Identificación de los elementos y componentes del costo de la mezcla asfáltica . 62

There are too many uncontrollable elements: if one is captured, others are sure to escape. Had we given full weight to the influences of the day, we would have had to shift the basis of our work from economic to social and then to cultural history, and to assimilate in turn Marxists, Annalistes and postmodernists. A counsel of perfec- tion might point in that direction; reality dictates otherwise. It is impossible, at least for us, to see how these acts of incorporation could have been executed intelligibly: linguistic bedlam alone would have given the text a manic incomprehensibility as articulating modes of production ran into discursive discourses of The Other.

Our own, imperfect solution was to approach the problem primarily from the perspective of economic history, but also to suggest how material forces were linked to political, social and cultural developments. 5 _{We also attempted, deliberately, to}

present our argument in a way that was free from the transient linguistic fashions that can easily disfigure and date historical studies, especially in fields that attract commitment and place a premium on novelty – which may or may not prove to have lasting value. This decision had a price: by the time our books appeared in 1993, economic history had fallen out of favour, and interest had shifted to the other end of the spectrum, where post-colonial studies, strongly influenced by trends in literary criticism, had directed the attention of a new generation of researchers to cultural issues centred on imagined empires and representations of subject peoples. In some scholarly circles ‘productive forces’, as they were once termed, had been taken off the agenda, and ‘totalising pro jects’ that attempted to generalise about long-term structural change were regarded as being theoretically flawed and ideologically suspect.

Had we planned or even hoped to catch the historiographical tide, we undoubt- edly failed. In the event, however, this disadvantage was counterbalanced by other considerations, some of which were wholly unforeseen, that helped our work to attract the interest of journalists as well as scholars. British Imperialism received extensive publicity in the serious daily and weekly press when it appeared, notwith- standing the length of the text and the density of the footnotes. Beyond academic circles, the general argument was taken up because it chimed with the ‘condition of England’ question that was being discussed in its new guise in 1993, when our books were first published. At that time, the painful restructuring of the 1980s had resulted in economic crisis and high unemployment, the Thatcher era had come formally to an end, and there was an intensive debate about the future of economic policy, including Britain’s role in the world in the aftermath of the Cold War. The Conservatives had lost faith in monetarism and economic miracles, and were toying with new nostrums, such as ‘back to basics’, that lacked substance and turned out to have only limited appeal. Old Labour, meanwhile, had yet to become New Labour and was still uncertain about how much of its interventionist and pro-manufacturing traditions to carry forward. In these shifting circumstances, our books were seen to provide a timely historical perspective on current dilemmas and prospects. Some commentators used our emphasis on the power and priorities of the City to argue that the deindustrialisation of the 1980s was the culmination of a long-standing bias in British economic policy. 6 _{Others fastened upon the same}

evidence to show that the City and the service sector generally were where Britain’s true international comparative advantage lay. 7 _{The notion of gentlemanly capitalism}

entered public debate: it made an appearance in Will Hutton’s best-selling paper- back, 8 _{and was even adopted, albeit briefly, by television pundits.}

Despite the shift to cultural history, our study caught the attention of a wide range of scholars principally because it dealt with a large subject and advanced a revisionist thesis on two extensive and (so we suggested) connected issues: the process of modern economic development and the causes of imperial expansion. 9

In doing so, it brought together new research on the evolution of the British economy, advanced a fresh interpretation of causation, and suggested a different chronology for the rise and fall of the empire. The book also emphasised the importance of the interactions between British and imperial history. From an economic perspective, the empire could be seen as a transnational organisation that reduced transaction costs by extending abroad the institutions associated with the metropolitan economy. 10 _{Britain exported the settlers, political ideology and}

cultural values that were needed to animate the imperial system, to endow it with a degree of coherence, and to impose compliance. Reciprocally, the empire con- tributed significantly to the enduring international bias of the British economy, to the formation of the British state, and to the very definition of what it was to be British. 11 _{In seeking to reunite the study of British and imperial history, we hoped}

to engage the attention of two sizeable but separate sets of specialists: those con- cerned with the process of industrialisation in Britain, and those in Area Studies who were less interested in Britain than in specific territories within the empire. The continuing scholarly debate on gentlemanly capitalism and empire suggests that economic history has an important contribution to make to an understand- ing of the key issues of economic development and state-building. 12 _{Postmodernism,}

for all the stimulus it gave to the study of cultural influences, contributed little to these questions. Writing in 2001, we suggested that the next historiographical shift would return to some of the classic themes of historical enquiry, given that poverty remained one of the world’s great unsolved problems and that the future of the nation state in an era of globalisation had become a subject of intense discussion. The change has now taken place. Recent interest in the history of globalisation has authorised a return to studies of long-run developments and of their material com- ponent in particular. 13 _{Naturally, there are approaches to writing economic history}

other than the one we adopted. The interpretation advanced in British Imperialism offers just one view of an immensely complex subject, and the discussion it has generated includes a good deal of criticism. 14 _{Nevertheless, the scholarly reception}

of our work has been very generous, even among those who have disagreed with some or all of our interpretation. 15 _{Those who attack large problems should not}

baulk at the adverse comments that inevitably come their way: dissent has the merit of forestalling the worst of all fates, neglect, and the major attribute of advancing understanding.

The main purpose of the revised Foreword is to reflect on the scholarly response to British Imperialism . The most important areas of discussion can be grouped under

three headings: analytical issues, especially those relating to the key concept of gen- tlemanly capitalism; developments within Britain itself; and the link between events at home and imperial expansion abroad. We conclude by suggesting some of the ways in which the subject can be carried forward. The relationship between our interpretation and the changes that have occurred in Britain and in her position in the world since the early 1990s will be considered in the Afterword.

Several commentators have raised methodological objections to the undertaking as a whole. General interpretations of major historical events inevitably prompt dif- ficult questions about the nature of historical explanation, as we ourselves noted. 16

One critic, for example, has claimed that generalisation on this scale is invalid because it cannot possibly provide an adequate explanation of particular episodes and events. 17 _{This is an interesting, if also an extreme, reaction because it points to}

a very different conception of what historians mean when they speak of causation. Most commentators have accepted that the explanatory chain we constructed has validity in principle, even though they may also have questioned the fit between hypothesis and evidence in particular cases. 18 _{A rather different objection has been}

made to the ‘Popperian approach’ implied by our discussion of aims. 19 _{What we}

sought to do in setting out our argument was to state our assumptions as explic- itly as possible and to avoid investing our hypotheses with an undeclared ideology or simplistic verificatory procedures. 20 _{The assumptions themselves are unverifi-}

able; the hypotheses derived from them are subject to the normal tests of historical enquiry. Our interpretation, like other interpretations, can be improved in two ways: by advancing a more plausible set of assumptions and by providing a better fit between hypothesis and evidence. These are deep waters, 21 _{and readers should be}

alerted to the need to navigate them with care – whichever direction they decide to take.

A methodological concern that is frequently raised against selective interpreta- tions of complex historical events centres on the charge that the argument ‘comes dangerously near to monocausality’. 22 _{Readers have been warned. But they have}

also been forewarned by our own statement of our aims and procedures. 23 _In

essence, what we tried to do was to identify a theme that would provide a route, like Ariadne’s thread, through the labyrinth. The theme we chose had not been explored by previous work; 24 _{it was founded on recent research, and it seemed to}

us to offer a powerful means of explaining developments and connections that had eluded previous interpretations. We did not claim that our interpretation eliminated all other explanations of imperialism; rather that it added to them. This implied that the existing historiography would need to be revised, but the extent of the revision could only be determined by future research. 25 _{In the light of the discus-}

sion generated by British Imperialism , it is hard now to see the debate reverting to a position that either ignores the themes we identified or rejects them on the grounds that they constitute a monocausal explanation. The significant question, in our judgement, is not whether we are right or wrong, but how much weight should be attached to our interpretation. As we see it, the answer to that question has already carried the subject forward and will continue to do so.

Most of the discussion of the British basis of our argument has focussed on the concept of gentlemanly capitalism. Our main purpose in formulating this organising principle was to direct attention to the non-industrial forms of capi- talism that, in our view, had been greatly underestimated by historians of modern Britain. In this aim, we can fairly claim to have succeeded – though at the cost of provoking some marked disagreement. Predictably, it has been said that, in elevat- ing the role of finance and services, we have relegated the part played by the forces of industrialisation. 26 _{To the extent that we were trying to insert non-industrial}

forms of capitalism into the story of modern economic development, some shift in the relative importance attached to the two sectors was, in our view, both desir- able and consistent with new research. Surveys of British economic history have now adjusted their treatment to reflect this change. 27 _{However, we also made it}

clear that ‘the process of industrialisation is undoubtedly central to modern Brit- ish history’, 28 _{and we saw no purpose, and much perversity, in trying to eliminate}

it. 29 _{The interesting problem now, in our view, is to unravel the relations between}

finance and industry over the centuries in more detail and with greater subtlety than was possible in our study, which of course had to keep other matters in view. Precisely where the balance lies has still to be decided and is a matter primar- ily for specialists in economic history rather than in the history of imperialism. What can be said, however, is that the story can no longer be told as if all routes led into or out of industrialisation and that the assumption that services derived from or were parasitic on manufacturing has to be demonstrated and not simply taken as given.

It has also been pointed out that we failed to identify the group of gentlemanly capitalists with sufficient precision. One critic felt that the concept was too under- theorised to be useful and was in any case redundant; 30 _{another felt that it claimed}

too much but was still insufficiently developed to provide a theory of the state. 31

As these comments suggest, a taxonomy of criticisms would show that a good number of them cancel each other out. Nevertheless, the merit of these objections, irrespective of the view taken of them, is that they direct attention to another key area where, surprising though it may seem, a large amount of detailed research remains to be done. When we began thinking about this subject, it was still com- mon for historians of international relations to refer to ‘British policy’, as if it were an unproblematic representation of the national interest mediated by short-term considerations of faction, party and personality. Robinson and Gallagher went even further than this: in their view the ‘official mind’, though not entirely closed to outside influences, was for the most part above party and economic processes. 32

The most persistent attempt to establish an alternative approach was by applying class analysis, but this ambition foundered on the insuperable difficulty of showing that the bourgeoisie (which in most readings meant the industrial middle class) had ever taken firm hold of the levers of power. In default of the required series of case studies demonstrating how industrial pressure groups imposed their will on impe- rial policy, radical explanations of empire-building too often fell back on reification: it was capitalism, not its representatives, that imposed and disposed. This device

short-circuited the need to provide an account of agency, but it also drained the analysis of its essential empirical content.

Our aim in looking behind the composite notion of British policy was to iden- tify a gentlemanly elite who promoted and served capitalist interests of the kind we described. If our analysis lacked precision, it was partly because the number of case studies available to us, especially on the period after 1914, was very limited. Thirty years ago, little detailed work on the City had been completed, and the service sector was scarcely recognised as being a separate and significant element in modern British history. 33 _{Imprecision also derived from the fact that fluidity}

reflected historical reality: the gentlemanly order was continually redefining and renewing itself with the result that at any single moment there were status and other differences between new recruits and full members of the establishment. 34

To acknowledge these difficulties, however, is a long way from accepting that the exercise itself was misplaced. Had we inferred political action from economic imperatives without systematic reference to human agency, 35 _{we would have been}

heavily criticised for adopting the crudest possible form of economic determinism. Accordingly, it was essential for us to identify and describe the sources of social recruitment and the value system of the gentlemanly elite, even if we could not explore them fully, and to indicate how the qualities represented by gentility were linked to political power.

Most commentators have accepted the proposition that there were gentlemen who were capitalists and gentlemen who aligned themselves in a supportive role with gentlemanly capitalism. We, in turn, accept that the gentlemanly elite needs closer definition than we were able to give it originally. A fuller characterisation would establish more clearly than we did that gentlemanly capitalists were one ele- ment among a larger cohort of gentlemen who occupied high-ranking positions in the military, the professions and the Anglican Church. These men were removed from the business of money-making but were related to it through a shared code of conduct, dependence on income streams that flowed from the City and landed rents, and social connections, often extending to inter-marriage. Most gentlemen, even if not active in the market, were aware of the economic world through land or finance, and it was natural for them to imagine that these activities, rather than the distant mills of industry, were central to Britain’s power and progress.

As prominent members of the cohort, missionaries, humanitarians and the mili- tary deserve a larger place in the story. 36 _{To the extent that their upper reaches were}

staffed by gentlemen, these groups were important adjuncts to the money-makers in the City. The American Revolution, to take one prominent example, created a crisis of legitimacy for Britain’s vaunted ‘empire of liberty’ and stimulated new thinking about its existence and purpose. 37 _{Evangelicals provided the means of regaining}

the moral high ground. The loss of the mainland colonies was God’s judgment on the sin of slavery; abolition became the means of atonement. Humanitarians added Enlightenment principles in an appeal to universal rights, which, with the con- siderable help of John Stuart Mill, they transformed into a mission to civilise the non-Western world. 38 _{Once started, the abolitionist movement acquired popular}

momentum that quickly extended below the elite leadership, attracted women as well as men, and reached far beyond the capital. 39 _{This revised version of ‘freedom’,}

devised from on high, contributed to the creation of a more inclusive political com- munity, which in turn helped to shape Britain’s national identity. 40

The military component stands as an exceptional example of continuity from the eighteenth century to today and is currently one of the few remaining unquali- fied examples of the gentlemanly values of honour, duty and public service. The French Wars gave the military an unprecedented degree of public prominence. Horatio Nelson and Arthur Wellesley, representing the navy and the army respec- tively, both came from gentlemanly stock: Nelson, the son of a cleric, was related to the Walpole dynasty; Wellesley was a member of the Irish aristocracy. 41 _Both

were super-celebrities who became canonised as heroes of their age. The values they embodied, or were imputed to them, had an immense and enduring influ- ence in elevating and inculcating the gentlemanly ethos and welding it to a sense of nationality that was at once English and British. 42 _{By the time that Wellesley,}

the 1st Duke of Wellington, died in 1852, the military-fiscal state had also been laid to rest. Thereafter, the heroic image and its attendant values lived on through the medium of the public schools and the reformed civil and armed services. The death of Major-General Charles Gordon in Khartoum in 1885, after a career spent in imperial service, gave new impetus to the ideal of the Christian warrior ‘march- ing as to war’. Gordon, himself the son of a Major-General and also an evangelical