A Strange Family

Looking at the course of human history, the times created outstanding historical figures—some heroes, some demons.

Fascist ideology rose across the world, advocating that "superior nations" should conquer "inferior nations" and seize other countries' territory as their own living space. Such ideas existed in Britain as well.

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the third Marquess of Salisbury and three-time British prime minister during the Victorian era, was an imperialist. He believed that the progress of backward races had to pass through a stage of European rule, especially British rule, and that this stage had to be maintained by force. His mission was to expand and defend the British Empire.

In foreign affairs, he focused on plundering colonies. In Asia, Burma was seized; in West Africa, Nigeria was conquered; Kenya was occupied; Uganda was entered; in South Africa, Rhodesia was occupied. He had also approved the war against China in 1900.

Though history called it the Eight-Nation Alliance, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the major European powers formed alliances one after another. He believed Britain needed no allies, that it should maintain Splendid Isolation and preserve the European balance of power. He did not support Joseph Chamberlain's proposal to ally with the German Empire. In short, he thought himself capable of anything. If not for his advanced age, this prime minister would not have given up his concurrent post as foreign secretary.

His non-alignment policy ended when the Marquess of Lansdowne, his foreign secretary, concluded the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902 and abandoned the policy of Splendid Isolation. That same year, he announced his retirement and handed the office of prime minister to his nephew, Arthur Balfour.

Compared with his own son, the marquess preferred his nephew. Arthur Balfour had the nickname "Bloody Balfour," earned through his bloody suppression of