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BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

Britain’s Informal Empire

in Spain, 1830–1950
Free Trade, Protectionism and
Military Power

Nick Sharman
 Britain and the World

Series Editors
Martin Farr
School of History
Newcastle University
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Michelle D. Brock
Department of History
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA, USA

Eric G. E. Zuelow
Department of History
University of New England
Biddeford, ME, USA
Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The
editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in
which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth cen-
tury to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World
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share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider
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around the world that study Britain and its international influence from
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on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the
Britain and the World peer-reviewed journal.
Martin Farr (martin.farr@newcastle.ac.uk) is General Series Editor for
the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock (brockm@wlu.
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G. E. Zuelow (ezuelow@une.edu) is Series Editor for titles covering the
post-1800 period.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795
 Nick Sharman

Britain’s Informal
Empire in Spain,
1830–1950
Free Trade, Protectionism and Military Power
Nick Sharman
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, UK

Britain and the World

ISBN 978-3-030-77949-8    ISBN 978-3-030-77950-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77950-4

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 Preface

Less than two weeks after the military uprising in Spain in July 1936,
Britain’s Conservative Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden abandoned the
democratically elected Republican government by denying it the supply of
arms. His non-intervention policy effectively guaranteed the eventual vic-
tory of the rebel army and its fascist supporters within and outside Spain.
A decade later, in January 1947, Britain’s reforming Labour Government,
many of whose members had vigorously supported the Republic during
the Civil War, refused to support United Nations initiatives to remove the
Franco dictatorship and return democracy to Spain in the aftermath of the
comprehensive defeat of European fascism. Both decisions were justified
by the immediate political issues of the day, appeasement in the 1930s,
anti-communism in the 1940s. The outcome, however, was the same,
government of Spain by an authoritarian, anti-democratic regime. Both
Britain’s major parties, committed in principle to democratic governance,
had decided that maintenance of social order by a fascist dictator in Spain
was preferable to the uncertainties of a return to democracy. This book
grew from my interest in this apparent paradox and my conclusion that
behind the unity of political purpose were the underlying economic inter-
ests of Britain’s industrial and trade-based empire. As I pursued this inter-
est, three interlocking themes emerged: first was the deeply entangled,
though unbalanced, relationship between the two countries’ economies.
The second was the substantial impact that the British Empire’s free trade
policy had on the development of the Spanish economy and its domestic

v
vi PREFACE

politics. The third was the Spanish protectionist movement’s resistance to

the imposition of free trade. The movement, often seen as no more than a
reactionary force, in fact had a strongly reformist and modernising agenda.
Seen together and drawing on Gallagher and Robinson’s concept of infor-
mal imperialism, these themes provide the basis for explaining both the
debilitating effects of Britain’s free trade imperialism on Spain’s economic
development and the political resistance it engendered within the country.
The story of Spain’s economic policy in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries begins with mercantilist protectionism, switches to an enthusias-
tic embrace of free trade before reverting to trade and investment protec-
tionism and, finally, to increasingly radical forms of autarkic economic
nationalism. My argument is that this trajectory was shaped in decisive
ways by two interlinked processes: the exercise of formal and informal
power by a dominant British Empire and the reaction of successive Spanish
governments as they sought to escape economic dependency, on Britain
and France in particular.
Overlaying these processes within Spain was the wider story of the
British Empire: its astonishing rise during the nineteenth century to
achieve global diplomatic and economic hegemony at the apogee of its
influence in the last quarter of the century. Over the first decades of the
twentieth century the Empire progressively declined, ever more rapidly
after the First and Second World Wars. By the 1950s, virtually every trace
of the formal and informal imperial power that had sustained Britain’s
dominant role in Spain for over a century had disappeared. This book
traces the story of the Anglo-Spanish relationship from the 1830s to the
1940s and concludes that throughout the period the two processes, the
exercise of British imperial power and Spain’s economic and political
development, were tightly intertwined.
My thanks for their consistent and enthusiastic support for the project
go to Chris Grocott, Gareth Stockey, Tony Kapcia, Steve Roberts, Mark
Gant and Manuel López Forjas all of whom made valuable suggestions to
earlier drafts. My thanks, too, go to two people who launched my interest
in Spain and its history: Pilar Membrilla who taught me the language
through her deep interest in Spanish culture and politics and Helen
Graham who sympathetically supervised and encouraged my initial
research. Many other friends and colleagues have helped me with their
 PREFACE vii

support and encouragement, notably Lisa Newby, Teresa Itabor, Karenjit

Clare and Michael Lambert. Most of all though, my thanks go to my fam-
ily, Jo, Jamie and Imogen, for their unfailing support, patience and love.

Nottingham, UK Nick Sharman

September 2021

Translations from Spanish sources are by the author.

 Contents

Part I British Informal Imperialism and Spain   1

1 Informal Imperialism and the British Empire  3

The Informal Imperialism Controversy   8
Spain and Informal Imperialism  18
The Spanish Reaction to Britain’s Informal Imperialism  25

2 Britain, Free Trade and the Spanish Liberal Monarchy,

1833–1856 35

3 Britain, Spain and the War of Africa, 1859–1860 65

4 The ‘Disaster’ of the Spanish-American War of 1898

and the Algeciras Conference of 1906 85

5 Informal Imperialism and Total War: Britain and Spain

in the First World War103

6 The Second World War: Revival and Demise of Britain’s

Informal Empire in Spain121

ix
x Contents

Part II Spain’s Response to Britain’s Informal Imperialism 147

7 The Spanish Challenge to Britain’s Free Trade

Imperialism149

8 The Rise of Economic Nationalism173

9 Economic Nationalism to Autarky193

10 Conclusion219

References225

Index233
 PART I

Britain’s Informal Imperialism

in Spain
 CHAPTER 1

Informal Imperialism and the British Empire

Britain and Spain have been strongly interconnected since the two coun-
tries first achieved a measure of national unity in the sixteenth century.
Although the relationship was one of the most consistently important for
both nations, it was rarely one of equals. In its ‘golden’ sixteenth century,
Spain was the first global empire and a dominant power in Western Europe,
while England, as it then was, lay on the margins of the continent. During
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Spain’s power declined, while
England, later Britain, itself established a worldwide commercial empire.
The result was an intense rivalry, focussed mainly on control of the
Mediterranean and Atlantic trade routes and the entangled American
empires of the two countries. The Napoleonic Wars were a watershed for
the relationship: French occupation and loss of its naval fleet, critical to
the protection of its colonies, left Spain severely weakened. Meanwhile,
Britain, already the world’s leading commercial power based on its naval
dominance, was set on an astonishing economic growth path springing
from its leadership of the Industrial Revolution.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 settled the peace and the relationship
between the great European powers and gave Britain a dominant role in
the continent’s diplomacy for the next century. In the following decade,
the loss of its South American colonies confirmed Spain’s marginal posi-
tion among the European great powers. For Britain, Spain’s main diplo-
matic interest now lay in the potential alliances it might make with the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Sharman, Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain, 1830–1950,
Britain and the World,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77950-4_1
4 N. SHARMAN

other powers to threaten its Atlantic trade routes. This paramount con-
cern meant that Spain remained a vital imperial defence issue, right up to
the twilight of its Empire in the aftermath of the Second World War.
However, Britain’s concern with Spain had another, more openly eco-
nomic element: its substantial domestic and colonial markets and its
unparalleled mineral wealth. This combination of geopolitical and directly
economic factors led to a series of British interventions in Spanish politics,
from its military support for the liberal monarchists in the Carlist Civil War
of the 1830s to Churchill’s desperate attempts to prevent Spain from join-
ing the Axis powers in 1940. The consequence of this long-standing stra-
tegic and economic engagement was that Britain had a major influence in
shaping modern Spain. This book is about the interventions Britain made
to secure its imperial interests and the effects they had on Spain. It con-
cludes that, in effect, the country became an ‘informal’ colony of Britain,
a concept for which theoretical support was set out by Gallagher and
Robinson in their celebrated 1953 Economic Review article, ‘The
Imperialism of Free Trade’.1 Their central hypothesis was that, by the early
nineteenth century, Britain’s industrialisation was the foundation of an
extraordinary expansion of trade, people and investment, an ‘ever extend-
ing and intensifying development of overseas regions’. Britain’s imperial-
ism was ‘a sufficient political function of this process of integrating new
regions into the expanding economy’, one aspect of which was to ensure
guarantees of strategic protection for British interests.2 Their second major
proposition was that Britain’s approach depended on how far local elites
were prepared to cooperate: Britain would only take direct control of ter-
ritories if these elites were unable or unwilling to safeguard British inter-
ests. They summed this up in their well-known aphorism: ‘trade with
informal control if possible; trade with rule where necessary’.3
The story of the Anglo-Spanish economic relationship during the nine-
teenth and first half of the twentieth century closely fits this theoretical
framework. Britain used its imperial power, formal and informal, to shape
Spain’s economic and political development to ensure the strategic secu-
rity of its trade routes and the critically important raw materials and
markets for its industrial products. Spain was incorporated into Britain’s

1
Gallagher, J and Robinson, R ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review
Vol. VI, No 1, 1953.
2
Ibid. 5–6.
3
Ibid. 13.
 1 INFORMAL IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE 5

‘informal’ Empire, exploited economically and dominated politically,

although, except for Gibraltar, never acquired as a formal dependency.
Only when domestic political circumstances in Spain threatened its trade
and investment interests did Britain need to intervene directly. Its readi-
ness to do so at moments of threat to its strategic concerns confirms the
imperial character of the relationship. Although France (and later in the
period, Germany) exerted a strong cultural and economic influence in
Spain, only Britain deployed military force during the period.4 For most of
the time, Britain’s commercial and diplomatic pressure was enough to
secure Spanish compliance with its economic and strategic aims.
The initial attraction was the consumer market that Spain and its colo-
nies offered to British textile and, later, machine tool and manufactured
exports. Britain exerted intense pressure on Spain to open up its markets
and draw Spain’s economy into its trading orbit. In parallel, Britain worked
to weaken and destroy Spanish competitors to its industries, most notably
the Catalan textile producers. Towards the end of the century, when
Spain’s mineral resources became crucial to the second wave of Europe’s
industrial revolution, Britain established a dominant role in the extraction
of the country’s copper, sulphur and iron ore resources. The export of
these minerals, rather than their processing within Spain itself, under-
mined the possible emergence of rival native industries. Combined with
French dominance of Spain’s financial credit market and its railway net-
work, this process contributed to Spain’s fragmented, underdeveloped
economy and to the country’s relative economic decline in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.
Explanations for Spain’s failure to use its abundant natural and human
resources to achieve industrial ‘take-off’ in the nineteenth century have
pointed to a wide range of domestic institutional and cultural factors.
Most have emphasised the co-existence of a small and unstable industrial
sector alongside a largely unmodernised, often quasi-feudal, agricultural
sector, creating a dual economic structure, ‘respectively growth-­generating
and growth-resisting’.5 Others have emphasised the failure to achieve the
balance of elements necessary for successful industrialisation, citing an
4
France had intervened militarily in 1823 to support the absolutist regime of Ferdinand
VII but thereafter refused to become involved again, despite both British and Spanish appeals
for it to do so during the first Carlist Civil War. Britain on the other hand mobilised military
force, or threatened to do so, on at least five occasions between the 1830s and 1940s.
5
Trebilcock, C The Industrialization of the Continental Powers 1780–1914, Longman,
1981, 312.
6 N. SHARMAN

inadequate financial sector, oriented to funding public debt, an undevel-

oped entrepreneurial class and a weak state, all factors leading to consis-
tently poor policymaking.6 Many writers have pointed to the survival of
pre-capitalist agriculture, culture and institutions.7 Some early explana-
tions (including in Spain itself 8) rejected such structural causes in favour
of psychological features, an ‘inherent racial vice’, ‘a lack of practical sense
and an instinct for conspicuous consumption over efficient production’.9
Most of these various approaches, however, have had a common link,
namely that, ‘Spain’s backwardness is its own doing’.10 However, by over-
emphasising internal factors and underplaying the impact of external
forces on the Spanish economic development, these explanations of
Spain’s halting progress to industrialisation are incomplete. The most
important of these external factors was Britain’s dominant influence,
alongside France, on Spain’s trade and investment policymaking. The first
part of the book shows how Britain deliberately undermined Spain’s own
efforts to industrialise its economy and, as a result, further unbalanced the
country’s wildly uneven economy. Near-feudal agriculture in some regions
ran alongside highly industrialised centres in others, creating enormous
social and economic disparities. From these developed the fiercely opposed
factional and regional interests which distorted Spain’s politics through-
out the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At key moments of crisis,
Britain’s policies deliberately deepened these internal political divisions,

6
Nadal, J El fracaso de la Revolución Industrial en España, 1814–1913, Ariel, Barcelona,
1975, 226; Tortella, G Banking, Railroads and Industry in Spain 1829–1874, Arno Press,
1977, 12. Pro, J La Construcción del Estado en España, Madrid, 2019, 147 and 547. Pro
highlights the enormous task facing the liberal monarchists in reconstructing an effective
state to support the newly capitalist markets almost from scratch in the 1830s, an enterprise
that took over a century.
7
For example, Wood, E The Origin of Capitalism, Verso, 2017 (2002), 151.
8
Araquistáin, writer and leading politician in the Second Republic, argued that ‘the origi-
nal sin of Spain, the cause of our backwardness, is the moral decadence of the typical Spaniard.
What is rotten in Spain, what spreads the corruption, is the Spanish character’. Araquistáin,
L España en el Crisol, Barcelona, 1920, 234. In the wake of the 1898 ‘Disaster’ when the
country lost its last colonies in the Spanish-American War, Ortega y Gasset titled one of his
major polemical works ‘Invertebrate Spain’.
9
Carr, R Spain 1808–1939, Oxford, 1966, 27.
10
Tortella (1977) 4.
 1 INFORMAL IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE 7

undermining the fledgling industrial class and supporting the landowners’

export of agricultural products.11
The second half of the book explores the reaction in Spain to Britain’s
imposition of economic hegemony. For Gallagher and Robinson, a crucial
factor that shaped British strategy was the attitudes of local elites towards
Britain’s commercial interests, especially its free trade policies. In Spain,
Britain’s powerful free trade campaign stimulated equally strong reactions,
both positive and negative. These responses are explored by assessing the
long-term effects of the British free trade campaign on the economic ideas
and policies of Spain’s political classes. Many among the liberal elite were
enthusiastic supporters of Britain’s proposals for an open economy, seeing
them as the path to modernity and the restoration of Spain’s status as a
great power. A significant section of the elite, however, were bitterly
opposed, seeing Britain’s free trade policies as a direct threat to Spain’s
interests. Initially this opposition centred on the influential protectionist
movement, sponsored by a Catalan textile industry facing destruction
from the uncontrolled import of inexpensive British cotton goods. Their
alternative route to national modernity was temporary protection of fledg-
ling industries backed by a programme of state-supported industrialisa-
tion. The resulting political and ideological conflict between free trade and
protectionist supporters contributed to the chronic instability of Spanish
governments for much of the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the
twentieth century, resistance to growing foreign economic and political
pressures had led to the emergence of a strongly conservative economic
nationalist movement. In the aftermath of the First World War, these con-
flicts intensified, as protectionism evolved into extreme forms of economic
nationalism and Britain’s imperial power in Spain ebbed. Two decades
later, the Second World War created an existential crisis for both countries,
and Britain used its military force to reaffirm its strategic and economic
interests and the relationship once again reverted, albeit briefly, to one of
imperial domination. Only with the assertion of American power in
Europe in the post-war years were the last vestiges of Britain’s informal
empire in Spain finally swept away.

11
As Maluquer de Motes points out, ‘the industrial bourgeoisie, basically Catalan, were
able to intervene as a trigger for the bourgeois revolution and as an ally over the period but
were never able to become the dominant class in the process’ (p. 51). Maluquer de Motes, J
El socialismo en España 1833–1868, Barcelona, 1977, 51.
8 N. SHARMAN

Telling this story over the longue durée of a century highlights the
important—and often underappreciated—role the Anglo-Spanish rela-
tionship played in European history, most notably during the two world
wars. More broadly, it illustrates the combination of political and eco-
nomic processes by which Britain’s competitive market model was trans-
mitted to the weaker pre-capitalist societies of Europe and how different
sections of these societies resisted this model. In Spain, these opponents
were roughly divided into two groups: on the one hand, conservative
landowners and aristocrats, intent on preserving their traditional privi-
leges, and on the other, nationalist reformers, many of them industrialist
protectionists. Both these factions were bitterly opposed to a third group,
the commercial and political elites, most of whom were supporters of free
trade. The result was a chronic, often confused, conflict over objectives
and policies which a weak state consistently failed to resolve effectively.
The book concludes that Britain’s free trade campaign and Spain’s defen-
sive and contradictory reaction were two sides of a single process of infor-
mal economic imperialism, from which Britain gained by far the greater
advantage.

The Informal Imperialism Controversy

The use of Gallagher and Robinson’s concept of informal imperialism to
explain the process of Britain’s nineteenth-century economic expansion
has been controversial from the beginning. It is important therefore to
justify the general validity of the concept and to test the theory against
historical practice in Spain. This has been done by looking at three crucial
pillars of the Anglo-Spanish relationship, geopolitics, trade and finance to
show how in each area, Britain exercised a degree of control that radically
constrained Spain’s sovereignty. The body of the book goes on to review
the development of the relationship between the 1830s and 1940s, to
demonstrate in detail how Britain’s exercise of its dominant economic
power amounted to informal imperialism.
Britain’s empire, like those of other European trading nations, the
Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch, had emerged gradually from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as a hybrid of directly administered
outposts and territories. By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain’s
own rapidly growing, market-driven economy was having a profound
influence on its imperial possessions. A traditional form of commercial and
territorial empire was gradually transformed into a new market-oriented
 1 INFORMAL IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE 9

capitalist system as the settler colonies became economically self-­

supporting, earning their way by sending food and raw materials to supply
Britain’s rapidly developing industries and urban-based economy in
exchange for its industrial exports. Meanwhile, Britain’s naval power was
extending its imperial reach to a wider range of politically independent
territories in South America, Africa and the Orient.12 Dominated politi-
cally, militarily and economically, these ‘informal’ colonies also offered
their consumer markets and raw materials to benefit Britain’s growing
economy. However, in their case, the political institutions remained
in local hands, as long as they were prepared to shape their economies and
foreign policies around Britain’s economic and strategic interests. In prac-
tice, although Britain could, and did, mobilise its formal, military power
to enforce its interests in these territories on occasion, the imperatives of
market-based economic competition made such enforcement largely
unnecessary. Britain’s increasingly unchallenged control of international
sea routes and later, of global trade and investment financing, meant a
threat to use force was usually sufficient to compel compliance. By separat-
ing economic and political systems of control, Britain was able to use its
powerful diplomatic and military resources to guarantee the necessary sta-
bility and security of the financial and trading system as a whole, rather
than needing to police individual territories. For these societies, trade with
Britain brought a broad range of low-cost products which strongly
appealed to their expanding middle-class markets. Even more powerful
than the attraction of the physical goods, was the new form of competitive
capitalism based on free trade, whose promise was the creation of a wealthy,
modern society in a peaceful world. In nineteenth-century Spain, this
combination of material benefit and ideological promise was profoundly
attractive to its growing bourgeoisie.
Gallagher and Robinson focussed their attention on this new form of
capitalist empire, in which the guiding principle for both metropolitan
centre and colony was economic interest rather than territorial enlarge-
ment. They argued that the main objective of Britain’s imperial project
was the expansion of its economic wealth and power through the integra-
tion of new regions of the world into its free trade, market-driven econ-
omy. In place of the direct political management of imperial territories,
control was exercised by the anonymous economic imperatives of market
competition. This was a pragmatic political response to the relentless drive

12
Gallagher and Robinson (1953) 3.
10 N. SHARMAN

of British manufacturers and traders to extend the range of their activities

far beyond any conceivable capacity of Britain to manage territories
directly. For Gallagher and Robinson, this global ambition was the out-
come of the expansionary forces unleashed by the industrial revolution.
This transformation was driven by a plethora of small and medium-sized
capitalist enterprises operating under unrelenting competitive pressure to
expand through investment in new production methods in order to sur-
vive. Market forces compelled them to adopt the new steam-driven tech-
nologies organised in the factory system, and these investments in turn
enabled them to produce an astonishing range of inexpensive consumer
products. By the 1820s, however, Britain’s domestic markets had become
relatively saturated and there was an urgent need to find new, foreign mar-
kets for their products. Organised in powerful, city-based lobby groups,
these firms pressed the government to ensure foreign countries removed
domestic and international barriers to trade and inward investment to give
them access to new consumer markets. In its support for these commercial
interests, successive British governments used naval supremacy and the
commercial attractions of the country’s industrial products to persuade
foreign governments to sign trade treaties. These agreements gave tariff-­
free access to their markets in exchange for opportunities to enter Britain’s
consumer markets. The objective was to link ‘undeveloped areas with
British foreign trade and in so doing, move[d] the political arm to force an
entry into markets closed by the power of foreign monopolies’.13 As the
world’s most advanced and efficient industrial producer, Britain gained
disproportionately from this ‘free trade’ bargain, since its products could
outcompete native goods in price, quality and range.
The international reach of this form of informal imperialism depended
on Britain’s ability to provide the ‘public goods’ necessary to support the
global trading system, including secure international trade routes and
property rights, an open trade regime and an international money system.
The combination of industrial productive power and command of the
global economic system sustained Britain’s hegemonic influence for nearly
a century.14 This form of imperial domination required a change in the
13
Gallagher and Robinson (1953) 7–8.
14
Akita defines five categories of ‘public goods’ supplied by Britain that were essential for
the operation of an international trading system as peace, safe access to international water-
ways, international property rights protection, open trade regime, international money sys-
tem. Akita, S Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History, Palgrave Macmillan,
2002, 2.
 1 INFORMAL IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE 11

priorities of Britain’s diplomatic and military power: its role was now to
‘enforce’ the general conditions necessary to sustain free trade with these
informal territories, rather than, as in traditional empires, to police trade
and investment monopolies and enforce order within directly ruled colo-
nies.15 Gallagher and Robinson showed how this approach, consistently
applied for over a century, amounted to an ‘imperialism of free trade’.16
They pointed to examples, notably in Africa and South America, where
political and commercial pressures had been successfully applied to secure
Britain’s access to markets and investment opportunities. British direct
rule had only followed when it was clear, as it was in the case of Egypt, that
local political collaboration was either unsuccessful or unachievable.
An important aspect of Gallagher and Robinson’s approach was the
emphasis they gave to the politics of the ‘periphery’ in this process. Rather
than a single form of imperialism driven by the imperatives of the metro-
politan centre, they suggested there was a strong element of contingency
in Britain’s imperial project:

The type of political line between the expanding economy and its formal
and informal dependencies […] tended to vary with the economic value of
the territory, the strength of its political structure, the readiness of its rulers
to collaborate with British commercial and strategic purposes, the ability of
the native society to undergo economic change without external control,
the extent to which domestic and foreign political situations permitted
British intervention and finally how far European rivals allowed British pol-
icy a free hand.17

The character of imperial power was therefore ‘largely decided by the vari-
ous and changing relationships between the political and economic ele-
ments of expansion in any particular region and time’.18 The process of

15
Davis and Huttenback summarised this process: ‘the second British Empire was founded
on ambitions for increased foreign trade, as a chain of trading posts protected by strategically
placed naval bases with the aim of ensuring profits were not diminished by expense of colo-
nisation and the costs of warfare’. Davis, L and Huttenback, R Mammon and the pursuit of
Empire: the economics of British imperialism, Cambridge, 1988.
16
Grady and Grocott rename this ‘imperialism for free trade’, as its aim was ‘to create and
maintain unequal economic relationships with developing economies’. Grocott, C and
Grady, J ‘Naked Abroad: The continuing imperialism of free trade’, Capital & Class, 2014,
v38(3) 541–562, 544.
17
Gallagher and Robinson (1953) 6–7.
18
Ibid. 5–6.
Another random document with
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 My good Lord Sinnatus,
I once was at the hunting of a lion.
Roused by the clamour of the chase he woke,
Came to the front of the wood—his monarch mane
Bristled about his quick ears—he stood there
Staring upon the hunter. A score of dogs
Gnaw’d at his ankles: at the last he felt
The trouble of his feet, put forth one paw,
Slew four, and knew it not, and so remain’d
Staring upon the hunter: and this Rome
Will crush you if you wrestle with her; then
Save for some slight report in her own Senate
Scarce know what she has done.
(Aside.) Would I could move him,
Provoke him any way! (Aloud.) The Lady Camma,
Wise I am sure as she is beautiful,
Will close with me that to submit at once
Is better than a wholly-hopeless war,
Our gallant citizens murder’d all in vain,
Son, husband, brother gash’d to death in vain,
And the small state more cruelly trampled on
Than had she never moved.

Camma.

Sir, I had once

A boy who died a babe; but were he living
And grown to man and Sinnatus will’d it, I
Would set him in the front rank of the fight
With scarce a pang. (Rises.) Sir, if a state submit
At once, she may be blotted out at once
And swallow’d in the conqueror’s chronicle.
Whereas in wars of freedom and defence
The glory and grief of battle won or lost
Solders a race together—yea—tho’ they fail,
The names of those who fought and fell are like
A bank’d-up fire that flashes out again
From century to century, and at last
May lead them on to victory—I hope so—
Like phantoms of the Gods.

Sinnatus.

Well spoken, wife.

Synorix (bowing).

Madam, so well I yield.

Sinnatus.

I should not wonder

If Synorix, who has dwelt three years in Rome
And wrought his worst against his native land,
Returns with this Antonius.

Synorix.

What is Synorix?

Sinnatus.

Galatian, and not know? This Synorix

Was Tetrarch here, and tyrant also—did
Dishonour to our wives.

Synorix.

Perhaps you judge him

With feeble charity: being as you tell me
Tetrarch, there might be willing wives enough
To feel dishonour, honour.

Camma.

Do not say so.

I know of no such wives in all Galatia.
There may be courtesans for aught I know
Whose life is one dishonour.

Enter Attendant.

Attendant (aside).

My lord, the men!

Sinnatus (aside).

Our anti-Roman faction?

Attendant (aside).

Ay, my lord.

Synorix (overhearing).

(Aside.) I have enough—their anti-Roman faction.

Sinnatus (aloud).

Some friends of mine would speak with me without.

You, Strato, make good cheer till I return.

[Exit.

Synorix.

I have much to say, no time to say it in.

First, lady, know myself am that Galatian
Who sent the cup.

Camma.

I thank you from my heart.

 Synorix.

Then that I serve with Rome to serve Galatia.

That is my secret: keep it, or you sell me
To torment and to death.

[Coming closer.

For your ear only—

I love you—for your love to the great Goddess.
The Romans sent me here a spy upon you,
To draw you and your husband to your doom.
I’d sooner die than do it.

[Takes out paper given him by

Antonius.

This paper sign’d

Antonius—will you take it, read it? there!

Camma.

(Reads) “You are to seize on Sinnatus,—if——”

Synorix.

(Snatches paper.) No more.

What follows is for no wife’s eyes. O Camma,
Rome has a glimpse of this conspiracy;
Rome never yet hath spar’d conspirator.
Horrible! flaying, scourging, crucifying——

Camma.

I am tender enough. Why do you practise on me?

Synorix.

Why should I practise on you? How you wrong me!

I am sure of being every way malign’d.
And if you should betray me to your husband——

Camma.

Will you betray him by this order?

Synorix.

See,
I tear it all to pieces, never dream’d
Of acting on it.

[Tears the paper.

Camma.

I owe you thanks for ever.

Synorix.

Hath Sinnatus never told you of this plot?

Camma.

What plot?

Synorix.

A child’s sand-castle on the beach

For the next wave—all seen,—all calculated,
All known by Rome. No chance for Sinnatus.

Camma.

Why, said you not as much to my brave Sinnatus?

Synorix.
Brave—ay—too brave, too over-confident,
Too like to ruin himself, and you, and me!
Who else, with this black thunderbolt of Rome
Above him, would have chased the stag to-day
In the full face of all the Roman camp?
A miracle that they let him home again,
Not caught, maim’d, blinded him.

[Camma shudders.

(Aside.) I have made her tremble.

(Aloud.) I know they mean to torture him to death.
I dare not tell him how I came to know it;
I durst not trust him with—my serving Rome
To serve Galatia: you heard him on the letter.
Not say as much? I all but said as much.
I am sure I told him that his plot was folly.
I say it to you—you are wiser—Rome knows all,
But you know not the savagery of Rome.

Camma.

O—have you power with Rome? use it for him!

Synorix.

Alas! I have no such power with Rome. All that

Lies with Antonius.

[As if struck by a sudden thought.

Comes over to her.

He will pass to-morrow

In the gray dawn before the Temple doors.
You have beauty,—O great beauty,—and Antonius,
So gracious toward women, never yet
Flung back a woman’s prayer. Plead to him,
I am sure you will prevail.
 Camma.

Still—I should tell

My husband.

Synorix.

Will he let you plead for him

To a Roman?

Camma.

I fear not.

Synorix.

Then do not tell him.

Or tell him, if you will, when you return,
When you have charm’d our general into mercy,
And all is safe again. O dearest lady,

[Murmurs of “Synorix! Synorix!” heard

outside.

Think,—torture,—death,—and come.

Camma.

I will, I will.
And I will not betray you.

Synorix (aside).

(As Sinnatus enters.) Stand apart.

Enter Sinnatus and Attendant.

Sinnatus.
Thou art that Synorix! One whom thou hast wrong’d
Without there, knew thee with Antonius.
They howl for thee, to rend thee head from limb.

Synorix.

I am much malign’d. I thought to serve Galatia.

Sinnatus.

Serve thyself first, villain! They shall not harm

My guest within my house. There! (points to door) there! this
door
Opens upon the forest! Out, begone!
Henceforth I am thy mortal enemy.

Synorix.

However I thank thee (draws his sword); thou hast saved my

life.

[Exit.

Sinnatus.

(To Attendant.) Return and tell them Synorix is not here.

[Exit Attendant.

What did that villain Synorix say to you?

Camma.

Is he—that—Synorix?

Sinnatus.

Wherefore should you doubt it?

One of the men there knew him.
 Camma.

Only one,
And he perhaps mistaken in the face.

Sinnatus.

Come, come, could he deny it? What did he say?

Camma.

What should he say?

Sinnatus.

What should he say, my wife!

He should say this, that being Tetrarch once
His own true people cast him from their doors
Like a base coin.

Camma.

Not kindly to them?

Sinnatus.

Kindly?
O the most kindly Prince in all the world!
Would clap his honest citizens on the back,
Bandy their own rude jests with them, be curious
About the welfare of their babes, their wives,
O ay—their wives—their wives. What should he say?
He should say nothing to my wife if I
Were by to throttle him! He steep’d himself
In all the lust of Rome. How should you guess
What manner of beast it is?

Camma.
 Yet he seem’d kindly,
And said he loathed the cruelties that Rome
Wrought on her vassals.

Sinnatus.

Did he, honest man?

Camma.

And you, that seldom brook the stranger here,

Have let him hunt the stag with you to-day.

Sinnatus.

I warrant you now, he said he struck the stag.

Camma.

Why no, he never touch’d upon the stag.

Sinnatus.

Why so I said, my arrow. Well, to sleep.

[Goes to close door.

Camma.

Nay, close not yet the door upon a night

That looks half day.

Sinnatus.

True; and my friends may spy him

And slay him as he runs.

Camma.
 He is gone already.
Oh look,—yon grove upon the mountain,—white
In the sweet moon as with a lovelier snow!
But what a blotch of blackness underneath!
Sinnatus, you remember—yea, you must,
That there three years ago—the vast vine-bowers
Ran to the summit of the trees, and dropt
Their streamers earthward, which a breeze of May
Took ever and anon, and open’d out
The purple zone of hill and heaven; there
You told your love; and like the swaying vines—
Yea,—with our eyes,—our hearts, our prophet hopes
Let in the happy distance, and that all
But cloudless heaven which we have found together
In our three married years! You kiss’d me there
For the first time. Sinnatus, kiss me now.

Sinnatus.

First kiss. (Kisses her.) There then. You talk almost as if it

Might be the last.

Camma.

Will you not eat a little?

Sinnatus.

No, no, we found a goat-herd’s hut and shared

His fruits and milk. Liar! You will believe
Now that he never struck the stag—a brave one
Which you shall see to-morrow.

Camma.

I rise to-morrow
In the gray dawn, and take this holy cup
To lodge it in the shrine of Artemis.
 Sinnatus.

Good!

Camma.

If I be not back in half an hour,

Come after me.

Sinnatus.

What! is there danger?

Camma.

Nay,
None that I know: ’tis but a step from here
To the Temple.

Sinnatus.

All my brain is full of sleep.

Wake me before you go, I’ll after you—
After me now!

[Closes door and exit.

Camma (drawing curtains).

Your shadow. Synorix—

His face was not malignant, and he said
That men malign’d him. Shall I go? Shall I go?
Death, torture—
“He never yet flung back a woman’s prayer”—
I go, but I will have my dagger with me.

[Exit.

Scene III.—Same as Scene I. Dawn.

 Music and Singing in the Temple.

Enter Synorix watchfully, after him Publius and Soldiers.

Synorix.

Publius!

Publius.

Here!

Synorix.

Do you remember what

I told you?

Publius.

When you cry “Rome, Rome,” to seize

On whomsoever may be talking with you,
Or man, or woman, as traitors unto Rome.

Synorix.

Right. Back again. How many of you are there?

Publius.

Some half a score.

[Exeunt Soldiers and Publius.

Synorix.

I have my guard about me.

I need not fear the crowd that hunted me
Across the woods, last night. I hardly gain’d
The camp at midnight. Will she come to me
Now that she knows me Synorix? Not if Sinnatus
Has told her all the truth about me. Well,
I cannot help the mould that I was cast in.
I fling all that upon my fate, my star.
I know that I am genial, I would be
Happy, and make all others happy so
They did not thwart me. Nay, she will not come.
Yet if she be a true and loving wife
She may, perchance, to save this husband. Ay!
See, see, my white bird stepping toward the snare.
Why now I count it all but miracle,
That this brave heart of mine should shake me so,
As helplessly as some unbearded boy’s
When first he meets his maiden in a bower.

Enter Camma (with cup).

Synorix.

The lark first takes the sunlight on his wing,

But you, twin sister of the morning star,
Forelead the sun.

Camma.

Where is Antonius?

Synorix.

Not here as yet. You are too early for him.

[She crosses towards Temple.

Synorix.

Nay, whither go you now?

Camma.
 To lodge this cup
Within the holy shrine of Artemis,
And so return.

Synorix.

To find Antonius here.

[She goes into the Temple, he looks

after her.

The loveliest life that ever drew the light

From heaven to brood upon her, and enrich
Earth with her shadow! I trust she will return.
These Romans dare not violate the Temple.
No, I must lure my game into the camp.
A woman I could live and die for. What!
Die for a woman, what new faith is this?
I am not mad, not sick, not old enough
To doat on one alone. Yes, mad for her,
Camma the stately, Camma the great-hearted,
So mad, I fear some strange and evil chance
Coming upon me, for by the Gods I seem
Strange to myself.

Re-enter Camma.

Camma.

Where is Antonius?

Synorix.

Where? As I said before, you are still too early.

Camma.

Too early to be here alone with thee;

For whether men malign thy name, or no,
It bears an evil savour among women.
Where is Antonius? (Loud.)

Synorix.

Madam, as you know

The camp is half a league without the city;
If you will walk with me we needs must meet
Antonius coming, or at least shall find him
There in the camp.

Camma.

No, not one step with thee.

Where is Antonius? (Louder.)

Synorix (advancing towards her).

Then for your own sake,

Lady, I say it with all gentleness,
And for the sake of Sinnatus your husband,
I must compel you.

Camma (drawing her dagger).

Stay!—too near is death.

Synorix (disarming her).

Is it not easy to disarm a woman?

Enter Sinnatus (seizes him from behind by the throat).

Synorix (throttled and scarce audible).

Rome! Rome!

Sinnatus.
 Adulterous dog!

Synorix (stabbing him with Camma’s dagger).

What! will you have it?

[Camma utters a cry and runs to

Sinnatus.

Sinnatus (falls backward).

I have it in my heart—to the Temple—fly—

For my sake—or they seize on thee. Remember!
Away—farewell!

[Dies.

Camma (runs up the steps into the Temple, looking back).

Farewell!

Synorix (seeing her escape).

The women of the Temple drag her in.

Publius! Publius! No,
Antonius would not suffer me to break
Into the sanctuary. She hath escaped.

[Looking down at Sinnatus.

“Adulterous dog!” that red-faced rage at me!

Then with one quick short stab—eternal peace.
So end all passions. Then what use in passions?
To warm the cold bounds of our dying life
And, lest we freeze in mortal apathy,
Employ us, heat us, quicken us, help us, keep us
From seeing all too near that urn, those ashes
Which all must be. Well used, they serve us well.
I heard a saying in Egypt, that ambition
Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink,
The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men
Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad.
I will be no such wreck, am no such gamester
As, having won the stake, would dare the chance
Of double, or losing all. The Roman Senate,
For I have always play’d into their hands,
Means me the crown. And Camma for my bride—
The people love her—if I win her love,
They too will cleave to me, as one with her.
There then I rest, Rome’s tributary king.

[Looking down on Sinnatus.

Why did I strike him?—having proof enough

Against the man, I surely should have left
That stroke to Rome. He saved my life too. Did he?
It seem’d so. I have play’d the sudden fool.
And that sets her against me—for the moment.
Camma—well, well, I never found the woman
I could not force or wheedle to my will.
She will be glad at last to wear my crown.
And I will make Galatia prosperous too,
And we will chirp among our vines, and smile
At bygone things till that (pointing to Sinnatus) eternal peace.
Rome! Rome!

Enter Publius and Soldiers.

Twice I cried Rome. Why came ye not before?

Publius.

Why come we now? Whom shall we seize upon?

Synorix (pointing to the body of Sinnatus).

The body of that dead traitor Sinnatus.

Bear him away.

Music and Singing in Temple.

END OF ACT I.
 ACT II.
Scene.—Interior of the Temple of Artemis.

Small gold gates on platform in front of the veil before the colossal
statue of the Goddess, and in the centre of the Temple a tripod
altar, on which is a lighted lamp. Lamps (lighted) suspended
between each pillar. Tripods, vases, garlands of flowers, etc.,
about stage. Altar at back close to Goddess, with two cups.
Solemn music. Priestesses decorating the Temple.

Enter a Priestess.

Priestess.

Phœbe, that man from Synorix, who has been

So oft to see the Priestess, waits once more
Before the Temple.

Phœbe.

We will let her know.

[Signs to one of the Priestesses, who

goes out.

Since Camma fled from Synorix to our Temple,

And for her beauty, stateliness, and power,
Was chosen Priestess here, have you not mark’d
Her eyes were ever on the marble floor?
To-day they are fixt and bright—they look straight out.
Hath she made up her mind to marry him?

Priestess.

To marry him who stabb’d her Sinnatus.