Weak Officials
Is it arms or men that subjugate a country? The smart aleck says both, and is not wrong. But we need finer discriminations to understand colonial rule. Adventurers are usually half-way to defeating the locals before they have the firepower to overwhelm princes and kings. In the regime’s heyday, it is men who rule. While at empire’s end, there are usually more guns than soldiers. Gerald Hanley, The Consul at Sunset. It is the soul of the ruling class - its accidie - that brings their dominion down.
___________
Doubt. It is the worse vice of an official. Ruling requires belief, in the mission, in your superiority, in your right to govern, to instruct, to improve. Confidence the foundation of authority, that needs to believe it has God, the nation or justice on its side. To dominate others is to treat them as less than one’s self. Not quite objects but certainly children who need the wise guidance of the Great Teacher. The language of fathers and mothers is never far away. But how bring up the kids if you question your own maturity?
There are different kinds of parents, of course. Casey is a wise old owl. Turnbull a tough bird. Sergeant Major Abduruman the peacock on the lord’s estate’s - he’s a dedicated disciple of the British Empire. Then there’s Milton, who, for want of ornithological expertise, I will call a canary. Milton is a sensualist, and weak. Sole seems to strike the perfect balance: cool, smart, but also just; justice that most inhuman of human traits, for it makes no allowances for the peculiarities of character. The natives know this well. It is why they prefer the Italians, who have a humane warmth - for all their arrogance and abuse - which is far better than such indifference. Budgerigars more homely than eagles. Individuals softer than abstract concepts.
But things are changing. The Empire is growing old. And it has expanded beyond its ability to govern effectively; some are already saying this part of Africa - only recently conquered - is outside its range. Too true for Lieutenant Caddy, lost in the desert mountains. Imperial overstretch. It is not just that Britain, due to the war, lacks the men and materiel to keep the peace; crucially, the imperial class has expanded beyond its capacity to rule: too many of the new recruits lack a leader’s mentality. Their sensibility overly refined, their moral armour weak, they have lost that ruggedness of soul, essential to colonial government. This lot born to manage a bank or shuffle paper in the Civil Service, not to direct tribes from camel-back. No adventurers these. They want a comfortable conscience. Somaliland to be another county in middle-England
Milton is our case exhibit. He desires a quiet life; thus peace at any price between the two competing tribes, the Yonis Barra and the Omar Bilash, is his goal. This official unable to see beyond the little window of his office, his own small concerns. These tribes fighting each other long into the mythic past; this conflict part of their economy and a means of survival; also a prerequisite to masculine pride; for without the honour and excitement of death how can a man truly live? Of course it cannot all be blamed on Milton; his orders are to keep the empire calm. But he goes beyond the memorandum. For a timid official peace is its own reason, a sort of neurosis. So quick to become a victim…. Unable to manage a war zone, he is easy prey to the local chiefs; vultures to our pet parrot (better than canary, I have decided). Soon Milton’s in thrall to Aurella, a beautiful and clever woman, who clamps him tight in the trap lying between her thighs. The old balance between the tribes is disturbed, as, with Milton’s help, the Yonis Barra reclaim water wells lost for decades. But victory comes at a cost. Not only do the Yonis Barra depend upon the charms of their femme fatale but they must submit to the British, to whom they have surrendered their rifles. To triumph they become defenceless. In altering the balance of forces, Milton has upset the ratios of honour, creating a highly unstable situation; certain to explode into a terrible violence.
To maintain their position the Yonis Barra need the Brits to keep the peace. Not only does this stretch Milton’s military resources, it confuses his simple mind; for peace now belongs to a plan of war. One has to be a master to handle this well. Milton is a chump. Can he rely on the Yonis Barra? No. Grown over-confident, they overreach. Thinking to take on the Omar Bilash they kill their protector - Milton is a broken man, soon to leave the country - and incriminate their rivals. The problem of the British Empire in microcosm. Above a certain size it can preserve itself only by staying still; but always that urge to expand, increasing its dependency on the locals, themselves enmeshed in centuries of rivalry and conflict. The results are easy to read: violence, instability, trickery and deceit. No only one’s material resources but one’s soul begins to fray; these simple-minded officials corrupted by the natives’ diplomacy. How believe in honour if wrapped up in the legs of the winning side?
At first all goes well. A mirage.
With the political officer absent, Turnbull makes a poor decision: to arrest the chiefs of the Omar Bilash. He should have waited for a cooler, sharper, subtler headpiece; he should have waited for Sole. His mistake causes a riot, and Sole, just arrived at El Ashang, makes an understandable but fatal error - he fires into the crowd. This triggers an assault, freeing the chiefs. The riot is a signal for a general uprising, which sees many Yonis Barra killed. If you want to keep your power be careful of extremes, never go too far.
Sole is wounded. Sergeant Major Abduruman is killed.
Turnbull has a breakdown. He has taken on a responsibility for which he is not equipped. An intelligent and tough soldier - like a scholarship boy he has a talent for following orders - he lacks the clever finesse of a Sole or Colonel Casey; bred as much by class as the genes. Turnbull, deprived of a diplomat’s sophistication, so tending towards surface signs and his own prejudices, was bound to read the politics wrong. Sole is acutely alive to the invisible threads that tie actions together. Thus the moment he arrives, Sole is doubting the ‘obvious’: would the Omar Bilash murder Milton, knowing themselves the prime suspect? Turnbull, hiding his own guilty secret - he slept with Milton’s mistress on the night of the murder - isn't sensitive enough to read such political runes, the minds of others. A man of war, confident with its simple mechanics, he’ll never learn the techniques of peace (closer to taming a wild horse than driving a tank). Turnbull has failed for the first time in his life. Add Aurella’s conquest, his humiliation by Sole…little wonder he breaks down. Simple commands, running down the hierarchy like water down a waterfall, have evaporated like mist; here, in this river full of rocks and sunken boats, every move has to be navigated, each choice treacherous.… His best soldier dead, that shame - his sexual surrender - and the taunts of the Milton’s murderer, who refuses to kowtow to Turnbull’s will, wrecks his confidence. Add Sole’s doubt, Sole’s refusal to accept the military line - he orders Turnbull not to fire on the crowd - and we have a man who feels his authority disintegrating. Shame, frustration, a failing competence, confusion: these combustibles heat up in the crucible of his mind, melting it down. He goes mad. And performs an action - he sets the village alight with flares - that settles this tribal dispute, so reclaiming British rule. Without any homes the Omar Bilash are soon demanding their chiefs stop the war and give up to the Brits.
A minor imperial blip. Soon sorted. This empire to sail on its merry way? We listen to Sole.
“Oh, I mean the Christian messages and the light for the heathen stuff. The idea that we’ve got it all solved. I can’t believe in my job any more, I mean as an official. I can’t get near the people. I’m neither the big, kindly father to them, or I must punish them, often when I don't wish to. When I consider how we are beginning to appear now to the people we’ve always treated as stupid children, I just can’t do it any more. Look at Europe to-day! Do you understand what I am trying to say, sir?”
“Quite well, thank you, Sole. The sooner you leave the Colonial Service after the war, and this job as soon as possible, the better for everybody, if you feel the way you speak. You sound a bit bolshy to me. Are you a bolshy?”
Sole smiled and said, “No, I don’t think so. I just can’t stand preaching a lot of stuff of which I have become ashamed, that’s all, sir.”
Casey is not having it. A tough and extremely clever army-man, Casey takes control of the situation. He sums up Turnbull, and is soon mastering the tribes. He can read a man like a psychological novel, a scene like a detective story. Nothing to whizz past this man’s gaze. He is also hard. Why worry if the village burns down or the tribes kill each other? The first gives him power. The second keeps the region in balance: these chaps doing the work for us. The empire to survive only if it doesn’t force the locals too far. Progress? Humanitarian concerns, and the corruption they inevitably bring, must weaken official rule; for as with the Yonis Barra, the promises of imperial protection can only be fitfully fulfilled. More men, more weapons, and a lot tougher souls, tougher than Casey’s, is what's needed here to establish a welfare state. Liberalism requires an authoritarianism which depends on resources - physical and mental - that war-wracked Britain lacks. But Casey isn’t worrying about the future. Politics and administration are about the present, that ever insistent now, the nagging moment. Using the tested methods - the sacrifice of a junior official, a strong dose of authority, the clever manipulation of native differences - he re-establishes political order.
We know more than Casey. Such methods will not work for much longer. They cannot fight the enemy within….
He heard the bugler blowing the sad notes of Tamaam parade and he went out into the sandy courtyard and looked across the low wall at the flag, beyond which the sun was sinking. It fluttered slowly down as the bugle notes resounded on the bitter desert. The sun was never allowed to set on the Union Jack, and the Colonel stood to attention, bareheaded, pride and loneliness stirring in him. The sun did not set on the flag, he reflected sadly. But it had begun to set in the hearts of those who saluted it and the Empire it had represented, and he could not understand that terrible sunset.
Increasing number of Soles will visit this land.1 The empire to be overrun with them. Termites eating at it from the inside.2 At the height of his victory, the Colonel’s world is falling apart.
Review: The Consul at Sunset
___________
Comments
Post a Comment