James Morris's 'Farewell the Trumpets' 1978

 

Faber and Faber first edition - 1978  

James Morris (who had gender reassignment surgery in 1972) died as Jan Morris in North Wales in November 2020, aged 94. Some years back, I read his/her book on The Venetian Empire (Penguin, 1990) and liked the easy style very much. Then, a couple of years ago, I bought and read Heaven's Command (Faber, 1973) the first - but not the first to be written - on the British Empire, which I have commented on in a previous Blog. This volume, taking the story from 1897 to Sir Winston Churchill's death in 1965, completes the trilogy. Inevitably for a proud Englishman, this is the most poignant volume to read.

One could argue that Kaiser Bill and Herr Hitler destroyed the British Empire, with a supporting heavy push by Comrade Stalin and a more cynical shove by Roosevelt and the USA. However, the increasingly strong stirrings from 'within', steadfastly propelled  by Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah; by Kenyatta and Nkrumah and Nyerere; and a host of less remarkable African, West Indian, and Far East leaders (demagogues?) were, by the end of the Second World War, pushing at an 'open door'. Harold Macmillan's tour of southern Africa, with his famous 'Wind of Change' speech, merely underlined what had been happening for well over two decades.

For someone who grew up on two British West Indian Islands in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and whose Geography lessons were all about trade between a 'Mother Country' and its brood, the Empire appeared to be an orderly, well-run, 'natural' state of affairs - by 'Heaven's Command' almost. What Morris' final volume shows, is just how shaky - almost 'unnatural' - everything was. Mountbatten's precipitate Imperial withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent had major flaws, but the alternative would have surely been worse. The Palestinian mandate was a poisoned chalice which should have been steered clear of - the eternal enmity between Jew and Arab is still going strong after nearly seventy years. Few African states (British or otherwise) are well governed; anarchy or brutal dictatorship rules in most. It becomes increasingly difficult to keep blaming the European powers for the continuing mess. 

Morris skilfully weaves the general with the specific, explaining the developments in the various states - from the Far East (Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma); the Middle East (Palestine, Iraq, Persia, Aden and Syria); West and East Africa (the Gambia, Gold Coast/Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya Tanganyika), Southern Africa (the Rhodesias, Nyasaland, South Africa); the West Indies (Jamaica, Trinidad, British Honduras, Bermuda...); and the far flung Falkland Islands, Mauritius, the South Sea islands. His travels in the early and mid seventies gave him the geographical mindset and the personal anecdotes to sustain the interest of the reader. Occasionally, I felt his gift of hindsight made him perhaps more cynical than he might have been.  But his Envoi, at the end of the book, redeemed him for me. 

The arrogance of the Empire, its greed and its brutality was energy gone to waste: but the good in the adventure, the courage, the idealism, the diligence had contributed their quota of truth towards the universal fulfilment...The wind dies, and is forgotten, but some of the seeds it blows about will be fertile in the end.