To be called an imperialist is therefore also to be out of fashion. It implies a fondness for empire or a determination to increase the power of an empire. As 1066 and All That would have it, this is a bad thing. Imperialism is also linked with other words that make it even more sinister. Thus, ‘cultural’ imperialism implies that we are all forced to watch Hollywood films and to eat at McDonalds; ‘economic’ imperialism implies the control of one country by another by means more cunning than direct rule; and our own ‘Eastern States’ imperialism means that the poor outer states are controlled from Sydney, Melbourne, or Canberra – which actually is fair comment.

So when this book by Richard Toye states that Winston Churchill was an imperialist, we know – that in this manifestation, anyway – he was a bad thing. The revelation that Churchill was an imperialist, however, is hardly startling; it stands on similar ground to revelations that Hitler was a Nazi, Mussolini a fascist, the Pope a Catholic. But Richard Toye brings forth this remarkable discovery because he asserts that, for Churchill, things might have been otherwise. Despite the fact that Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, that his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a Tory chancellor of the exchequer, and that his entire milieu was aristocratic, Churchill could have chosen not to be an imperialist because there was ‘a range of opinion’ in nineteenth-century Britain about the morality of empire.

Indeed there was. The Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society, and other individuals deplored the fact that Britain ruled over one quarter of the globe. As human beings are at least to some extent free agents, it is possible to envisage Churchill sharing soda water, fruit, and berries at a Fabian get-together, or sharing a phone booth with the ILP at their annual meetings – possible, but surely very unlikely. Toye dismisses the view that Churchill had to be anything but a man of his time, but he is also saying that Churchill could have been other than a man of his class. In my view, this is asking too much – indeed it is ludicrous. Churchill was born to empire. That he would not develop into an imperialist would have been one of the great conjuring acts of all time.

So Churchill was an imperialist. But he was not one of the normal stripe. He described the first imperial war of the twentieth century (the South African War) thus:

This miserable war, unfortunate and ill-omened in its beginning, inglorious in its course, cruel and hideous in its conclusion … I have hated these latter stages with their barbarous features – questionable even according to the bloody precedents of 1870, certainly most horrible.

In 1920 he called – in a hostile House of Commons – for the sacking of General Dyer for carrying out a bloody and quite unnecessary massacre of civilians in India; and during his last premiership, in the 1950s, he refused to ban black immigration to Britain because the potential immigrants held British passports and were therefore legally entitled to come.

Does all this mean that Churchill was ahead of his time as a liberal on race? Of course not. As Toye shows in many parts of this book, Churchill was a man of his time. He saw the white ‘races’ as superior. When informed that African-American troops were about to disembark at Southampton during World War II, he enquired whether there would be a sufficient supply of banjos and watermelons there to greet them – an anecdote that has inexplicably escaped the author.

There is much balance in Richard Toye’s book. He explains that it was not Churchill who was responsible for the mess that is the modern Middle East, but the treaty-makers at Versailles. Churchill, as colonial secretary, was merely obliged to make sense of it. Even here, Toye indicates that it was the advice of the experts in his department, and so-called experts such as Lawrence of Arabia, that ultimately swayed Churchill’s views.

But I am forced to come back to the parameters of this book, in particular to its claim that Churchill was a major force in shaping the modern British Empire. Surely this is not so. I cannot think of a single country within the empire in the twentieth century where Churchill’s views had much effect at all. On India, as Toye is eager to show, Churchill wished to cling to empire – in 1935 and in 1947–48. But what he has failed to recognise is that Churchill’s opposition to Indian Independence had precisely no effect at all. Churchill and the diehards lost over the India Act in 1935, as they lost over the timing of Indian Independence in 1947–48. In the latter case, the main argument was merely over timing. For Churchill (and, by the way, for that arch-imperialist, Aneurin Bevan) it was too soon. Perhaps for Churchill it would always have been too soon. But he lost.

As for the rest of the empire, it is difficult to detect his influence at all. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand had Dominion status before Churchill achieved power. The African colonies achieved independence – with one exception – after Churchill had left power. The one exception is South Africa, and it does not sit well with Toye’s overall thesis. Churchill was involved in the negotiations that saw South Africa achieve independence in 1910. He feared, greatly and rightly, the effect this would have on the indigenous population. But what was the alternative – hang on to power and be branded a diehard imperialist? Toye cannot have issues like this both ways. Sometimes (gasp) some populations might have been better off if Britain had stayed longer as the controlling power.

And this leads to another problem with this book. Despite Toye, the British Empire was not the worst organisation that ever existed. Goodness me, in Australia, we were forced to hold a series of constitutional conventions to obtain independence. How shocking. Similar brutal struggles took place in Canada and New Zealand. There were worse things than being ruled by the British – ask the Rwandans, Algerians, Vietnamese, and Indonesians.

One last note. The author claims that two historians – John Grigg and John Charmley – both argue that what Churchill managed to do was not to save the empire but to hock it to the Americans. And they did in fact say this. But in taking these statements out of context, he traduces Grigg, who was merely suggesting that this was an inevitable outcome of World War II. Charmley was saying that if Churchill had made peace with Hitler in 1940 or 1941, Britain would have her empire still. How grotesque to imply by superficial comparison that a civilised historian like John Grigg had anything in common with a right-wing tub-thumper. Shame, Richard Toye, shame.

Is, then, this book worth reading? Yes it is – but stick to the detail. Cast Toye’s unsustainable generalisations into the same dustbin to which he consigns empire.

CONTENTS: MARCH 2011