FOOTNOTES:
See p. [713].
See p. [715].
CHAPTER XLIV.
INDIA AND THE COLONIES.
1815-1902.
Down to the end of the great struggle with Revolutionary and Imperial France, the history of the rise and development of the British empire beyond seas is intimately connected with the history of Britain's wars in Europe. The contest for colonial and commercial supremacy is at the root alike of the war of the Austrian succession, the Seven Years' War, the war of American Independence, and the war with Bonaparte.
But after 1815 this close interpenetration of the European and colonial affairs of England comes to an abrupt end. For the last eighty years they have touched each other at very rare intervals; the only occasions of importance when European complications have reacted on our dominions over-sea have been when our strained relations with Russia have led to troubles on the north-western frontier of India.
For the most part, the development of the colonial and Indian empire of Britain has gone on unvexed by any interference from without. We have therefore relegated our treatment of it to a separate chapter, set apart from our domestic annals.
The British Empire in 1815.
In 1815 the British territories in India were already by far the most important of our possessions, but they comprised not one-fourth of the dominions which now acknowledge Edward VII. as their direct sovereign. In Africa we owned only a few fever-smitten ports on the Gulf of Guinea, and the newly annexed Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope, inhabited by a scanty and disaffected population of Boers and a multitude of wild Kaffirs. In Australia, the small convict settlements of New South Wales and Tasmania gave little signs of development, blighted as they were by the unsatisfactory character of the unwilling emigrants. Our group of colonies in North America was the most promising possession of the crown; granted a liberal constitution by Pitt's wise Canada Act, they were growing rapidly in wealth and population. They had shown a most commendable loyalty during the American war of 1812-14, and the divergence in race and religion between the old French habitans of the province of Quebec and the new English settlers in Upper Canada had not as yet brought any trouble. But the greatest part of British North America was still a wilderness. The limit of settled land was only just approaching Lake Huron; even in the more eastern provinces, such as Quebec and Nova Scotia, there were still vast unexplored tracts of waste and forest. Into the far West, the basins of the Columbia and Mackenzie rivers, only a few adventurers—fur-traders of the Hudson's Bay Company and French half-breed trappers—had as yet penetrated.
The West Indian Islands.
The West Indian colonies, somewhat increased in number by the results of our wars between 1793 and 1815, had suffered many evils from French privateering and negro rebellions, but were now at the height of their prosperity. Vigorously if recklessly developed by the slave-owning planters, they were at this moment the main producers of sugar and coffee for the whole world. The colonies of France and Spain had suffered so fearfully that they could hardly attempt competition.
Other outlying possessions were in the hands of England, some destined to prosperity, some to obscurity—such as Mauritius, the Falklands, St. Helena, Bermuda—but we have no space for more than a hasty mention of them.
The history of the more important groups—India, Australia, Canada, and South Africa—requires a more detailed treatment.
British territorial possessions in India.
At the great peace of 1815 we were masters in Northern India of the great province of Bengal, lately increased by the "North-West Provinces," the territory between Allahabad and Delhi which we had taken from Scindiah in 1801-3. We had also annexed in the same year the possessions of the Rajah of Berar in Orissa. These three tracts constituted the presidency of Bengal, and were governed from Calcutta. South of Orissa the whole east coast of Hindostan was in our hands, the Carnatic having been annexed in 1799. The Carnatic, the lands taken from Sultan Tippoo, and the "Circars" which the Nizam had ceded to us, formed the presidency of Madras. Our possessions in this quarter were completed by Ceylon, which we had acquired from the Dutch at the treaty of Amiens. In Western India the Bombay presidency consisted as yet of no more than the islands of Bombay and Salsette and a few ports along the coast.
INDIA 1815-90.
The vassal states.
But in addition to these dominions, ruled directly by the Company, English influence was predominant in a much larger tract of India. The Nawab of Oude in the north, the Nizam in the Deccan, the Rajah of Mysore in the south, the Peishwa in the west, and many smaller princes, were all bound to us by subsidiary treaties; they had covenanted to guide their foreign policy by our own, and to supply us with troops and subsidies in time of war.
The Mahratta and Rajput states.
In all the Indian Peninsula there were only three groups of states which were still independent of the British power. The more remote Mahratta powers—the realms governed by Scindiah, Holkar, the Gaikwar, and the Rajah of Berar—were still for all intents and purposes autonomous. The treaties which Lord Wellesley had made with them were not enforced by his weaker successors, and the Mahratta princes continued their feuds with each other and their incursions into those parts of India which were not yet under British control. Their chief victims were the unfortunate states of Rajputana, where a cluster of native princes of ancient stock were as yet unprotected by treaties with the East India Company.
The Sikhs.—Runjit Singh.
Beyond the Rajputs lay the third district of India which was still independent—the Sikh principality of the Punjab. The Sikhs were a sect of religious enthusiasts who had revolted against the misgovernment of the Great Mogul some fifty years before, and had formed themselves into a disorderly commonwealth. But one great chief, Runjit Singh, had taught them to combine, and forced them into union. He ruled them for many years, and organized the whole sect into an army which combined the courage of fanaticism with the strictest discipline. He was friendly to the British, and took care never to come into collision with them.
Thus in 1815 the British in India held a position dominating half the peninsula, but unprovided with any solid frontier on the land side. They were charged with the care of several weak and imbecile dependent states, surrounded by greedy and vigorous neighbours. Unless they were to make up their minds to go back, they were bound to go forward, for no final peace was possible till it should be settled whether the East India Company or the Mahrattas and Sikhs were to be the dominating power in the whole land between the Indus and the Bay of Bengal.
Lord Hastings Governor-General.—The Nepaulese war.
The first important advance after the departure of Wellesley was made by the Marquis of Hastings, Governor-General from 1814 to 1823. This active ruler was resolved not to permit the petty insults to British territory, and the plundering of British allies which the unsettled condition of the frontier made possible. In 1814 he attacked and drove back into their hills the Gurkhas, the hill tribes of Nepaul, who had been wont to harass the northern frontier of Bengal and Oude. They offered a desperate resistance, but when once beaten became the fast friends of the British, and have given valuable aid in every war which we have since waged in India.
Extinction of the Pindarees.
The Nepaul war having ended in 1815, Hastings took a larger matter in hand: the dominions of our vassal the Nizam and of the other princes of Central India were much vexed by the Pindarees, organized bands of marauders—like the free companies of the Middle Ages—who found harbourage in the territories of the Mahrattas, and, when not employed in the civil wars of those chiefs, plundered on their own account all over the Deccan. Under a great captain of adventurers named Cheetoo, these hordes became a public danger to all India. Hastings had them hunted down and destroyed by armies which started simultaneously from Madras, Bengal, and Bombay. They were completely exterminated, and their leader Cheetoo fled alone to the jungle, and was devoured by a tiger.
The third Mahratta war.
The Pindarees had long received the secret countenance of the Mahratta chiefs, and while the British were still engaged in chasing the marauders, three of the great chiefs of Western India took arms. The Peishwa Bajee Rao was anxious to free himself from the dependence which Wellesley had imposed on him in 1801. He conspired with the Rajah of Berar and the regents who ruled for the young Holkar. But the event of the third Mahratta war (1817-18) was not for a moment doubtful. The allied chiefs never succeeded in joining each other: Bajee Rao was defeated in front of Poona by a mere handful of British troops, and after long wanderings was forced to lay down his arms and surrender. The army of the Holkar state was routed, after a much harder struggle, at Mehidpore; the hordes of the Rajah of Berar fled before 1500 British troops at Seetabuldee. Each of the confederates fought for his own hand without aid from his neighbour, and all alike were crushed.
The campaign of 1817-18 made an end of the independence of the Mahrattas. The Peishwa's whole realm was annexed to the Bombay presidency: he himself was sent to live on a government pension at Cawnpore, far away in Oude. One third of the dominions of Holkar was confiscated; the Rajah of Berar was deposed. Stringent terms of subjection were imposed on both their states. All the Mahratta principalities now came under British control, for Scindiah and the Gaikwar of Baroda, who had taken no part in the war, consented to sign treaties which made them the vassals of the Company. The same position was gladly assumed by the chiefs of Rajputana, who had suffered many ills at the hands of their Mahratta neighbours, and were only too glad to gain immunity from assault under the protection of the Company's flag. In all India only the realm of Runjit Singh beyond the Sutlej was now outside the sphere of British influence.
Internal tranquillity.—The Burmese war.
Owing to the wisdom of that aged prince, it was to be yet many years before the English and the Sikhs came into collision. For some years after the victories of Lord Hastings in 1817-18, India enjoyed a term of comparative peace. Lord Amherst and Lord William Bentinck, the two next Governor-Generals, were more noted for the internal reforms which they carried out than for the wars which they waged. The only important annexation of the period 1823-35 resulted from a struggle with a power which lay altogether outside the bounds of India. The King of Burmah assailed the eastern limits of Bengal and was punished by being deprived of Assam and Aracan.
Reforms of Lord Amherst and Lord W. Bentinck.
But the times of Lord Amherst and Lord William Bentinck have a far better distinction from the liberal measures of reform which they introduced than from any annexations. The latter Governor-General, a man of a strong will and a very enlightened mind, put down the horrible practice of suttee, or widow-burning, and crushed the Thugs, the disguised gang-robbers who infested the roads and took life half for plunder and half as a religious Sacrifice. He lent his support to Christian missions, which the Company had hitherto discouraged, from a dread of offending native susceptibilities. He introduced steamships on the Ganges, and worked out a scheme for the carrying of the mails to Europe by way of the Red Sea and the short overland journey from Suez to Alexandria. But this wise plan was not finally adopted till many years after.
Renewal of the Company's charter.
In 1833, while Lord William Bentinck was still in power, the East India Company's charter from the crown ran out, and was only renewed by the Whig government of Lord Grey on the condition that the Company should entirely give up its old commercial monopolies, and confine itself to the exercise of patronage and the duties of administration. For the last twenty-five years of its rule the tone of the great corporation was vastly improved, now that dividends were not the sole aim of its directors.
The First Afghan war.—Lord Auckland restores Shah Sujah.
In 1836 Lord Auckland took over the governor-generalship. His tenure of power is mainly notable for the commencement of the disastrous first Afghan war. Frightened by the intrigues of the Russians with Dost Mohammed, the ruler of Afghanistan, Lord Auckland unwisely determined to interfere with the internal politics of that barren and warlike country. There was living in exile in India Shah Sujah, a prince who had once ruled at Cabul, but had long been driven out by his countrymen. The Governor-General determined to restore him by force of arms, and to make him the vassal of England. Though we could only approach Afghanistan by crossing the neutral territory of the Sikhs, this distant enterprise was taken in hand. An English army passed the Suleiman mountains, occupied Candahar, stormed Ghuznee, and finally entered Cabul (1839). Shah Sujah was placed on his ancient throne, and part of the victorious troops were withdrawn to India.
Destruction of the British force at Cabul.
But the Afghan tribes hated the nominee of the stranger, and refused to obey the Shah. Lord Auckland was compelled to leave an English force at Candahar and another at Cabul to support his feeble vassal. For two uneasy years the garrison held its own (1839-41) against sporadic risings. But in the winter of 1841-42 a general insurrection of the whole of the tribes of Afghanistan swept all before it. The very townsmen of Cabul took arms and murdered the English resident almost under the eyes of the Shah. General Elphinstone, who commanded the brigade at Cabul, was a feeble old invalid. He allowed himself to be shut up in his entrenched camp, saw his supplies cut off, and was finally compelled to make a retreat in the depth of winter, after signing a humiliating treaty with the Afghan chiefs, and giving them hostages. But the treacherous victors attacked the retreating army as it struggled through the snow of the Khoord Cabul Pass, and massacred the whole force. One British regiment, three sepoy regiments, and 12,000 camp-followers were cut to pieces. Only a single horseman, Dr. Brydon, made his way through to Jelalabad, the nearest English garrison, to bear the tidings of the annihilation of the whole army.
End of the war.—Dost Mohammed reinstated.
Shah Sujah was murdered by his rebellious subjects, and all Afghanistan was lost save the two fortresses of Candahar and Jelalabad, whose gallant defence forms the only redeeming episode in the war. But to revenge our disaster, if for no better purpose, a new English army under General Pollock forced the Khyber Pass, defeated the Afghans, and reoccupied Cabul. They evacuated it after destroying its chief buildings, and Dost Mohammed, whom we had deposed in 1839, was permitted to return to the throne from which we had evicted him. For long years after we left Afghanistan alone, the memory of the massacre in the Khoord Cabul Pass sufficing to deter even the most enterprising Governor-Generals from interfering with its treacherous and fanatical tribes.
Lord Ellenborough annexes Scinde.
Ere the Afghan war was over, Lord Auckland had been superseded by Lord Ellenborough, an able and active ruler, whose qualities were only marred by a tendency to grandiloquence and proclamations in the style of the Great Napoleon. He not only brought the Afghan war to its close, but annexed Scinde, the barren lower valley of the Indus. We were drawn into a quarrel with the Ameers of that country, and it was overrun by a small army under Sir Charles Napier, who beat the Ameers at Meanee, though their forces outnumbered him twelvefold. Scinde was annexed to the Bombay Presidency, and by its possession we encompassed on two sides the Punjab, the only remaining independent state in India.
Lord Hardinge and the Sikh invasion.
Runjit Singh had died in 1839, and his successors were weak princes who perished in civil wars or by palace conspiracies. They were utterly unable to restrain their arrogant and unruly army, which made and unmade sovereigns at Lahore like the Roman praetorians of the third century. In 1845 the rash and ignorant generals of the Sikhs resolved to attack the British, and dreamed of overrunning all India. They crossed the Sutlej and invaded the North-Western provinces ere the new Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, had fully realized that war was at hand.
Battles of Ferozeshah and Sobraon.
Our Sikh wars saw the hardest fighting which has ever taken place in India. The army which Runjit Singh had spent his life in training was a splendid force, and proved able in the shock of battle to beat the sepoys of the Company. It was only by the desperate fighting of the British troops, little aided by their native auxiliaries, that the Sikhs were finally driven back. Unfortunately, Lord Gough, the commander-in-chief, was a reckless general, whose only idea of tactics was to dash his men at the centre of the enemy's position, regardless of batteries, obstacles, and earthworks. A more circumspect officer could probably have attained his end at a much less cost of life. At Ferozeshah he was completely foiled in his first attempt to force the entrenched camp of the Sikhs, and only succeeded on the next day because the enemy, who had suffered as heavily as the British, had not the heart to stand up to a second battle within twenty-four hours, and retired from his position. Sobraon, the decisive engagement of the campaign, was even more bloody; but on this occasion the Sikhs fought with the Sutlej at their backs; and when at last they were driven from their lines, a fourth of their army perished in the river (February 10, 1846). The Lahore government then asked for peace, which was granted them on condition that Dhulip Singh, the young son of Runjit Singh, should acknowledge the suzerainty of the British.
Battles of Chillianwallah and Guzerat.
But the brave and obstinate Sikhs did not yet consider themselves beaten. Less than two years after the first struggle was over they again tried the fortune of war. In March, 1848, Moolraj, the Governor of Mooltan, rose in rebellion to throw off the British suzerainty. The whole Sikh army fell away to him, and a campaign not less desperate than that of 1845-6 began. Lord Gough, who was still in command, repeated his former tactics at Chillianwallah, and flung his army against a line of batteries hidden by jungle. The British only carried them with heavy loss, the 24th foot being completely cut to pieces. The old general's disregard for common prudence and the lives of his men so irritated his officers, that when they again met the enemy at the decisive battle of Guzerat (February 22, 1849) they clandestinely confined him on a housetop, till the Sikh entrenchments had been pounded for three hours by an overwhelming fire of artillery. The British infantry were then let loose, carried the earthworks with little loss, and brought the campaign to a prompt end, for the whole Sikh army surrendered a few days later (March 12, 1849).
Lord Dalhousie annexes the Punjab.
The Punjab was now annexed, for Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General who had succeeded Lord Hardinge, did not intend to give the Sikhs the opportunity of raising a third war. Dhulip Singh, the titular Maharajah, was sent to live in England on a pension. Certain outlying districts, such as Cashmere, were left to chiefs who had not opposed us in the struggle of 1848; but Lahore and the whole of the plain of the "Five Rivers" were put under British rule. The officers to whom the settlement of the Punjab was given over were the picked men of India: so ably and genially did they do their work, that the Sikhs soon settled down into quiet and loyal subjects. When next the British empire in Hindostan was in danger, it was largely saved by the gallant aid of levies from the Punjab.
The second Burmese war.
After the great struggle with the Sikhs was over, the rest of Lord Dalhousie's administration was comparatively uneventful. The second Burmese war of 1852, provoked by the ill-treatment of English merchants at Rangoon, was a short and easy campaign, which resulted in the annexation of Pegu, the coast district of the Burmese kingdom, and the mouths of the Irrawaddy.
Further annexations by Lord Dalhousie.
But some of the doings of Dalhousie in India itself, though they made little noise at the time, were fated to have grave consequences. He held strongly the doctrine that direct British administration was the best thing for natives, and took every opportunity of annexing vassal states where the ruling houses died out. This was much against the prejudices of the Hindoos, who always try to perpetuate their family by adoption when natural heirs fail. By refusing to allow of this custom Lord Dalhousie was able to annex the great Mahratta state of the Rajahs of Berar, the old opponents of Wellesley and Hastings. He also took over the smaller Mahratta states of Jhansi and Satara, and refused to allow the deposed peishwa, Bajee Rao, to pass on his title and pension to his adopted son, the Nana Sahib. There is no doubt that these acts gravely displeased pious Hindoos.
Dethronement of the King of Oude.
Moreover, in 1856, Dalhousie, more by the Company's wish than his own, completed his wide annexations by dethroning the King of Oude, the chief Moslem state of northern India, and the oldest of the vassals of the British. His abominable misgovernment and folly drew down his fate deservedly enough; but the seizure of Oude was not popular even among the subjects who were delivered from the tyrant's rule, and it created a feeling of distrust and resentment among all the surviving feudatories of the Company.
Lord Canning Governor-General.
Lord Dalhousie, broken down by hard work, returned to England to die, soon after the annexation of Oude. He was succeeded by Lord Canning, the son of the great Tory prime minister of 1827. Scarcely had Canning gathered up the reins of power when the terrible sepoy mutiny of 1857 broke out.
The native army in India.
A power which undertakes to hold down a vast empire by a great mercenary army raised from among the peoples of the land, is always exposed to the danger of military rebellion. The army has no other incentives than its pay, its habit of disciplined obedience, and its loyalty to its officers, to keep it true to its foreign masters. If the soldiery realize their power, and are ready to unite with each other for a common end, they may aspire to cast out their employers and rule for their own benefit. Mutinies of single regiments were not unfrequent episodes in the history of the Indian army, but hitherto no general revolt had occurred.
In 1857 the proportion of British to native troops in India was abnormally low. The regiments withdrawn for the Crimean war had never been replaced, and small expeditions to Persia and China [69] were absorbing many more. In the whole peninsula the European stood to the sepoy troops in the ratio of only one to six—at present one to three is considered the least that is safe. Moreover, the spirit of many of the native troops was very bad. They had been so flattered and pampered by the government that they believed themselves to be the masters of the situation, and despised the few white regiments scattered among them.
Outbreak of the mutiny.
The army was arrogant and discontented; the old ruling families of the lately annexed states were intriguing and conspiring all over northern India. A widely spread prophecy that the rule of the British was only to last for a hundred years, dating from Plassey and the annexation of Bengal, was disturbing the minds of the masses, when a trivial incident let loose the elements of discord. The government was introducing among the native troops the use of rifles, in place of the old musket. The new weapons required greased cartridges, which were being duly issued, when some mischievous incendiary spread among the Bengal sepoys the rumour that they were being defiled. The cartridges, it was said, were lubricated with the grease of pigs and cattle, in order that the Hindoos might lose their caste by touching the flesh of the sacred cow, and the Mussulmans might be polluted by the contamination of the unholy swine. When all had become unclean, it was said, the government intended to make Christians of them. This foolish rumour sufficed to set the army in a flame. Two regiments which mutinied near Calcutta were easily disbanded; but a formidable and successful revolt of the sepoy brigade at Meerut, near Delhi (May 10, 1857), was the signal for the outbreak of well-nigh the whole Bengal army.
The heir of the Moguls proclaimed Emperor at Delhi.
In the months of May and June, more than forty garrisons in the valleys of the Ganges and the Jumna mutinied. In most cases their rising was followed by hideous cruelty; the European officers were treacherously shot, and hundreds of women and children massacred. Both Hindoos and Mussulmans eagerly joined the rising, but the main guidance of the mutiny was in the hands of the latter. They proclaimed the descendant of the great Mogul, who still resided at Delhi, the heir of the empire of his ancestors. Delhi itself, where there was no British garrison, fell into their hands, after the great magazine had been blown up by the desperate courage of Lieutenant Willoughby.
Rising in Oude.—Siege of Lucknow.
The ancient city became the centre of the rebellion in the north, while further south, in Oude, the whole population rose in arms to restore their late king, and beleaguered in the residency of Lucknow the one British regiment which formed part of the garrison of the newly annexed state.
Spread of the rebellion.
Except in Oude and certain parts of the North-West Provinces the rebellion was purely military, and the peasantry preserved a timid neutrality in the strife. But the whole Bengal army, with hardly an exception, rose—or tried to rise—against its masters. Fortunately for England, the mutiny did not affect the Madras presidency at all, and only spread to a small corner of the Bombay presidency. But all northern India from Benares to the Sutlej was lost for a time. Unwarlike Bengal remained quiet, and the Punjab—where English regiments were more numerous than in any other part of India—was kept under control by its able governor, Sir John Lawrence. But all that lay between them was a seething flood of rebellion, where a few English garrisons lay scattered like islands in a tempestuous sea. Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, were all insufficiently held—only at the third of them was there so much as a single regiment of British infantry.
The siege of Delhi.
While the authorities at Calcutta were collecting the few European troops who could be gathered from Burmah and Madras, and were making desperate appeals for prompt aid from home, the governor of the Punjab struck the first blow for the reconquest of the lost provinces. Four thousand Europeans and some hastily raised Sikh levies crossed the Sutlej and marched on Delhi, now held by at least 30,000 mutineers. They defeated the rebels in the field, and commenced the siege of the royal city on June 10, 1857. This bold move threw the enemy on the defensive, and the rising spread no further in the north. But Delhi was beleaguered for fourteen weeks, and even when every available British soldier had been drawn from the Punjab, the storming of the place was a hazardous task, only carried to a successful end by the reckless courage of the assailants. After six days of deadly street fighting (September 14-20, 1857), the rebels were driven out, and their titular leader, the aged Grand Mogul, with all his family, was captured. Bahadur Shah himself was only banished to Burmah, but his sons and grandson were shot without trial by Major Hodson, the daring cavalry officer who had tracked and captured them.
The massacre of Cawnpore.
While the siege of Delhi was still in progress, a small force had been collected at Calcutta and hurried northward to attack Oude and relieve the beleaguered garrisons of Cawnpore and Lucknow. General Havelock commanded this brigade, a mere handful of 1200 men. He pushed on from Allahabad on June 30, but when he had cut his way to Cawnpore after four considerable fights, he found that he was too late. The small garrison there, hampered with many hundreds of women and children, had held out for a month, but surrendered on June 27 to the chief of the rebels, Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the late Peishwa, whose pension and title had been denied him. [70] This revengeful and treacherous ruffian promised the besieged a safe passage to Allahabad. But as soon as they had evacuated their entrenchments, he massacred them all in cold blood, save two hundred women and children, whom he saved alive. When the news of Havelock's victorious advance was heard, he had these poor survivors hacked to death and cast into the famous "well of Cawnpore" (July 15). The British brigade cut its way into the city a day too late to save the prisoners, but was able to wreak a terrible vengeance on their murderers, though the Nana himself, to the bitter disappointment of all, got safely away and died a fugitive in the jungles of Nepaul.
The relief of Lucknow.
Havelock had to wait some time at Cawnpore for reinforcements before he could march on Lucknow, where the garrison, some 1000 strong, had maintained themselves for eighty-seven days behind the walls of the hastily fortified Residency. The much-tried defenders were cheered by the arrival of Havelock, who with 3000 men forced his way into the Residency after a day's street fighting. But 60,000 rebels, the whole fighting population of the province of Oude, still hung round the place, and Havelock could not drive them away. The final relief of Lucknow was only accomplished by Lord Clyde, the Colin Campbell of the Crimean war, who had arrived in India with the first reinforcements from home. On November 9 he swept away the rebels, and liberated the garrison, but Havelock died the very day after he and his troops were delivered.
Lord Clyde defeats the Mahrattas and the Oude rebels.
Lord Clyde drew back to Cawnpore with the rescued garrison, leaving Lucknow to be reoccupied by the rebels. He was forced to turn because the Mahratta army of Scindiah had just revolted and joined the Oude insurgents. Clyde beat them on December 6, just outside Cawnpore, and drove them back on to Central India.
Lucknow stormed.—Battles of Bareilly and Gwalior.
The final stage of the war was reached in March, 1858, when Clyde marched for the second time against Lucknow, stormed the city, and drove the remnants of the rebel army of Oude to Bareilly, where they were crushed in the last general engagement but one of the war (May 7). Meanwhile Sir Hugh Rose had collected an army from the Bombay presidency and overrun Scindiah's dominions and Bundelkund, where the rebellion of the Mahrattas had been headed by the Ranee of Jhansi and Tantia Topee, a clever leader of irregular troops. On June 16 he beat them in front of Gwalior, the Ranee was slain, and her army dispersed. But Tantia Topee took to the jungles, and was not finally caught and hung till the spring of the succeeding year.
Thus ended the great mutiny of 1857-58, a ferocious struggle in which the treachery and cruelty of the sepoys were amply punished by the ruthless severity of their victors, who gave no quarter, blew prominent traitors from the cannon's mouth, and hung meaner prisoners by the hundred.
Abolition of the East India Company.
The English nation were convinced that something must be done to reform the administration of India, and the East India Company was abolished by Act of Parliament in 1858, the whole administration, civil and military, of the peninsula being now taken over by the Queen's government. To mark that no blame was thrown on the Governor-General, Lord Canning, whose conduct all through the war had been most cool and courageous, he was made the first viceroy of the new empire.
India under the rule of the Crown.
Since the Mutiny the annals of India have been comparatively peaceful, and hardly a shot has been fired within the bounds of the peninsula. The history of the last thirty years has been a record of growing prosperity, of the development of trade and industries, the building of railways and canals, and the marvellous increase of sea-borne trade. Since the Suez Canal has brought India so close to Europe, the arable land is everywhere encroaching on the jungle, and the main difficulty of the future appears likely to be the overgrowth of population in the thickly settled districts, where, more than once, a year of dearth has slain thousands and brought tens of millions to the edge of starvation. The terrible Madras famine of 1877, the worst of its kind, is said to have cost the lives of 1,500,000 peasants.
The second Afghan war.
The one great warlike episode in the history of British India remaining to be chronicled is the second Afghan war, of 1878-80. This struggle was a consequence of the Russo-Turkish war of the previous year, and of the estrangement between Russia and England which resulted therefrom. Lord Lytton, the viceroy of the years 1876-80, was a disciple of Lord Beaconsfield, and a believer in a spirited foreign policy. He found that Shere Ali, the Ameer of Afghanistan, was intriguing with the Russian governor of Turkestan, and promptly summoned him to sign a treaty of alliance and receive a British resident at his court. The Ameer refused, and at once saw his dominions invaded. When General Roberts stormed the Peiwar Kotal and advanced within a few miles of Cabul, the Ameer fled towards the Russian frontier, and died on the way. His son, Yakoob Khan, accepted the British suzerainty, and promised all that was required. But when the army had retired, the populace of Cabul rose just as in 1842, and murdered Sir Lewis Cavagnari, the British resident, and all his escort. A second invasion at once began, and Yakoob Khan was deposed and sent to India. Lord Lytton would probably have annexed the whole country but for the troubles which broke out in the winter of 1879-80, when the Afghan tribes took arms and assailed the garrisons of Cabul and Candahar. Roberts was besieged in his entrenchments at Cabul, but finally drove off the insurgents, and held his own. But in the south General Burrows, advancing to attack the pretender Eyoob Khan, was totally defeated at Maiwand, with the loss of half his brigade, and chased back into Candahar. He was only saved by the rapid and masterly march of Roberts, who in twenty-three days forced his way from Cabul to Candahar, routed the army of Eyoob, and liberated the Candahar garrison (September 1, 1880). But the disaster of Maiwand had troubled English public opinion, and a Liberal government had now replaced Lord Beaconsfield at home. Afghanistan was evacuated, and Abdurrhaman Khan, a nephew of Shere Ali, was recognized as ruler of the whole country, where he maintained himself with success till his death in 1901, and proved faithful to the English alliance.
The Queen proclaimed Empress of India.
Perhaps Lord Lytton's administration may ultimately be remembered less for his unhappy Afghan war than for his proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India in the great Durbar held in Delhi in 1877. This step marked the commencement of a new and more intimate relation of England and India, of which an earnest had been given two years before by the Prince of Wales's tour through the peninsula. Since then every attempt has been made to enlist the sympathies of the natives on behalf of the British rule. Their princes have been encouraged to visit England, to interest themselves in public works, education, and internal reforms, and to supply troops for the general service of the empire. Elective municipalities have been created in the cities, to teach their motley population the art of self-government—which they are still very far from having learnt. A share in the administration—which some think unduly large—is granted to native civil servants, and the native press has been granted a liberty which it often abuses. All financial and agrarian legislation is framed to press as lightly as possible on the masses. But the results of these efforts are still somewhat problematic, and the British bayonet is still needed to keep the peace between contending races and creeds.
The Australian penal settlements.—New South Wales.
In strong contrast with the stirring annals of British India are the unromantic details of the development of our Australian Colonies. We have alluded to the unpromising foundation of our first establishment in Botany Bay, by the despatch thither of the gangs of convicts who in an earlier age used to be sent into servitude in America (1788). For many years this annual crop of ruffianism swamped all attempts at real colonization in New South Wales. But after a time the extraordinary fertility of the soil began to attract more immigrants, while the mitigation of the English penal law under the hands of Sir Robert Peel decreased the number of convicts. As the free population grew they began to protest so strongly against the companions who were drafted in upon them, that the government diverted the stream of convicts to new settlements in Tasmania and Western Australia. For long years New South Wales remained a purely pastoral colony, and its immense plains were inhabited only by the "squatters"—the proprietors who had bought large tracts of land from the government. They dwelt in stations thinly scattered over the face of the country, rearing vast herds of cattle and sheep. It was as exporting wool, hides, and tallow alone that Australia first became known to the commercial world of Europe.
Discovery of gold-fields.—Victoria.
In 1851, however, an enormous difference was made by the discovery of rich alluvial gold deposits near Port Phillip, on the southern shore of New South Wales. The washings proved so productive that thousands of immigrants of all sorts and conditions poured in to profit by them. The Port Phillip district was cut off from New South Wales, and made into the new colony of Victoria (1851). Its population went up from 80,000 to 450,000 in the ten years that followed the discovery of gold. When the alluvial deposits were exhausted, it was found that large reefs of auriferous quartz lay below them, and a steady development of scientific mining by machinery superseded the haphazard work of the early diggers. Victoria still continues one of the great gold-producing centres of the world.
Queensland.—The labour difficulty.
New South Wales still remains a mainly pastoral country, though here too considerable gold-fields have been found. After throwing off its southern districts to form the colony of Victoria, it ceded its northern territory to form the colony of Queensland (1859). The semi-tropical climate of this last province differentiates it from the rest of Australia. The great heat makes European labour difficult during the greater part of the year.
South Australia.—Western Australia.—Tasmania.
South Australia, settled in 1836, is mainly an agricultural country with some copper-mines. Western Australia, originating in a convict settlement in 1829, has lagged behind the rest of the sister colonies for want of any of the natural advantages which attract immigrants, but the tardy discovery of gold in 1892 may suffice at last to draw thither the much-needed population. Tasmania, originating, like Western Australia, in a penal colony, has developed into a small island community of steady prosperity.
New Zealand.—The Maori war.
Far to the east of Australia lie the twin islands of New Zealand, first explored by Captain Cook in 1773, but not planted with English colonists till 1839. Unlike the aborigines of Australia, the lowest and feeblest savages in the world, the natives of New Zealand were a fierce and clever race of cannibals, named Maoris. They bitterly resented the settlement of their islands, and raised two considerable wars, for the second of which (1861-66) British troops had to be brought to this remote colony, and had hard work to expel the Maoris from their pahs, or stockades. After their defeat they quieted down, and are now slowly dying out before the progress of civilization, which seems fatal to them, though they are a vigorous and intelligent race. New Zealand more resembles Great Britain in climate and situation than does any other of our colonies, and has enjoyed a long career of prosperity, somewhat checked of late by a tendency to a rash extension of the public debt.
The Cape Colony.—The Boers.
Passing westward across the Indian Ocean, we come to the second great group of English colonies, those of South Africa. The old Dutch dominion of the Cape of Good Hope was conquered by the British in 1806, and secured to us by the treaty of Vienna in 1815. It reached only as far as the Orange River, and was thinly settled by Dutch farmers, or Boers, scattered among a population of Kaffirs, whom they had in many cases reduced to slavery.
Natal.—The Orange Free State and the Transvaal.
When English emigration was directed to the Cape, the Boers resented the intrusion of the foreigner, and many of them trekked, i.e. migrated, into the wilderness to conquer new homes among the Kaffirs. But the British government followed them, and annexed their first settlement in Natal (1843). They then moved inland, and finally established (1852-54) the two republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which still remain, though each of them was for a short time under British control.
The Kaffir wars.
The history of the Cape Colony, till within the last few years, was one of comparatively slow development and of frequent Kaffir wars. No less than eight such struggles with the natives are recorded between 1815 and 1881, some of them of considerable length and difficulty.
The diamond mines.—Kimberley.
Each led to an annexation, till at last all the country south of the Orange River had passed into the hands of the settlers, though large reserved tracts were set aside for the native tribes. Meanwhile the Dutch and English colonists held apart, and have always remained more or less estranged. The first rapid development of the settlement began in 1867, when the discovery of diamond-mines in Griqualand West, beyond the Orange River, led to the northward extension of the British boundary, to the grave discontent of the Boers of the Orange Free State (1872). The great mining town of Kimberley has arisen as the centre of this arid but busy district.
Annexation of the Transvaal.
The most formidable difficulty which the English have met in South Africa came from the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. The Boers of that republic having engaged themselves in dangerous wars with the natives, Lord Beaconsfield's government resolved to place them under British rule. This was done, and, as heirs to the Boers' quarrels, we fought out the sanguinary Zulu war of 1879.
The Zulu war.
The Zulus, an immigrant tribe from the north, had built up a military monarchy over their neighbours under a despot named Chaka, who had disciplined them and formed them into regiments in imitation of European organization. We made war on his grandson Cetewayo, and incurred, on our first meeting with the formidable Zulu army, the disaster of Isandula, where a whole British battalion and 1000 native auxiliaries were exterminated to the last man. It required the dispatch of 10,000 men from England under Sir Garnet Wolseley, and three sharp battles at Ekowe, Kambula, and Ulundi to break Cetewayo's army and restore the prestige of the British arms.
Hardly was the Zulu war over when the Boers of the Transvaal revolted, and defeated the small British force in Natal at Laing's Neck and Majuba Hill. We have related elsewhere how the Gladstone government thereupon made peace, and gave the Boers their independence. [71]
The scramble for Africa.
The history of British Africa during the years 1885-95 was mainly the story of a scramble with the other European powers for the possession of the unoccupied parts of the continent. Since the Germans began to seize large tracts of southern Africa, and the French to extend their power into the Sahara and the valley of the Niger, the British government was forced in self-defence to make similar seizures, in order to prevent its colonies from being cut off from the interior. This has resulted in the annexation of three great tracts—one reaching from the Orange River and Griqualand up to the Zambezi, and circling round three sides of the Transvaal Republic; a second round Lake Nyassa; a third further north, including a slip of coast about Mombasa and Witu, and running up inland to the great equatorial lakes which feed the Nile, so as to include the kingdom of Uganda. At the same time the Niger Company has been allowed to establish a protectorate over the lower valley of that great river, where a colony is being built up which throws into the shade the old pestilential seaports at Sierra Leone and on the Gold Coast, which were once the only British possessions in Guinea. The annals of South Africa from the day of the Jameson raid (December 29, 1895) onward have possessed so much more than local importance, that they will be found recorded in the general chapter dealing with the closing years of Queen Victoria.
Upper and Lower Canada.
The history of the British colonies in North America is of a very different character from that of British South Africa. We have spoken in an earlier page of the gallant aid which the colonists gave to England in her struggle with the United States during the years 1812-15. When the excitement of this war had died down, there arose a slowly increasing estrangement between the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada; the English settlers of the former and the old French habitans of the latter were separated from each other by race, language, religion, and prejudices. They were, moreover, administered as wholly different colonies. Gradually a dangerous spirit developed itself among the French Canadians, who complained that their governors and officials were unsympathetic, and chafed against the limited self-government allowed them by Pitt's Canada Act of 1791. Even some of the settlers of the Upper Province expressed disloyal sentiments on this latter grievance, and spoke of asking for annexation to the United States.
The Canadian rebellion.
This discontent took shape in the Canadian rebellion of 1837, a movement almost entirely confined to the French-speaking districts, and easily suppressed by the loyalists, aided by a few British troops. After investigating the grievances which had led to the rising, the Home Government resolved to unite the two provinces into a single colony, that the French districts might be more closely linked to and controlled by the English. At the same time a more liberal measure of self-government was conceded. The constitution for the future comprised an elective Lower House and an Upper House of life-members, who stood to the governor much as the two Houses of the English Parliament stand to the Queen (1840).
Canadian federation.
The most important event in the history of British North America has been the federation of all its colonies into the single "Dominion of Canada" in the years 1867-1871. The danger which the British possessions had experienced during the threatened war with the United States in 1862 and the Fenian invasions of 1866-7 impelled the provinces towards the union which gives strength. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, consented to federate themselves with Canada. Only the remote and thinly populated fishing-station of Newfoundland has preferred to remain outside the alliance. The four other colonies send deputies to the Dominion Parliament, which meets at Ottawa, though they retain for local purposes provincial legislatures of their own.
The Canadian Pacific Railway.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, so that free communication exists across the whole continent from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. Since then the broad plains between the great lakes and the Rocky Mountains are being rapidly peopled. The old settlement of Manitoba and the newer provinces of Assinboia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are all being put under the plough or turned into cattle runs.
Imperial federation.
Our general survey of the history of the British colonial empire brings us to the topic which will be all-important in the twentieth century—the practicability of Imperial Federation. At the present moment the Crown is the only formal link between the many colonies and possessions over which the Union Jack floats. Is a closer connection desirable, and practicable? May we look forward to a firm and well-compacted league of all the British lands? Such a union might almost control the world, but it is hard to bring about. First among the difficulties in the way is the doubt whether Great Britain would ever allow herself to be outvoted by her colonies in an Imperial Parliament, and whether Canada would submit to the dictation of Australia, or Australia to the dictation of South Africa, in matters where their interests clashed. Next comes the question of free trade and protection. Most of the colonies are zealously protectionist in spirit, and as a condition of federation they would probably demand that the mother country should give their goods a preference over those of foreign states, by means of a revised customs tariff. A third set of objections turn on the likelihood of the colonies refusing to countenance the purely European policy of England. A fourth and formidable question is the place which India would have to take in the confederacy; she is not yet fit for self-government and equal partnership with the rest. If she were, the votes of her 250,000,000 inhabitants would swamp those of all the other members of the league. Yet none of these difficulties appear wholly insuperable. The idea of federation is in the air both in Great Britain and in her daughter-states. The day has long gone by when a not inconsiderable number of English statesmen looked forward to the time when the colonies should, as it was phrased, "cut the painter" and steer their own course. The consciousness of common origin and interests grows stronger; the interdependence of the mother country and her colonies is more realized; the development of rapid communication by sea and land makes the distance between the various British communities in different hemispheres less felt as every year rolls by. Facts like the splendid aid granted by all the colonies for the late South African War, speak for themselves. But there are still difficulties in the way. If local jealousies prevail, and the English-speaking peoples drift asunder, each must be content to play a comparatively unimportant part in the annals of the twentieth century. If, on the other hand, the project of federation can be worked out to a successful end, the future of the world lies in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race.