British-Israel: Racial Identity in Imperial Britain, 1870-1920

Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1997 British-Israel: Racial Identity in Imperial Britain, 1870-1920 Eric Michael Reisenauer Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Reisenauer, Eric Michael, "British-Israel: Racial Identity in Imperial Britain, 1870-1920" (1997). Dissertations. 3693. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3693 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1997 Eric Michael Reisenauer LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO BRffiSH-ISRAEL: RACIAL IDENTITY IN IMPERIAL BRITAIN, 1870-1920 VOLUME I A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY ERIC MICHAEL REISENAUER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JANUARY 1997 Copyright© by Eric Michael Reisenauer, 1997. All rights reserved. 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While the work of writing a dissertation is, by and large, a solitary venture, such a task could never have been completed without the help of many other persons. Over the past three years I have incurred debts to many people, and I offer thanks to all of them. I am greatly indebted to my committee, Dr. Jo N. Hays, Dr. Robert 0. Bucholz, and Dr. David Dennis, for their support, time, and guidance, as well as for their insights into the subject and their suggestions as to how to make sense of it all. I would also like to thank the staff at the Elizabeth M. Cudahy Memorial Library of Loyola University, especially those in the interlibrary loan department without whom my research would have taken much longer and would have been far more daunting. The librarians at the British Li brary, the Royal Society of London, Sion College, and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, were also extremely helpful and I owe them much. Without the financial support from Loyola in the forms of research travel grants and a Dissertation Fellowship I am certain that the completion of my work would have been long delayed. Finally, my greatest debt I owe to the people in my life, my family and friends, for their patience and understanding and especially to Lynn for all she has given me over the years. It is to her that I dedicate this work. lll TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . iii INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter 1. THE EMPIRE AND THE BRITISH RACE . 27 2. THE BRITISH-ISRAEL IDENTITY . 95 3. THE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVEMENT . 175 4. FAITH CONFIRMED BY SCIENCE: SECULAR EVIDENCE ........... 246 5. THE RELIGION OF ELECTION: SCRIPTURAL CONSIDERATIONS. 309 6. "A NATION AND A COMPANY OF NATIONS": BRITISH-ISRAEL'S EMPIRE ..................................... 350 CONCLUSION: EPILOGUE ............................................ 403 WORKS CITED ...................................................... 414 VITA ............................................................... 482 iv INTRODUCTION In the last decades of the nineteenth century the British came to perceive themselves, with ample reason, as commanding the summit of world power and prestige. Their nation had amassed great wealth, their people seemed to be reproducing at unprece- dented and unmatched rates in the Western world, and, most notably, their capital city was the center of an empire unlike any the world had ever known. Such a remarkable expansion of wealth and power necessitated not so much justification as explanation. The complex economic and political entity that was the British Empire became the focus of countless surveys and examinations, each offering a solution to its existence. But what- ever the true source of British imperial expansion, whether it be economic interests, political structures, or social impulses, the most common reason given for the rise and pros- perity of Greater Britain was the inherent racial character of its people. These people, the Anglo-Saxon race, possessed all the traits necessary for successful colonization and imperial rule. Great Britain, a relatively small group of islands in the North Atlantic, was home to a race destined, it seemed, to attain and to hold the dominant position on the planet. In light of this fact, or rather assumption, came a renewed interest in the origin or, in the words of one contemporary, "the genesis of the Anglo-Saxon race."1 In the origin of the race lay the secret of the empire, while in the strength of the blood rested its future. 1H. L. Chamberlain, "The Genesis of the Saxon Race," Overland Monthly 43 (January 1904): 70. 2 As the empire grew it exerted an increasing influence over the way in which the 'Anglo- Saxon' peoples, both at home and abroad, viewed themselves. That they were an 'imperial race' certainly could not be doubted; defining exactly who they were and where they came from, however, became critically important. If the race could be found to be 'imperially predestined' from its origin, either because of its racial characteristics, its en- dowment of Providential favor, or both, then the empire assumed a much higher, indeed almost unassailable, legitimacy. 2 In this way, the existence of the empire fundamentally effected the search for and definition of British origins and identity. This is not a study of the growth of the British Empire per se, as it will neither de- tail the expansion of British influence nor attempt to discover its underlying reasons or consequences.3 It is, rather, an examination of one way in which the imperial experience shaped the way the British viewed themselves. It will assess British racial identity during the decades around the tum of the century, especially as that identity resulted from the images and reality of imperial expansion. Specifically under consideration will be the British-Israel movement, since it represented not only the apotheosis of this type of identity but also fully reflected much imperial discourse otherwise considered 'mainstream.' The proponents of the British-Israel theory, or British-Israelism, contended that the An- 2The relationship between national identity and the feeling of divine election has been explored to some degree in William R. Hutchinson and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., Many Are Chosen: Divine Election and Western Nationalism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). See specifically A. F. Walls, "Carrying the White Man's Burden: Some British Views of National Vocation in the Imperial Era," chap in, ibid., 29-50. 3For a solid and convincing survey of the motives and course of British expansion see P. J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, vol. 1, Innovation and Expansion 1688-1914, vol. 2, Crisis and Deconstruction 1914-1990 (London: Longman, 1993). 3 glo-Saxon race's predominating position on the planet was explained fully (and was otherwise inexplicable) as the fulfillment of a promise. God had promised Abraham and his descendants that they would inherit the earth and come into a place among nations that the British now indisputably occupied. To doubt the validity of this covenant was to doubt the faithfulness of God. The Anglo-Saxon race was the recipient of the Abrahamic promises, therefore, not because it had somehow deposed the Hebrews of their rightful inheritance but in that it had descended from the chosen people, the children of Israel. God's covenant blessings had not been transferred, British-Israelites confidently pro- claimed, but rather had simply remained unfulfilled until the present day. In the forbears of the Anglo-Saxon, the Hebrews of the Kingdom of Israel, the explanation for empire was found. Being racial Israelites Anglo-Saxons could claim to be the rightful inheritors of the earth. The origins of the race, as set forth by this movement, both defined the people and explained the empire. As the nineteenth century drew to a close and British dominance seemed increasingly permanent,4 the quest for origins, particularly racial origins, became a powerful dynamic in the formation of British identity. It is this dynamic that is under investigation here. 4Faith in the continued dominance of the British Empire, despite numerous signs to the contrary, is explored in Francis G. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Im perialism in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), esp. xi-xiii, 137-41. While Hutchins concentrates on the idea of a permanent Raj in India, this 'illusion of permanence' also applied to Greater Britain as a whole. The Boer War seemed to incite a resurgence of imperial feeling and the boundless potential of the empire. See "Leading Article--South Africa and the Empire," Times (London) 1 May 1902. Numerous states men, however, were coming to understand that the position and future of the British em pire was not so stable. See, Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Expe rience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). 4 Historical assessments of British national identity have tended to focus upon the internal cultural aspects of a nation, such as religious confessionalization, literature, Ian- guage, and art as the prime movers in the identity-formation process.5 Certainly a na- ti on' s internal culture is instrumental in any sense of self which that nation develops. A people's external activities, however, including expansion, have begun to be examined as potent factors in the ways in which the people of any nation come to view themselves. At the forefront of this investigation have been those scholars, particularly literary theorists, who attempt to bridge the gap between 'internally' and 'externally' generated identity by studying the interaction between a nation's culture and its imperial thought and activity.6 While such studies have been helpful, they tend to base their conclusions more on theory 5See for example: Mary J.

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