DV Journal

As someone who grew up in the last days of the British Empire, I am often asked how it was that so few people controlled so much of the world for so long?

The answer is that technology underpinned the British Empire, from its tentative beginnings in the 17th century to its global dominance in the 18th and 19th  centuries and most of the first half of the 20th century.

The first great technological leap forward was the steam engine, perfected in the 1760s by James Watt but originally developed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 to pump water in coal mines. Steam was the workhorse of the Industrial Revolution, enabling the management and expansion of Britain’s empire.

With steam, ships that had taken months to reach India got there in weeks, and the great railways, whether in southern Africa or India, which were one of the hallmarks of the empire, were built.

Another invention that made communications throughout the empire possible was the electric telegraph, perfected by Samuel Morse in 1838.

If there was one silver bullet, one invention that set Britain’s imperial ambitions ahead, it was the invention of the longitudinal chronometer, the first design of which was completed in 1730, but many modifications followed. The government had offered a substantial reward for a clock that could help its captains accurately establish their longitudinal positions. John Harrison’s chronometer gave British ships a significant advantage: they knew where they were.

Other technical innovations included copper-sheathed hulls, followed by steam engines and eventually iron hulls, which ultimately led to the development of steel ships. Henry Bessemer made steel a readily available commodity with the Bessemer furnace in 1860, and soon, British steel hulls significantly upgraded naval fleets.

In 1733, the flying shuttle was invented, which made Britain rich and enabled British fabric mills to process local wool and cotton from around the world, including America, India and Egypt.

Imperial Britain was a mercantile country, where  the government worked hand in hand with commerce, insisting that all raw materials, including cotton and jute as well as agricultural products like tea, had to be transported to Britain for processing. To this day, tea is packaged in Britain and Ireland but grown in China, India, Sri Lanka, Africa and other countries.

Weaponry also received the Brit-tech boost and played its role in the expansion of the empire. First came the rifling of muskets to improve accuracy. Then came breech-loaded artillery and, toward the end of the 19th century, the deadly Maxim Gun, a forerunner of the machine gun. Mass weapons manufacture assured British dominance.

Advances in medicine were important, especially in treating malaria and understanding tropical diseases. The use of quinine enabled troops in malarial areas, particularly in Africa, to recover more effectively. Keep the troops healthy and ready for combat.

My paternal grandfather was one of those. He was shipped from London to India and then to South Africa, where he was demobilized at the end of the Boer War, which is how I came to grow up in the last vestiges of the empire and to understand some of the complexities of British rule.

For example, when it came to local administration, one size did not fit all. India was the Raj, the jewel in the crown. Southern Rhodesia, where I grew up, was the only self-governing colony in all but external affairs. The Kenya Colony was just that; Malawi (Nyasaland) was a protectorate, as was Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Bechuanaland (now Botswana). If in doubt about a rock or a country, the Brits claimed it fell under the monarch’s suzerainty. Good enough. It was red on the map.

Despite some imperial rumblings lately, America shouldn’t want and wouldn’t benefit from trying to assemble even a modest empire this late in the game. However, America has enjoyed the technological benefits of empire since the British one waned, beginning with India’s independence in 1947.

America filled the gap left by Britain as the dominant force in the world, admired, copied and envied. Underpinning that state of esteem and financial ease was tech leadership, medical leadership, and cultural leadership through film and television. America became the techno supremo.

Now, government research funding is being butchered across the board, from advanced energy to, most shameful of all, the philistine slashing of the National Institutes of Health’s research budgets.

Changing times doomed the British Empire, America’s future is at stake, and it will be determined by technology and medicine. If we underfund research, the future is known.