Joseph Chamberlain

Joseph Chamberlain 1836-1914, British statesman. After a successful business career, he entered local politics and won distinction as a reforming mayor of Birmingham (1873-76). Entering Parliament as a Liberal in 1876, Chamberlain advocated radical social reform and served under William Gladstone as president of the Board of Trade (1880-85). In 1886, however, he broke with Gladstone, leading the defection from the Liberal party of the Liberal Unionists (those Liberals who opposed Home Rule for Ireland). In 1887-88 he negotiated a treaty with the United States to settle the fisheries dispute between that country and Canada. Chamberlain became leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Commons in 1891, and in 1895 he joined the Conservative government as colonial secretary. While maintaining his interest in social reform at home, he pursued a vigorous colonial policy aimed at imperial expansion, cooperation, and consolidation. Although a parliamentary inquiry cleared him of complicity in the Jameson Raid (see Jameson, Sir Leander Starr ), there is some evidence that he was at least aware of the conspiracy. His subsequent attempts to reach a settlement with the Boers failed, resulting in the South African War (1899-1902). After the war he worked for a conciliatory peace. Chamberlain's belief in the need for closer imperial union led him to espouse the cause of imperial preference in tariffs. However, this proposed abandonment of Great Britain's traditional free trade policy provoked great controversy, and in 1903 he resigned from office to spend three years in an attempt, through the Tariff Reform League, to convert the country to his views. His campaign split the Liberal Unionist-Conservative bloc and contributed to its defeat in the election of 1906. Ill health ended Chamberlain's public life in 1906, but his tariff policy was adopted (1919, 1932) within the lifetime of his sons, Austen and Neville.

Bibliography: See E. E. Gulley, Joseph Chamberlain and English Social Politics (1926); W. L. Strauss, Joseph Chamberlain and the Theory of Imperialism (1942, repr. 1971); biography (to 1903 only) by J. L. Garvin and J. Amery (6 vol., 1932-51); studies by R. V. Kubicek (1969) and M. Balfour (1985).

Chamberlain, Joseph (1836–1914). Radical and imperialist. Like many of the most interesting politicians, Chamberlain defies categorization. He made his fortune as a screw manufacturer, which enabled him to retire at the age of 38. He dedicated the rest of his life to politics, first on the Birmingham city council, where he rose to be mayor in 1873–5, and then as a Birmingham MP. He was an advanced social reformer, clearing slums, building houses for the poor, setting up free public libraries and art galleries, and taking the gas, water, and sewage systems of Birmingham into municipal ownership. He also had sharp views on the aristocracy, which he regarded as useless (‘they toil not, neither do they spin’), and he talked of making them pay a ‘ransom’ for their continued enjoyment of their privileges. That offended, as one might expect, Queen Victoria.

He rose to cabinet rank in 1880. But he was not altogether comfortable even on the radical wing of the Liberal Party, because of his patriotic views on national issues. These were sorely tested by Gladstone's limp policies, as he saw them, on South Africa and Egypt, and caused him to break formally with the Liberal Party over the Irish Home Rule issue in 1886. That was curious in some ways, because he was not an out-and-out unionist, and did not seem all that far away from Gladstone's views on Ireland when the crisis came. That led some of his contemporaries to suspect that he was really making a play for the leadership. If that was in his mind, however, he was soon disabused. The new Liberal Unionist group he attached himself to never made it up with the rump of the Liberal Party, and eventually allied with the Conservatives. It was this camp that provided Chamberlain with his next major platform, as colonial secretary in Salisbury's government of 1895.

As colonial secretary Chamberlain proved as radical as he had on the domestic scene, and in many of the same ways: advocating the development by central government, for example, of what he called Britain's ‘imperial estates’. He also believed in their extension, particularly in southern Africa, where he was instrumental in trying to bring the Afrikaner republics to heel, first clandestinely (the Jameson Raid) and then by helping to provoke the second Boer War. That made him the leading imperialist of his time. But he was an unusual one. He sought to extend the empire, but also worried about its over-extension. With this in mind in 1898 he tried to fix a protective alliance with Germany behind Salisbury's back. He also wished to consolidate the colonies, in order to maximize their potential strength. In 1903 he came out publicly in favour of imperial preference as a means of achieving this, resigning from the cabinet in order to press it at the next election (1906). The result was to split the Conservative Party (the second great party he had had this effect on), and give the Liberals a landslide victory.

He may have been right. In July 1906, however, he suffered a disabling stroke. Without his energy behind it the tariff reform campaign wilted. He died just before the Great War came to bear out his deepest fears.

Bernard Porter

Bibliography

Marsh, P. T. , Joseph Chamberlain (New Haven, 1994).

Chamberlain, Joseph (1836–1914) British political leader, father of Neville Chamberlain. He entered Parliament as a Liberal in 1876. In 1880, he became president of the board of trade. In 1886 he resigned over Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, and was leader of the Liberal Unionists from 1889. In 1895, he returned to government as colonial secretary, where his aggressive, imperialist stance helped provoke the South African War (1899). He resigned again in 1903 in order to argue freely for tariff reforms.