The Secret of England's Greatness

This is a famous depiction of the British Empire by Thomas Jones Barker, 1861, 'The Secret of England's Greatness'. It is so called because it depicts the apocryphal story commonly told of Queen Victoria that, when asked how the British Empire had grown so strong, she pointed not to ships or guns but to the Bible and said, "Tell them that this is the secret of England's greatness." Here we see Her Majesty handing over a copy of the Holy Writ to an African envoy in the Audience Room at Windsor.

Some commentators suppose that the envoy is generic and that the implication is that the British lay claim to the whole of Africa. A sinister interpretation. More likely, he is understood to be or is based upon or alludes to Ali bin Nasr, governor of Mombasa. Victoria was on good terms with him. He had been invited to and attended her coronation in 1838 and travelled to England to see her again in 1842. The costume in the painting can be identified as specifically east African.

I point out that if this handsome African is (or is based upon) Ali bin Nasr then he is, obviously, a Muslim and that, therefore, he would acknowledge the Bible as one of God's Books and would understand Queen Victoria and the British as 'People of the Book'. It would therefore not be at all insulting or demeaning or imposing for him to be presented with a Bible. He would entirely expect her to give him a Bible. The scene, therefore, does NOT signify the imposition of Christianity upon heathens, which is usually how it is taken, or always how it is taken in post-colonial intellectuality.

I think that is a simplistic interpretation. No doubt it was understood as having that meaning at the time - it was a widely reproduced and very popular picture - but I doubt that it is, as it were, a simplistic endorsement of missionary Christianity in Africa. The British did not usually try to convert Muslims to Christianity. Like among the Muslims themselves, there was a distinction between 'People of the Book' and those deemed religionless, between 'Musselmen" and "savages". Savages were given Christianity. British missionaries worked to convert Muslims (they still do) but the task was more difficult and less urgent than was the baptism of savages.

I do not think this is a picture of a savage. I do not think it is a picture of a heathen. It is a picture of an African Muslim chieftan. He is depicted with considerable sympathy. He is not depicted as an ape or as sub-human, as Africans sometimes were in European ideas. He is regal - not some khalhari bushman. He is handsome, muscular, proud, dignified, strong, albeit kneeling appropriately before Her Majesty. But the British themselves knelt before her in exactly the same way. So rather than this being a depiction of raw subjugation and surrender, we see an African dignitary (with his dignity fully acknowledged by the painter) in an act that shows him as "one of us". This is the peculiarity of the scene. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, along with Prince Albert and the Mistress of Robes, look on watching the remarkable way in which the British Empire had brought diverse peoples - even Africans! - into a single edifice under a single sovereign.

That is how I understand this picture. I don't indulge in post-colonial demonizing of everything British. My world-view isn't formed by the resentful post-colonial Leftism that pervades the intellectual culture of my age. Of course this picture is about Empire, and of course it combines themes of patriotism and piety, and of course the polite deference of the chieftan disguises the fact that the British were probably stripping his country of natural resources, but it also celebrates those benevolent and benign aspects of the Empire that we no longer admit.

That is: as Empires go, the British Empire wasn't too bad. I remember talking to a guy in Java who told me how envious he was of the Malays. "They were conquered by the British," he said. "Lucky!" He complained that his country had been conquered by the Dutch, who were complete bastards, whereas any country that was part of the British Empire he regarded as enormously fortunate. I heard the same thing in India too - Indians who told me that they counted themselves lucky to have been conquered by the British and to have been part of the British Empire. I was sitting talking to a man in a Hindu temple outside of Bangalore. "What about Gandhi and all that?" I asked. Of course he revered Gandhi, but he didn't believe the British had been too bad. Indian nationalists had demonized them, but he said that most Indians were glad to have had that experience under the British. His mother loved the British, he added. The British brought tinned food. His mother regarded British tinned food as a veritable emblem of civilization.

I was educated in the usual post-colonial narrative. The evil British raped and pillaged their way around the globe in a racist rampage of colonial exploitation. The reality of travelling knocked that out of me. The reality was much more nuanced. I think this painting is more nuanced than we take it too. It is a good painting with which to deal with this post-colonial bias. It seems a straight-forward, heavy-handed paean to imperialist ideology, everything your standard post-colonial Leftist hates. It's got it all. Empire, religion, racism, monarchy, hierarchy. A picture we can love to hate. But if we understand that the African is a Muslim man, its' meaning alters just enough to make it interesting. (Notice, by the way, that  he wears a knife. He has not been disarmed.)

I do have to add here that the pervasive feminist treatments of this painting are vacuous and tiresome. Do a google search for 'The Source of England's Greatness'. Follow links in the first thirty or so results. All you'll find are people trying to find some "gender" angle in this painting. I don't think it has one, really. There's no cogent "women's angle" on this painting. But that doesn't prevent my gender obsessed contemporaries from inventing one. The 'Women in World History' page at George Mason University gets the prize for feminist stupidity this time. Regarding 'The Secret of England's Greatness' it states:

"Despite the frequent depiction of empire as a masculine world, the queen was the symbolic figurehead of the British Empire...."

That's really scratching. Apart from this being an utterly inane observation, as far as I can tell the Empire was always referred to and depicted as feminine. Britannia is female. Always. I'm so annoyed by this stupid comment that here's a couple of pictures just to prove my point - the British Empire is female:

- Harper McAlpine Black