CHAPTER XI

AN IMPERIAL FOREIGN POLICY

1874-1875

It was as an 'imperial country' that Disraeli, when laying down his programme in 1872, invited his hearers to regard Great Britain; to maintain and heighten its imperial character was the special work at which he laboured as Minister. During the early months of his Administration the process was mainly silent and almost unperceived, though the diplomatic world soon began to realise that the atmosphere of British diplomacy under the inspiration of Disraeli was different from that to which they had grown accustomed since 1869; that observance of European treaties, respect for British rights, and consideration for British opinion in matters of European concern, were expected and would, if necessary, be enforced. The veil was a little lifted in May, 1875, when it was discovered that a wanton renewal by Germany of her attack on France would be resented not only by Russia but, under Disraeli, by England also; that England, with Disraeli Prime Minister, was not prepared to regard with indifference Continental complications which, though they might not affect her directly, yet would grievously upset the European balance. A sudden opportunity in November, 1875, revealed in a flash the new spirit, and immediately arrested the attention of the world.

The situation of Great Britain when Disraeli was called to power was in many ways unsatisfactory. There was, indeed, great prosperity at home. Though the social improvement of the mass of the people had not kept pace with the increase of wealth, and though there had been so many years of abounding trade and good harvests that, in the

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normal cycle, bad times were nearly due, still the immediate prospect was good. Abroad, however, the reputation of the country had sunk. Looked up to for half a century as the leading power in Europe, she had been treated as a negligible quantity at the time of the Franco-German War; she had permitted Russia to tear up, no doubt under the guise of due diplomatic formalities, the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris; she had so mismanaged her relations with the United States as to have to put up with a judgment which condemned her to pay preposterously exaggerated damages for her negligence during the Civil War. Germany under Bismarck dominated the European field; but for the moment a more serious domination for the British Empire was that of Russia in the Near Eastern and Asiatic field. While Russian influence in this sphere extended from year to year, the direct connection of England with her great Asiatic dependency of India and with her Australasian dominions had been rendered less secure. Since the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, the main route from Europe to India, and, indeed, the only one, with the exception of tedious caravan tracks across deserts and mountains under Turkish control, had been for generations by the open sea round Africa. In the middle of the nineteenth century competition had been set up by the establishment of the overland route across Egypt from Alexandria to Suez; this involved breaking bulk and was only suitable for passengers, mails, and light wares. But in 1869 the journey had been absolutely revolutionised by the opening of the Suez Canal, which provided the means of a short, and uninterrupted, sea voyage from England and Europe to India, Australia, and the East. Palmerston had realised what a change the Canal would make in the defensive position of the British Empire, and had therefore opposed the project from the first. Disraeli also had opposed it, relying, however, mainly on what he believed to be its engineering impracticability. Gladstone had supported it in the name of progress, ridiculing the possibility of danger arising from it to British in

As the English followed Palmerston's lead and refused co-operation, the Canal had been built by French enterprise and French money; it was managed by a French company, whose head office was in Paris; and the shares were held, roughly speaking, half by Frenchmen, and half by the Khedive of Egypt, the ruler of the country through which it passed, who was himself a more or less independent feudatory of the Sultan of Turkey. The Eastern trade was diverted at once to the new route, and, from the first, 75 or 80 per cent. of the shipping which used the Canal was British. Accordingly what became, as soon as it was completed, a vital link in British imperial communications was under the control of a foreign company and at the mercy of a foreign ruler. Gladstone, who held office during the first five years of the Canal's existence, refused, in spite of several opportunities and of the representations of some of his colleagues, to take any steps to remedy this unsatisfactory position and to secure British interests in the new waterway.

Meanwhile Russia was pressing on, both in Europe and in Asia. In Europe she had restored her power in the Black Sea, had started a menacing Pan-Slavonic propaganda, and was becoming as formidable as ever to the Sublime Porte. In Asia, in spite of repeated assurances from the Tsar and his Ministers to the contrary, her proconsuls were rapidly advancing her frontiers by annexing, one after another, the decadent Tartar and Turcoman States which occupied the country between Siberia on the north, and Persia, Afghanistan, and India on the south. General Kaufmann, who became Governor of Turkestan in 1867, captured Samarkand and subdued Bokhara in 1868, and reduced Khiva in 1873, proceeding in 1875 to the conquest of Khokand north of the Syr Darya. In 1870 he opened friendly communications with the Ameer of Afghanistan, into whose immediate neighbourhood Russian power had now penetrated. The Indian Government, to whom the Ameer referred this new development, treated it with in

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difference, relying on the assurances of the St. Petersburg Government that they regarded Afghanistan, the frontier State across which an invader from the north-west must advance to attack India, as completely outside the sphere of Russian influence. Kaufmann was therefore able to proceed without interference in a persistent policy of tampering with the Ameer's fidelity to the British connection. After the fall of Khiva, Sher Ali, the Ameer, felt that the advance of Russia made it indispensable for him to know where he stood between the two great European forces in Asia. He asked for a definite promise of aid from the British Government in case of Russian attack; and one of the last acts of Gladstone's Ministry was to refuse, in adherence to the Lawrence policy of avoiding all intermeddling with Afghanistan, any definite engagement beyond vague assurances of support. From this time Sher Ali steadily gravitated to the Russian side.

For dealing with difficulties of this kind Disraeli was especially fitted by the bent of his mind and the experiences of his career. It was the fortune of Great Britain, at a time when the British Empire in Asia and the highway to the East were threatened, to have a Prime Minister of Oriental extraction and imagination, whose whole outlook had been coloured at the most impressionable period of his life by his travels in the Levant, and who had played a large and decisive part in the affairs of India in the troubled fifties. Disraeli's personal and anxious attention to the problem was therefore assured; but he necessarily relied much on two colleagues, his Foreign Secretary and his Indian Secretary, Derby and Salisbury. The intimate political and personal relations which had bound him to Derby from the first made their confidential co-operation, in spite of serious differences of temperament, easy and natural; but with Salisbury, just converted from critic into colleague, the beginnings of mutual trust had to be created. Disraeli, guided by good feeling no less than by his knowledge of men, set himself to win confidence by giving it; showing abundantly

the reliance he felt on his colleague's capacity to administer rightly the great affairs entrusted to his care, and his own anxiety to help and support him in all difficulties; and recurring, as we have seen, to his advice on many important matters outside departmental work. Approximation was aided by the mutual realisation of a great community of aim in imperial affairs, and of a considerable similarity of temper and method in dealing with them. A lover of peace, Salisbury was never afraid on fitting occasion to assume serious responsibilities which might lead to war; resembling in this respect his chief, and having none of that tendency to hesitation and procrastination which often afflicted Derby at a critical moment.

In the very first days of the Government we find Disraeli making arrangements for combined working with Derby and Salisbury, and following with keenness the Russian advance in Central Asia.

To Lord Salisbury.

BRIGHTON, March 7, 1874.- Lord Northbrook's letter is dated Feb. 5th. He had then received Sir Henry Rawlinson's mem. but does not seem to have received a copy of Lord Granville's despatch to Ld. A. Loftus dated Jan. 7th; but wh. as I learn, was not sent off till the 17th.

Lord Northbrook cd., therefore, know nothing of the subsequent assurances of the Russian Government; that no such expedition, as he referred to, was to take place.

The despatches of Lord A. Loftus in consequence of Lord Granville's despatch, and the concluding despatch of Prince Gortchakoff to Comte Brunnow, of wh. a copy was left with H.M.'s Government (communicated to Granville by Brunnow on the 17th Feb.), contain, on the part of the Russian Govt., a complete disclaimer of the intentions, wh. it was supposed to entertain at the time when Lord Northbrook's letter was written; this information is, therefore, superseded by what we have since heard.

The Russians may be lying, but we cannot do more, so far as diplomacy is concerned, than obtain from them such pledges as they have given.

But the question arises, have you seen these despatches? I have in MS.; and they are, now, in that form, I believe, circulat