Colonialism and its Legacy

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Colonialism and its Legacy

• Devs 200, 2007

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Colonialism Why relevant?

• Modern history cannot be understood outside the
  colonial context which burdened poorer countries
  with technological, financial, and trading
  disadvantages vis a vis former colonial powers
• Colonialism helps to explain
• Current inequalities between rich and poor
  countries
• Structural causes of underdevelopment
• Current civil and international conflicts
• Current claims to land rights
• BUT, was it all bad?
• Are people better off than they would have been
  without colonialism?

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Colonialism and Development

• Colonialism
• Establishment of political and administrative
  control by foreign states
• Economic interests reinforced by political
  control
• Laws and regulations imposed by colonial power,
  including powers to raise revenue through
  taxation
• Much of sub Saharan Africa, S.Asia, SE Asia
• Sometimes associated with settlement by
  foreigners
• Colonies of settlement
• Americas (Spain, Portugal), Canada, Australia,
  New Zealand (Britain)
• Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa (Britain, Holland)
• Angola, Mozambique (Portugal)

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Phases of the colonial period

• !6th Century
• European exploration and conquest primarily by
  Spain and Portugal The Americas and the
  Caribbean
• 17th 18th
• Expansion of trade (mercantilism) and
  plantation economies in the Americas and the
  Caribbean. Associated with the slave trade
• Heyday of Chartered companies, e.g. English East
  India Company
• 18th -20th
• Colonialism in Asia, then Africa, associated with
  the era of industrial capitalism and imperialism
  (European powers, especially Britain, France,
  Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Belgium,
  Italy)
• British and Dutch East India Companies protected
  sources of raw materials on behalf of colonial
  powers and created new markets
• Scramble for Africa and more intensive colonial
  administration
• Latin American colonies officially independent
• 20th
• Independence from British Empire beginning with
  India in 1947, followed by French, Belgian,
  Portuguese
• Colonial expansion in mid to late 20th century
• Japan (Korea, Taiwan)
• China (Tibet)
• Indonesia (East Timor, Irian Jaya)

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Why colonise?

• To guarantee supply of raw materials
• and consumer products for the wealthy
• To provide cheap labour for mining and
  agricultural interests, as well as for large
  scale infrastructure (roads and railways in the
  colonies), and imperial wars
• To develop markets for manufactured products from
  industrialised Europe
• Great Power rivalry
• To civilise from a sense of duty
• Bringing light to The Dark Continent
• The White Mans Burden

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Exploitation?
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Impacts of Colonialism

• 90 of Central and South Americas indigenous
  population is reported to have died labour
  subsequently had to be imported from Africa as
  part of the slave trade
• 22.9 million Africans exported in Atlantic Trade
  devastating impact on African societies
• Introduction of private property rights
• In African settler colony contexts, African
  farmers were pushed on to marginal lands
• Economies all oriented to exporting raw materials
  (primary produce) and generating revenue for
  colonial power
• Artificial boundaries that divided some ethnic
  groups, and lumped together others who had little
  in common
• Differential impact Local elites often
  benefitted from collaboration with colonial power
• Internalization of a sense of inferiority and
  dependency
• Colonization of the mind (Fanon, 1963)
  Christian missionaries, Western attitudes and
  values, dependence complex (Mannoni, 1956)

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On the other hand.

• During the later stages of colonialism
• health care, education systems, training of local
  personnel for colonial bureaucracy
• greater economic investment for local development
• Colonialism generated a sense of collective
  experience and identity tribal rivalries
  subsumed to nationalism, at least temporarily.

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Resistance to colonialism

• We in India may in a moment realise that 100,000
  Englishmen need not frighten 300 million human
  beings (Gandhi, 1920)
• When you understand you are being oppressed, you
  make changes. We had taken the Mau Mau oath
  because we had realised that the leadership of
  the white man was only oppressing us more and
  more, and we had a color bar which was as bad as
  the one which existed in South Africa. ..We
  abandoned Christianity entirely and began
  praying in the traditional Kikuyu way (Nderi
  Kagombe, cited in Elkins, 206)

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Forms of resistance

• Non Violent resistance (Gandhi)
• Protesting British rule Wearing homespun cloth,
  challenging British salt monopoly (The Salt
  March), non-violent protest
• Mass political movements
• Armed liberation struggles

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Motivation for independence movements

• To overcome material deprivations of colonialism
• To overcome psychological scars of colonialism
• To (re)claim independent cultural and national
  identity
• To play catch up with the West
• Inspiration from Russian Revolution 1917
  (Shaking off imperial power is possible)
• Inspiration of the newly formed United Nations

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Why did colonial rule end when it did?

• Second WW had depleted European resources
  colonial administration became too costly
• Soldiers recruited from the colonies returned
  with resentment about the price they had paid for
  saving the Empire
• Increased resistance now expressed by newly
  educated elite who were able to mobilise the
  sense of injustice over colonial rule as a
  nationalist cause.
• Pressure from US. After the war they insisted on
  access to dependent colony markets

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Decline of colonialism
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Independence

• From 1945-1981, 105 new states joined the United
  Nations. The number of independent states rose
  from 51 156.
• Now 192.
• The European idea of the nation state became the
  essential framework for development.

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Two examples of resistance to British colonialism

• Gandhis non violent strategies to passive
  resistance through Satyagraha (Persuasion and
  Truth)
• Salt March, 1930
• Kikuyu rebellion in Kenya (The Mau Mau
  movement, 1950s)

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Questions Gandhi

• What was the reason for the Salt March?
• In what ways was the salt issue symbolic of the
  injustices of colonialism?
• Why was non-violence (Satyaghara) an effective
  strategy?
• What has been the legacy of Gandhis strategy of
  non violence?