The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 by John Darwin

CONCLUSION
    The argument of this book has been that the fate of the world-system in which the British Empire was embedded was largely determined by geopolitical forces over which the British themselves had little control. The distribution of wealth and power within and between the two ends of Eurasia, in East Asia and Europe, created the openings and then closed off the freedoms that the British had exploited with striking success since the early nineteenth century. Once the politics and economics of both these great regions had turned against them, and wrecked the fine balance of naval and military power on which the defence of their interests depended, they had little chance of surviving at the head of an independent world-system. Perhaps they might have hoped to ride out the storm. But the strategic catastrophe of 1938 to 1942, and its devastating impact on the central elements of their system, were together so crushing that recovery (after 1945) was merely short-lived remission.
    Of course, the British were not just victims of blind fate, benign or malign. They had taken a hand in prompting the geopolitical changes from which they had gained, although (as at Trafalgar) perhaps more to ward off an imminent danger than to create a main chance. The peculiar trajectory of the British economy before 1800, and the accompanying emergence of a ‘polite and commercial society’, were essential foundations. By then, British commerce was geared to the long-distance traffic that had roused Adam Smith's ire, and the long credit advances required by the cycle of commodity trades, including the slave trade. The infrastructure to exercise maritime power in almost every part of the world was already in place, including the systematic compilation of navigational data. The British consumer was already addicted to a range of exotic new tastes, both cultural and physical, and easily tempted with more. Economic and religious transformation had created a restless, competitive, pluralistic and (amongst a critical number) guilt-ridden society, harbouring rival visions of empire and of Britain's true place in a world needing redemption. It had the means and the motive to widen the bridgeheads already established in the world beyond Europe, and to send in new ‘landings’ for commerce, conversion and colonisation. All that was needed was the (vague) promise of gain in new regions opened up to commercial or spiritual enterprise. In the 1820s and 1830s, a torrent of travellers’ ‘narratives’, seductive prospectuses, missionary reports and settler propaganda proclaimed a world that was ready for a British invasion.
    Nineteenth-century British leaders shared much of the intoxication that these visions had stirred among the key interest groups behind Britain's global expansion. Yet they were generally cautious about the government's part. They commanded a strong and well-funded state apparatus, but were wary that public opinion might turn against an unlucky venture abroad. They subscribed to ‘Gladstonian’ finance which implied a steady reduction of the government's share of the national income, and a negative view of costly long-term commitments. Hence they preferred to avoid direct confrontation with large or resilient states in Europe or Asia and intuitively grasped the signal advantage of an ‘intermediate’ situation, neither fully ‘continental’, nor entirely peripheral to the rest of Eurasia. They saw – or sensed – that this geostrategic prudentialism was vital to the stability of Britain's global connections, because these depended so much upon cooperation and partnership, not coercion and conquest. The settlement colonies, effectively self-governing from the 1830s and 1840s, could not be conscripted into imperial wars, or made to pay for their strategic defence – it was hard enough to extract any real contribution to wars fought on their soil and in defence of their (settler) interests. India, which could, was viewed