Rural cultivators perhaps realized that they were now at the mercy of the world market. This world market, however, was not the neo-liberal fantasy of a market with no state interference. States, particularly imperial states, interfered ceaselessly. It is simply not the case, as neo-liberals have claimed for so long, that government is the problem and markets are the solution.17
After taking over the province of Berar in India in 1853 (the main cotton-producing province, located in Hyderabad), the British developed it to meet the requirements of the home industry (i.e. Manchester) by introducing technology and building railroads to connect Berar to Bombay. Berar’s natural landscape was turned upside down by a vast British effort ‘to turn so-called “waste lands” into cotton farms’.18 British economic interests prevailed to the extent that even the Cotton Commissioner for Berar appointed by the British, Harry Rivett-Carnac, was an agent of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.19 During the American Civil War, as the production of American cotton slumped, Indian cotton more than quadrupled in value.20 Irrigation was cheap, since Berar’s black soil was naturally rich for cotton. Britain only cared about Berar cotton, not Berar weavers.21 Indian peasants were now at the mercy of the constant fluctuation of prices, whether of grain or cotton. If the international prices of grain increased, it made more sense for Indian growers to export their produce (via intermediaries) rather than to sell it to the home market. If the international price of cotton fell, cotton weavers could not afford food, particularly if this food could be exported. Indian wheat exports actually increased during the 1876–7 famine. This makes perfect economic sense: one sells to those who can afford to buy, not to those who are starving to death. In practice the people of the West were eating India’s food.22 The result of a combination of drought and world market dependency was a sequence of famines in the last decades of the nineteenth century with millions of deaths: 1866 in Orissa, 1869 in Rajputana, 1873–4 in Bihar, 1876–8 in southern India.23
William Digby, a champion of Indians under British rule and an advocate of racial equality, in his ‘Prosperous’ British India: A Revelation from Official Records, published in 1901, used official statistics to demonstrate that the situation of the people of India deteriorated constantly under the British. In what amounts to a long and sustained denunciation of imperial rule, backed by an impressive array of figures and citations from official British documents, he estimated that there had been four times as many famines in the immediately preceding thirty years (under British rule) than in the previous century, and that the deaths in India caused by famines in the period 1891–1900 numbered 19 million.24 Digby denounced the delusion of the British about their allegedly enlightened rule in India and the attempt to forget that originally ‘we were in India to make money, and all shadow of pretence at even making money honestly was cast aside’.25 Many of Digby’s findings were used by Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian British MP (elected for the Liberal Party, 1892–5) and a founder of the Indian National Congress. Naoroji, a wealthy cotton merchant, claimed that the British had ‘drained India of its wealth, impoverished its people, and subjected them to a series of devastating famines’.26 He denounced the high salaries received by British colonial officials, the huge cost of an army whose task was that of maintaining British rule not just in India but also in neighbouring countries, and the tax burden inflicted on Indians without the benefit of direct representation.27 The worst famine was yet to come: the Bengal famine of 1943–4, a man-made catastrophe that caused the deaths of perhaps 3 million people.28 The new Viceroy, Archibald Wavell, pleaded in vain with the British cabinet and particularly with Churchill (in a letter, 24 October 1944), but with little success, writing that India’s problems were being treated by the government ‘with neglect, even sometimes with hostility and contempt’.29 Churchill’s racist contempt for the Indians was, of course, well known but does not seem to have tarnished his image as the saviour of Britain in the Second World War.30
The British did not just take over India gradually in the course of the nineteenth century because they thought it would lead to greater economic growth. They did so because the East India Company was no longer able to control India. Britain did not need a formal empire to penetrate Indian markets. After all they had traded successfully throughout the world without any need for direct administrative controls.31 No one could seriously argue that the lengthy and haphazard British expansion in India, which had taken 250 years, was propelled by a single cause or a single will.32 The same can be said for the French conquest of Algeria and Indochina.
Had India been a strong state, of course, it might have been able to protect its economy. But it wasn’t and it didn’t. India (and other similar colonies) suffered not because it was outside the world of Western empires. It suffered because it was part of it. It does not follow, however, that because what was later called the ‘Third World’ (the term was coined in 1952 as ‘Tiers Monde’ by the French historian Alfred Sauvy) was impaired by the industrialization of the ‘First’, the ‘First’ benefited massively. The data seem to suggest that access to non-Western markets provided only an extra stimulus to the industrial growth of the developed world.33 On the other hand, had there been no colonialism, some countries of the ‘Third World’ might well have become modern nations at an earlier stage, countries such as Egypt and Morocco as well as Mexico and Colombia.
Local entrepreneurial spirits were thwarted by imperialism. ‘King’ Jaja of Opobo in the eastern Niger delta (in today’s Nigeria) became a wealthy trader in palm oil. In the 1880s he tried to ship it directly to Liverpool to avoid the cartel of British traders who regulated the price of palm oil to their advantage.34 He was lured to a negotiation where-upon he was arrested and found guilty of blocking hinterland trade, an act that, according to Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister but on holiday in France, amounted to kidnapping. Jaja was deported to St Vincent in the West Indies. Four years later he was permitted to go back home, but died on the return journey.35 Jaja of Opobo had welcomed the presence of the British in west Africa and the trading opportunities this opened up. His mistake was to believe that one could deal with Europeans as equals.36 Colonialism was a one-way street.
The situation was no better in Egypt, ruled by Ismail Pasha, grandson of the great modernizing khedive Muhammad Ali who had tried to establish a thriving domestic cotton industry.37 The country was in dire straits because it owed vast sums to its formal suzerain, the Ottoman Empire, and because the price of its main export, cotton, had dropped significantly after the end of the American Civil War and the consequent American recovery. By 1875, Ismail Pasha’s finances relied on the goodwill of the British and the French. Egypt’s shares of the Suez Canal were sold to the British government, thus involving Britain even more in Egypt’s internal affairs. The burden of debt on the fellahin (the Egyptian peasants) increased, sapping Ismail Pasha’s remaining popularity. Europeans were appointed to the government to reassure creditors. Ismail Pasha accepted such imposition but he also encouraged agitation against the European powers, thus involving the army even more in Egyptian politics. To cap it all, Islamic reformers emerged, adding to the destabilizing forces surrounding Ismail’s rule.38 Ismail, now desperate, decided to throw in his lot with an elected assembly that had been hitherto divided and ineffectual. He declared, ‘In my capacity as head of the government and an Egyptian, I consider it my duty to comply with the opinion of the nation …’39 Neither Britain nor France (the main creditors) was impressed with this belated discovery of democracy. They put pressure on the ever weaker Ottoman Empire to depose Ismail Pasha (1879) and install his more pliable son Tewfiq.40 Ismail, ousted, spent the rest of his life in exile in Naples. Anti-British feelings erupted into a revolt in 1881, largely conducted by nationalist officers (the ‘Urabi revolt, so called after its leader, Colonel Ahmad ‘Urabi). It was quickly crushed by the British and Egypt became a de facto British colony.41
Rallying the Egyptians was difficult since a wide variety of groups jockeyed for posi
tion: the old non-Egyptian elites, tied to the former khedives (Albanians, Ottomans, etc.); expatriate Europeans; Syrian Christians; junior officers; overtaxed fellahin; urbanized intellectuals; merchants; clerks; Jews, etc. Egyptian nationalism was of the modern variety: it wanted for itself what Europeans had and what they boasted about, namely, some form of democracy and an elected parliament. The assembly that came into being had little support among the traditional conservative masses. The modernizing elites could ignore the masses, as they often do, sometimes at their cost, but could not ignore Great Britain. The members of the elected assembly wanted to wrest some powers from the Ottomans and the British. They wanted to be a true parliament in control of the national budget or, at least, that half not already pledged to servicing its debts to Europeans.42 This was more than the British and the French could bear. What if Egypt defaulted? This was the background to the British take-over of Egypt (nominally still part of the Ottoman Empire), which included the bombing of Alexandria in July 1882 by the British Mediterranean Fleet under Sir Beauchamp Seymour (as a recompense he was made Lord Alcester), the defeat of ‘Urabi’s troops, and the establishment of a British protectorate over Egypt, which lasted formally until 1922 and informally until the so-called Revolution of 23 July 1952, led by a group of army officers under the direction of Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Gladstone, who was Prime Minister in 1882, and whose government instructed Beauchamp Seymour ‘to warn & then destroy’ Egypt (in effect, bomb Alexandria), tried to invoke some kind of feeble ethical justification. In a letter to the Liberal MP John Bright on 14 July 1882, Gladstone wrote defensively that ‘I have been a labourer in the cause of peace’. It was clear, however, and clear to John Bright, that the goal was to protect the interests of the British holders of Suez Canal bonds.43 Gladstone was a reluctant imperialist, the reluctance more pronounced in opposition than in power. John Bright, the effective leader of the ‘Peace Party’, resigned from the cabinet in spite of entreaties from Gladstone: ‘I object to the slaughter of some thousands of Egyptians on such grounds as have been offered in defence of our policy.’44
This was the beginning of a lengthy period of Egyptian subservience to the wider Western world. Its features were: a native elite (including the army) whose main model of modernity was Europe; a largely rural and traditionally minded population at odds with this elite; and subservience to foreign powers (Britain until 1950, then the USSR, and then the USA). A similar pattern would be replicated in many former colonies.
In Tunisia too (also nominally part of the Ottoman Empire), modernization attempts led to an ever increasing spiral of indebtedness towards France, Britain, and Italy. The European powers created an ‘international’ commission to oversee the repayment of the country’s debt to themselves. Internal strife in Tunisia provided Jules Ferry, the French Prime Minister, with the excuse to send troops and seize power. He was backed by a near-unanimous vote in Parliament. To the dismay of Italy, which had hoped to gain a foothold in Tunisia, the French established a protectorate in 1881. At first Tunisia was not a formal colony. It was colonialism without responsibility: Tunisia kept its flag and its national anthem; Tunisians kept Tunisian nationality; and the coinage was in the name of the Bey (Sultan) who remained in office. Nevertheless all practical attributes of sovereignty, particularly foreign relations, were in the hands of the French.45 The real ruler was the French Résident général appointed from Paris. The Bey’s task was, in effect, to repay the debts contracted. The Treaty of Bardo signed with France in May 1881 stated plainly that the Bey’s reforms would have to be approved by France and that no new loans could be contracted without the authorization of France.46 In fact, the treaty was merely the terms of Tunisia’s surrender and the Bey was given a few hours to accept it. Had he refused he would have been taken prisoner.47 Two years later, in 1883, tribal unrest forced France to intervene again and with greater ferocity, ruling Tunisia, technically still a protectorate (though the word was not used in the Treaty of Bardo), almost like a colony until 1956.
Pro-colonialists argue that colonialism brought some advantages and not just to the colonial power. Niall Ferguson believes that ‘without the spread of British rule’ liberal capitalism and parliamentary democracy would not have been so successfully established throughout the world.48 Some might wonder to what extent parliamentary democracy has really been established throughout the world, or why particular credit is due to the British, since very few parliamentary democracies seem to have copied the Westminster system. Nevertheless, it is true that not being colonized was not a recipe for economic or political success. Countries that were never colonies, such as Afghanistan, Nepal, Ethiopia (a colony for only a few years), and Liberia fared no better (and probably worse) than some of their colonized neighbours. But the forty-eight countries listed as the ‘least developed countries’ by the United Nations in 2012 have almost all been colonies: thirty-three in Africa, fourteen in Asia and Oceania, and one in the Caribbean (Haiti), though these countries were certainly not prosperous before colonialism.49 One thing is certain: colonial countries would have had quite a different shape and history if they had not been colonized and no one can be sure what this would have been.
The gap between the two worlds was not purely one of wealth. It reflected an international division of labour: Europe and North America exported manufactured goods, agricultural produce such as wheat, and dominated finance and international trade, while the countries of the ‘periphery’ (i.e. not part of the West) were largely limited to the export of primary products: silk and tea from China, cotton from Egypt and India, sugar from Brazil, wool and beef from Argentina, nitrates and copper from Chile, and so on. None of the peripheral countries of the core itself (whether Russia, Spain, Italy or Romania or even Japan) felt they had a real option. They had to follow the pathbreakers – maybe in their own way, but they had to follow. Modern industrial capitalism belonged, then, to the West. Even Argentina, by far the most developed of Latin American countries, had, at the end of the nineteenth century, a relatively small manufacturing sector composed of small and medium-sized firms employing less than 20 per cent of the workforce.50 Moreover, countries exporting primary products were at the mercy of changes in demand in the importing country. Thus once European beet sugar was produced in ever larger quantities (mainly in Germany and France), cane sugar became less important, to the detriment of Caribbean sugar cane and hence to planters and growers, many of whom had been forcibly transported from Africa as slaves. This was not before the production of sugar cane had destroyed many of the forests of those islands, never to be replaced.51 Few of the one hundred or so countries subjected to colonial rule ever developed a proper manufacturing sector.52
There are significant differences between ‘real’ colonies, such as the Caribbean islands, and settlers’ states, like the USA, Australia, and New Zealand, and originally the Latin American countries. The relationship between settlers and the ‘mother-country’ (Spain, England) was nothing like the relationship between conquered Africans or Indians and their European ‘masters’. Settlers’ states often had more in common with states that had escaped colonization, countries such as Japan, which caught up with the West in the 1960s, or Thailand. The Asian ‘Tigers’ that emerged after 1945 had never been classical colonies: not even Taiwan or South Korea (for decades under Japanese control), though when Korea was formally annexed by Japan in 1910 there were 170,000 Japanese settlers, almost all recent immigrants. By 1935 there were over almost 600,000, a number comparable to French settlers in Algeria.53 One-quarter of the Japanese who settled in Korea worked in the colonial administration, so were not ‘real’ settlers, and other Japanese became small landlords employing Korean workers.54 Japanese workers who wanted to go abroad went to California and Hawaii.55 There was little cultural assimilation. The city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong were commercial and financial intermediaries and therefore more autonomous from China, or the British Crown, than if they had remained part of C
hina or been part of Malaysia. China, the great success story in the race to industrialization since the 1980s, for all its woes, humiliations, and oppression, was never a colony.
Africans were not ‘free’ to follow their ‘own’ model of development, and never really had the option of delaying their integration in the world economy until their own economic structures were sturdy enough to resist subjugation. The only country in sub-Saharan Africa with an adequate infrastructure, state institutions, education system, financial network and so on (compared to its neighbours) was South Africa – a country that had freed itself from the clutches of the British Empire earlier than the rest of the continent, though one in which, until the final decade of the twentieth century, a minority of white settlers oppressed a black majority.
But was colonization itself the way forward for the pathbreakers? Although colonialism did not play a major role in the birth of the British Industrial Revolution it helped its development. Did Britain succeed in industrialization because it had inserted itself into the international system earlier than others? Karl Marx had no doubt about this being the case. Early colonialism, he thought, was a key variable to British development:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c.56
The Anxious Triumph Page 59
