The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

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Imperial Connections: Frederick Lugard, Charles

Hartley, and Hubert Lyautey’s English Influences

Michael P.M. Finch

To cite this article: Michael P.M. Finch (2018) Imperial Connections: Frederick Lugard, Charles
Hartley, and Hubert Lyautey’s English Influences, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, 46:6, 1044-1066, DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2018.1506868

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2018.1506868

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THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY
2018, VOL. 46, NO. 6, 1044–1066
https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2018.1506868

Imperial Connections: Frederick Lugard, Charles Hartley,

and Hubert Lyautey’s English Influences
Michael P.M. Finch
King’s College London, UK

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article examines the English influence on the thinking of Lyautey; Lugard; Hartley;
the French colonial soldier and administrator Marshal Hubert colonial doctrine;
Lyautey (1854–1934) through his interactions with the transnational; networks;
imperialism; influence
colonial Governor Lord Frederick Lugard (1858–1945) and
the Victorian Engineer Sir Charles Hartley (1825–1915).
Whereas Lyautey’s affinity for the British approach to
colonial governance has long been noted, earlier
considerations focussed on translated texts as the means by
which knowledge of British practice was disseminated.
Adopting a micro-historical approach, this essay instead
scrutinises Lyautey’s encounters with Lugard and Hartley,
both in person and in correspondence, so as to assess their
influence upon him. Consequently, it can be seen that
although Lugard is held up as a cross-channel equivalent of
Lyautey, whose career spanned a similar period and whose
ideas and approach to colonial governance mirrored those of
the Frenchman, his influence upon Lyautey was minor. In
fact, following correspondence in the mid-1920s, the two
men met for the first time as part of a process of
rapprochement which helped to forge a new link between
the pair and to position them as Franco-British counterparts.
Although this episode afforded both men the opportunity to
reflect on the thinking of the other, in Lyautey’s case such
knowledge as was acquired only reinforced ideas he had
generated years earlier. Conversely, although Lyautey’s
meeting with Sir Charles Hartley on the banks of the Danube
in 1893 was fleeting, and of consequence only to the
Frenchman, it exercised a profound effect upon him. Coming
at an opportune moment in his transformation from
metropolitan cavalry officer to fully-fledged colonial soldier,
Lyautey would return to this encounter at intervals
throughout the rest of his life, highlighting its importance in
teaching him about the possibilities of a life abroad and
what could be realised by a capable ‘man of action’. This
article argues that a transnational lens allows for a deeper
appreciation of the complexities of Franco-British imperial
relations. The example of Lyautey’s encounters illustrates that
national competitors could also be individual collaborators.
Depending on the circumstances, enmity could exist

CONTACT Michael P.M. Finch michael.finch1@anu.edu.au Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell
School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Hedley Bull Building, 130 Garran Road, Acton ACT
2601 Australia
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1045

alongside admiration, even at times of increasing cross-

channel tension.

… aux colonies […] où l’imprévu est la règle et où la décision est une nécessité quo-
tidienne, une formule domine toutes les autres, c’est the right man in the right place.
Hubert Lyautey, ‘Du Rôle Colonial de l’Armée’

Hubert Lyautey (1854–1934) was a colossal figure in the history of the French
colonial empire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His long over-
seas career culminated in an appointment as Resident-General of the newly
incorporated Morocco in 1912, a position he held for over a decade, securing
his place amongst the most eminent of France’s grand coloniaux. Indeed, his
association with imperial Morocco was such that following his death in July
1934 his body was sent to Rabat, where it would remain until repatriated to
the Hôtel des Invalides in 1961.1 This final move saw him laid to rest alongside
Napoleon Bonaparte: an honour afforded to only a select few Marshals such as
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, the conqueror of Algeria, further cementing his cre-
dentials as a quintessentially French imperial hero.2
At the same time, Lyautey’s ‘Anglo-Saxon’ affinity in colonial affairs has long
been noted.3 Lyautey himself never sought to obscure it: as the quotation above
demonstrates, it is evident even in his ‘Du Rôle Colonial de l’Armée’, the encap-
sulation of the method for colonial pacification devised alongside his mentor
Joseph Gallieni across their experiences in Indochina and Madagascar.4 In
order to succeed in the colonies, wrote Lyautey, what was needed above all
was ‘the right man in the right place’: a formulation that ranged a certain ad
hoc ethos against reputedly more prevalent bureaucratic and centralising ten-
dencies, and which was written—tellingly—in English.5 Early biographers
hinted at Lyautey’s affinity for les Anglo-Saxons. André Maurois, for example,
remarked that Lyautey was ‘filled with admiration for certain aspects of the
British Empire’ during stopovers in Egypt and Singapore, en route for Indochina
in 1894. Despite the inevitable pangs of Anglophobia, borne of an enmity which
would culminate in the Fashoda incident of 1898 and which found more con-
temporary manifestation in rivalry over the future of Siam, he could not help
but feel a countervailing sense of comradeship for the British officials whom
he encountered.6 ‘Like them’ Maurois noted, ‘he had a feeling for style, the
sense of caste, a liking for rather wild flights of fancy going hand in hand
with a love of tradition.’7
Aside from such observations, more substantive considerations of the English
influence on Lyautey’s thinking have followed an indirect route, focusing on the
manner in which ideas reached him through the work of other French colonial
theorists. In this regard the work of colonial sociologist Joseph Chailley-Bert
loomed large. Although the pair would engage in correspondence after
meeting in person in 1899, Lyautey had read Chailley-Bert’s La Colonisation
1046 M. P. FINCH

de l’Indo-Chine: l’expérience anglaise (1892) in 1894 on the recommendation of

Gallieni, and had taken his ideas on board.8 Equally important was Sir John Stra-
chey’s India (1888), which, later in his life, Lyautey admitted to having read
around the same time.9 As Pascal Venier has shown, Strachey’s tome most
likely reached Lyautey in the form of Jules Harmand’s 1892 translation.10 All
such works, which stressed the advantages of the British model of colonial gov-
ernance, formed part of a broader wave of colonial theory advocating indirect
rule for an expanding French empire, reaching as far back as Paul Leroy-Beau-
lieu’s comparative study of colonial rule De la colonisation chez les peuples mod-
ernes (1874).11 Such influences helped mould Lyautey’s own approach to
colonial governance in the years after 1894.
In contrast to these written sources, this essay considers the English influence
on Lyautey through the lens of his interaction with two individuals: the well-
known colonial administrator, Lord Frederick Lugard, and the rather more
obscure engineer Sir Charles Hartley. Although Lugard may be considered a
less celebrated cross-channel equivalent of Lyautey, whose work in encoding
the practice of indirect rule in Africa mirrored the development of Lyautey’s
own attitude towards imperial governance, this essay contends that it was in
fact the obscure Hartley who exercised real influence on the intellectual
genesis of the Frenchman.12 Lyautey and Lugard’s careers were contempora-
neous, but their ideas did not develop due to any kind of direct cross-fertilisa-
tion. Rather, a rapprochement in the mid-1920s created a new link between
the pair, and it was only with this that the idea of them as national counterparts
was cemented. Indeed, it was during the period between 1924 and 1928 that
Lyautey first came to grips with the detail of Lugard’s ideas, recognising and
remarking upon those aspects that best reflected his own thoughts, which
were in turn solidified some decades before. Lyautey’s encounter with Hartley,
by contrast, was fleeting but transformative, becoming a seminal experience to
which Lyautey would make reference at various points throughout his life.
Coming at an opportune moment during his transformation from metropolitan
cavalry officer to full-fledged colonial, Hartley’s example, rather than a pro-
nounced doctrine, exerted a profound influence on the way in which Lyautey
would approach his colonial work.
Writing in the 1950s, Raymond Betts noted that there was something surpris-
ing about the admiration in which ‘Anglo-Saxon virtues’ were held by many late-
nineteenth century French writers on colonial doctrine. Despite the intense
imperial rivalry that existed between the two states, there appears to have
been a willingness to learn from the British that stemmed in large part from a
French perception of their own relative inexperience in colonial matters.13 In
light of more recent scholarship, which lays emphasis on the interconnectedness
of empires, such an observation now appears less surprising. By shifting the
focus of study away from the traditional loci of centre and periphery and
towards ‘imperial networks’, such work has attempted to introduce a ‘complex
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1047

spatiality of empire’ which better accounts for the transference of both material
and ideas.14 Imperial networks, moreover, functioned not only within empires,
but also between them. Ulrike Lindner, for example, has described the ‘consider-
able degree of interconnectedness’ achieved ‘between the colonies, between
different colonial empires, and across continents’ in the age of ‘high imperialism’
prior to the First World War, as a consequence of technical and economic glo-
balisation, pushing colonial empires towards co-operation, despite the concur-
rent intensification of nationalism.15 In the case of rival empires to the
British, this could result in a dependency on the resources and infrastructure
of the longer-established empire in order to succeed.16
As Zoë Laidlaw has noted, however, ‘imperial networks connected people
first, and places second.’17 In following the early colonial trajectory of
Lyautey, this article explores the manner in which the interconnectedness of
Empire made knowledge exchange possible on a more intimate level. Lyautey’s
imperial genesis—as a Frenchman whose mental world straddled both the mili-
tary and the administrative spheres, whose ideas were moulded by encounters
and not just through reading, and whose experiences were not limited to
encounters with his own countrymen—underscores this. In the words of John
MacKenzie, ‘empires of all sorts […] can surely be best understood from the
specific experiences ‘on the ground’ of both dominant and subordinate
peoples.’18 As such, and despite Lyautey’s status as a ‘great man’ of history, a
micro-historical study of his interactions with Lugard and Hartley illuminates
how in the realm of empire consideration of the national rival could exist along-
side appreciation of the individual co-imperialist, even in a climate of intensify-
ing enmity. In this manner, Lyautey’s English language allusion to ‘the right man
in the right place’ was no offhand gesture, but rather an indication that his
approach to imperial doctrine, colonial warfare, and the power of the ‘man on
the spot’ were the product of transnational fermentation.19

I
In December 1928 Hubert Lyautey gave a speech to the Royal African Society at
the May Fair Hotel, London, in which he lauded the British contribution to the
imperial endeavour. ‘In modern times which nation has given a finer example
than England?’ he asked, before expanding on the manner in which the
British example had influenced his own thinking:
It is with you that I found my first masters – on my first stopovers in Aden, Colombo,
Singapore, India, I had the revelation of your methods, so far from rigid uniformity, so
diverse according to the countries to which they applied, so well adapted to places, to
things and to men, so free of formalism, so simplified in administration, leaving such
large initiative to local agents […] and with what interest, from the beginning, I read
the works that set out your colonial methods.20
1048 M. P. FINCH

This candid admission of the profound effect the agents of British imperialism
had made on a much younger Lyautey—a Lyautey in the process of formulating
his own ideas about Empire—could not have been made in the 1890s. Indeed, it
was only with the amelioration of Anglo-French relations in the opening decades
of the twentieth century, and perhaps the shared experience of fighting the Great
War alongside each other, that such overt proclamations could safely be made.
The currents of cross-channel admiration flowed in both directions. Lyautey’s
attendance at the December dinner came at the behest of the Royal African
Society, which had decided to award its Gold Medal to a foreigner for the first
time. The chairman of the society, Lord Buxton, explained that ‘this function
and the bestowal of the Medal is not only intended as a compliment to
Marshal Lyautey himself, but through him, to honour the French African
Empire.’21 Lyautey, for his part, took it as such, emphasising that he felt ‘that
we are in agreement in mind and heart, that I find myself this evening so at
ease amongst you, in order to thank you for the great honour that you have
made, in my person, to my country.’22 In this manner, the award of the
Medal formed part of a broader and very conscious attempt to strengthen
Anglo-French imperial bonds. As Buxton noted,
it would be a gratification to us if we could feel that our gathering to-night would con-
stitute one further link, however tiny, in the chain which helps to strengthen that amity
and alliance between France and England, which we all hold so dear.23

At the same time, the dinner afforded ample opportunity for the lionisation of
Lyautey the man. In his speech, Buxton was effusive. The choice of Lyautey to
become the first non-British recipient of the medal was an easy one since he was
undoubtedly the most outstanding of those who, under other flags, have done the best
and the most lasting work for Africa in later years […] Of Poland, it was said of its
conqueror that he “made a desert and called it peace.” Of Marshal Lyautey it may
be said that he “found a desert and made it bloom like a rose.”24

Such expansive praise cast Lyautey’s life as a model to be emulated: he was ‘a

prophet outside his own country’ as well as ‘a prophet in his own.’25 And yet,
as Lyautey’s remarks above demonstrate, as far as he was concerned the
British influence on him was profound.
Another dinner speaker, Leo Amery, offered a more nuanced view. ‘Colonial
administrators of both countries,’ he contended, ‘had succeeded most where they
had applied something of each other’s methods. Over a large part of the world,
and especially in Tropical Africa, French and British problems were the same.’
Moreover, the military heritage of the greatest Imperialists, whether British or
French was worth remarking upon:
It was not without significance that in African Colonial Administration that two great
men who stood out among all others both began their careers as soldiers. They were
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1049

Marshal Lyautey and Lord Lugard, both of whom had played distinguished parts in
building up the respective Colonial administrations they represented.26

Frederick Lugard was also present that evening.27 Despite the equivalency drawn
by Amery, Lyautey’s visit marked the first meeting between the pair. In so doing,
they were also able to resolve a point of tension between them. The instigation
and the resolution of the problem began with a third party, however. In January
1924 Sir Austen Chamberlain wrote to Lugard on the subject of Lyautey’s Lettres
du Tonkin et du Madagascar; a selection of correspondence dating from his colo-
nial conversion in 1894 to the first years of his involvement in the conquest and
consolidation of Madagascar.28 Chamberlain remarked on the ‘immense inter-
est’ with which he was reading the volumes, the more so since he had met
Lyautey in person in Morocco several years earlier and had formed ‘a very
high opinion’ of his work there. He was equally convinced that ‘you and he
would be firm friends and admirers one of the other if you had ever met’, but
that reading the Lettres had imposed a small barrier. ‘There is only one reference
to you,’ he wrote ‘and that a slighting and offensive one to the notorious Col.
Lugard’s massacre in Uganda or something of the kind, for I quote from
memory.’ As a consequence, Chamberlain wanted to challenge Lyautey ‘as Beau-
champ did the officers of the Imperial Guard’ and to that end he inquired of
Lugard whether he might be willing to send via himself a copy of any book he
might have written outlining his work in Uganda and Nigeria.29 Lugard
replied that he would be only too happy to obtain a copy of his The Dual
Mandate in Tropical Africa ‘write M. Lyautey’s name in it, with my ‘homage’
etc, and send it to you for transmission to him’ so as to ‘disabuse him of the
idea that the methods of British officers are such as he believes mine to have
been in Uganda.’30
Lugard’s gift elicited the desired response. Lyautey wrote to Lugard that the
former had
every right to be legitimately wounded by a phrase which […] had escaped from my
pen following quick remarks which I did not have the care to control. I regret it pro-
foundly and they will certainly disappear from any new edition of this book.31

Likewise, the grand colonial expressed to Chamberlain his sincere regret ‘to have
struck at a man whom your illustrious father held in such high esteem—as do
you—and I thank you sincerely for having enlightened me frankly on this
matter.’32 This proved to be the beginning of an amicable and fruitful associ-
ation. When Lyautey travelled to London four years later, Lugard ensured
that the two men, along with their go-between Chamberlain, met in advance
of the Royal African Society dinner. Their luncheon, at Brook’s Club, was an
occasion for mutual admiration. Lugard reported that Lyautey insisted on
making an impression of a line from Shelley engraved on his ring which he
had adopted as his life’s motto. It read: ‘The soul’s joy lies in doing.’ Underneath,
he wrote: ‘To one of our colonial masters, Lord Lugard, in homage, Lyautey,
1050 M. P. FINCH

4/12/28.’33 The meeting also provided Lyautey with a chance to apologise in

person for the remarks in his Lettres and to explain more fully the reasons
behind them.34 Whilst Lugard was doubtless most gratified to receive these
apologies, in his telling it seems that Lyautey found it hard to stop saying
sorry. According to Lugard,
Later, at the Colonial Exposition in Paris on 16-19 October 1931, of which he was the
patron and hero, he made an extremely complementary public speech about me, and, if
I remember aright, a sort of apology for his mistake.35

If Lyautey was moved to repeatedly apologise for causing offence it was perhaps
because his remarks referred to a particularly sensitive period in Lugard’s career.
The incident in question concerned Lugard’s service in Uganda with the British
East Africa Company. In December 1890 an assignment to the Kingdom of
Buganda brought him into contact with the White Fathers, a French Catholic
missionary group of the Algiers-based Sociététes des Missionnaires d’Afrique
whose strong presence in the region had resulted in increasingly overt tension
with the Anglican Church Missionary Society. In January 1892 mounting hosti-
lity between Catholic and Protestant convert groups—known respectively as the
Wa-Fransa and the Wa-Ingleza—erupted into violence, during which the White
Fathers refused Lugard’s offer of Company protection, only to take up refuge at
the British fort at Kampala at Lugard’s insistence in the aftermath of an Ingleza
attack on the Fransa at Rubaga, the location of the White Fathers’ mission. Some
months later, Lugard’s conduct during the episode in Buganda became the
subject of Anglo-French controversy, with the White Fathers leading the accu-
sations that Lugard had engaged in acts of brutality against the Fransa and had
held their priests hostage against their will.36 Lyautey’s letter was written en route
to Madagascar in late February 1897, following an encounter in Zanzibar with
one Père B of the White Fathers. Père B related his tales of Lugard to Lyautey,
who then relayed them to his sister. In so doing, he closed a paragraph with
the words ‘that was the horrible time of gusty winds which we all bled from
in Paris, ten years ago, the all too famous massacre of Captain Lugard, the
calls without echoes.’37 Even after twenty five years, Lyautey’s words impugned
on Lugard’s reputation and harked back to a trying time in his life. As such it was
hardly surprising that Lugard was quick to thank Chamberlain ‘most heartily for
your desire to vindicate my good name.’38 Lyautey, for his part recognising the
seriousness of the matter, also proved to be as good as his word in fulfilling his
promise to excise the offending words from any future edition.39
Nevertheless, an air of manufactured controversy hung around the entire
episode. After all, had Chamberlain not noticed the remarks they would likely
never have come to Lugard’s attention. And since Lyautey’s Lettres du Tonkin
et de Madagascar had only been published in 1920, it was not the case that
these remarks had been in the public domain ever since the 1890s. It is possible
that Lyautey may have harboured a degree of resentment towards Lugard in the
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1051

intervening years, but even this seems unlikely. Whilst Lyautey was effusive in
his apologies—in writing in 1924, in person four years later, and possibly
again in 1931—in his correspondence he was keen to emphasise the distance
from the events related. For example, he wrote that Lugard had every right to
be offended by a phrase which appeared ‘in the letters that I wrote 27 years
ago in the Indian Ocean.’40 Looking back over his correspondence, he remarked
that that ‘In all I talked of Mr Lugard only incidentally in reproducing perhaps
inaccurately appraisals which were not my own and that I had garnered in the
course of a brief meeting.’ He concluded that ‘There are exactly seven words to
subtract.’41 As far as Lyautey was concerned, this was a marginal episode.
Lugard, despite remarking dismissively that Lyautey’s ‘“coup-de-pied invo-
lontaire” is a matter of absolutely no importance’, may have harboured a
deeper sense of aggravation.42 Nevertheless, the episode itself said as much
about contemporary relations as it did about past conduct. The links established
between Chamberlain, Lugard, and Lyautey set in motion a sequence of events
that led to the award of the Gold Medal to the latter in 1928, and the process did
not stop there. In the early 1930s Lugard made a return trip to Paris to partici-
pate in the Exposition Coloniale, and shortly after Lyautey’s death, he played a
role in helping the Fondation Lyautey create an Oxford Scholarship to host a
candidate from the French colonial service at the university for one-year.43
These actions were consistent with Lugard’s commitment to fostering better
Anglo-French colonial relations. As Lord Hailey reported after Lugard’s death,
while he never wavered in his conviction that Britain could not share with an inter-
national agency its responsibility for the administration of its Colonies, he had a
strong faith in the value of extending the international study of colonial affairs and
of co-operation in the solution of their problems.44

Through his words and deeds, Lyautey was equally committed to the process.45
As the rapprochement with Lyautey was beginning, Lugard wrote to Cham-
berlain that ‘I should like to meet Lyautey, who is, I think, the only Frenchman
who has adopted British methods with the native races in Africa.’46 Whilst this
assertion held some truth, it is evident from the events related above that those
methods were not derived from Lugard. Until the mid-1920s Lugard was, at best,
a marginal presence in Lyautey’s intellectual world: the butcher of Uganda,
rather than his cross-channel equivalent. Chamberlain’s introduction afforded
Lugard the opportunity to present Lyautey with ‘a true conception’ of his
methods and principles.47 In so doing, Lyautey was introduced to Lugard’s writ-
ings for the first time. Even then, Lyautey was unable to digest fully Lugard’s
work. Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa was published
only in 1922, and despite some interest from francophone parties, was not trans-
lated into French.48 Thus Lyautey was sent a copy in English, a language he did
not read with any fluency. This did not prevent him from perusing the volume:
he remarked to Lugard in 1924 that he had ‘highlighted certain ideas to which I
1052 M. P. FINCH

am most attached in matters of colonial government, and others, which I intend

to profit from.’49 Likewise to Chamberlain he noted:
I have just browsed this book and at first glance, without having read it deeply, I have
already highlighted the ideas which are most dear to me, for example, in Chapter
V. ‘‘Continuity of Personnel, Continuity in Office of Governor.”50

Yet, the broader task of digesting Lugard’s work in its entirety was a slower affair.
During the luncheon in 1928 Lyautey returned to the work once again, expres-
sing his regret that:
there was no French edition of Lord Lugard’s book on the Dual Mandate. He did not
understand English, but he had a good deal of the book translated for him and had
distributed copies of those chapters which he considered of special interest for his
officers amongst them.51

In this manner, Lugard’s work exerted some influence over Lyautey and those
under his command, but only during the last stages of his career. In the case
of ‘continuity of personnel, continuity in office of governor’, however, this
would appear to amount more to the reinforcement of lessons he had learnt
across his own colonial experiences, and which, to some extent, were enshrined
in the notion of unity of command expressed within the colonial method.52 Thus
despite occupying positions which rendered them as cross-channel equivalents,
in drawing closer to each other in the mid-1920s Lyautey and Lugard had soli-
dified an almost wholly new link.53

II
At the same time as this link was being forged, in his speech to the Royal African
Society Lyautey alluded to a more meaningful and long-standing ‘Anglo-Saxon’
connection. Whilst paying homage to the British for providing his ‘first masters’
Lyautey singled out one individual in particular, an obscure Victorian engineer
called Sir Charles Hartley.54 This was not the first time in his career that he had
done so: in ‘Du rôle colonial de l’armée’, Lyautey wrote of him at some length.55
Similarly in 1915, whilst travelling to Marrakesh with the writer Alfred de Tarde,
he mused that: ‘It was a meeting long ago with an Englishman at the mouths of
the Danube that gave me a full revelation of myself. That man was Sir Charles
Hartley.’56 Yet where relations between Lyautey and Lugard spanned several
years, the meeting with Hartley was fleeting. In ‘Du rôle colonial’ Lyautey was
imprecise about the timing of the event, referring to an episode ‘ten years ago’
which would have placed it around 1890.57 In fact, the meeting occurred as
part of a trip Lyautey made in May-June 1893, shortly after his promotion to
Chef d’Escadron of the 1er Hussards, during which he travelled along the
River Danube from Vienna, taking in Budapest, Bucharest, and Constantinople,
before travelling on through Greece and finally to Italy.58 Accompanying the
French Commissioner to the European Commission of the Danube, Georges
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1053

Cogordon, on 25 May Lyautey debarked at Sulina, a small town at the mouth of a

branch of the River Danube.59
For Hartley, the encounter was barely noteworthy. In his diary he wrote only
that Cogordon had arrived in the company of a French commandant and that
the pair undertook a short expedition on 26 May, before both parties departed
on 27 May.60 His lack of interest in Lyautey is unsurprising: in the eyes of the
Englishman there was likely little to distinguish him from any other French
officer abroad. Hartley, meanwhile, was a busy man, despite his advancing
years. Born the son of local businessman in Hedworth, County Durham in
1825, by early adulthood Hartley had traded the North East for the Near East.
Having first worked as an apprentice civil engineer in Leeds, on the Scottish
Central Railway and subsequently at Plymouth harbour, in 1855 he joined the
British Army, serving as a captain of the Anglo-Turkish engineers during the
Crimean War. The conclusion of that conflict marked the beginning of Hartley’s
long association with the Danube. In 1856 he was appointed chief engineer to the
European commission of the Danube, created by the treaty of Paris with a
mission to make the river navigable to the Black Sea—a task which was partly
accomplished through the transformation of the Sulina estuary into an exit
route. This colossal undertaking would occupy Hartley for much of the rest of
his life, and whilst he engaged with other projects—most notably providing
advice on construction around the mouth of the Mississippi in 1873–4—he
remained in post as chief engineer of the commission until 1907.61 Nevertheless,
the major works on the Danube having been completed during the 1880s, by the
1890s Hartley habitually spent only some three weeks every year directly over-
seeing further works.62 It was serendipitous that he happened to be present as
Lyautey was passing through.
In one of her final works the literary critic Rebecca West mused about the ‘ray
of light’ that passed from Hartley to Lyautey,
when the son born in the industrial revolution of a Darlington man and a woman from
Linlithgow found the word that freed the hidden purpose in the mind of Lyautey, who
was as native French, and native antique French at that, as Watteau or Racine.63

C.W.S Hartley, meanwhile, wrote that it was ‘extraordinary’ that his great uncle
‘should have produced so immediate and overwhelming an impression on the
young Lyautey’ in such a short period of time, and that it ‘shows better than
any other recorded description the preeminence [sic] of character and ability
that the older man had established in the Danube communities.’64 Yet this
was no meeting of minds. There is no record to suggest that the two men
struck up a mutual special bond during their brief encounter: Hartley did not
impart any notable pearls of wisdom or principles of action which Lyautey
would carry with him for the rest of his life. Rather, Lyautey simply observed
Hartley and the environment in which he worked.
1054 M. P. FINCH

The effect was instantaneous. To his sister he wrote that Hartley was ‘indeed a
grand character for me to present to you’, explaining that:
It is he who made everything we see here; he arrived as a young engineer in 1856 […]
there was no proper ground and the river simply disappeared into the sea through the
reeds without banks or exact channels. […] He had to live in a cabin built on stilts,
sleeping on the floor like a shipwrecked sailor, and from nothing Sir Charles made
what we see: the large canal, the port of 20-feet depth, between whose two fine
quays fifty large ships are now ranged, the two long embankments, and three
beacons. A town has arrived, and security, and commerce, and large ships now go
up the Danube to the Romanian ports. And it is not finished. He wants to make his
river deeper; he has just invented a dredger of incredible power which bears his
name; and he is leaving for China to conquer the Woosung bar and it has been pro-
posed that he takes on the Yellow River, the most dangerous and erratic in Asia.65

According to a recent biographer of Lyautey the importance of the encounter—

both with Hartley and Sulina—lay in what it revealed to him about the possibi-
lities of colonial administration. ‘Until then’, he writes, ‘he had never encoun-
tered the politics of administration […] At Sulina, the small town by the
Black Sea, he encountered an entire cosmopolitan society made for an exotic
novel.’ Observing Hartley offered a glimpse of
the future plan of the protectorate […] the encounter between an exceptional man and
an institutional plan sufficiently autonomous to bring true freedom of action: every-
thing that was lacking in France, “the most beautiful kingdom under the sky”, then
struck by impotence.66

Yet it was in Tonkin late the following year that Lyautey would encounter, in the
person of Jean-Marie de Lanessan, an administrator whose advocacy of indirect
rule would truly impact upon him.67
At Sulina, what mattered more was that Hartley presented himself to Lyautey
as ‘a fine figure of a man of action.’68 Yet he offered more than that: in him,
Lyautey found tangible evidence of the possibilities of a life of ‘action’. He dis-
covered not only words of action and purpose, but proof of what could be
achieved. As he reported to his sister, Hartley’s eyes lit up
when he speaks of his work, when he presents his river, the river which, after centuries,
he has been the first to regulate the course, which has been called (truly we can say this
without metaphor) to a useful life, to fulfil its function on earth.

Nor was it only the destiny of the river which had been realised. ‘His is a good life
for a man, well fulfilled,’ opined Lyautey.69 This eulogy for the individual was
intertwined with a deep faith in the ability to master the environment. Hartley
had not simply worked on this branch of the Danube, he had taken possession
of it: it was his river. Hartley even appeared to approach god-like powers in
‘calling to life’ not only the river, but Sulina itself, which Lyautey claimed had
risen ‘from nothing.’ The passing years did little to diminish such sentiments.
In ‘Du Rôle Colonial de l’Armée’ Lyautey praised Hartley once more for
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1055

‘having called to life this great river, unused since the beginning of the world, to
have released it so to speak’, in so doing creating a town and a port ‘where before
there were only a few pitiful cabins.’70
In this manner, the encounter with Hartley stirred in Lyautey an ‘overween-
ing environmental confidence’ held in common with many British imperialists
of the Victorian age.71 In this respect, his closest contemporary British parallel
was to be found not in the person of Lugard, but rather with another colonial
governor, Sir Charles Eliot. Eliot, a bookish scholar who spurned a fellowship
with Trinity College Oxford in favour of a career in the diplomatic service,
served as commissioner for British East Africa from 1901 to 1904.72 In his
1905 book The East Africa Protectorate, he expressed in strident terms his
belief in the power of the imperialist to shape the natural world to his ends:
Nature and mankind interact on one another. Nations and races derive their charac-
teristics largely from their surroundings, but, on the other hand, man reclaims, disci-
plines, and trains Nature. The surface of Europe, Asia, and North America has
submitted to this influence and discipline, but it has still to be applied to large parts
of South America and Africa. Marshes must be drained, forests skilfully thinned,
rivers taught to run in ordered courses, and not to afflict the land with drought or
flood at their caprice; a way must be made across deserts and jungles, war must be
waged against fevers and other diseases whose physical causes are now mostly
known. A good beginning has been made, and the future is full of hope. No doubt a
large part of Africa is low-lying and tropical, and such countries are at the best not
well suited to the higher races, but is there any reason why in time it should not be
as civilised and humanised as Southern India?73

As John Mackenzie has noted, Eliot applied ‘the language of discipline and train-
ing to nature in the same way in which it was invariably used of indigenous
peoples’, so that in this vision of the imperial environment ‘natural forces, like
people, were to be acculturated to the modern world.’74 Such notions resonated
in the language and ideas of Lyautey. Just as Eliot considered East Africa ‘a
tabula rasa, an almost untouched and sparsely inhabited country, where we
can do as we will,’ Lyautey exalted the capacity of the individual to create civi-
lisation ‘from nothing.’75 He revered ‘this magnificent object of the colonial
œuvre, fertilising the world, calling sleeping lands and peoples to a full life,
which brought grandeur and beauty above all distinction of nations and fron-
tiers.’76 As Le Réverend argues, for Lyautey, the more the awareness of his
imperial vocation grew, the more he came to view the earth as a ‘field of
action’, or as ‘a vast uncultivated land’ from which imperialists were duty-
bound to extract maximum value.77
It was the encounter with Hartley that provided the spark necessary for these
ideas to take root. Although Le Réverend contends that Lyautey’s arrival in
Tonkin marked the transformation, at which point a hitherto passive appreci-
ation of la terre fused with a long-held, but vague, idealisation of action, such
a transformation would not have been possible without the earlier meeting.78
1056 M. P. FINCH

Hartley became emblematic of what Lyautey believed the colonial venture could
achieve, his work on the Danube epitomising a spirit of endeavour, creativity
and freedom: the man of action had met, and moved, the earth. When
Lyautey embarked on his journey to the Far East in the summer of 1894, he
found in the French colonial officials he encountered echoes of the qualities
he had noticed in Hartley the previous year. He wrote at the time:
These conversations between men of pure action make one feel as far distant from the
falsity of the literary salons and dinner-parties of Paris as from the mummified exist-
ence of our unemployed, routine-ridden, swaddled army! And it is a resurrection.79

Nor was this a debt that Lyautey ever forgot. He was as clear in 1928 as he was in
1893, in 1900, and in 1915, that Hartley had given him ‘the most intense revel-
ation of the constructive œuvre abroad.’80 He was to carry this example through-
out his imperial career, seeing in the deeds of Frenchmen a similar meeting of
the man of action and the earth itself. Thus in ‘Du rôle colonial’, he remarked
that:
I hardly thought that, later, I would see, living their lives, colonial leaders with creator’s
hands shaping uncultivated lands into paddy fields, sleeping valleys into arteries of life,
giving the wave of a magic wand which set to work a great domain offered for the
activity of man. What a noble task for the man of action.81

In his Royal African Society speech, meanwhile, he reflected upon, ‘how many
times later on my thoughts returned to him, when I saw our colonial œuvre ren-
dering other rivers navigable which were unused since the beginning of the
world and covering with harvests lands which remained uncultivated until
then.’82
It is equally noteworthy that this inclination towards action and the environ-
ment was not limited to the administrative realm, but echoed also in Lyautey’s
attitude towards colonial warfare. Here again, similarities can be drawn with
Eliot, who noted that ‘this contest with the powers of Nature seems a nobler
and more profitable struggle than the international quarrels which waste the
brain and blood of Europe and Asia.’83 For Lyautey too, a clear distinction
could be drawn between European and Imperial conflict: ‘if continental struggles
are destructive struggles, in our old Europe, the colonial effort is a constructive
effort, bringing order, peace and progress where there was anarchy, disorder,
stagnation and savagery.’84 The ‘colonial method’ devised by Joseph Gallieni
and Lyautey further underlined this notion by characterising force as something
to be used only ‘in order to rebuild better.’85 Whilst this distinction held true in
principle rather than in practice, it also marked a subtle difference in thinking
between Lyautey and the man whose work best encapsulated the British
approach towards colonial warfare, Charles Callwell. In Small Wars, his
manual for British practice first published in 1896, Callwell famously contended
that ‘it is perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of small wars as
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1057

compared with regular hostilities conducted between modern armies, that they
are in the main campaigns against nature’86 In the words of Mackenzie, this
positioned colonial warfare as ‘a battle with the environment itself instead of
with other humans’87 Lyautey, on the other hand, contrived to render military
action as a creative harvesting of nature in the service of the imperial venture,
and was prepared to make this connection in strident terms. In 1896, for
example, following a long winter spent on campaign in the Tonkin highlands,
he reflected that ‘war truly has been nothing but the means of creation, of
peace and of life, and that was its price.’88 For Lyautey, violence and creation
converged in the empire.

III
In providing empirical substance to Lyautey’s English influences by tracing his
personal connections with Lugard and Hartley, this article has attempted to
reconstruct ‘ways of transfer within and between empires.’89 In this case, the
investigation suggests that an attempt to chart influence within networks of
imperial knowledge should be attuned as much to the seemingly obscure as to
the seemingly obvious. Despite similarities in practice and approach and their
contemporaneous years of service, Frederick Lugard did not exert any real
influence on the thinking of Lyautey. At the end of the nineteenth century,
there was no contact between the pair, and Lyautey thought only of the English-
man as a ‘butcher’ who had imperilled the lives of French missionaries. After the
First World War the two men were finally brought together in the spirit of
Anglo-French amity which grew up around the colonial venture, creating a
new bond which enabled Lyautey to find ex-post-facto validation of some of
his long-held principles in the work of Lugard. In the case of Charles Hartley,
meanwhile, a brief encounter resulted not in the implantation of solid principles
or maxims, but rather afforded Lyautey a tangible, inspirational example of what
could be achieved in devoting oneself to empire: a profound revelation which he
would draw upon at intervals throughout the rest of his life.
The context of that encounter was fortuitous. Just as Lyautey was inclined to
believe the worst of Lugard when informed of his actions by a French priest
during a period of intense colonial rivalry, the stopover in Sulina caught
Lyautey in a mood more conducive to English influence. Hartley had found
something to which he could devote himself whole-heartedly and with singular-
ity of purpose: Lyautey, it transpired, was looking for the same. C.W.S. Hartley
contended that this was a case of opposites attracting for two vastly different
individuals, as ‘admiration is so often aroused by qualities not to be found in
ourselves.’90 This may be so, but the timing was also crucial: had Lyautey met
Hartley at any other point in his life, and had that meeting not been followed
shortly after by his own departure for the colonies, it seems likely that the
impact upon him would have been much diminished. In large part through
1058 M. P. FINCH

happenstance, Lyautey would go on to extol the virtues of a Victorian engineer

whose activities were perhaps as little known to those luminaries present at the
dinner of the Royal African Society in 1928 as they were to readers of ‘Du rôle
colonial’ almost three decades earlier.
Whilst in his 1928 speech Lyautey pointed to the importance of the British
example in lighting the way on his own journey of self-discovery, it is worth
underlining that he was no Anglophile. In order to receive his medal he
crossed the channel for the first time, and during the trip he conversed in
French and delivered his speech in the same language.91 During the 1890s he
had proved very susceptible to both the rising wave of Anglophobia and the
intensification of French nationalism. This accounted for the incendiary
remarks made about Lugard which would come back to haunt him. Years
later he admitted that he was ‘full of bitterness then against England’ for
reasons that were explicitly related to imperial competition, and recalled
writing to his sister that ‘the future of France lies in her colonial empire, but
there we find that our real enemies are not the Germans, but the English.’92
Nevertheless, this attitude needs to be qualified. In a recent article Pablo La
Porte has argued that as Resident-General of Morocco from 1912 to 1925,
Lyautey carried with him prejudicial attitudes towards the British which had
solidified during his colonial apprenticeship: ‘By the end of the nineteenth
century, initial admiration for British imperial endeavours […] had given way
to the realisation that Britain was a main contender for supremacy in
Africa.’93 Yet Lyautey’s appreciation of the British was more complex than
this argument suggests. On his voyage to Indochina he explained that
if, since Egypt, the feeling is growing in me that England is our eternal and inexorable
enemy, side by side with this feeling my admiration for her is increasing, and with it the
conviction that it is from her that we have to learn everything.94

In short, feelings of respect and rivalry emerged in tandem, not in succession. If

enmity boiled over, respect simmered below the surface. This much was appar-
ent to Austen Chamberlain, who remarked upon reading the Lettres du Tonkin
et de Madagascar that they breathed ‘the spirit of colonial rivalry of Fashoda and
W.African days, but always with admiration, a kind of how-I-hate-them-but-d–
it-what-wonderful-fellows-they-are attitude.’95
Examination of Lyautey’s encounters with British officials helps to explain
how he could hold these seemingly contradictory viewpoints. By his own admis-
sion, Lyautey had been impressed with many of the individual representatives of
the British Empire whom he encountered at various stages during his career, and
as this essay has argued, one of them exerted a particular formative influence. In
person, it seems, Lyautey considered his counterparts as co-imperialists first, and
national representatives second. By the time he spoke to the Royal African
Society, Lyautey was inclined to stress the common identity that bound all
such individuals together, proclaiming:
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1059

I am before everything a colonial, and, as a result, here I am amongst family, for the
coloniaux whatever their national origin, truly make a family, in which one never
feels foreign, because one talks the same language, has the same ideas, the same
goals […] This sensation of always being amongst family with coloniaux, how many
times I have felt it in many places across the world with your compatriots! Even at
times when relations between our two countries were most tense, where we found our-
selves with opposing interests such that it was possible to envisage terrible ruptures,
when, as certain of my old letters bear witness, I became annoyed with finding you
in front of me in places where I wished us to be, even in these moments, as soon as
personal contact was established with your agents, the causes of disagreement faded
and gave way to confident, cordial and relaxed conversation on the great colonial
œuvre that we all had in our hearts, the principles of which we envisaged in the
same way.96

In Lyautey’s mind, this ‘imperial family’ cut across national boundaries, united
all in the universal pursuit of imperialism, and could surmount Franco-British
rivalry, if only temporarily. As Kamissek and Kreienbaum have noted,
‘British, Belgian or German men on the spot […] often first started to perceive
themselves as “European” when they were confronted with the colonial “others”
in the imperial periphery.’97 Yet in highlighting commonality amongst imperi-
alists, Lyautey was also speaking to the idea that such individuals belonged to a
special category of beings: the colonial. This was a category he had described in
‘Du rôle colonial’ as neither civilian, nor military, but capable of combining a
multitude of roles across the politico-military-administrative spectrum, in line
with the unique exigencies of imperial rule and command.98
In 1928, just as in 1900, Lyautey held to this ideal of the imperialist abroad. It
was, nevertheless, his experiences during the 1890s, and in particular the
encounter in 1893, which brought the revelation of possibilities overseas and
the ‘men of action’ who could realise them. Enlightened by Hartley’s example,
soon afterwards Lyautey found in the person of Joseph Gallieni—‘the most mar-
vellous specimen of a man of action and organiser’—a compatriot who met the
same criteria.99 It remains the case, however, that Lyautey’s ‘right man in the
right place’—an idealised conception of the ‘man on the spot’—was the
product of a lateral process of influence and experience illuminated by scrutinis-
ing his activities through a transnational lens.100

Notes
1. Singer, “Lyautey,” 134. Both Lyautey’s funeral and the transfer of his remains to
Morocco were carried out with due ceremony and attendant press coverage. Sèbe,
Heroic Imperialists in Africa, 207.
2. For consideration of what constitutes an imperial hero, see Sèbe, Heroic Imperialists, 1–10.
Mackenzie, “Heroic Myths of Empire,” 109–16.
3. See for example, Venier, Lyautey Avant Lyautey, 71. Finch, A Progressive Occupation?
28–9. Tripodi, “Good for one but not the other,” 784–5. Venier, “Lyautey et l’idée de
protectorat de 1894 à 1902,” 500–9.
1060 M. P. FINCH

4. This acknowledgment stands in contrast with the way Lyautey increasingly played
down analogous efforts of less media-savvy soldiers serving in the colonies, notably
Théophile Pennequin. See Finch, A Progressive Occupation? 135–6. Klein, “Le
sorcier de la pacification,” 35–56.
5. Lyautey, “Du rôle colonial de l’Armée,” 309. For consideration of the ways in which
Lyautey employed the English language in his correspodence, see Le Révérend,
Lyautey Ecrivain, 406–8.
6. For Siam, see Andrew, Théophile Delcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale, 32–
4. Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, “The French ‘Colonial Party,” 100–1, 117–8. Jeshurun
The Contest for Siam 1889–1902, 49–95.
7. Maurois, Lyautey, 47.
8. Venier, Lyautey Avant Lyautey, 67–9. Although André Le Révérend suggests a later
work, Java et la colonisation hollandaise (1900) played the key role in shaping Lyau-
tey’s idea about the protectorate, Venier’s argument is more convincing. Le Révérend,
Lyautey Ecrivain, 204.
9. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale en Afrique,” 117.
10. Venier, Lyautey Avant Lyautey, 70–1.
11. See Betts, “L’influence des méthodes hollandaises et anglaises sur la doctrine coloniale
française,” 35–49.
12. For example, in categorising four major types of colonial heroes following a roughly
chronological trajectory from the late nineteenth into the twentieth century, Berny
Sèbe assigns both Lyautey and Lugard to a final category of the ‘proconsul turned
hero […] who embodied the slow shift from conquest to administration.’ Sèbe,
Heroic Imperialists in Africa, 140, see also 166–7.
13. Betts, “L’influence des methods hollandaises et anglaises,” 38–41.
14. Lambert and Lester, Colonial Lives Across The British Empire, 3, 23. See also Lester,
Imperial Networks. Laidlaw, Colonial Connections. Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race.
Barth and Cvetkovski, Imperial Cooperation and Transfer, 1870–1930. Adelman,
“Mimesis and rivalry,” 77–98. Kamissek and Kreienbaum, “An Imperial Cloud?”
164–82. Rosenberg, A World Connecting, 1870–1945, 285–431.
15. Lindner, “Imperialism and Globalization,” 5–7, 27.
16. Linder, for example, points to reliance on materiel provided by Cape Colony as evi-
dence of the German inability to prosecute the war against the Nama. Lindner,
“Imperialism and Globalization,” 15–6. In a similar vein, James Fichter has demon-
strated for an earlier period the degree to which the French relied on British maritime
infrastructure to sustain the growth of their empire in Asia. Fichter, “British Infrastruc-
ture and French Empire,” 183–203.
17. Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 35
18. Mackenzie, “Analysing ‘Echoes of Empire’ in Contemporary Context,” 189–90.
19. For a classic example of the ‘man on the spot’ in the guise of expansionist, controlling
French soldiers in West Africa, freed from Parisian oversight by distance and in-
country experience see Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan, especially
266–8. Also Kanya-Forstner, “French expansion in Africa,” 289–90. For the expansio-
nist tendency of British imperial governors, see Galbraith, “The “Turbulent Frontier”
as a Factor in British Expansion,” 150–68.
20. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 117.
21. Papers of Frederick Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger, Bodleian Libraries, Uni-
versity of Oxford (hereafter MSS Lugard). 14/9 2 Lugard to Chamberlain, 3 Feb 1924.
22. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 120–21.
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1061

23. MSS Lugard 12/2 14 ‘Marshal Lyautey Honoured By The African Society’ The African
World, 8 Dec 1928.
Although this was the first time that the Royal African Society had honoured a
foreigner, the Société de géographie de Paris had made similar gestures much earlier,
awarding a Gold Medal to Henry Morton Stanley in 1878, and to David Livingstone
in 1857. Sèbe, Heroic Imperialists, 43.
24. MSS Lugard 12/2 14 ‘Marshal Lyautey Honoured By The African Society’ The African
World, 8 Dec 1928.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Lugard was had himself been a recipient of the Society’s Gold Medal in 1925. The award
of the Gold Medal had been an intermittent affair in the 1920s and 1930s, with awards
only made when the society agreed on a candidate of suitable standing. The recipients of
the award were: 1922 – Sir Harry Johnston. 1924 – Sir Alfred Sharpe. 1925 – Lord
Lugard. 1926 – Sir Reginald Wingate. 1927 – Sir Ronald Ross. 1928 – Marshal
Lyautey. 1930 – Lord Buxton. 1935 – Sir Henry Wellcome. 1936 – King Leopold III
of Belgium. MSS Lugard 156/3 3 Gold Medal Correspondence 1934–39. Royal
African Society – Medals. Recommendation of the General Purpose Committee.
28. First published in two volumes, the lettres went through several editions in the 1920s
and 1930s. The letters concerning Tonkin were not translated into English until 1932,
when they appeared as Intimate Letters from Tonquin under the editorship of Aubrey
Le Blond.
29. MSS Lugard 14/9 1 Sir Austen Chamberlain to Lugard, 31 Jan 1924. The reference is to
George Meredith’s Beauchamp’s Career (1875).
30. MSS Lugard 14/9 2 Lugard to Chamberlain, 3 Feb 1924.
31. MSS Lugard 14/9 3 Lyautey to Lugard, 31 March 1924.
32. MSS Lugard 14/9 Lyautey to Chamberlain, 31 March 1924.
33. MSS Lugard 14/9 62 Note by Lord Lugard. See also, MSS Lugard 14/9 61 Lyautey to
Lugard, 29 Nov1928.
34. MSS Lugard 12/2 8 Note On Conversation At Luncheon Given To Marshal Lyautey.
35. MSS Lugard 14/9 63 Note by Lord Lugard.
36. Perham, Lugard, 214, 220–33, 300–4, 327–48. See also Flint, “Frederick Lugard,” 293–
4. In Lugard’s account of events, none of the Fathers (11 in total) were injured during
the fighting, although their West African doctor had perished. Whilst their Church had
been destroyed, they had safely hidden in a brick building, and their storehouse also
remained intact. In the aftermath, Lugard had the priests transported to the
Company fort at Kampala, reporting that they were “most courteous: standing
among the blazing ruins of their houses and church, they offered me wine and said
I had saved their lives and were greatly delighted that their storehouse had escaped
the fire.” Quoted in Perham, Lugard, 301–2.
37. Lyautey, Lettres du Tonkin et de Madagascar, 1894–1899, ii. 166.
38. MSS Lugard 14/9 2 Lugard to Chamberlain, 3 Feb 1924.
39. In the third edition, published a year prior to his death, the line becomes ‘Les Peres
Blancs se sont trouvées dans le ressac ; et c’a été l’horrible période de bourrasque
dont nous avons tous saigné à Paris, voici dix ans.’ Lyautey, Lettres du Tonkin et de
Madagascar, 1894–1899, 504.
40. MSS Lugard 14/9 3 Lyautey to Lugard, 31 March1924.
41. MSS Lugard 14/9 4 Lyautey to Chamberlain, 31 March 1924.
42. MSS Lugard 14/9 Lugard to Chamberlain, 14 April 1924.
1062 M. P. FINCH

43. For the Fondation Lyautey Scholarship see MSS Lugard 12/2 Letters 2,4,5,6,7. Sèbe,
Heroic Imperialists, 168.
44. MSS Lugard 2/6 86 A Book of Remembrance – Lugard 1858–1945 – By his brother,
E.J.L. Lord Lugard’s International Influence By Lord Hailey, 17. Lugard’s commitment
to this notion was long-standing: even before the outbreak of the First World War he
had freely passed on some of his ideas on colonial rule to the German Colonial Sec-
retary, Wilhelm Solf. Lindner, ‘Imperialism and Globalization’, 11-12.
45. In the context of the arguments pursued later in this essay, it is interesting to note that
in his 1893 correspondence Lyautey paid homage to the European Commission of the
Danube in facilitating the work of Sir Charles Hartley and transcending European
rivalry, lauding
cet Etat de raison, qui, tandis que nos gouvernements se ruinent, a, depuis quar-
ante ans, à travers les fluctuations européennes, sagement, tranquillement, sûre-
ment accompli cette grande œuvre, et sans les bonnes finances, et sans l’autorité
de laquelle tout le génie de Sir Charles n’aurait servi de rien.
Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse, 152.
46. MSS Lugard 14/9 2 Lugard to Chamberlain, 3 Feb 1924.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid. According to Lugard both the Governor General of the Belgian Congo and the
Belgian Colonial Minister were interested in a translation.
49. MSS Lugard 14/9 3 Lyautey to Lugard, 31 March 1924.
50. MSS Lugard 14/9 4 Lyautey to Chamberlain, 31 March 1924.
51. MSS Lugard 12/2 8 Note On Conversation At Luncheon Given To Marechal Lyautey”
52. See Finch, Progressive Occupation, 65–70.
53. As recently as the beginning of that decade different comparisons could be drawn. For
example, a French press report on Lugard from 1920 compared him not to Lyautey,
but instead contended that ‘His work can only be compared to that of the first organ-
iser of Madagascar. He is the Gallieni of the black Indies.’ MSS Lugard 2/3 3 ‘A French
Opinion of Sir F. Lugard’s Report’, West Africa, 8 May 1920.
54. Lyautey, "Une œuvre coloniale,” 116.
55. Ibid., 116.
56. Maurois, Marshal Lyautey, 203.
57. Lyautey, “Du rôle,” 323.
58. The itinerary is indicated by the selection of letters in Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse,
p. 115. Venier, Lyautey Avant Lyautey, 50–51.
59. For a full account of the stopover see Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse, 146–53. Also,
Hartley, A Biography of Sir Charles Hartley, Civil Engineer (1825–1915), ii, 585–9.
60. Sir Charles Hartley Papers, Institution of Civil Engineers, London. NRA 20358
Hartley. 1893 diary, entries for 25, 26, 27 May. Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse, 153.
61. For Hartley’s life see Hartley, A Biography of Sir Charles Hartley. Also Carlyle,
“Hartley, Sir Charles Augustus (1825–1915),”. For Hartley’s work on the Mississippi
see also Hartley, “Sir Charles Hartley and the Mouths of the Mississippi,” 261–87.
62. Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse, 150.
63. West, 1900, 119.
64. Hartley, A Biography of Sir Charles Hartley, 588. Lyautey, it should be noted, was 38 at
the time of his passage through Sulina.
65. Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse, 151.
66. Teyssier, Lyautey, 103–4.
 THE JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY 1063

67. See Finch, Progressive Occupation, 120–34. Maurois, Lyautey, 48–9. Venier, Lyautey
Avant Lyautey, 63–7.
68. Lyautey, Lettres de Jeunesse, 151.
69. Ibid., 151–2.
70. Lyautey, “Du rôle colonial,” 323–4.
71. Mackenzie, “Empire and the Ecological Apocalypse,” 216.
72. Sansom, “Eliot, Sir Charles Norton Edgcumbe (1861–1931)”. See also, Mackenzie, The
Empire of Nature, 160.
73. Eliot, The East African Protectorate, 4.
74. Mackenzie, “Empire and the Ecological Apocalypse,” 217.
75. Eliot, The East African Protectorate, 3.
76. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 117.
77. Le Révérend, Lyautey Ecrivain, 219, 254.
78. Ibid., 236.
79. Quoted in Maurois, Lyautey, 47.
80. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 116.
81. Lyautey, “Du rôle colonial,” 323–4.
82. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 117.
83. Eliot, The East African Protectorate, 4–5.
84. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 116. See also Le Révérend, Lyautey Ecrivain, 234–8.
85. Gallieni, Trois Colonnes au Tonkin (1894–1895), 154.
86. Callwell, Small Wars, 44. On Callwell, see Whittingham, “Savage warfare,” 591–607.
87. Mackenzie, “Empire and the ecological apocalypse,” 217.
88. Lyautey, “Lettres du Tonkin et de Madagascar,” 8. Letter of 5 May 1896, to Paul
Desjardins.
89. Kamissek and Kreienbaum, “An Imperial Cloud?” 168–9.
90. Hartley, A Biography of Sir Charles Hartley, ii, 589.
91. It appeared as such in the society’s journal.
92. MSS Lugard 12/2 8 Note On Conversation At Luncheon Given To Marechal Lyautey.
93. La Porte, “Lyautey L’Européen,” 101.
94. Quoted in Howe, Lyautey of Morocco, 74.
95. MSS Lugard 14/9 1 Sir Austen Chamberlain to Lugard, 31 Jan 1924.
96. Lyautey, “Une œuvre coloniale,” 116.
97. Kamissek and Kreienbaum, “An Imperial Cloud?” 165.
98. Lyautey, “Du rôle colonial de l’Armée,” 310.
99. Quoted in Howe, Lyautey of Morocco, 139.
100. For an exploration of the insights made possible by the adoption of a transnational
approach to empire, with a particular emphasis on a Franco-British comparative fra-
mework, see Sèbe, “Towards Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Empires and their
Echoes?” 123–40.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Michael P.M. Finch http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1259-5801
1064 M. P. FINCH

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