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Conquest versus Commerce: Institutional Incentives for Formal Imperialism
“Peccavi” (“I have sinned”). General Sir Charles Napier is alleged to have sent this
single word dispatch to report his conquest of the Sind, a recalcitrant region on the Indian sub-
continent, in 1843 (Farwell 1972: 30). The (perhaps apocryphal) tale of Napier not only
exemplifies the dry wit of Queen Victoria’s soldiers, but the uneasy self-reflection of a liberal
nation as it embarked on rebuilding the world’s largest formal empire in the late nineteenth
century. Why would the most economically advanced democratic state of that period have
utilized the archaic tool of colonialism in an era of industrialization, liberal trade, and plunging
transportation costs?
The more closely we examine Victorian England, the more puzzling the choice for formal
colonies becomes – given its political, economic, and social environment. Politically, as England
was becoming more democratic, monadic democratic peace arguments would predict a decrease
in conquest, not a radical increase (Rousseau et al. 1996; Rummel 1995). Economically, the
liberal writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo had become dominant in British discourse by
the nineteenth century (Cain 1999: 38-42; MacDonagh 1962; Platt 1973-74) “provide[ing] a
powerful demonstration of the potential gains from international specialization and trade
according to comparative advantage” (Yarbrough and Yarbrough 1999: 12); this would predict
Britain exchanging finished products for primary goods, not conquest. Socially, colonies were
not only popularly seen as a fiscal millstone around England’s neck, but as a morally abhorrent
anachronism (Schuyler 1921; Schuyler 1922). In fact, the common view that the British people
wanted to see a return to empire is misplaced, to the extent that the English “up to 1870, with the
exception of one very small group of thinkers, were not only opposed to any extension of the
Convention