"Flandry had met his kind by the scores, career administrators, conscientious but rule-bound and inclined to self-importance...
"He was uncreative but not stupid, a vital cog of empire."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT VII, p. 436.
James Bond meets the Governor of the Bahamas:
"He belonged to a routine type that Bond had often encountered round the world - solid, loyal, competent, sober and just: the best type of Colonial Civil Servant. Solidly, competently, loyally he would have filled the minor posts for thirty years while the Empire crumbled around him..."
-Ian Fleming, "Quantum of Solace" IN Fleming, For Your Eyes Only (London, 1964), pp. 84-108 AT p. 86.
It is good to know that, although the British Empire crumbles, something of if its tradition survives into the Terran Empire.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, a lack of imagination can be more than compensated for in many civil servants by them being conscientious, loyal, solid, competent, etc. For both the British Empire and a hypothetical Terran Empire.
And I would have thought being governor of Jamaica not such a minor thing! Rather, it would have been the culmination or completion of the career of the man Bond met.
And this makes me angry all over again! I'm reminded of how many of the officials trying to keep order as humanely as possible on the southern border of the US are just as solid, loyal, competent as these British and Terran officials. BUT, "Josip's" disastrous reversal of President Trump's border control policies has caused an agonizing crisis there. The border and immigration control officers there are OVERWHELMED!
And there are many other reasons why I consider "Josip" to be a disaster! To say nothing of how I don't consider him mentally and physically fit to carry out the duties of his office. I am even starting to think Emperor Josip would have been better than President "Josip"!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Your comments here about British and Terran civil servants made me recall how Flandry had some more things to say about the better Imperial civil servants in others of the stories. I want to quote some bits from "The Game of Glory" on how he regarded these bureaucrats. In Section I, as Flandy met Lady Varvara Ayres Bannerji we see this: "Hurri Chundra Bannerji had been a little brown middle aged Terran with wistful eyes: doubtless the typical fussy, rule-bound, conscientious civil servant whose dreams of a knighthood die slowly over the decades." And in Section II, as Flandry was speaking to Lightmistress Tessa Hoorn: "I'm afraid I'm a little more sympathetic to Hurri Chundra Bannerji, who fussed about and established extrasystemic employment contacts for your more ambitious young men and built breakwaters and ordered vaccines and was never admitted to your clubs, than I am sorry for you."
A little earlier in that same Section II, speaking more broadly about the civil service, Flandry said: "Yes, we settle for a single man on worlds like this [Nyanza]. We'd actually like to have more, because enough police could smell out trouble before it's grown too big, and could stop the grosser barbarities left over from independent days--"
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Reading that bit about "grosser barbarities" reminded me of how the British Raj stamped out such barbarities as Kali worshiping Thugs and widow burning!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: and how the Raj proper, after 1857, developed much more routinized procedures than the Company Raj had.
This has both advantages and disadvantages.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! Both advantages and disadvantages. And I think one mistake the British made was in not co-opting the Congress Party. I recall you saying that down till about 1920, the party was pro-Raj. If, say, Edward VII had insisted on appointing Congress Party members to high ranking posts in the Indian gov't and Civil Service, including even Indian viceroys, I have to wonder if that might have prolonged the Raj.
Might Elizabeth II be Empress of India in that case?
Ad astra! Sean
That would have presented severe problems. First, the ICS would have fought it tooth and nail. (Indian Civil Service, the ‘iron backbone’ of the Raj.
Second, what the Congress wanted for India was “Dominion” status, like Canada or Australia. But The Dominions made little contribution to Imperial defense costs in time of peace, whereas India paid for its own armed forces which were larger than the British Army, -and- paid the cost of the one-third of the British Army stationed in India. The Dominions rallied round in wartime, but that’s a different matter. When the British Empire sent an expeditionary force, Indian soldiers paid from Indian taxes were always part of it — and India’s population was so large that it could raise a large army of volunteers.
This was hugely significant. It’s what enabled the British to be a military Great Power without conscription and with relatively light taxation, most of which went to the Navy, and still have a standing army similar in size to France or Germany..
Hence Viceroy Curzon’s observation that Britain was only a ‘first-rate’ power as long as she held India. Dominion status meant you got Imperial protection without, usually, having to pay for it.
Also, an Indian government responsible to Indian pressure groups would have adopted a protectionist tariff policy, as Canada and Australia did. Even as it was India had a affair-sized modern textile industry by 1914, and had just built its first steel mill. This would have happened earlier and faster if India had been autonomous, but the Raj stuck with free trade. Britain’s textiles and metals were excluded from one market after another during the 19th century, and India was a crucial exception. There were other considerations of similar types.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Thanks for your very interesting comments! Even granting the ICS opposing anything like what I suggested, a strong and determined leader could have overruled them. Additionally, I would not expect every Viceroy, governor, commissioner, or resident to be from India itself. I would expect many to still come from Britain as well.
I also thought of the system used by the Ch'ing Dynasty after the Manchu conquest of China in 1644. There were Manchu and Chinese grand secretaries (ministers of state) in equal numbers in Peking. And in the provincial viceroyalties one governor would be a Manchu and the other a Han Chinese. Meaning both Manchus and Chinese got big chunks of power, office, and influence.
And I was esp. interested in your explanation of just why India was so important to Britain and the British Empire. Given the fact that both Canada and Australia became Dominions, I think it was inevitable that many in India would desire the same thing. So it would have been better for the UK to have gotten ahead of that by having India gaining Dominion status. I think the problem of how then to handle the military and economic issues you raised need not have been impossible to resolve on terms reasonably satisfactory to the UK itself. Maybe one fourth, rather than one third of the regular British Army being posted to India would have been sufficient?
I don't like high, exclusionary tariffs. It smacks too much of discredited 18th century mercantilism. I favor either no tariffs at all or law tariffs designed to get the gov't some income. So I lean more to free trade!
Ad astra! Sean
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