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January 4, 2010
Exclusive: Sherlock Holmes and the Empire
In the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. the world’s most famous consulting detective pursues the villainous Lord Blackwood (played by Mark Strong). Blackwood practices black magic and murders five young women as part of his satanic rituals. Holmes and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) capture him just before he sacrifices a sixth. Blackwood is hanged for his crimes, but apparently rises from the grave and the game is afoot again. All well and good, but Hollywood cannot resist inserting its warped political views into what should be a simple mystery-action tale. Late in the film, Blackwood reveals his true objective: he wants to give the British Empire a stronger government, win back control of America, and have London dominate world affairs for the next 1,000 years. In other words, his brutal crimes are motivated by patriotism! Indeed, from the Hollywood perspective, his greatest crime may be patriotism!
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories recounting the adventures of Holmes and Watson starting in 1887. There was no need for Hollywood to go outside this vast body of work to create such a political story. Worse, the plot twist dishonors Holmes’ creator as Conan Doyle was a staunch defender of the British Empire.
In late 1899, shortly after the play “Sherlock Holmes” debuted to rave reviews on Broadway, British forces suffered a series of defeats in South Africa at the opening of what became known as the Boer War (1899-1902). Conan Doyle threw himself into the war effort. His first desire was to enlist, and he started pulling strings to get a post in the Middlesex Yeomanry regiment which was designated for imperial service. He had written a letter to The Times newspaper declaring “Great Britain is full of men who can ride and shoot. Might I suggest that lists should at least be opened and the names of those taken who are ready to go if required – preference might be given to those men who can find their own horses?” He was disappointed when he was placed on the reserve list due to age (he was then 40). So he went to South Africa in his capacity as a doctor working in a field hospital as close to the front as he could get.
He also conducted interviews there and did research that produced several articles and two books on the conflict: The Great Boer War and The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct. The second book was a refutation of German and domestic left-wing propaganda attacks on British forces for allegedly committing war crimes during their counterinsurgency campaign. The charges Conan Doyle refuted include that the war had been fomented by capitalists and Jews; that British soldiers wantonly killed civilians; that the insurgent Boers posed no real threat to England; that the Empire used inhumane weapons; and that innocent people had been improperly detained in “concentration camps.” If these topics sound familiar it is because hey are the common propaganda themes that are always trotted out by the “antiwar” movement. A century later, they have been repeated against American and British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan with only slight modification.
Conan Doyle opened his book by lamenting, “For some reason, which may be either arrogance or apathy, the British are very slow to state their case to the world” and that he wished someone with “official authority” would do so. He argued that the Transvaal Boers had built up the largest military force in South Africa and had not done so for defensive reasons. They wanted to conquer the entire region as the only way to keep their minority regime in power. In combating this threat, British and other imperial forces had fought as humanely as possible under the difficult circumstances of guerrilla warfare waged by the Boers after their standing armies had been routed by Empire reinforcements.
Conan Doyle gives a very concise, realistic and unapologetic assessment of how the counterinsurgency campaign led to the “concentration” refugee camps. “We cannot deny that the cause of the outbreak of measles was the collection of the women and children by us into the camps. But why were they collected into camps? Because they could not be left on the veldt. And why could they not be left on the veldt? Because we had destroyed the means of subsistence. And why had we destroyed the means of subsistence? To limit the operations of the mobile bands of guerillas. At the end of every tragedy we are forced back to the common origin of all of them, and made to understand that the nation which obstinately perseveres in a useless guerilla war prepares much trouble for its enemy, but absolute ruin for itself.” This is seen again today in the use of terrorism in the Middle East. The Islamic jihad has primarily killed Muslims.
The book was distributed not only in Great Britain but across Europe in many translations. He made a special effort to get the book into Germany, the source of much of the anti-British propaganda, as the rivalry between the two powers mounted. It was these activities for which Conan Doyle was knighted in 1902. The book was published just before he wrote his most famous Holmes story “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” He would later give evidence to the Royal Commission on the War.
Conan Doyle made a run for a seat in Parliament in 1900 during what was called the “Khaki Election” because so many members of Parliament were in South Africa serving in their military capacities and there was an upsurge of voting among veterans. He was a Liberal-Unionist with increasingly Conservative leanings. Liberal Unionists favored progressive reforms at home, but were hard-liners in foreign policy. They might be considered political kin to what are called neo-conservatives today. The inexperienced Conan Doyle lost against a Liberal Party incumbent. However, the pro-war “imperialist” coalition of Liberal-Unionists and Conservatives won a landslide victory behind the slogan “Every vote given to the Liberals is a vote given to the Boers."
In the new movie, Holmes and Watson have a pet dog named Gladstone. William Gladstone was the most prominent leader of the Liberal Party in the late-19th century. His weak policies and disdain for the Empire were criticized by Conan Doyle. Another subtle Hollywood slap at the literary genius whose reputation the moviemakers want to use but not respect.
Doyle considered running for office again from time to time, but decided his talent as a writer and work as a local activist were the better ways to advance the causes in which he believed. He organized a rifle club to promote military skills, and advocated “a law by which each parish council must establish a rifle club, with the power to levy the money for that end.” He supported the Boys Empire League where he offered a prize for the best patriotic song. He became friends with Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill.
The next issue that won his attention was Tariff Reform, based again on his allegiance to the British Empire. The Tariff Reform campaign was led by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain who understood that England’s early dominance of world commerce as leader of the Industrial Revolution had faded. Other powers, particularly the United States and Germany, had become manufacturing powerhouses with large, protected home markets. The only way to safeguard British economic strength was to abandon “free trade” and pull the global Empire together behind a system of preferential tariffs that would keep out foreign imports while supporting increased production and trade among the far-flung colonies.
For many years Conan Doyle made the case for protective tariffs to benefit British and Empire industry in newspaper letters and columns. Noting the increase in imported manufactured goods that were displacing domestic production, he argued “The whole essence of the Protectionist argument is that if we could dislocate that portion of our trade, we should be in a stronger position, keep that [money] at home, and give much more work – which means higher wages – to our own people.” He refused to buy a French-made automobile even when offered to him at half-price, preferring to buy a British car instead as a matter of patriotic duty. If the British Empire was to survive in an increasingly competitive world, it must mobilize its joint economy. As he wrote in 1904, “The first essential for a nation, as it seems to me, is to hold tight to its home market.”
Unfortunately, the campaign for tariff reform and imperial integration was not successful until after the value of industrial capacity was proven in World War I. By then Great Britain had already lost too much ground to rivals who had not made themselves vulnerable to “free trade.” Its economic decline was slowed but not halted.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s heart was always in the right place and his loyalty was beyond question, which is more than can be said for his current Hollywood interpreters.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor and Republican Congressional staff member.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (1) | Sign Up for FSM Updates!
It seems that the writers of this piece not only bewails the passing of the "golden age" of empire but wants to bring it back. Hollywood revises Sherlock Holmes to get rid of its problematic politics so that the literary character remains popular and achieves wider appeal. Why would you want it otherwise?
posted by: Tanushree
Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 05:55 PM
