The two-way nature of the relationship applied also to India, which provided huge manpower resources in return for considerable financial subsidies. In this, Britain was as much of use to India as India was to Britain. ‘In 1942 with the Japanese pressing against the frontiers of Bengal and threatening Calcutta,’ Jackson points out, ‘India was there for the taking in a global struggle that would have ended with a wholesale imperial repartition of the world if Britain and its allies had been defeated.’ The greater horror of Japanese imperialism was ill-grasped by the anti-British ‘Quit India’ politicians of the National Congress Party whose short-sighted antics secured jail sentences at the time. Perhaps as many as 60,000 Indians fought as allies of the Japanese, although mostly they had been captives taken in the Malayan campaign for whom enlistment in the ‘Indian National Army’ was a ticket out of Japanese prison camps. Their battle performance compared poorly with that of the British Indian Army, which rose from a force of 200,000 at the war’s commencement to over 2.5 million strong at the end. Significantly, by 1945 Britain was a net debtor to the government of India, not the other way around. ‘Quit India’ became policy in London too.
Britain was, of course, clapped out and reduced to austerity by the war’s end, its superpower status eclipsed by its American ally. With most of Britain’s overseas assets flogged off, the conflict had damaged the imperial nexus. But the effort had been appreciated. When the fighting stopped, Canada generously cancelled Britain’s war debt. Others also acted supportively. Indeed, for most of the Commonwealth countries Britain remained the primary trading partner in the years after the war.
The author of this even-handed book, which is filled with judicious evaluation of the evidence, is a military historian at King’s College, London. He focuses on the wide strategic sweep rather than the personal anecdotes of foot soldiers at the sharp end. Readers seeking the latter would be better turning to Christopher Somerville’s 1998 book, Our War. For those wanting the big picture, told in a lucid rather than florid style, The British Empire and the Second World War is a fittingly magisterial work. Ultimately, a great canvas seems the appropriate size for so vast an enterprise. Jackson sums up the Imperial war effort as ‘a miracle of organisation’ that ‘remains a humbling spectacle’. It is a conclusion any dispassionate reader must surely share … and salute.
Graham Stewart’s latest book, The History of The Times: The Murdoch Years, is published by HarperCollins, £30.
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