THIS BLESSED PLOT, THIS EARTH, THIS REALM, THIS ENGLAND.
—from John of Gaunt’s speech in William Shakespeare’s Richard II
The English-speaking island north of the European continent has been called many things over the centuries: England, Britain, Great Britain, and in a derivation from Latin, Britannia. Today it is often referred to by the boorish letters UK, for United Kingdom. Imagine Shakespeare writing, “This blessed plot, this realm, this UK.” It just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Historians date the birth of the British Empire in different years, even different centuries. Like most empires, Britain had a small and unremarkable start, evolving from overseas possessions and trading posts between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. By 1913, the empire was at its pinnacle, governing an estimated 412 million people, which was nearly a quarter of the world’s population. By 1920, British rule comprised about 24 percent of the earth’s landmass. The saying about an empire “on which the sun never sets” was not an overstatement, because the sun always seemed to be shining on one of its territories.
Militarily, geographically, and culturally, Britannia at one time ruled much of the world.
It is somewhat ironic that Queen Elizabeth I—a woman literally in a man’s world, given the long line of dominant male kings (in this she was an anomaly, as was Catherine the Great of Russia, who is profiled elsewhere)—is due credit for expanding Britain’s reign and rule. In many ways, she had the strength of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, who as prime minister in the late 1970s and 1980s led a much smaller Britain with similar resolve.
Under the rule of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), a true national identity was born. A powerful example of this can be found in the Spanish invasion of 1588. The invasion was launched by Philip II of Spain in an attempt to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and restore Catholic rule in England. The plan was to sail a massive fleet from Spain to the Spanish-occupied Netherlands, pick up a battle-hardened Spanish army, and land them in England. On paper, the English had no chance, but after a ferocious naval battle, the English prevented the Spanish fleet from joining up with the Spanish army. During the return to Spain, nature completed the work begun by the English and destroyed much of the Spanish fleet. The defeat of the Spanish in the armada campaign was seen as an act of divine intervention and blessing on England. Even then, “divine intervention” meant that God was on the side of the victorious.
Years of continuous war forced the English to expand their knowledge of the world and their presence within it. Most important, the English would make their presence felt in North America.
As Glubb describes it, this part of the arc of an empire is characterized by the fearlessness and daring of the nation.1 Inevitably, though, this overreach and the gobbling up of so much land, plus demands upon its residents (notably taxes in America, which resulted in rebellion and the loss of the Thirteen Colonies), led to the British Empire’s decline and fall. Today’s England is barely a shadow of its former self. Scotland even attempted to secede from the UK in 2014 through a referendum. Though voters defeated it, separation sentiment remains strong. Older voters mostly want to stay within the UK, while most younger voters want to break with London. Demographics may not work in favor of Scots wishing to remain under the authority of the Crown.
Concerning the first stage of an empire, Glubb writes, “Again and again in history we find a small nation, treated as insignificant by its contemporaries, suddenly emerging from its homeland and overrunning large areas of the world.”2 This rapid emerging is what England did under Elizabeth I. Few believed that this tiny land would, or even could, have such an enormous bearing on European affairs.
Vision is always key to building nations into empires, but when the leader with the vision dies, it is difficult to transfer that vision to others, because their own vision may conflict with that of their predecessor, or worse, they may have no vision at all. As Scripture warns, “Without a vision the people perish” (Prov. 29:18). George H. W. Bush famously disparaged this wisdom as “the vision thing.”3
By the time Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, the English had lost their last foothold outside of the British Isles. Calais had fallen in 1559. By the time of her death, England’s role in the world was rapidly expanding, with a strong and growing presence in North America and the Caribbean. Once the 1700s began, Britain increased its power through large and impressive military victories. By the time Napoleon was defeated for the final time at Waterloo in 1815, England had achieved world dominance, which lasted until the beginning of World War II.
CAMEO: Stanley Baldwin
No one person can be credited—or blamed—for the end of the British Empire, but one man was unarguably a contributor to it. He is literally a forgotten man in British history—and probably deserves to be, except as a cautionary tale. His name was Stanley Baldwin, and although he displayed some quirky and even admirable traits, such as donating one-fifth of his family’s fortune to help pay down the national debt (a gesture that might have had more meaning had he also been able to constrain spending by Parliament), his negatives far outweighed his positives.
As Martin Kettle wrote about Baldwin in the Guardian in 2014, “Although he was prime minister three times in the interwar period—briefly in 1923, more extensively from 1924 to 1929, and then finally from 1935 to 1937—he is always overshadowed by his more dramatic and glamorous contemporaries Lloyd George and Churchill. His most widely remembered achievement, if he still has one, was to drive through the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. His long-term reputation is still haunted by his failure to stem the rise of Hitler in the 1930s.”4
Three years after this article appeared, Anne Perkins wrote that there was another side to Baldwin’s strength and that his focus was more on popular will (today we might call it an opinion poll or focus group) than on making tough decisions that were best for his country. Like many of his peers (notably Neville Chamberlain), Baldwin was in denial about Britain’s need to rearm in the face of Germany’s military buildup. While he saw rising storm clouds from the Continent and believed another world war would destroy civilization, he was unwilling to do the necessary things that would prevent it from happening.5
Baldwin’s denial of what seemed obvious to Churchill (who was obtaining classified documents from the British Foreign Office’s Ralph Wigram) was enough to forever taint him in the eyes of the future prime minister.
Some see parallels with at least one American politician. In 2016, President Barack Obama declared, “We are living in the most peaceful, prosperous, and progressive era in human history” and, “The world has never been less violent.”
That was true for a time, but Obama was reluctant to confront China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and the Middle East, instead kicking the can down the road to the Trump administration.
As the National Review noted, “Obama is the U.S. version of Stanley Baldwin, the suave, three-time British prime minister of the 1920s and 1930s. Baldwin’s last tenure (1935–1937) coincided with the rapid rise of aggressive German, Italian, and Japanese Fascism.”6
The lesson that can be drawn from Stanley Baldwin’s tenure in the British government (and in history) is that unpreparedness serves as a sign to freedom’s enemies of an unwillingness to fight to preserve that freedom. Neville Chamberlain—another contributor to Britain’s decline as an empire—cared more about preserving an illusory peace than about arming Britain to do the necessary work of defeating evil. In his “Peace in Our Time” declaration following the Munich Pact, Chamberlain followed Baldwin’s earlier instincts, which led to disastrous results.
THE AGE OF CONQUESTS
The British Empire’s arc from rise to fall is longer than Sir John Glubb’s estimate of 250 years, but the trajectory remains the same. From 1700 to 1815, the British Empire found itself in a perpetual state of war. During those 115 years, Britain advanced from a relatively weak nation to become the undisputed master of the sea. While still not the greatest power in Europe, Britain had the greatest influence. It was an age in which alliances were in constant flux. There were, however, two opponents Britain could always count on facing: France and Spain. Britain was by far the greatest victor, on the whole, in the major conflicts of this time period, which began with the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1715) and continued with the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). More than twenty smaller wars were simultaneously fought by the British, in all corners of the world (with the exception of frigid Antarctica!). While the British did lose some conflicts, their march to victory was relentless and ultimately successful.
It was not only on the battlefield (and at sea) that Britain could claim success. The British also spread colonies and outposts all over the world, in what today might look like a franchise operation worthy of Starbucks and McDonald’s, or ubiquitous Chinese restaurants. The two most important examples of this are North America and India. (Africa also became an important addition as the British Empire expanded still farther in the mid-1800s.)
Lessons learned from the British Empire’s expansion could be applied today when it comes to the deployment of military force in foreign lands. The British chose to avoid large troop commitments to the European continent proper and instead focused on using their navy to raid enemy coastal strongholds in Europe and blockade enemy ports. This military strategy allowed them to commit larger forces to the colonies in North America and move forces around to aid allies as required.
In addition to achieving military victories and expanding its territory, Britain also began to mature rapidly in technology, finance, and influence. Britain quickly proved its ability to deploy forces effectively in all corners of the globe. British diplomatic skills grew rapidly and, in some circumstances, helped secure advantages without war and conclude peace settlements favorable to the empire. In all of its exploits, Britain never suffered catastrophic losses with any treaty, except the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which recognized American independence.
Perhaps of most importance, the British Empire emerged from this age in a strong economic position, allowing it to fund both the navy and a professional army. Navies are expensive to maintain, but that investment was returned many times when the fleet was called upon to engage in war and to maintain long periods of peace. While the territory Britain controlled had not reached its peak by 1815, the stage was set for the empire to grow virtually anywhere its rulers desired, and there was little that lesser powers could do about it.
THE AGE OF COMMERCE
Economic considerations have long served as motives for an empire’s expansion and also have led to their demise. The problem comes when ideology or political goals replace an understanding of human nature. Incentives derive from motivation. If governments tax too much and spend too much, motivation is harmed, and people are less inclined to work hard, because they know significant portions of their profits will be seized by the government. Britain’s economic policies following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 serve as one of many historical examples.
More than twenty years of war had contributed to an enormous debt. At the time of the American Revolution, Britain’s debt was nearly 127 million pounds. By 1815, it had soared to more than 900 million pounds. Taxes were raised to help pay down the debt. It didn’t work, because high taxes reduce incentive, and the undermining of incentive produces less income and thus less tax revenue.
Writing in Financial Analysts Journal, Jude T. Wanniski, a proponent of contemporary supply-side economics, observes,
What made the Industrial Revolution and the Pax Britannica possible was the audacity of the British Parliament in 1815. Spurred by middle-class agitators . . . the legislature rejected the stern warnings of the fiscal experts and in one swoop eliminated [William] Pitt’s income tax, which had been producing 14.6 million pounds, or a fifth of all revenues, and tariffs and domestic taxes that had been producing 4 million pounds more. Had the British left their tax rates high in an attempt to quickly pay down their debts, the 60-year bull market that followed would not have been possible.7
It was expanding revenues that produced debt reduction. Britain became the largest creditor nation in the world and had to keep reducing taxes in order to avoid surpluses. Imagine that! Taxes were eventually reimposed, because politicians cannot help themselves.
“Until 1914, the British income tax had been very nearly proportional . . . all income classes paid the same rates. After 1914, the system was progressive. . . . This began the reversal of Britain’s course in the nineteenth century. Instead of tax cuts, expansion, revenue increase, tax cuts, etc., the trend in Britain has been tax increase, contraction, revenue decline, tax increase.
Racism
Some have called it America’s original sin, though it hasn’t always been America’s. Britain had a vibrant slave trade—the ultimate and most shameful example of racism—and although it didn’t take a civil war in that country to end slavery, the feelings about race and class ran just as deep there as here.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of mine, has done some excellent work in several series carried on PBS. He has traced the DNA of some prominent African Americans back to slave ancestors, and that of some prominent whites back to their ancestors who were slave owners.
Gates, who is African American, decided to have his own DNA examined, and to his astonishment, he found he is mostly Irish.
When I saw his first series, African American Lives (which can still be viewed online at pbs.org), the thought occurred that racism is basically a form of self-hatred. We are all mixed up in the great gene pool of life, and there are no purebred humans.
To hate another person because of the color of his or her skin is a sin, pure and simple.
As with other cultural conflicts, too many of us don’t know each other. We see ourselves as members of tribes or categories, and we think we know enough about an individual because of their membership in a certain tribe or category.
It works in reverse too. Think about the few politically conservative African Americans you have heard of or possibly know. When notables like Justice Clarence Thomas, perhaps the most famous conservative African American of our time, or Professor Thomas Sowell speak or write, they are often denounced by the liberal establishment as being insufficiently black. This slander says black people and other minorities (and women too, for that matter) should think like a group and not as individuals. It is its own form of racism (and sexism).
Modern society has rightly rejected the bigoted statement “They all look alike,” regarding those of other races. But a parallel idea has emerged: that everyone of a particular race should think alike. That’s just as racist.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that Sunday morning was the most segregated hour of the week in America. He was speaking of church services. That may have been the result of racism and segregation in the past, but today it is a kind of tribalism of our own making. How many white people have visited, much less joined, black churches, or the reverse? Yes, we seem more comfortable with people of our own color and beliefs, but breaking those man-made barriers and getting out of our comfort zones is a first step toward addressing racism.
Question: If you are a white person reading this, have you ever invited people who are of a different race, ethnicity, or nationality for dinner in your home? Would you go to their home? Would you allow your children to become friends with their children?
We don’t know each other, and that is an underlying cause of racism and so many other problems that confront us. Hospitality works, if it’s genuine. Try it. Such an outreach might change you and your attitude toward people who are different from you, even more than it changes your guests.
Balancing the budget became the process of increasing the ‘supertax’ on higher incomes.”8 So it is today in the UK, with a progressive income tax and a value-added tax of 20 percent on virtually everything, which stifles growth, leads to more dependency on government, and reduces revenue.
At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill and the Tories, who wanted to maintain the increasingly costly colonial empire, were thrown out of office. Just two years later, in 1947, India declared its independence, and the British Empire was effectively over.
THE AGE OF AFFLUENCE
Roughly paralleling what Mark Twain labeled the Gilded Age in America was Britain’s Victorian era.9 The British economy began to expand in the mid-1800s, when there was a dramatic policy shift from protectionism to free trade. Yes, it would for a time leave behind a significant portion of the population, but it set the stage for the era that followed, an era that lifted many boats and created a vibrant British middle class, as happened in America.
Heavy foreign investment also contributed to reshaping the British economy, as did the growth of manufacturing, an increase in small businesses, and the proliferation of banks, insurance companies, shipping, and railways—the sorts of things that fuel economic growth.
While the 1930s presented hardships for many Britons, those who had or could find jobs benefited from depressed prices, which contributed to their affluence. If you paid little for the basics of life, you had more to spend on other things, such as a nicer house, better clothes, travel, and even a modern automobile.10
After the end of World War II, Britain began a slow recovery from the general economic struggles of that period. It began to face a far subtler danger than the Luftwaffe’s bombing of London. Dr. Martha Kirby, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Glasgow, describes a resurgent economy that led to “the freedom to indulge in consumerism as never before.” According to Kirby, one of the significant results of this new prosperity was a “rising tide of obesity.”11
If being obese is a sign of prosperity, why do we see so many weight loss ads on TV in Britain and America? Just asking.
Who could blame Britain—or America—for wanting more after suffering the double blow of the Great Depression and World War II? But just as a balanced diet is essential to good health, so too is a balanced outlook toward possessions. The Puritan ethic of living within one’s means was in many cases thrown to the winds, in favor of mass consumerism, increasing personal and government debt, and, for those who couldn’t keep up, an addictive welfare state that has resulted in several generations of people living in “council houses,” having no expectation of ever working, and taking offense at those who tell them they should find a job. Perhaps it could be called the age of entitlement.
There are always downsides to affluence, regardless of what lottery promoters and prosperity gospel preachers may say. Governments and individuals who ignore warnings like this one do so at their own risk: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless” (Eccl. 5:10).
THE DECLINE
Shortly before World War I, Britain had begun to fade from its position as “workshop of the world.” Its economy stopped growing as fast as it had in the past, and inevitably the nation began a slow but steady decline, relative to other countries.
There are many theories about why this happened, including less demand for British products overseas. A significant contributing factor was complacency, the notion that things will always remain the same, which predictably leads to laziness, lack of productivity and incentive, and inevitably decline. Consider one of many passages in Scripture that warns of the consequences of laziness: “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth” (Prov. 10:4).
Is there a lesson here for us? I believe there is, and to understand it, we must fast-forward to the mid-twentieth century.
On April 20, 1968, Enoch Powell, a member of the British House of Commons, delivered a speech to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham, England. It was dubbed the “Rivers of Blood” address, and Powell was denounced as a racist by liberal elites for his mentioning of “the black man” overtaking “the white man” because of immigration.
Whatever the legitimacy—or illegitimacy—of such a charge, Powell’s larger point was this: no nation can maintain its character if it doesn’t control its borders and limit immigration to an orderly pace so as to make sure those entering the country can be assimilated and fully embrace the values, language, and culture of the host nation.
Look at it this way. If I have a glass of water and begin pouring milk into it, the milk will first dilute and then eventually replace the water in the glass. It is the same with immigration. No nation can survive in its current form if it fails to control who enters it, how many enter it, and what will be done to make sure that the immigrants are fully assimilated and have the skills necessary to find jobs, so they can be contributors to the nation instead of burdening taxpaying citizens.
There is no right, in law or in logic, for anyone to claim residence in a country in which they do not enjoy citizenship. Whenever I travel to foreign lands, a stamp on my passport not only limits my stay but in many cases informs me that I am not allowed to work in that country. I never complain. It is their right. If I want to stay longer—and especially if I want to work in that country—I must receive permission by way of a visa or other document permitting me to do so.
“Is Europe Committing Suicide?” read a headline in the May 20, 2017, Daily Mail newspaper. In a review of Douglas Murray’s book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, Dominic Sandbrook wonders if Europe is deliberately contributing to its own decline. The subheading in his review says, “Controversial book claims elites in UK and the Continent are encouraging mass immigration because they’ve lost faith in historical Christian values.”12
Perhaps that is because they haven’t applied those values. At any rate, what would make European leaders favor Islamic values, given the deplorable way they are practiced in Muslim-majority nations?
In his book, Murray writes, “By the end of the life spans of most people currently alive, Europe will not be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home.”13
Sandbrook continues his review:
The causes, [Murray] thinks, are twofold. First, our political leaders have knowingly colluded in the “mass movement of peoples into Europe,” filling “cold and rainy northern towns” with “people dressed for the foothills of Pakistan or the sandstorms of Arabia.”
Second, he believes Europe’s intellectual and cultural elites, including those in Britain, have “lost faith in its beliefs, traditions and legitimacy.” Crippled with guilt, obsessed with atoning for the sins of empire, they have lost sight of the historic Christian values that their people expect them to defend.
As a result of their deluded utopianism, Murray thinks, Europe is ceasing to be Europe. Indeed, he believes that European culture as generations have understood it—the culture of Michelangelo and Mozart, Shakespeare and Goethe, Dickens and Wagner—is doomed.14
It’s a depressing outlook, but the reality he describes is one of Britain’s and the rest of Europe’s own making and could even now be reversed if leaders have the will and stop feeding at the trough of political correctness.
CAMEO: George Stephenson (1781–1848)
George Stephenson was the principal inventor of the locomotive. People tend to forget what life was like before all of our modern conveniences. Prior to the invention of machines that allowed people to travel between towns and even countries and then across oceans and continents by air and eventually into space, for thousands of years modes of transportation consisted of walking or riding horses (or elephants).
The invention of the steam engine and locomotive revolutionized land transportation, much as the building of oceangoing ships had done to promote commerce by sea. Railroads not only allowed for the transport of large numbers of goods but also made it possible for people to travel to places they never would have thought to visit by horse and cart, unless they were of the sturdiest stock.
While the railroads supplanted horse-drawn transportation, they opened up many markets, instead of closing them as critics claimed they would. There have always been those opposed to progress, believing the familiarity of the status quo is preferable to a future which no one can predict. Stephenson’s bravery and commitment to the future contributed greatly to the expansion of the British Empire and its ability to sustain itself into the twentieth century. His work ethic and vision were once taught in British (and American) schools, before those virtues were replaced by more self-centered concerns.
As if this weren’t discouraging enough for Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world, the Daily Mail in 2015 published a lengthy investigative report that found “eighty-five Islamic courts dispensing ‘justice’ across the UK.”15
There is disagreement over what constitutes an Islamic court. Some are councils without authority over British law and deal mostly with religious matters, including marriage and divorce. But the following case, one of many from the article, is a profile of what these courts or councils dispense, and it isn’t justice, especially not for women.
The newspaper reported on a young Muslim woman who sits before a cleric and complains about the state of her marriage. She claims her husband has physically and emotionally abused her and “treats me like a dog.” Instead of offering an empathetic response, the Daily Mail reports, “the cleric laughs and says, ‘Why did you marry such a person?’”16
Any nation such as Britain that allows for a people who do not hold Western values to invade it will not remain that country for long. The Muslim invasion of Europe is replacing Western culture with Islamic culture. If the trend continues, there will be nothing left of the West. Radical Muslims announce that this is their plan and ultimate objective. The West remains mostly in denial, refusing to defend itself. Unless things are reversed, the outcome for Britain and Europe is predictable.
But none of this is inevitable. Yes, to the casual observer of what is happening in Great Britain, the situation seems hopeless. But Christians are a people of hope, believers in lost causes for the sake of God’s kingdom. At one point in Britain’s history, the abolition of slavery appeared to be a lost cause, until a man of faith decided to fight because of his Christian principles. William Wilberforce fought for more than forty years in a battle that turned even his friends against him. You could say he gave his life for this fight, dying just three days after learning that the Slavery Abolition Act had become law.
The problem in Britain and elsewhere is that those holding to the Christian faith are in decline. It is difficult to have influence on culture and government when the overwhelming majority is secular or only nominally Christian and view faith, if they view it at all, as a private matter.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM GREAT BRITAIN?
The United States is currently engaged in a hotly contested—and highly politicized—debate over immigration. As the politicians fight it out, let me offer my perspective and then some practical suggestions for injecting the values of our faith into the equation.
If we have learned anything from the British experience, it is this: every nation has the right and responsibility to control its borders. That means finding ways to ensure those coming into our country do so for the right reasons, as well as setting limits based on our resources and capabilities for receiving immigrants. There is nothing un-Christian about creating and maintaining an orderly process that must be adhered to by anyone seeking entry into our country. Nor is it unfair or prejudicial to refuse entry to anyone for whom there is credible evidence that they may be connected with criminal or terrorist activity. Controlling our borders is just plain common sense, a trait that the Brits seem to have abandoned.
What intrigues me most, however, about Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech17 is what I call the rest of the story: we control our borders “to make sure those entering the country can be assimilated and fully embrace the values, language and culture of the host nation.” A friend recently shared a story with me about a stay-at-home mom who volunteered through her church to “adopt” a young Syrian family who had recently (and legally) immigrated to her city. For more than a year, she took the young mom to the grocery store once a week, offered free babysitting so both parents could attend an English language class (offered by her church). She took her to a vacant parking lot and taught her how to drive, just as she once had done for her own teenage kids. Today both parents speak English well enough to get along on their own and are now in the process of applying for citizenship. The dad found a job in IT, further exposing him to Western values.
It’s just one person, with no formal training in cross-cultural ministry. Only one small family from a nation many would consider an enemy of the United States. But that’s often how serious problems are solved. One at a time.
In the same way that Britain was unable to maintain its dominance over regions with different histories, languages, and religions, the country began to import immigrants, many of whom represented those nations where British influence once dominated. It isn’t a stretch to say that what Britain experienced (and what many believe America is now experiencing) is a kind of cultural suicide. When people will not assimilate and embrace the character and values of their host nation, that nation is not likely to sustain itself on the foundation that made it great in the first place.
As citizens of the kingdom of God, you have both a responsibility and a privilege to come alongside the “aliens and strangers” in your communities and demonstrate a way of life and a belief system that will give them a full and abundant life.18 That will make us all proud to call them neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens—and possibly, through your practical witness to them, fellow believers.