Gregory A. Barton - Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

General Editors: Megan Vaughan, Kings College, Cambridge, and Richard Drayton, Kings College London

This informative series covers the broad span of modern imperial history while also exploring the recent developments in former colonial states where residues of empire can still be found. The books provide in-depth examinations of empires as competing and complementary power structures, encouraging the reader to reconsider their understanding of international and world history during recent centuries.

Titles include:

Tony Ballantyne

ORIENTALISM AND RACE

Aryanism in the British Empire

Peter F. Bang and C. A. Bayly (editors)

TRIBUTARY EMPIRES IN GLOBAL HISTORY

Gregory A. Barton

INFORMAL EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF ONE WORLD CULTURE

Rachel Berger

AYURVEDA MADE MODERN

Political Histories of Indigenous Medicine in North India, 19001955

Roy Bridges (editor)

IMPERIALISM, DECOLONIZATION AND AFRICA

Studies Presented to John Hargreaves

Rachel Bright

CHINESE LABOUR IN SOUTH AFRICA, 190210

Race, Violence and Global Spectacle

Larry Butler and Sarah Stockwell

THE WIND OF CHANGE

Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization

Kit Candlin

THE LAST CARIBBEAN FRONTIER, 17951815

Nandini Chatterjee

THE MAKING OF INDIAN SECULARISM

Empire, Law and Christianity, 18301960

Esme Cleall

MISSIONARY DISCOURSES OF DIFFERENCE

Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 18401900

T. J. Cribb (editor)

IMAGINED COMMONWEALTHS

Cambridge Essays on Commonwealth and International Literature in English

Jost Dlffer and Marc Frey (editors)

ELITES AND DECOLONIZATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Bronwen Everill

ABOLITION AND EMPIRE IN SIERRA LEONE AND LIBERIA

Ronald Hyam

BRITAINS IMPERIAL CENTURY, 18151914

A Study of Empire and Expansion

Third Edition

Brian Ireland

THE US MILITARY IN HAWAII

Colonialism, Memory and Resistance

Robin Jeffrey

POLITICS, WOMEN AND WELL-BEING

How Kerala Became a Model

Gabriel B. Paquette

ENLIGHTENMENT, GOVERNANCE, AND REFORM IN SPAIN AND ITS EMPIRE, 17591808

Sandhya L. Polu

INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN INDIA, 18921940

Policy-Making and the Perception of Risk

Sophus Reinert and Pernille Rge (editors)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EMPIRE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Ricardo Roque

HEADHUNTING AND COLONIALISM

Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire, 18701930

Jonathan Saha

LAW, DISORDER AND THE COLONIAL STATE

Corruption in Burma c.1900

John Singleton and Paul L. Robertson

ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALASIA 19451970

Miguel Surez Bosa (editor)

ATLANTIC PORTS AND THE FIRST GLOBALISATION c.18501930

Julia Tischler

LIGHT AND POWER FOR A MULTIRACIAL NATION

The Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation

Aparna Vaidik

IMPERIAL ANDAMANS

Colonial Encounter and Island History

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

Series Standing Order ISBN 9780333919088 (Hardback)

9780333919095 (Paperback)

(outside North America only)

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Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture

Gregory A. Barton

Professor of History, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney

Gregory A. Barton 2014

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For Timothy Mark Neal, With love

Contents

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped me fashion the ideas behind this book. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher pioneered the general concept of informal empire and my debt to them will be obvious to any reader. Wm. Roger Louis, Antony G. Hopkins, Alfred W. McCoy and James Onley, have inspired me over the years as I worked on this project. My friend and mentor, Harold Perkin, who passed away, encouraged me to tackle only the most important ideas and to write about the big picture. In particular two individuals stand out as crucial in their help by their endless conversation on the ideas that form the core of this work. My debt to Bryan Glass, founder and Director of the British Scholar Society, simply cannot be overstated. He has inspired, challenged and revised my ideas at every stage. I have especially benefited from his analysis of leading imperial historians of the past, and by his partnership in exploring the Scramble for Africa and the role of the African Lakes Company. My colleague and closest friend, Brett M. Bennett, has also read my drafts and discussed the strengths and limitations of this work with a thoroughness that makes the separation of my ideas from his own almost impossible to delineate.

Nor can I ignore the institutions and the many grants that have made this work possible. I worked on this project as an academic at Indiana University East, Macquarie University and now as a Senior Fellow at the Australian National University. A Fulbright Scholarship to Bangladesh gave me access to archives that kindled this project, while multiple grants from the above institutions brought me to archives in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, France, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom, to name but a few. The many authors and readers of the journal Britain and the World