Churchill and the British Empire's Decline
How the Empire's greatest champion presided over the forces that brought it down -- and refused to accept the verdict of history.
Churchill the Imperialist
Churchill was a Victorian imperialist born in 1874 at the height of British global power. He served as a young army officer on the North-West Frontier of India, in the Sudan, and in South Africa. He believed sincerely that the British Empire was a force for civilization, progress, and order. This conviction never fundamentally changed, even as the world around him did.
His views on India were particularly intense. He opposed the Government of India Act of 1935, which granted limited self-governance, and spent much of the 1930s fighting against any concessions to Indian self-rule. He described Gandhi as 'a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir' and found the idea of Indian independence genuinely repellent. These views marginalized Churchill within his own party during the 1930s and contributed to his exclusion from government during the wilderness years.
Churchill's imperialism was not merely sentimental. He believed the Empire served vital strategic interests: controlling the sea routes through Suez and Singapore, projecting power globally, and providing the economic base that sustained Britain's great-power status. The loss of Empire, in his view, would reduce Britain to a minor European island.
