ABSTRACT
Defining British policy in the Middle East and South-Eastern Asia as an extension of Indian policy, Salisbury regarded India as the centre of British imperial enterprises in the East. He was prepared to make the British government in India more acceptable to the natives, and to give any practical entitlements to them, so long as British interests were not consequently sacrificed and British sovereignty there not undermined. The balance between Indian self-assertion and Britain’s concept of right was that which Salisbury strove to reach in his two periods at the India Office, consistently. The interests of the Indian population and the British duties of good government, which Salisbury emphasized all the time, were two different aspects in colonial politics and not necessarily in contradiction to, or in conformity with, each other. With respect to the defence of India, Salisbury was vigorously defensive, always keeping a watchful eye on the movements of the contending parties in Afghanistan and on Russian activities in Central Asia. Clearly, Salisbury’s imperial policy was not imperialistic, but he had to be forward in keeping the other Powers in check in order to effectuate his policy of containment. Herein lay an acute ‘sense of original sin’ in regard of politics that made Salisbury truly conservative.
