Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [76]
The girls were allowed to share some of the excitement of Scouting, learning how to find their way by the stars, how to clean their teeth with a stick, or ‘How to Secure a Burglar with Eight Inches of Cord’.* They were taught the prevailing belief in the uplifting qualities of ‘playing the game’. Mainly, though, it was the function of girls to learn how to help males to expand and consolidate the empire. ‘It is men’s work to defend the Empire in person, and to be prepared to fight for their country and their homes. But you must not forget that you can play a very important part in holding the Empire by becoming experts at ambulance work and nursing.’ Settling in a colony could offer many ‘delightful prospects’, such as ‘turning packing-cases into furniture’ and ‘producing capital meals with three bricks and a baking pot’. The thing to remember was that ‘To a true-hearted girl who wishes to make a man happy, there is bliss in an African hut.’
Chapter Eight
‘The more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race’
Cecil Rhodes, 1877
The hero of Rudyard Kipling’s 1893 short story ‘The Bridge-Builders’ is a no-nonsense Scottish engineer. Findlayson is building a railway bridge across the mighty Ganges. Thousands upon thousands of Indian labourers have toiled for three years constructing the stone plinths and riveting together the British-made steel girders which will cross the biggest river in the entire subcontinent. The Viceroy himself is to be present at the opening of the causeway. As a reward for his tireless efforts Findlayson dreams of being made a Companion of the Star of India, the Victorian decoration invented to honour congenial Indian princes and particularly significant British public servants.* Then one night the engineer receives a telegram from a British outpost further upstream. There is a huge flood rolling down from the Himalayas, which will strike the uncompleted bridge in hours. The work of empire risks destruction by a force of nature and an alarmed Findlayson orders the massive camp gong to be struck, waking the entire workforce. The site foreman, Peroo, ‘a lascar† familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London’, will organize the emergency flood defences in the little time available before the torrent strikes. Several hours later, with the rain pouring down on the two exhausted men, the roiling flood arrives. There is nothing more to be done, and Peroo takes an old tobacco tin from his waistband, opens it and offers the engineer a couple of brown pellets, to ‘kill all weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain’. It is opium, and before he knows where he is, this upstanding Scot is delirious, dreaming of talking animals, many-limbed Indian gods and praying in sacred temples.
His bridge survives the flood, but that is entirely due to the quality of British engineering rather than to any Indian gods. Findlayson is rescued from his druggy reverie by an Indian prince with the sporty affectations and languid disdain of an English education. The episode with the opium is not mentioned again. British modernity has tamed ancient India.
Massive engineering works stamped the British presence upon the world, evidence not merely of technological achievement, but demonstrations of purpose. Inside a metal tube in the public library at the diamond town of Kimberley, for example, is the rolled-up map of Africa on which Cecil Rhodes drew a pencil line the entire length of the continent depicting the railway which he hoped would one day run the 5,000 miles from the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to Cairo and the Mediterranean. That line was never completed, but on 7 November 1885 the last spike was driven into another track that had been laid through the Rockies, over bogs and prairies, through floods and forest fires, snowfall and avalanche, and that effectively created the Dominion