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5. But I doubt if any consistent logical application of the principle can be traced. In practice much flexibility was inevitable, to take account not only of ability to pay but political willingness to do so - for unless self- interest kept a territory British (as I suppose it does Hong Kong?), too much pressure might force it to take the American way out, which until quite lately would have been thought unfortunate.
Scope of the principle
6. In the heyday of Empire the main defence of the colonies was the Navy. But fleets are essentially mobile, and I have never heard of anyone trying to quantify the naval cost of defending each individual colony or using
a basis for seeking dolonial defence contributions. The same broadly speaking for the RAF when it came in (except for logistic support like colonial airfields, but they were costly ventures which often attracted British aid). The defence contributions story is primarily an Army one. Moreover I can't recall offhand any instance of contributions being sought from a colony where tropps were not actually stationed, even though it might be argued e.g. that the war in Europe saved the West Indian colonies from invasion (the USA certainly thought,so). All this narrows down the field quite a bit.
7. An important cross-current comes in here too. In time of peace, the role of troops in a colony is quite as much (usually more) internal security as actual "defence". and it would be a clever accountant who could cost the two elements separately. In the 1950's (when I was head of CO Defence Dept. for my sins) the Chiefs of Staff, distracted by sideshows like Malaya and Mau Mau and beginning to feel the Treasury squeeze, insisted that colonies should take over maximum responsibility for internal security. In many cases that meant raising, and paying, local troops as well as police. Where that was done and the British garrison correspondingly reduced it would have been more difficult to ask for a cash contribution to Imperial defence as well. Not so in colonies with where the Imperial defence commitment bulked larger than the local security one Hong Kong being the prime example.
Some modern examples
8. The Hong Kong letter refers to memories of the Gold Coast. The arrangements in West and East Africa were peculiar because the locals troops had been taken over (and much enlarged) by the War Office during the second war for use in the Abyssinian and Burma campaigns. Afterwards, in the mistaken belief that here was the Indian Army of the
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