Q. What do you understand by colonialism ? Point out important features of its various stage in India. उपनिवेशवाद से आप क्या समझते हैं? भारत में इसके विभिन्न चरणों की विशेषताएँ बताइये। [BPSC, 1993] ©selfstudyhistory.com

Ans:

Colonialism

• Colonialism, as a historical phenomenon of territorial expansion, is intimately connected with the rise and growth of the modern capitalist world system.
  • Colonialism is as modern a historical phenomenon as industrial capitalism. It is a complex phenomenon of capitalist expansion.
• In a narrow sense, colonialism refers to the process of control of supplies of raw materials, mineral resources, and markets in underdeveloped and pre-capitalist regions.
  • Such narrow definition of colonialism overlooks a vital aspect of colonialism relating to political activity and the drive for dominance over the daily lives of the people of colonies.
• In a modern sense, colonialism is a general description of the state of subjection—political, economic, intellectual—of a non-European society as a result of the process of colonial organisation. Colonialism deprives a society of its freedom and its earth and, above all, it leaves its people intellectually and morally disoriented.
  • It is a well structured whole, a distinct social formation in which the basic control of the polity, economy and society is in the hands of a foreign capitalist class.
• Colonialism, as a historical pheno­menon, refers to foreign domination which implies that the colonised area is regulated in a manner known as ‘unequal exchange’. Colonised societies are intended to serve the interests of the ruling country.
  • i.e. colonialism refers to foreign domination in social, economic, and political policies of the colony countries. Obviously, the destiny of the colony is governed by the policies of the foreign country so as to sub-serve the interests of the ruling country.
• The economic and social development of a colonial country is completely subordinated to the ruling country. Colonial economy is stripped off all independent economic decisions. The development of agricultural, utilisation of the country’s vast natural resources, its industrial and tariff policies, trading relations with foreign countries, and so on are left into the hands of the ruling country.
• The economic policies of colonies conform to the interests of the rulers and not of the subjects. Obviously, this unequal relationship between these countries results in a state of underdevelopment of the colony.
• Note: If Imperialism is what happens in the metropolis, then colonialism is what happens in the colonies. The same system of capitalism that produced development in the Western world created underdevelopment in the colony. In this sense imperialism and colonialism are two sides of the same coin.

Causes of Colonialism:

• Discovery of New Lands And Trade Routes
• Economic Consideration: The countries like England, France, Spain and Portugal established their colonies primarily for the economic benefits.
• Mercantilism: The policy of Mercantilism was based on the premise that the economic development of the mother country (Metropolis) was most important and the colonies should be governed in such a way that they lead to the benefit of the mother country.
• European Rivalry:
  • The exploration and colonization was started by Spain and Portugal. Gradually, other countries like France and England also entered the race. Acquiring new colonies became a thing of national pride.
  • Moreover, due to various economic benefits of colonization, a stage of ‘competitive colonialism’ started among the European powers.
• To Spread Christianity:
  • During the Age of Discovery; the Catholic Church started a major effort to spread Christianity in the New World by converting indigenous peoples.
  • As such, the establishment of Christian missions went simultaneously with the colonizing efforts of European powers such as Spain, France and Portugal.
• Push Factors:
  • The enclosure movement, taking land out of cultivation and converting it into pastureland for sheep, was creating a surplus population.
  • Sheep raising, more profitable than traditional agriculture, required fewer labourers. The new lands in America gave these unemployed a place to work.
• In Asia, the Europeans met ancient and well populated societies, and hence direct colonization was not feasible.
  • Rather, armed coastal trading posts along maritime trade routes (such as Goa, Malacca and Macau), were established.
  • Nonetheless, in certain areas both Spanish and Portuguese became the effective rulers.
• In India, the internal conflicts among Indian Kingdoms, the technological superiority of Europeans and financial benefits of commerce enabled the European traders to gradually gain political and military influence and appropriate lands.

Four basic features of colonialism:

• Under colonialism, the colony is integrated into the world capitalist system in a subordinate position.
  • It is to be noted here that dependence or subservience of the colonial economy and society was the crucial or determining aspect “and not mere linkage or integration with world capitalism or the world market”.
• The colonialism in India is encompassed by the twin notions of unequal exchange and internal disarticulation of the economy
  • Colonialism is characterized by unequal exchange.
    • The exploitative international division of labour meant that the metropolis produced goods of high value with high technology and colonies produced goods of low value and productivity with low technology.
    • The colony produced raw materials while the metropolis produced manufactured goods.
    • The pattern of railway development in India in the second half of the 19th Century was in keeping with the interests of British industry
  • The colony was articulated with the world market but internally disarticulated. Its agricultural sector did not serve its industry but the metropolitan economy and the world market.
• The drain of wealth took place through unrequited exports and state expenditure on armed forces and civil services.
  • The advancement of the Indian economy had been largely halted during the British regime due to the low availability of actual social surplus or internal savings available for investment in the economy.
  • Such scarcity of internal savings is attributed to drain of wealth or unilateral transfer of surplus to the metropolis.
• Foreign political domination.
  • India’s policies were determined in Britain not for the interests of India, but for the British economy and society.

• There were three distinct stages of colonialism. The forms of subordination changed over time.
• The stages were the result of four factors:
  • the historical development of capitalism as a world system;
  • the change in the society, economy and polity of the metropolis;
  • the change in its position in the world economy and lastly;
  • the colony’s own historical development.
• First Stage (broadly from 1757 to 1813): Monopoly Trade and Plunder:
  • In order to make trade more profitable indigenously manufactured goods were to be bought cheap. For this competitors were to be kept out, whether local or European. Territorial conquest kept local traders out of the lucrative trade while rival European companies were defeated in war.
    • Thus the characteristic of the first stage was monopoly of trade.
  • The political conquest of the colony enabled plunder and seizure of surplus. For example, the drain of wealth from India to Britain during the first stage was considerable.
    • It amounted to two to three per cent of the national income of Britain at that time.
  • Colonialism was superimposed on the traditional systems of economy and polity. No basic changes were introduced in the first stage.
  • In India:
    • Both the objectives – the monopoly of trade and appropriation of government revenues – were rapidly fulfilled with the conquest first of Bengal and parts of South India and then the rest of India.
    • The East India Company now used its political power to acquire monopolistic control over Indian trade and handicrafts.
      • Indian traders were ruined while weavers were forced to sell cheap. The company’s monopoly ruined the weavers. In the next stage cheap manufactured goods finished them.
    • The drain of wealth was admitted to by British officials.
      • In the words of the Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors, “Our system acts very much like a sponge, drawing up all the good things from the banks of the Ganges and squeezing them down on the banks of the Thames.”
    • The colony did not undergo any fundamental changes in this stage.
      • Changes were made only in military organization and technology and at the top level of revenue administration.
      • Land revenue could be extracted from the villages without disturbing much the existing systems.
    • In the sphere of ideology too there was respect for traditional systems in contrast to the denunciation of traditional values in the second stage.
      • The respect with which Sanskrit was held by British Indologists like William Jones was in sharp contrast to Macaulay’s later dismissal of traditional learning as not being enough to fill a bookshelf of a good Western library.
• Second Stage (broadly from 1813 to 1858): Era of Free Trade:
  • The interest of the industrial bourgeoisie of the metropolis in the colony was in the markets available for manufactured goods. For this it was necessary to increase exports from the colony to pay for purchase of manufactured imports.
    • The metropolitan bourgeoisie also wanted to develop the colony as a producer of raw materials to lessen dependence on non-empire sources.
    • Increase of exports from the colony would also enable it to pay for the high salaries and profits of merchants.
  • The industrial bourgeoisie opposed plunder as a form of appropriation of surplus on the ground that it would destroy the goose that laid the golden eggs.
    • Trade was the mechanism by which the social surplus was to be appropriated in this stage.
  • In this stage changes in the economy, polity, administration, social, cultural and ideological structure were initiated to enable exploitation in the new way.
  • The slogan was development and modernization.
  • The colony was to be integrated with the world capitalist economy and the mother country.
  • Capitalists were allowed to develop plantations, trade, transport, mining and industries.
    • The system of transport and communications was developed to facilitate the movement of massive quantities of raw materials to the ports for export.
  • Liberal imperialism was the new political ideology. The rhetoric of the rulers was to train the people in self-government.
  • In India:
    • The era of free trade saw India emerge as a market for manufactured goods and a supplier of raw materials and food grains.
      • Import of Manchester cloth increased in value from 96 lakh sterling in 1860 to 27 crore sterling in 1900.
      • Traditional weavers were ruined by this competition.
    • Rather than industrialization, decline of industry or deindustrialization took place.
      • In the middle Gangetic region, according to historian A.K. Bagchi, the weight of industry in the livelihood pattern of the people was reduced by half from 1809-13 to the census year 1901.
    • Estimates by Sivasubramaniam indicate that in the last half century of British rule per capita income in India remained almost stagnant. Dadabhai Naoroji calculated per capita income at Rs.20 per annum.
    • Railway expansion was undertaken and a modern post and telegraph system was set up. Administration was made more detailed and comprehensive so that imports could penetrate the villages and raw materials could be taken out easily.
    • The legal system was to be improved so as to ensure upholding the sanctity of contract.
    • Modern education was introduced to produce babus to man the new administration.
    • Westernized habits were expected to increase the demand for British goods.
    • Transformation of the existing culture and social organization required that the existing culture be denounced.
      • Orientalism, by depriving people of the power to study their own languages, was an appropriation of the processes by which people understand themselves. The new ideology was one of development.
      • Underdevelopment was not the desired but the inevitable consequence of the inexorable working of colonialism of trade and of its inner contradictions.
• Third Stage (broadly from last decades of 19th century and continuing till independence): Era of Finance Capital:
  • The third stage saw intense struggle for markets and sources of raw materials and food grains.
  • Large scale accumulation of capital in the metropolis necessitated search for avenues for investment abroad. These interests were best served where the imperial powers had colonies.
    • This led to more intensive control over the colony in order to protect the interests of the imperial power.
  • In the sphere of ideology the mood was one of reaction. The need for intensive control increased. There was no more talk of self government; instead benevolent despotism was the new ideology according to which the colonial people were seen as children who would need guardians forever.
  • A major contradiction in this stage was that the colony was not able to absorb metropolitan capital or increase its exports of raw materials because of overexploitation in the earlier stages.
    • A strategy of limited modernization was implemented to take care of this problem but the logic of colonialism could not be subverted. Underdevelopment became a constraint on further exploitation of the colony.
  • In India:
    • A huge amount of capital was invested in railways, loans to the Government of India, trade and to a lesser extent in plantations, coal mining, jute mills, shipping and banking in India.
    • In this stage, Britain’s position in the world was constantly challenged by the rivalry of new imperialist countries. The result was further consolidation of its control over India.
      • Some worldwide developments caused a new development in the British policy in India. The most important development was the eclipse of Britain as the only industrial power of the world since other European nations succeeded in industrializing themselves.
      • Control had to be strengthened to contend with competition from rival imperialist powers.
      • For her survival, Britain decided to make massive investments in various fields (rail, road, postal system, irrigation, European banking system, and a limited field of education, etc.) in India by plundering Indian capital.
      • It is said that ‘railway construction’ laid the foundation for a new stage of colonial exploitation, or in other words, the exploitation by British capital investment in India.
      • The fact the amount of export of capital to India was insignificant and the capital plundered from the Indian people was invested in this country as the British capital. It increased the public debt in India.
        • The clever tactic of public debt system received a strong stimulus from the British Government under which the volume of public debt stood at £ 224 million in 1900. It swelled to £ 884 million before the Second World War (1939-45).
        • Similarly, the uneconomic as well as extravagant system of railway construction also caused public debt to fan out.
      • The British investment was not meant for India’s industrial development.
        • The important point to note is that roughly 97 p.c. of the British capital invested in India before the First World War was devoted to administration, transport, plantation, and finance.
        • The basic motive behind such investment was the commercial penetration of India, its exploitation as a source of raw materials and markets for British manufactures.
    • This major spurts in industrial investment took place precisely during those periods when India’s economic links with the world capitalist economy were temporarily loosened:
      • foreign trade and the inflow of foreign capital were reduced or interrupted thrice during the 20th Century, i.e. during the First World War, the Great Depression (1929-34) and World War II.
      • What took place was only industrial growth, not industrial revolution.
    • Reactionary imperialist policies characterized the viceroyalties of Lytton and Curzon. All talk of self government ended and the aim of British rule was declared to be permanent trusteeship over the child people of India.

To conclude, we can say that whatever be the stage of colonialism, the main objective was the exploitation of the colony and only the methodology of exploitation changed. ©selfstudyhistory.com