A hidden thread

DAVID TWISTON DAVIES on religion and the British Empire
The British Empire, 15581995, by T.O. Lloyd, Oxford University Press, £12.99.
IT IS EASY TO FORGET in our secular age the religious thread that runs through our history.
The pre-Reformation West Country sailors who signalled the start of our imperial story when they spotted the island of Newfoundland 500 years ago next month may have been looking for a trade route to India. But the Puritans who settled at Massachusetts Bay were motivated by a desire to retain independence from the papist trappings of Anglicanism, while the Calvert family were concerned to protect their fellow Catholics when they set up Maryland.
When the King's government took over Quebec in the 18th century, it had to grant the French Canadian populace a toleration not extended to Catholics in Britain. The East India Company only saw missionaries as trouble well into the 19th century; yet it could not resist the Evangelicals' demand for the right to attempt to convert the heathen and abolish suttee and slavery. And, in our own century, the Catholic mission schools produced many African rulers.
All this is outlined with great skill by Trevor Lloyd. He adopts a degree of detachment not possible for earlier historians, who once celebrated the imperial mission, then denounced exploitation and, most recently, offered earnest arguments seeking to prove that the empire was only a millstone round Britain's neck.
Flitting nimbly from, say, the kaffir war in the Cape to land speculation in South Australia and sugar markets in the West Indies, Lloyd has little opportunity to dwell on individuals. Nevertheless, he describes the Indian career of the Duke of Wellington's brother Lord Mornington, produces a far more positive picture of Cecil Rhodes than did the recent dire television series, and outlines the achievements of the Greys (who included a British prime minister, a foreign secretary, two colonial secretaries and a Canadian governor-general).
Professor Lloyd also never forgets the busy officials in Whitehall who accepted the way circumstances changed the motivation and style of Britain's imperial involvement while remaining constant in their efforts to keep down costs. Inevitably, the picture becomes blurred as the narradve deals with recent developments. But we should be wary of assuming that Hong Kong's return to China this year means that everything is over. There is still a scattering of red on the world's map. Some old friends and relations will certainly need our help in the future. And who can tell what will be the effect on our self-awareness of the threat to the United Kingdom posed by new Labour's devolution plans?
David Twiston Davies is the editor of Canada From Afar: the Daily Telegraph Book of Canadian Obituaries, published by Dundurn at 00.95.