© Oxford University Press 2005, all rights reserved
Sir Keith Hancock and the British Empire: The Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana*
University of Texas, Austin
The reputation of Sir Keith Hancock as the greatest historian of the British Empire and Commonwealth rests mainly on his two-volume Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs published in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He used ‘microcosmic’ case studies to illuminate the macrocosm of British rule. Though he stopped short of formulating a concept of a world-wide imperial system, his work laid the foundation for later scholarship, for example Gallagher and Robinson's, by shaping clear analytical concepts of Britain's imperial economy and by demonstrating the cultural and political links among English-speaking peoples of the British diaspora. At once an Australian nationalist and a champion of Britain's imperial mission, he upheld the principle of sovereign national equality while opposing attempts to forge a unified empire. By the phrase Pax Britannica he meant the conditions of peace in the colonies that permitted economic development and allowed the inhabitants to be trained in the art of self-government. Throughout his career he was concerned with the moral worth of the empire. In late life he reflected on the successor to the British Empire and demonstrated scepticism, indeed alarm, about the Pax Americana.