Outposts_ Journeys To The Surviving Relics Of The British Empire Part 1

Outposts.

Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire.

by Simon Winchester

Introduction.

The world has changed a very great deal since 1984, the year during which I wrote the following affectionate, in many ways rather poignant, and on occasion sentimental account of my wanderings to and around the British-run relics of the greatest of all modern Empires.

The small and curiously discrete world of which I was writing then has changed physically, of course. The tiny Imperial a.s.semblage I was then able to describe has shrunk, at the very least by the removal of the territory of Hong Kong from the rolls. I stood in the hot rain that June night in 1997 and watched the Union flag come down, and as midnight struck and the Chinese victory fireworks started to erupt, so I watched as Britannia Britannia sailed away for London, taking with her the colony's last Governor and his Prince, and a clutch of women standing at the taffrail, in tears. Even putting sentiment deliberately to one side, it would be idle to suggest that night was anything but unbearably moving. sailed away for London, taking with her the colony's last Governor and his Prince, and a clutch of women standing at the taffrail, in tears. Even putting sentiment deliberately to one side, it would be idle to suggest that night was anything but unbearably moving.

The Imperial population, if we can still call it that, evaporated with that single and long-expected act of retrocession, from the full six million it was back then to just the few tens of thousands of people who remain under London's weary supervision today. A gathering of distant places which still had some slight significance before that June night-when, quite literally, the sun did not set on the British Empire-was reduced at the stroke of a midnight bell to not much more than a fistful of dust.

The world beyond the relict Empire has changed profoundly, too. The t.i.tanic stand-off between what we liked to call the superpowers was, in 1984, soon and quite unexpectedly to be over; today only one such power remains, and the totalitarian ideology that underpinned the other, and which had such relevance to many of the tiny places in the world that were once run from London, has now all but vanished. In 1984 a place like Ascension Island derived much of its reason for being from the Cold War; it was close enough to the malleable states of West Africa to make it the ideal location for electronic spies seeking to monitor the increasing threat of Marxism. With the fear of that ideology all but vanished, there now seems little point to the populated existence of the island (after all, the island was barely populated before we seized it) nor to Britain's continuing possession of it.

Much else has changed besides. The public att.i.tude towards Empire and to the very notion of Imperialism itself has undergone a swift metamorphosis over the past two decades. Post-colonial literature, already in 1984 a small but well-established genre, has since swollen to a flood, and has been joined by a canon of scholarly studies emphasising the point that, no matter how benevolent and well-intentioned the colonising powers may have thought themselves to be, their effect upon the world was ultimately to lead to the gravest of ills. Affection and poignancy are rarely to be found in today's writings about a kind of governance that is now regarded as having been politically most incorrect; sentiment, never the best lens through which to view anything, is these days a wholly inadvisable means of looking at past Empires, which appear to deserve only the cold gaze of the post-structuralist sceptic.

There are a number of obvious reasons behind the burgeoning of these new ways of thinking about Empire. Perhaps the most important is the flouris.h.i.+ng of journalism and literature on the subject by post-colonialist authors-the old guard like V. S. Naipaul, Chinua Achebe and Derek Walcott, and the more recent such as Salman Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee and Vikram Seth-whose experiences and memories of being part of the enginework of colonial subjection have found a wide and admiring audience. The fact that Naipaul is now a n.o.bel Prize winner underscores the wide admiration for his specific achievement in giving a voice to the Imperially ruled, rather than to the Imperially ruling, cla.s.ses.

Then again, the rather more widely appropriated culture of repudiation, which lies at the heart of so much present-day art and literature, has enabled many to challenge the comfortable old a.s.sumptions of white-run Empire simply because they are comfortable and old and white, and has elevated anti-colonialist sentiment to the status of high fas.h.i.+on. Edward Said, the noted and prolific Palestinian scholar at Columbia University, who wrote the groundbreaking 1978 work Orientalism Orientalism and went on to publish and went on to publish Culture and Imperialism Culture and Imperialism in 1993, has long been a standard-bearer for the new movement. Few are the students who do not regard his trenchant views of the cruel and crabbed legacies of colonialism as having the heft and authority of Holy Writ. in 1993, has long been a standard-bearer for the new movement. Few are the students who do not regard his trenchant views of the cruel and crabbed legacies of colonialism as having the heft and authority of Holy Writ.

But there is one further reason, rather less easy to discern, behind the change.

There is currently an uncomfortable feeling abroad, a feeling that was not recognisable in 1984 and is still not fully recognised today, which in essence holds that an Empire of quite another sort-or some kind of phenomenon that we feel like calling an Empire-is stealthily and subtly returning to centre stage. We have an uneasy feeling that whatever this new ent.i.ty is, it is before too long going to exert an unacceptable and undesirable influence over the world, and that the entire cycle which we thought had ended with the slow collapse of all the great sea-borne European Empires during the three decades following the Second World War-the British Empire pre-eminent among them-is in fact beginning all over again.

The phenomenon of which we have such grave suspicion has many names: globalisation globalisation is currently the most popular and thus the most familiar. is currently the most popular and thus the most familiar. Informal Empire Informal Empire is another-the notion that since the old, formal Empires are all now dead, since the systems of unelected Governors and Viceroys and District Commissioners have all pa.s.sed away, what replaces them is an unstructured kind of imperium, with on the one hand a slew of new and similarly unelected rulers, which in this case are banks, corporations and brands, all operating without restriction in a new and economically borderless world, and on the other hand a vast and disparate body of subject peoples, who are in increasing numbers bound to make use of these banks, corporations and brands and are kept in thrall to them unwittingly, but firmly kept there nonetheless. is another-the notion that since the old, formal Empires are all now dead, since the systems of unelected Governors and Viceroys and District Commissioners have all pa.s.sed away, what replaces them is an unstructured kind of imperium, with on the one hand a slew of new and similarly unelected rulers, which in this case are banks, corporations and brands, all operating without restriction in a new and economically borderless world, and on the other hand a vast and disparate body of subject peoples, who are in increasing numbers bound to make use of these banks, corporations and brands and are kept in thrall to them unwittingly, but firmly kept there nonetheless.

The benefits of globalisation are proclaimed vociferously by the banks and corporations who are its prime beneficiaries: economies of scale mean that consumer products become cheaper and more widely available; bureaucracy crumbles in the face of corporate-directed efficiency; access to goods and services is more widespread, more democratic democratic, the standard of living everywhere improves-everyone floats higher on an ever-rising tide of global prosperity.

But the darker side of the phenomenon, less readily observable, is what worries many. That the world is becoming increasingly ordered by unelected and faceless figures in distant (and most commonly American) corporate headquarters, figures who are answerable only to the shareholders in the country which is their base of operations. That there are fewer and fewer controls on those global operators-for under whose law, exactly, do they operate?-to limit unscrupulous and inhumane behaviour. That the less powerful-the employee in a Third World nation, working under contract for some distant American company whose responsibility is limited by distance and by adroit corporate lawyers-can be oppressed and cheated and denied rights, without anyone to notice or complain. That indigenous businesses can so easily be forced under, unable to stand the compet.i.tion from the corporate super-giants whose growing share of world trade seems unstoppable, and whose ruthlessness is glorified by managers, who see it as essential for success.

It is because of growing fears about such inequities and excesses that a new mood of anger has lately settled abroad. Violent protests are now breaking out, sporadically but very noticeably, at those various forums around the planet-Seattle, Genoa, London, Ottawa-at which the world's leaders gather to discuss, or seem to the protestors to be discussing, the profitable benefits of globalisation. Men like Jose Bove in France win enormous public support-and yet suffer harsh official sanctions-for demonstrating against such very obvious and palpable evils as those of the McDonald's Corporation. The 'slow food movement' has taken off in Italy, for much the same reason-a gathering sense of loathing and fear that the tastes of the Tuscan epicure, let us say, might one day become deeply influenced by men in grey suits from the same McDonald's headquarters in suburban Illinois.

And then again, Marxist academics like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (the authors of a seminal book in 2000 called, somewhat unimaginatively, Empire Empire) are carving significant inroads into current university thinking-nudging thousands of highly motivated young students into believing that this new Imperial phenomenon, presenting itself in a variety of guises from the ubiquitous consumption of American fast food to the immense readers.h.i.+p of cheap American magazines to the near-universal acceptance of American commercial practices, cannot but suggest the onset of a harmful tendency, one that is eventually just as certain to damage the entire world as the cla.s.sic Empires did in their day.

This current ferment is an early sign of what may well become (at least, so most activists hope) a widespread movement of concern and hostility. It also hints at why so many are currently so hostile to the idea of all Empires that went before-because by recognising and demonising these past Empires, we can perhaps better warn ourselves of the perils of the new super-Empire that is readying itself to succeed them. It is not simply that V. S. Naipaul is an eloquent spokesman for the victims of past Imperial injustice; nor that the whim of fas.h.i.+on has at last reached the sh.o.r.es of Empire. It is that we sense something akin to the old evils lurking in the wings, and we want our arguments against them to be honed to a perfect sharpness, ready to do battle.

It is against this backdrop of an entirely new and fascinating intellectual movement, then, that the following stories from my languorous journeyings around the fifteen or so relics of the British Empire may perhaps be read anew. I confess that there is much affection in the tales that I then wrote; and I now have to accept that affection for such things is a sentiment quite thoroughly out of date, and most improper, and undeserved.

Or is it?

I mention above that a fear exists that the new Empire-in-the-making may be as harmful to the world as those that came before. But just how harmful were those previous Empires, in fact?

In principle, of course, they were a less-than-ideal arrangement-for how much greater an indignity could any people suffer than to have an alien power impose some form of rule upon them, often with racist overtones? How shocking for proud members of tribes in East Africa to be obliged to live under the Imperium of Berlin. How shaming for Madra.s.sis and Bangaloreans to be forced to obey laws laid down by bureaucrats in London. Has there ever been a more humiliating period in Polynesian history than when the French came and told them where to work, how to behave and how it was permissible to dress? No-there can be no doubt that all such arrangements-whether the colonial masters came from Rome or Venice, were Ottomans or Mughals, had been educated at an ecole Superieure or at Haileybury or the University of Tokyo-were misguided. The very idea of Empire is, by today's standards and principles, quite wrong.

But setting principles aside, and accepting for a moment that these arrangements did hold, that these are realities of history which, like it or not, did take place-how truly dreadful were some or all of these arrangements?

And if one were to argue that not all were quite so frightful as the principle suggests they should have been, were some of these foreign Empires in fact better better than others (or at least, less bad)? Did some few of them, perhaps, at least leave a legacy that was to be of some utility to those who had been colonised-a legacy that a dispa.s.sionate long view of history might argue offered some compensation for the shock, shame and humiliation of all those years under the Imperial heel? than others (or at least, less bad)? Did some few of them, perhaps, at least leave a legacy that was to be of some utility to those who had been colonised-a legacy that a dispa.s.sionate long view of history might argue offered some compensation for the shock, shame and humiliation of all those years under the Imperial heel?

It is at this point that I have to struggle to suppress a certain chauvinism which inevitably rears its head. For it seems to me today, after almost two further decades of hindsight and further wanderings and reflection on matters colonial, that of all the recent European sea-borne Empires-the French, the German, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish and the British-it is, singularly, the British Empire that managed to leave behind the kind of legacy of which, dare one say it, some might still be rightly proud.

Hong Kong, since 1997 once again a part of the China from which we wrested it by war in 1841, offers the most comprehensive examples of that legacy. There is a system of democracy in place, imperfect to be sure, and offered to the citizenry very late in the territory's history, but which is somewhat more accountable than the cruel apparatus of government imposed by Beijing. There are courts that are, by and large, fair and impartial. Business contracts are exchanged and honoured by all parties. The police force is much respected and little feared. There is a bureaucracy made up of talented civil servants, its senior members generally free from corruption. The press is vocal, colourful, and still more or less free to write and say what it likes. There are several good universities, a system of primary and secondary education open to all, a cadre of teachers of impeccable training and talent. The postal system works faultlessly. The commuter railway system is the envy of the world. The environment is moderately well protected, the arts are reasonably well a.s.sisted-Hong Kong is, in short, a part of China in which any civilised human might wish to live.

It cannot escape the notice of even the most rabidly anti-colonial campaigner that the essential livable decency of the place stems not necessarily from any peculiarly innate goodness in its people, but from-may one dare to say this today?-the wisdom and benevolence of the colonial masters who planned and ruled the territory for the century and a half so lately ended.

Much the same might be said of a whole raft of former British possessions. Comparisons between the practical aspects of living in almost any one of them, and of living in countries once ruled by rival Empires, nearly always tend to favour (all chauvinism aside, though I would not blame any reader for doubting me) whichever one was once directed from London. Compare, for example, the courts in (formerly British-run) Malaysia with those in Indonesia, where the Dutch so long held sway. Post a domestically bound letter in a village outside Bombay, and compare its progress with one similarly mailed in a town near Tijuana. The railway system in Kenya (British) still works splendidly; that in Ethiopia (as Abyssinia, Italian) is dire. Papeete (French) is a tawdry Tahitian slum, Apia (once British, as Samoa) a quiet mid-Pacific gem. And so on, and so on.

So there is, I feel, perhaps some justification for the affection I felt for the relics of the British Empire that I visited in the early 1980s-it is an affection that is not wholly based on sentiment, and which still manages, I confess without shame, to withstand the new mood of disapprobation for Empire generally which has quite properly caught hold today. I feel the tug of fondness still when I go back, as I have many times in these last twenty years, to some of the more distant possessions; I feel a certain sense of pride when I hear such colonial subjects as remain talk of their lingering links with faraway London.

Much has happened to change the appearance of these final specks of Imperial territory.

Pitcairn Island-which I wasn't able to reach in 1984, but to which I have now been twice in the years since-has decayed, become ever more depopulated, and has been racked by unsavoury scandal.

Montserrat's previously pleasant existence in its private corner of the Caribbean has been devastated by the eruption of its great volcano, known as the Soufriere Hills. The eruption, which started in July 1995 after a repose of more than four centuries, killed some twenty people, totally destroyed the colonial capital, Plymouth, and has devastated the local agricultural economy, so far costing more than $500 million. Refugees from the crisis were welcomed by Britain, which responded with what was generally regarded as high-speed compa.s.sion, humanity and generosity, giving the lie to those who had carped that the mother country rarely found an opportunity to show the kinder side of colonialism.

The exiled citizens of Diego Garcia were told by a court in London in November 2001 that their expulsion in the 1970s, which was to make way for a mid-ocean American military base, had indeed been the terrible injustice that all thought it was. The judge ordered that the islanders and their descendants now be allowed to return to their homes on Boddam and Peros Banhos Islands, which they have not seen for thirty years. The American defence establishment reacted to the decision with cold fury; the British Government made no obvious effort to offer any help to the citizens-most of whom live in exile on the island of Mauritius, a former possession itself-and the Diego Garcians themselves settled down to wait patiently for more court decisions. They are a people well used to waiting; they have a sunny optimism that all will work out for the best, in time.

For what I wrote in this book about the island of Tristan da Cunha I have been banned, and have never landed there since. I have been to the colony's territorial waters a number of times, but the local police have kept me away-the islanders still vexed that I had written about the war-time romance of one of their number, now an elderly (and contentedly married) lady. Whenever I have since visited I have had to content myself with lying offsh.o.r.e in a boat, gazing at the black rocks and the potato fields I liked so well, from a floating vantage point half a mile away.

The people of St Helena, surely one of the world's most pleasing and civilised islands, now have a near-absolute right to settle in Britain-a right that had long been denied them (but which, to the credit of the French Government, had for years been enjoyed by all subjects of the remnant specks of the Empire of France).

And the vexed question of Gibraltar rumbles on-with the British Government now seeking to accommodate Spain's claims, to the furious vexation of the overwhelming majority of those colonials who huddle on the immense rock which for three centuries seemed so secure a symbol of eternal Imperial stability. The thought that Gibraltar might one day crumble, metaphorically, is perhaps the most potent reminder that this is the age of Empire's death, its oolite being the capstone of the Imperial tomb.

But it was the long-expected, long-awaited return to China of Hong Kong that most powerfully symbolised the true ending of an Empire that Lord Rosebery once called 'the greatest secular force in history the world has ever known'.

As I have mentioned, I was there at what the British would call the end the end, and what all right-thinking Chinese would regard as the new beginning the new beginning. My feelings during those last few hours were mixed indeed.

It was sentiment that made me wonder, when the final parade of British soldiers, sailors and airmen gave the last salute that night, and at the moment when the bugles began to play 'Retreat'-when the skies opened and the men in their gleaming uniforms had to stand in a drenching summer downpour-it was sentiment that made me think this an appropriately melancholy moment, full of divinely ordained symbolism. It was concern and apprehension that I felt when I listened to political activists broadcast their worries for the future of free speech and democracy once China had taken over the controls. It was affection I felt when the last Union flag was taken down, and the red flag of China and the emblem of the bauhinia flower rose up to take its place. And it was pride I felt when the Royal Navy escort wars.h.i.+ps left, as they steamed down through the Li Yue Mun Gap, when their navigation lights finally became invisible under the beam of the Waglan Island lighthouse, and as they sailed off into the black tropical night beneath the beacon they used to call 'The Light at the End of the Empire'.

Pride, concern, sentiment and affection: all of these things I felt, and felt acutely, on that hot and rainy Chinese night in June, now six years past. Not a very different range of feelings, in fact, from those I experienced when I first wrote this book nearly twenty years ago-notwithstanding the very much altered mood of the world and its thinking today.

And I can only conclude that my feelings remain much the same because I still believe today, as I believed both when I travelled and when I wrote, that while there can be no doubt that in running the British Empire we seized and we expropriated and we annexed and in many places we ruled harshly, once we had the territories in our grasp, and once we settled to govern, we had a serious, if somewhat naive belief in our ability to improve each of the countries and territories we now found ourselves ruling. We had, I rather fancy, an optimistic faith that we might leave behind at least some of our possessions in a marginally better condition than when first we found them. And, by and large, I think we did.

Perhaps there is a brand-new form of American-led colonialism around the corner. Perhaps its intentions, if still unstated and relentlessly undefined, are ultimately malevolent. Perhaps it will one day overwhelm us, and in doing so will justify all the fears of those who look at past Empires to offer a warning of what might yet come about. But all of that will be very many years ahead. In the pages that follow you will not find much by way of a warning. This is instead, quite simply, one final and genial look around an Empire that had much to commend it; and in the stories of its vestiges and relics I hope that some of you, despite the ideologically troublesome principles involved in doing so, may yet discern aspects of its existence that it is possible to enjoy discovering or remembering, to admire, and even, with the benefit of time and hindsight, and to a degree, to respect.

S. B. A. W.

Sandisfield, Ma.s.sachusetts March 2003

1.

The Plan.

Like most long journeys into the unknown, this one began with an idea-an idea that was triggered by a strange story I read one wet Sunday afternoon in a recent early spring, on the front page of a London newspaper. It was all about the alleged 'invasion' of an island known as Southern Thule, which was said to be 10,000 miles away from England in chilly wastes of the Southern Ocean.

The island of Southern Thule is quite barren, windswept, bitterly cold, uninhabited and, to all intents and purposes, useless. The Admiralty's Antarctic Pilot Antarctic Pilot says that it is part of an old sunken volcano, and is covered with ash and penguin guano. There are seals, a variety of petrels and a bank of kelp weed a few hundred yards offsh.o.r.e, especially around a small inlet called Ferguson Bay. Of other possible delights the says that it is part of an old sunken volcano, and is covered with ash and penguin guano. There are seals, a variety of petrels and a bank of kelp weed a few hundred yards offsh.o.r.e, especially around a small inlet called Ferguson Bay. Of other possible delights the Pilot Pilot is silent. is silent.

The central fact of this curious tale is that Southern Thule belongs now, and belonged at the time of the 'invasion', to Britain. It was, and is, a part of a British Crown colony-one of the South Sandwich Islands, which are themselves dependencies of the Falkland Islands. Southern Thule was, indeed, part of the British Empire. It was given its name because it must have seemed to its first finders at very much the extreme end of the discoverable world.

Some time during the November of 1976-no one is certain of the exact date-a party of fifty members of the Argentine Air Force landed on this remote British rock and, with neither notice, permission nor publicity, constructed a small military base. They built barracks, and a small concrete landing pad for their helicopters. They set up weather-recording machinery and a radio station. They built a plinth, and erected a flagpole, and they flew their flag-the blue and white bandera bandera of the Argentine Republic. So far as they and their commanders were concerned the island, hitherto British, was now an integral part- of the Argentine Republic. So far as they and their commanders were concerned the island, hitherto British, was now an integral part-de facto if not if not de jure de jure-of Argentina.

It was a month before the British Government discovered what had happened. Ham radio operators on the Falkland Islands, a thousand miles away to the west, heard chatter between Argentine naval vessels and the Thule air force detachment. On the orders of the Ministry of Defence the local Royal Naval guard s.h.i.+p-HMS Endurance Endurance-was sent down to investigate. Five days before Christmas a helicopter from the s.h.i.+p spotted the Argentinians, and the extraordinary news of what was at the very least an act of the most immense cheek, was flashed to London.

But what initially intrigued me about the story is that London did almost nothing about it. More than a year was to go by before word of the seizure was to leak out to the British public-via the Sunday newspaper-or to the British Parliament. The then Prime Minister, James Callaghan, admitted to a House of Commons that was by turns amused and outraged that yes, he had known all about the affair and that no, he was not planning to send in the Marines to dislodge the Argentinian trespa.s.sers. Patient negotiations would continue, he said, to try to persuade them to go away, and in the meantime the interests of regional serenity, diplomatic practice and protocols would be better served if everyone remained calm, and made light of the incident.

The Argentines remained on Southern Thule until six days after the Falklands War was ended, on 28th June 1982. The same HMS Endurance Endurance that had first sighted the men six years before, turned up with a recovery party. HMS that had first sighted the men six years before, turned up with a recovery party. HMS Yarmouth Yarmouth, a frigate, dropped a salvo of sh.e.l.ls on to a bluff not far from the Argentine base. A Royal Naval tug and a Royal Fleet Auxiliary stood by, giving the whole exercise a properly Imperial appearance. And the Argentines, outnumbered and outgunned, surrendered and handed over their weapons to the Royal Marines. The Union flag was hoisted, and everyone-British victors and Argentine vanquished-sailed away and left Southern Thule to a customarily lonely winter of gales, ice storms and blizzards.

The story did not quite end there. Six months later a pa.s.sing British wars.h.i.+p noticed, to general astonishment, that the Union flag had been taken down from the jackstaff and the blue-and-white Argentine flag run up in its place. Wary sailors clambered on to the island, finding it deserted, but noticed that whoever had taken the British flag down had folded it with commendable neatness and stuffed it under a nearby boulder. There was general agreement that the new invader was a wit, if nothing else.

The sailors' amus.e.m.e.nt was not matched back in London: a signal was sent to HMS Apollo Apollo ordering its men to destroy all buildings on Southern Thule, leaving none fit for prolonged habitation. Demolition crews moved in with plastic explosive, and by Christmas 1982 every barrack block and mess room and met station was reduced to a pile of concrete rubble. ordering its men to destroy all buildings on Southern Thule, leaving none fit for prolonged habitation. Demolition crews moved in with plastic explosive, and by Christmas 1982 every barrack block and mess room and met station was reduced to a pile of concrete rubble.

Only a tiny refuge hut was left, stocked with rations, in case a British survey team should ever find itself benighted on the island. And to give such stranded men solace, a Bible, presented by the Scottish Commercial Travellers' Christian Union, was tucked in with the food. As a final act the helicopter crew from Endurance Endurance raised yet another Union flag, though since the halyards had been destroyed it could only flutter at half mast, where it possibly remains to this day, whipped by the freezing winds, to declare to all the world that this minute speck of worthless land is British, and that, as stated in the best-known of all British Imperial axioms, 'What we have, we hold.' raised yet another Union flag, though since the halyards had been destroyed it could only flutter at half mast, where it possibly remains to this day, whipped by the freezing winds, to declare to all the world that this minute speck of worthless land is British, and that, as stated in the best-known of all British Imperial axioms, 'What we have, we hold.'

The story intrigued me, for one reason above all. I had thought-to the extent that I had ever thought about the matter at all since schooldays-that we had no longer had an Empire. I had watched so many television newsreels, I thought, about this place being made independent, and that place, and this island, and that peninsula, with this member of the royal family going here, and that one there...surely, I had said to myself-surely it was all gone. And yet, if this story were true, we still had some sort of an Empire out there, and what was more, it was still big enough and complicated enough and still so far-flung and unruly and unmanageable that we occasionally misplaced, misfiled or plain forgot some of its more remote members, and didn't worry too much if someone else took a fancy to them, invaded them, and took them away.

What others did we have? How, as King George V is believed to have inquired from his deathbed-how is the Empire? And not just how-what was the Empire, and where, indeed, its members?

Here came the fateful step. I had raised the question in a roomful of friends: which-it was rather like one of those baffling queries from 'Trivial Pursuit'-which were the colonies still run, at heaven's command, from London? No one was quite sure. Fiji, someone ventured-wasn't Fiji 'one of ours'? And what about Tonga, and the Isle of Man, and didn't we still have Christmas Island? In fact weren't there two Christmas Islands, and didn't both belong to us?

Then someone remembered she had an uncle who worked on a cable station that was still British-a.s.sumption Island, she said, a name like that. No wait, Ascension, that was it! 'Gibraltar!' somebody else piped up. 'Malta-and Cyprus!' said a third.

To the atlas, but the maps had been drawn in the early Seventies and were long out of date. Thin red lines were etched under some dozens of mid-ocean islands that I knew-even if my visitors did not-had long since become free of what their islanders had come to regard as the British yoke. The tides had ebbed from the high-water mark of Empire far too rapidly for the cartographers at Bartholomew or Oxford to capture, and so their maps, while no doubt topographically accurate, were monuments for the nostalgic, tempting us to a.s.sume that our Imperial manor was far grander than reality allowed.

It was Whitaker's Almanack Whitaker's Almanack that finally did the trick. There were just eight pages, sandwiched between the statistics of cattle owners.h.i.+p in Zimbabwe and the name of the Chancellor of the University of Adelaide-for how, indeed, had the Empire faded away! that finally did the trick. There were just eight pages, sandwiched between the statistics of cattle owners.h.i.+p in Zimbabwe and the name of the Chancellor of the University of Adelaide-for how, indeed, had the Empire faded away!

They were in alphabetical order, the forgotten names of Imperial might. There was Anguilla, set in the shallows of the Caribbean Sea. There was-the visitor had been quite right-Ascension Island, tucked into the fold of Africa in the equatorial Atlantic. Bermuda still belonged, and had like most of the others a colonial governor, noted by the Almanack Almanack as being a peer of the realm. British Antarctic Territory was still ours, though only penguins lived there full-time, and there was no native population, and no government. We had a curious ent.i.ty known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, and another, less curiously named, and more Imperially enticing in the British Virgin Islands. as being a peer of the realm. British Antarctic Territory was still ours, though only penguins lived there full-time, and there was no native population, and no government. We had a curious ent.i.ty known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, and another, less curiously named, and more Imperially enticing in the British Virgin Islands.

There was the Crown colony of the Cayman Islands-these three clumps of coral had, at the zenith of the Empire, been mere dependencies of Jamaica, but Jamaica had gone her own way now, and the Caymans stood colonially alone, their islanders proud to be British in the Caribbean Sea.

The Falkland Islands we knew a little about: the son of the Port Stanley harbourmaster had been in my cla.s.s at school, and he used to tell me stories of the storms and the moorland and the sheep, and how he longed to go back to the peace of it all during the summer holidays, even though it was winter 'down there'. He had not spent an Easter or a Christmas in the Falklands since he had been sent off to England for his schooling, and that bothered him, as I remember.

There were the Falkland Islands dependencies, too-memories of stamp collecting, and the Stanley Gibbons Catalogue, the thickest book a schoolboy ever owned, came flooding back. The dependencies had always issued colourful stamps, with maps outlined in orange, and sketches of seals and enormous polar birds.

But there were still more. We ran Gibraltar and Hong Kong. We administered Montserrat and the Pitcairn Islands, as well as the exile-island of St Helena, where Napoleon Bonaparte spent the last six miserable years of his life. We had charge of the volcanic morsel of Tristan da Cunha, which had been evacuated in the 1960s when one of the cones suddenly erupted. The islanders, who knew little of 'civilised' life, were all brought to Britain, but loathed the place, and eventually decided that, volcano or not, they would all go back home.

And finally, in this alphabetic list, one colony of which no one in the room seemed to have heard: the Turks and Caicos Islands, utterly overlooked and puzzlingly named, and set in the pleasant waters of the western Atlantic, not far from the Bahamas, 200 miles from Florida.

So, from Anguilla to Grand Turk, just sixteen groups of rocks and atolls and ice-islands were still officially cla.s.sified as ours, as dependent territories of the British Crown. Not a ma.s.sive Empire, maybe, but an Empire nonetheless, and more than any other Imperial power of the past had managed to cling on to, were that anything of which to be particularly proud.

But there are lesser islands, too-chunks of rock and ice and coral not large enough to be listed in the gazetteers of the relict Empire, morsels and specks found only on the maps, in the charts, in the sailing directions and in the catalogues furnished by the Directorate of the Overseas Survey, and the Defence Mapping Agency of America, who keep tabs on all the world's dry land, and who, from day to day, claims to own it. So there are many such-many more than even the keenest student of political geography might suppose.

At the time of writing it seems that Her Majesty's writ runs in some 200 named islands of any size, and a thousand smaller rocks and skerries besides. But it is in the fine print of the gazetteers that the true extent of Her Majesty's realms becomes clear. 'Citizen of United Kingdom and Colonies' say the blue-and-gold pa.s.sports. How many bearers are aware that they are, by virtue of holding such a doc.u.ment, subjects of the British Crown and, technically, proud citizens also of an Empire that includes the island of Zavodovski, the rock of Stoltenhoff, of Elephant Island, Junk Island, of Spectacle Reef and p.r.i.c.kly Pear Cay?

Tireless administrators can still, if their tasks allow, outline in Imperial pink the perimeters of two Dogs, a Swan, a Hen, a Parrot, an Eagle, a Bosun Bird, a Sealion, a Rabbit, a Nightingale, a s.h.a.g, a Carca.s.s and a Rat. There are islands called Alpha, Gamma and Lamda; there are skerries named after Robert, George, Peter, Norman and Nelly. London salutes in islet form the memories of Nelson, Henderson, Livingston, Hawkins, Golding, Willis and Pickersgill. Union flags can still, in theory and in good weather, fly proudly over Coronation, King George, English and St George's. The Royal Navy may by right lie less than three miles off Inaccessible, Astrolabe, and Shelter.

There is an Isle Parasole that is British. There are two islands of the Empire, rather inconveniently close to each other, both named I'lle Anglaise. Westminster presides in ultimate authority over Three Brothers, a Necker and a Virgin, one Lively, one Barren, one a Danger. British civil servants in Whitehall have technical authority over the fates of places with the unfamiliar names of Po Toi and Shek Kwu Chau, Jost van d.y.k.e and Visokoi, Takamaka, Beauchene and Providenciales.

And, in a serried line stretching through the freezing seas from fifty-six degrees south to the formal boundary of the Antarctic, at lat.i.tude sixty, the rocky outcrops of South Sandwich-Leskov, Candlemas, Saunders, Montagu, Bristol, Cook and, most vulnerable of all, the dependent colonial Island of Southern Thule.

We still had, it seemed, dominion over palm and pine.

No, not a bad collection, someone said. And was it not true-yes, it was! we discovered as we studied the maps-that thanks to happy coincidences of history and geography the islands and peninsulas that Britain had not given up were still draped around the oceans and the time zones in such a way that it was still technically correct to say that the sun never sets on the Crown dominions. While it was sinking into the sea over one island in the West Atlantic so, at that same moment, it was rising to a bugle call and a flag-hoisting ceremony half a world away, in the Indian Ocean, or the China Sea.

It was a small and ragged sort of Empire now, no match for that great a.s.semblage of peoples and races-a quarter of mankind, a quarter of the land surface of the globe-over which Victoria had reigned with such supposed benevolence and wisdom. Four hundred million people were, at the moment of Victoria's Jubilee in 1897, subject to her whim and fancy (tempered by English law, proud tradition and good, old-fas.h.i.+oned common sense). Great nation-states, or nations-in-the-making-India, Canada, Australia, South Africa-were governed from Whitehall by her servants, in her name. Oscar Wilde had noted that England was a land 'Before whose feet the world divides' and few could be found who would quarrel with the notion.

But today none give the Empire, even though it exists in shrunken form, so much as a thought. No world divides before Britannia's feet. The United Kingdom, mighty though she sounds, commands little might, wields little power, can number only a few subjects in her sovereign territories. I thumbed through the Almanack Almanack and did a little mental arithmetic-at the time of the last colonial census, in 1981, there were 5,248,728 people who could justly be called citizens of the Crown colonies-an eightieth of the number noted just fifty years before. And 5,120,000 of those lived in Hong Kong. The remaining fifteen possessions held just 128,000 colonials. and did a little mental arithmetic-at the time of the last colonial census, in 1981, there were 5,248,728 people who could justly be called citizens of the Crown colonies-an eightieth of the number noted just fifty years before. And 5,120,000 of those lived in Hong Kong. The remaining fifteen possessions held just 128,000 colonials.

Might it be possible, I mused, to visit all these places and catch, possibly for the very last time before progress and political reality snuffed it out for ever, something of the spirit of the old Imperial ambition-to see what remained, and find out what it had all been like, and why it had been so grand, why it had lasted so long, why it had died so quickly, but yet had seemingly refused to die completely?

Were there really still governors out there somewhere, with their blanco'd topees and plumes of goose feather in white and scarlet? Did British civil servants still look after our far-flung dominions with a sense of romantic fascination, privilege and pride? Was there a little of the colour and pomp and swagger and-dare I say it-the style style of the old Empire to be found in these forgotten specks left scattered through the seas? I had been in India, and had sensed the Empire in the cool marble of Curzon and the bold sandstone of Lutyens. I had felt it in the echoing halls of Ottawa's parliament, in great cathedrals in Africa, in fretworked bungalows in jungle hill stations from Malaya to Guiana. of the old Empire to be found in these forgotten specks left scattered through the seas? I had been in India, and had sensed the Empire in the cool marble of Curzon and the bold sandstone of Lutyens. I had felt it in the echoing halls of Ottawa's parliament, in great cathedrals in Africa, in fretworked bungalows in jungle hill stations from Malaya to Guiana.

From one end of the world to the other railway stations and dockyards and libraries and botanical gardens and Jubilee Memorial Halls served to remind us of what the Empire had given to her subject peoples. (And there were historical tracts by the ton reminding us what the Empire had taken from these same peoples, and how barbaric and wicked an arrangement it had all been.) But these were all memories of the thing, reminders-premature, maybe, but reminders of a sort-that the Empire had quite pa.s.sed away. Only, as Whitaker's Whitaker's had so concisely shown, it hadn't, quite. Perhaps, I fancied, the still-living, just-breathing Empire was to be found in these sixteen distant dots. Its life might be drawing peacefully to a close, but it might yet be possible to capture one last vision, hear one last remark, sense one final exhalation of pride, watch one small finale to the glories that once had been. I made up my mind to go, to make what in Victorian times would have been called 'an Imperial Progress, an Inspection Tour', to check up-half for the memory of old King George-exactly how was the blessed Empire, what was the state of the fragments that remained. had so concisely shown, it hadn't, quite. Perhaps, I fancied, the still-living, just-breathing Empire was to be found in these sixteen distant dots. Its life might be drawing peacefully to a close, but it might yet be possible to capture one last vision, hear one last remark, sense one final exhalation of pride, watch one small finale to the glories that once had been. I made up my mind to go, to make what in Victorian times would have been called 'an Imperial Progress, an Inspection Tour', to check up-half for the memory of old King George-exactly how was the blessed Empire, what was the state of the fragments that remained.

Out came the timetables and the s.h.i.+pping calendars and the Cook's Continentals Continentals and the Admiralty and the Admiralty Pilots Pilots. I pored and checked my way around the Imperial world, working out how it might be possible to make a single journey that would take in every colony that remained. It became clear uncomfortably quickly that the journey would not be easy.

Some colonies were not blessed with aerodromes-not St Helena for example, nor Tristan da Cunha. There was no simple way of getting to the Pitcairn Islands, in mid-Pacific (population forty-four), and it was strictly forbidden for anyone to go to the Chagos Islands, the sole members of the high-falutin' arrangement known as British Indian Ocean Territory.

Ascension Island was similarly difficult to reach-it belonged to the military, was administered by-of all people-the BBC, was on part loan to the American Navy and was loaded to the gunwales with secret electronics: strangers were discouraged, though not absolutely forbidden.

But my first draft plan disregarded the Ca.s.sandras. I felt that, with some perseverance and a great deal of good fortune, I might girdle the world and take in every British possession inside six long months. I would fly from London to Bermuda-no problem here, since British Airways transports thousands of sunbathers there each year. Then I would fly on to the nearest neighbour-colony, the Turks and Caicos Islands; thence to the other Caribbean possessions-the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat and the Caymans. Next-and here was a cunning move, easy to formulate at an Oxford desktop-I would travel from the Cayman Islands to the one-time colony (but now no longer) of Antigua, and catch the once-weekly American Navy plane that I knew took supplies across the ocean to the forces on Ascension.

Now I was on the eastern side of the Atlantic, and fully able to wander down at will, aboard such s.h.i.+ps as might tramp by, to St Helena, Tristan, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic bases. I would, of course, be sure to set out from England in the winter: not only would the West Indies thus provide a welcome relief from the cold, but down in the southern lat.i.tudes it would be summer, and there would be no problems with bad weather, or with ice.

From Antarctica it would be but a short step to Chile, to an airfield where I could catch a plane to Panama. A pa.s.sing freighter would then whisk me smartly to Pitcairn Island, and would take me on to Fiji from where I could take yet more planes to Hong Kong. Down then to Singapore, on to another American warplane-how very generous these Americans were going to be!-to their Chagos Island base on the atoll of Diego Garcia-and then, via their good offices once more, on to Bahrein and Tangier. And at Tangier, as every traveller on the north African coast knows well, a plane of Gibraltar Airways waits to carry travellers to the Rock. From there, finally, to London. I would have flown and tramped 40,000 miles; but in six months the Empire would be mine.