An empire in transition

The publication of Don Alastos’ study of the British Empire is late but not without interest. Its author was Greek Cypriot intellectual Eudoros Ioannidis (1910–1978) or Doros Alastos, as he was known.

He was obliged to leave Cyprus having denounced the practices of the asbestos business in which he worked and settled in Britain in 1930. There he worked as a journalist until the end of his life. Eurymath, a critical intellectual, wrote among others an important study on the History of Cyprus. A Survey of 5,000 years, 1955). His study of the British Empire entitled How is the Empire? was written in 1938-1939 and remained anecdote for decades. It was written while her author was still young, before he turned thirty years old. The study starts from a Marxist perspective. Nevertheless, Alastos, like Lenin himself, recognized the mental debt to a liberal scholar of imperialism, John Hobson. Alassos attributes the creation of the Empire initially to 18th-century commercial capitalism and then to the 19th-century industry. She spotted her apogee in 1919-1920, that is, at the end of World War I, when Britain expanded to significant possessions of the dissolved Ottoman Empire. The British Empire did not constitute a compact political community but an entity of variable geometry with varying degrees of dependence on possessions and colonies from the center. One category was the autonomous to independent possessions, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. India was itself a separate category due to its size and economic and symbolic importance to the empire. The colonies, including Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, but also formally independent states, were followed by a combination of contractual obligations and informal forms of control with London, such as Egypt and Iraq.

Doros Alastos. How is the Empire; A Study, NHE / IIE Publications, 2024, p. 356, value of 20 EUR

National movements

Although his interests were primarily identified in the economic and political aspects of colonialism, Alatos fully understood the constitutional and strategic aspects of the empire. As noted, the height of imperial expansion in 1919-1920 had also meant the emergence of strong anti-colonial pressures. On the one hand Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were also differentiated in the field of foreign policy. They would not automatically follow Britain into war engagements, as the 1922 Chanak crisis showed when they avoided helping London in the confrontation with the Turkish nationalists of Kemal. On the other hand, in addition to Ireland’s secession, national movements were manifesting in India, Egypt, Iraq where new leaders gained mass appeal by mobilizing popular classes, farmers and new educated middle classes. Although in the Middle War Britain was able to deal with these movements either by repression or compromise, control was becoming more difficult. Its first elements of reflection on the possibility of Marxist tools to detect the social, political and merit bases of emerging national movements are also distinguished in the study of Allastos. What also needs to be restrained is that Alastos, a harsh critic of colonial practices, considered in the 1938-1939 treaties, the eve of World War II, as a major danger to fascism. Instead he recognized in the British Empire a liberal remnant which was sufficient for him to make his choice against fascism. It does not result from what has become known whether this choice, contrary to Moscow’s choice, which concluded on 23 August 1939 the non-attack pact with Hitler, thus clearing the way for the Nazi attack in Poland, is responsible for the fact that the study was not published by London publishing houses adjacent to the Communist Party or more generally to Marxist circles. Apparently, his book was the beginning of a long process of reviewing his evenings which, 15 years later, in 1954, led Alastos from the Communist to the Labour Party.

The study would expect its publication another 70 years. Along with the useful prescripts of Academic Paschal Citromileides, Cambridge Emeritus Professor Paul Ioannides, son of Alestos, and the introduction of Professor Robert Holland is worth reading. It captures aspects of a completely different from the current world map but also the pressures that led to emancipation from colonialism. It highlights in particular the importance of spreading education and ideas, proof of the lively and penetrating way in which a young intellectual from the countryside read and signified this map.

Mr. Sotiris Rizas is the director of the Research Centre for the History of Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens.

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