Colonial History of India

06-06-2009, 09:37 AM

QUOTE(ramana @ Jun 5 2009, 01:15 PM)I have a question about the East India company troops that were in Delhi in 1857. The poet laments "tilingas" came and looted and that lamps were lit and temple bless rung.

Was this the revenge of the Telugus for Kakatiyas?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTESeveral felt that Muslims were singled out for reprisals. Shah Ayatollah Johri rues the desecration of mosques and holy places, claiming that the Brahmins prosper while the Muslims suffer and the masjids remain desolate while in the temples the conches can now be heard:

The House of God lies in darkness whereas the lamps are lit in the temples
The traditions of the infidels thrive whereas the light of faith flickers
The mystically inclined Syed Ali Tashnah, a much-loved poet of Delhi, blames the outsiders who robbed and pillaged:

The Tilangas came and looted the entire city
As the saying goes, the naked came to rob the hungry


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I don't think Tilangas mean Telugus

http://sidshome1.blogspot.com/2007/06/1857...dependence.html
...Delhi sources describe them as âTilangasâ or âPurbiasâ - effectively outsidersâ. "...

Also, I think Kakatiya memory was gone as baton was passed to Vijayanagara after Musunuris' defeat. so having mems for "revenge of the Telugus for Kakatiyas" would be a stretch in 1857 but revenge for Vijayanagara is possible from Southerners.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 06-06-2009, 11:04 AM by Bodhi.)

QUOTE(shyam @ Jun 6 2009, 09:37 AM)Was this the revenge of the Telugus for Kakatiyas?
[right][snapback]98369[/snapback][/right]

against whom?

QUOTE(shyam @ Jun 6 2009, 09:37 AM)I don't think Tilangas mean Telugus
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It does mean telanganians, of course telugu speakers. EIC had hired hindu youth from the telangana region and raised a local regiment, which was deployed first against Tippoo, and then against peshawa. Kamptee (Kamthi) near Nagpur was its important base besides secunderabad. After subjugation of south was complete, this regiment was moved northwards and stationed in UP and Bihar.

And purabia meant the awadhi-bhojpuri speaking soldiers from the east UP and north-west Bihar, mostly brahmin and rajputs -- they were likewise hired and inducted in the Bengal regiment which was a misnomer and had no bengali. After subjugation of Bengal, this was also deployed in misadventures against Afghanistan and Nepal, also in a conflict in china near canton.

Both the above were largely Hindus regiments, of course under european officers, battle-hardened and disciplined, and technically best-trained for the time. Moslems were only hired at this time as jamadars and such lowly jobs, and to do spying.

Of course both of the above telugu and awadhi-bojpuri speaking Hindus had together fought shoulder to shoulder, far away from their homelands leaderlessly, with one immediate aim, shoot the white b@st@rd, and free the entire bharata. So, no they were not taking any artificial revenge against anyone, but were a positive force trying to get rid of this recent scum enforced upon India. Why else would both of them fight in Delhi, accepting the Peshwa as supreme commander and Bahadur Shah as king?

That they were unable to even speak to each other, except in some broken Hindi, was also evident. Bharatendu Harishchandra later wrote that it was this fact that he heard about from Bengal in his childhood, that tilangas and purabias fighting side by side did not know how to communicate with each other, had provoked him to promote a common peoples language for Indians, when he later chose khadi boli for the experiment.

Also, because tilangas were cavalrymen, and were recognized by people for riding horse with their large enfield on shoulder, the name later tilanga came to apply to any musketeers.

ramana · 07-02-2009, 02:48 AM

X-post...

X-posted...
QUOTE("brihaspati")The Urdu and regional language docs around the 1857 period were neglected I think primarily because of the Marxist ideological straightjacket stemming from Marx's hilarious commentary on the first "war of Independence".

Regime supported Indian historians have always felt uncomfortable with 1857. It has many connotations dangerous for all succeeding Indian regimes.

Marx's comments stifled Indian Marxist historians because they could not decide whether 1857 was "good" or "bad" - bad because it spread colonialism, and good because it overturned "feudalism", and like Alexander's supposed invasion, provided with great relief for the historians, a context and connection to the more "understood" and "comfortable" Marxist-European linear schema of historical development.

Even after Independence, GOI would be uncomfortable with the "mutiny" aspect of the the 1857 military, and I think we will recognize this discomfort even on this forum. The whole gamut of constructions of "martial races" actually based on who remained loyal to licking British boots, perhaps continues in their long shadows even on to the current system - thereby possibly causing discomfort.Â

The possibility of collaboration between supposedly unmergable faith communities against a GOI perceived as the common enemy is also a dangerous portent.

Then there comes the political ramifications and merry confusions on images of even current political descendants of forces who took an active role. If you focus too much on 1857 as an attempt at "liberation" against a "foreign" occupying force, what happens to the "shining-sun" Scindhia who carries the name of someone who definitely collaborated with and helped this "foreign occupying" force?

I think it should be obvious why it took a certain Savarkar to portray 1857 as a "war of independence", and what happened subsequently to that Savarkar.

Access to these Urdu records, during my attempts, were stymied because, I was not a "professional historian". I had to be "supervised" by an "acceptable professional historian" if I wanted to get access, which I refused. Western journalists, and historians ofcourse even then had easy access. But I have not seen much coming out of their pens - probably they shied away from writing what they found because it would do their regimes no good at all.

Even, recently, with the supposed Glasnost in UK historians, just try to raise two issues - the triangular Atlantic trade and its role in capital extraction and jumpstarting the so-called "industrial revolution", and the role of exploitation of child labour in British capital formation.

ramana · 07-06-2009, 10:11 PM

From Pioneer, 6 July 2009

QUOTEAGENDA | Sunday, July 5, 2009 | Email | Print |

Shedding colonial baggage

BB Kumarâs book is a rich collection of materials and painstaking analysis, writes Satya Mitra Dubey

India: Caste, Culture and Traditions
Author: BB Kumar
Publisher: Yash Publications
Price: Rs 2,100

Author BB Kumar, being a teacher, an academic administrator in the field of higher education, an active researcher with training in anthropology, with his natural inclination for a textual and empirical understanding of Indian society mixed with first hand familiarity with the linguistic, socio-cultural and political problems of the tribes of the Northeast, can easily depend on his experience and study to write a book on Indian castes, culture and traditions.

According to him, âThe confusion of the average Indian about our social structure, culture and tradition is enormous. The root cause is our culture and tradition illiteracy that is quite high in society, especially among our university degree holders. One reason for this is the continuance of the old colonial education in our country even after Independence.â 

Kumar is of the view that social science disciplines such as anthropology, history and Indology, apart from the mindset of a large section of educated Indians, are coloured by colonial misinterpretations. This is primarily the motivating factor for writing this book. âEfforts should be made to get our social sciences and education rid of the all pervasive colonial hangover without any delay. The book, written with this perspective in mind, tries to inform about Indian social structures â varna and caste â and the various other aspects of our culture and tradition in the succeeding chapters,â Kumar says.

Al Beruni mentions only four castes and eight outcastes in Hindu society and the fact that all the four castes, as observed by him, had no hesitation in eating together, Kumar says, indicates that the caste system in its present form is a post-Turk phenomenon. The constant invasions, wars, defeats and reprisals in the medieval period generated insularity among Hindus, leading to the hardening of commensality and extreme forms of the notions of purity and pollution.

The early administrators of East India Company were primarily interested in profit through loot, expansion and consolidation of the British Empire. The well-integrated Indian society and stable village communities were portrayed in their reports, monographs and surveys as consisting of isolated, mutually-exclusive castes, tribes, communities, linguistic groups, sects, religions and mass of people geographically scattered and racially distinct.

Some of the early Western translators of Sanskrit texts into English deliberately misinterpreted the philosophical and religious concepts. By this the main purpose was to strengthen colonial rule, propagate Christianity and convert Indians. To achieve these objectives, Indian customs and traditions were degraded.

Going through these bold assertions, a natural question may arise: Has Kumar offered sustainable evidence to prove his line of argument? Yes.

The author recognises the valuable contributions made by William Jones and a host of other scholars and administrators. But at the same time, he points to the negative, distorted and motivated pictures of Indian society as presented by Abbe JA Dubois, Max Mueller, James Mill, ET Dalton, HH Risley, among others. 

James Millâs History of British India was recommended as a basic text for candidates of the Indian Civil Service. Even a pro-colonial scholar like Max Mueller calls this book âmost mischievousâ. According to a well-known Sanskrit scholar, Prof Wilson: âMill, in his estimate of Hindu character, is guided by Dubois â¦ Orme and Buchanan, Tenant and Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very unprejudiced judges. Mill, however, picks out all that is most unfavourable from their works and omits the qualifications which these writers felt bound to give to their wholesale condemnation of the Hindus.â

Brahmins, being the intellectual class in India, were especially targeted. Dubois considered them the greatest hurdle in winning âIndia for Christâ. The Boden Professorship of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford was established to translate Sanskrit books into English so as to enable the British to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion. Macaulay, who had a design of âproselytisation through educationâ, proposed to pay Â£10,000 to Max Mueller for translating the Rig Veda in such a manner that it would destroy the belief of Hindus in the Vedic religion.

In Kumarâs assessment, in the early phases, the process of differentiation and stratification based on the varna system was positive. The varna system played significant roles in division of labour in Indian society and helped in organising occupational structure. Its contributions were pivotal in the socio-cultural integration of Indian society. The present degraded form of rigid and untouchabilty-based caste system is the product of the latter phases. In the first decades of the 20th century, such views were strongly upheld by scholars like Bhagwan Das and Anand K Coomaswami. Even Mahatma Gandhi had highlighted the positive roles of varna and caste.

The author has tried to discuss different aspects of caste in different chapters with special emphasis on its relationship with varna, professions and mobility, clan and marriage, food taboos and commensality, caste clusters, socio-religious practices, panchayats and castes and the caste-tribe continuum. There are chapters on deities and priests, the jajmani relationship and Scheduled Castes.

In the evaluation of any work, there are bound to be different opinions. This book, too, is not an exception. For its rich collection of materials and painstaking analysis, this book deserves admiration. At the same time, in this era of ideological controversies and political motivations, some others may find it tradition-oriented.

Both these stands will make this book more readable and valuable.

The writer is a senior sociologist and political analyst

ramana · 07-06-2009, 10:21 PM

Another one from Pioneer, 6 july 2009

QUOTEAGENDA | Sunday, July 5, 2009 | Email | Print |

Politics of religion

This book posits, through facts and arguments, a historical trajectory of different stages of Indian society particularly with a focus on colonial and post-colonial developments, writes Ajay Kumar

This is a pioneering work and a must read book for undergraduate and post-graduate students by Himanshu Roy who teaches political science in the University of Delhi. It is equally a work of importance for those who are interested in research and debates on communalism and secularism in India as it posits, through facts and arguments, a historical trajectory of different stages of Indian society particularly with a focus on colonial and post-colonial developments. More, it analyses the transformation of dharma and relegere under colonialism/ capitalism with a comparison of Western Europe.

Royâs main thesis which he rightly points out, is that âIndian states in history, unlike Europe, have rarely been theocratic. Neither were they ideologically premised on the religious majority-minority divide.â The vast number of independent small peasantry existing on a natural subsistence economy enjoying a large degree of freedom which itself is required for agricultural decision-making, acted as a bulwark against theocracy or against such kind of rule. âIn Europe, the more the states became theocratic in nature more the ruling classes restricted/ denied landholdings to the peasants ...â Here, Roy seems to present, to use Sudipta Kavirajâs phrase, a âflattering picture of the pre-colonial pastâ.

In his second thesis he argues that it was the colonial state that âintroduced the religious divisive paradigm in 1909 in connivance with the Muslim elite which was stiffly opposed by the Moderate Congress.â Later on, in 1916, the extremist Congress compromised with this divisive paradigm. This communal compromise of religious segregation was internalised as Indian secularism. Fortunately, many elements of this compromise were debunked by the Constituent Assembly after Partition. âThe leftover, which could not be debunked, were perpetuated as secular features of polity.â Here, Roy brings in another interesting argument. He states that a segment of traditional Muslim elite has always been hostile to the Congress.â But âopposite of it, a substantive percentage of Muslim masses under the jajmani system have been an integral part of her support base till the 1980s. Once the jajmani system withered away, the Muslim masses, too, drifted away from the Congress.â

Roy looks at the relationship between religion and political processes in India through the form of classical Marxian paradigm of which one of the main arguments is that Indian communalism is largely (rightly so) the result of colonial modernity. But it is hard to accept the argument that it was also largely due to the dialectical trends of capitalist development to integrate the world with âuniversal attributesâ of âmodern citizenshipâ. Here, Roy discusses ambiguously the relationship between capitalism and social identities in India, where he always finds capitalismâs positive role in determining modern identities, notwithstanding the fact that capitalism has had its retrogressive role too in determining caste and communal identities in modern India. Roy criticises vaguely how scholars are fancied by metaphors and jargons and how particularly the âLeftâ (of the CPM variety) âpits the community/ collective (the Left conveniently deletes the traditionality of the community) against the âbourgeoisâ citizenship without transcending the traditionality/ religiosity of the communityâ(all original quotes).

Roy sees the religious intervention by the colonial state and the enumeration in terms of âmajority-minorityâ often giving rise to fundamentalism. The term is used interchangeably with communalism in Indian political debates and Roy sees this as a retreat from bourgeois modernity into a more comprehensible doctrine of âtraditionalityâ. However, this argument does fit well for communal politics in India, which is essentially and clearly a strategy to seek more secure gains within the arrangements of modern electoral politics. Modern communal politics in India has its basis in the existence of parliamentary electoral arrangements. It is mainly based on the numerical biases of the modern state. Western or capitalist secularism, which Roy takes as the reference point, is based on the simplistic, dualistic picture of the historical processes of depletion of religious beliefs often implying that rationalisation led the growth of the secular, atheistic world view. Such an interpretation actually does not fit even for Western secularisation as it denies the complexities and interruptions of the rationalisation process.

Finally, he concludes that secularism is inbuilt in capitalism despite the existence of oppositional elements in it. And in combination with judicial pronouncements and democratic processes, it has played, overall, a positive role in the secularisation of society. As the market economy breaks down, the primordialities of society there emerges, and after decades of communal jigsaw, a better trend that reflects recognition to secularism and inclusive developments. Unfortunately, this aspect is not recognised by the Left academics who argue that minority ethnic rights are a part of secularism. As a result, they failed to transcend the Indian bourgeois paradigm premised on the communal compromise of 1916.

It is refreshing to read Royâs book at this juncture when Marx and Marxism are generally forgotten. He brings in lots of insights on the subject from a Marxian perspective.

The reviewer teaches in JNU

**acharya** · 07-11-2009, 10:21 PM

X Posted
http://www.portraitofindia.com/
QUOTEâComplete assimilation is possible only with the sacrifice of Indian Cultures via Darwinist capitalismâ
-Mario Vargas, 1990, Christian Right wing Presidential candidate and novelist in Peru.

âIndians are colonial creation. They are only Indian because pre capitalist exploitation denied them the boons of European culture. The very survival of Indians is proof of their defeat. The heroic task of socialism or communism is âde- indigenizationâ.â
-Martinez Pelaez, Leftist Guatemalan Historian, on Indians-1992.

**acharya** · 07-17-2009, 11:48 PM

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-new...m-without-idols

Paganism without idols
By M. A. Niazi | Published: July 17, 2009

One of the abiding misconceptions of the War on Terror is that it is a war on Muslims as a continuation of the Crusades, which were definitely a war of Christianity with Islam. This is because the West of today is essentially pagan with a Christian veneer, and wishes Muslims to complete their conversion to the same paganism, and is now struggling to make that conversion complete. It should not be forgotten that the faith of Judaism and Christianity are the same as Islam. Indeed, according to devout Muslims, all three faiths are identical, and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was merely the Last Messenger in a chain that had previously been among the Jews. So had Jesus, only he was rejected by the Jews themselves, and accepted by the Gentiles, to the extent of being accepted by the Roman Empire itself, and adopted as the Empire's religion.
The West was still Christian when it embarked on its imperialist enterprise, which engulfed the Muslim world. However, before decolonisation, it moved. It had already adopted capitalism as its economic system, and it thereupon adopted pagan values to live lives according to. The ideas of paganism had long been present, especially after the post-Renaissance revival of classical learning, but it was only at the turn of the 20th century, just before the First World War, that they were widely adopted, at about the same time as socialism or communism won so many supporters.
While the Christian West had certain shared values with the Muslim World then, it jettisoned these values now. It set-up as the measure of all things Man, and made humanism the ultimate good. Though there was no reversion to the idol worship of the ancient pagans, there was the setting up of untouchable shibboleths, in the form of the freedoms. These were ultimately borrowed from the French Revolution, from its Rights of Man, so that Revolution, even though it was predated by the American, became the seminal Western Revolution, with all of its rigmarole of a new calendar and a new religion, with its virulent anti-clericalism. Western man no longer was willing to be judged by the Almighty, as was Islamic man; and that was the main difference. The Afterlife might have been foretold, but it included a Judgement according to a code, which had been revealed through the Prophets. That this code had included a number of direct instructions was only accepted by Orthodox Jews and Muslims, but not Christians, who had not followed the laws of Moses for centuries before they finally left the teachings of Jesus. The code was also abandoned by the Jews, as they attempted to assimilate and abandoned orthodoxy, and decided to take a national homeland in the Middle East, ignoring the rights of those who were settled there before them.

**acharya** · 08-24-2009, 12:44 AM

India royals' allowances raised
By Narayan Bareth
BBC Hindi service, Jaipur

Asmat Ali Khan

The descendants of the former princely rulers of Tonk in the Indian state of Rajasthan have won a legal battle to raise their monthly allowances.

Each of the 570 descendants will now get a minimum of 100 rupees ($2). The earlier minimum was set at 50 paise (less than a cent).

The descendants would also be paid 20 years worth of arrears, officials said.

The allowance was started in 1944 and the maximum amount was fixed at 500 rupees ($10).

Tonk was the only Muslim princely state in Rajasthan before India gained independence in 1947.

'Not rich'

'"It is matter of pride to receive this amount, because it is a mark of our royal legacy and lineage," said Asmat Ali Khan, the descendant who filed the petition in Rajasthan's high court.

Mr Khan is a former secretary of Anjuman Society Khandan-e-Ameeria (ASKA) which represents the royal descendants of Tonk.

He says not all 570 descendants are rich and many feed their families by working in low-paid jobs.

''Few of them are in government jobs, the rest take up different kinds of work to run their families."

Mr Khan receives 13 rupees 64 paisa (a quarter of a dollar) a month as allowance and it costs him more than double of that in transport to go collect it.

"When I hire an autorickshaw to go to the government office to collect my allowance, I have to pay 30 rupees," he says.

Mohammed Rafique, another royal descendant, says the increased allowance is particularly welcome as it comes just before the Eid festival in September.

"It would be a big relief to many of the descendants as all are not rich. Though they have had a rich history, some of them are leading a life of penury," Mr Rafique says.

''It does not matter if the amount is not big, it is a mark of respect for us. It reminds us of our glorious past," he adds.

An official said the administration has requested the state government to send $240,000 to pay the arrears to the descendants.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8213390.stm

**acharya** · 08-24-2009, 10:10 AM

Monday, Jul. 14, 1947
INDIA: The Legatees

On U.S. Independence Day, Britain's Prime Minister Clement Attlee presented to the House of Commons an Indian independence bill. It was, said the bespectacled, scholarly Earl of Listowel, last Secretary of State for India, a "nice, neat, tidy little bill." The bill was certainly neater than the mess Indians will try to clear up before the British leave on August 15.

Last week the Indians were tussling with the complexities brought by the partition of India. They agreed on one major problem: partition of the Indian Army. In the first stage it will be split on the basis of religious communities, with Moslem-majority units going into the Pakistan forces, non-Moslem majority units into the Indian Army. Next April, each soldier will be allowed to transfer to the army of the state where his religion is predominant.

In effect, two new armies will be built up from scratch. Last week the British-owned Calcutta Statesman lamented: "Within nine months, therefore, unless plans have meanwhile to be altered under pressure of events, the best army in Asia (with the possible exception of that which Russia keeps in Siberia) will, we reckon, be reduced to about a sixth of its present military valueâperhaps less."

Typewriters & Inkpots. Meanwhile, Moslems and Hindus were wrangling over their shares of the inheritance from the British Raj. Fifty committees set up to divide the Government's assets proceeded along 50 different lines. The Moslem League wanted one-fourth of India's assets, but was not willing to pay one-fourth of the $6 billion national debt. Railway rolling stock will probably remain on that side of the border where it stands on independence day. (The Moslem League accused the Hindu-controlled Government of switching brand-new American locomotives from Pakistan areas to Delhi, substituting old, burnt-out engines.) The 40,000 staff members of New Delhi's vast imperial Secretariat were busy last week counting typewriters and almirahs (cabinets), carpets and inkpots. Typists worked four hours a day overtime copying files, so that each of the two new Governments would have a set. Moslems and Hindus accused each other of stealing files that both wanted.

Hindus accused the Minister of Communications, Moslem Leaguer Abdur Rab Nishtar, of carting off to Karachi (temporary capital of Pakistan) every piece of telephone and telegraph equipment he could lay hands on. Calcutta's Hindu press said that Bengal's Prime Minister Huseyn Shabad Suhrawardy, a Moslem, was stripping western Bengal (which will be part of Hindu India) of food, clothing, machinery and hospital equipment.

Moslems claimed for Pakistan the famed Moslem-built Taj Mahal at Agra, deep in Hindu India, only 100 miles from New Delhi. Extremist Hindus retaliated by claiming the river Indus (deep in Pakistan), on the ground that the sacred Hindu Vedas had been written on its banks some 25 centuries ago.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,779142,00.html

**acharya** · (This post was last modified: 08-27-2009, 03:54 AM by acharya.)

http://iref.homestead.com/Messiah.html

Partition Back to History Page
The Messiah and The Promised Land
Margaret Bourke-White was a correspondent and photographer for LIFE magazine during the WW II years. In September 1947, White went to Pakistan. She met Jinnah and wrote about what she found and heard in her book Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India,Simon and Schuster, New York, 1949. The following are the excerpts:

Pakistan was one month old. Karachi was its mushrooming capital. On the sandy fringes of the city an enormous tent colony had grown up to house the influx of minor government officials. There was only one major government official, Mahomed Ali Jinnah, and there was no need for Jinnah to take to a tent. The huge marble and sandstone Government House, vacated by British officialdom, was waiting. The Quaid-i-Azam moved in, with his sister, Fatima, as hostess. Mr. Jinnah had put on what his critics called his "triple crown": he had made himself Governor-General; he was retaining the presidency of the Muslim League -- now Pakistan's only political party; and he was president of the country's lawmaking body, the Constituent Assembly.

"We never expected to get it so soon," Miss Fatima said when I called. "We never expected to get it in our lifetimes."

If Fatima's reaction was a glow of family pride, her brother's was a fever of ecstasy. Jinnah's deep-sunk eyes were pinpoints of excitement. His whole manner indicated that an almost overwhelming exaltation was racing through his veins. I had murmured some words of congratulation on his achievement in creating the world's largest Islamic nation.

"Oh, it's not just the largest Islamic nation. Pakistan is the fifth-largest nation in the world!"

The note of personal triumph was so unmistakable that I wondered how much thought he gave to the human cost: more Muslim lives had been sacrificed to create the new Muslim homeland than America, for example, had lost during the entire second World War. I hoped he had a constructive plan for the seventy million citizens of Pakistan. What kind of constitution did he intend to draw up?

"Of course it will be a democratic constitution; Islam is a democratic religion."

I ventured to suggest that the term "democracy" was often loosely used these days. Could he define what he had in mind?

"Democracy is not just a new thing we are learning," said Jinnah. "It is in our blood. We have always had our system of zakat -- our obligation to the poor."

This confusion of democracy with charity troubled me. I begged him to be more specific.

"Our Islamic ideas have been based on democracy and social justice since the thirteenth century."

This mention of the thirteenth century troubled me still more. Pakistan has other relics of the Middle Ages besides "social justice" -- the remnants of a feudal land system, for one. What would the new constitution do about that? .. "The land belongs to the God," says the Koran. This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the "true Islamic principles" one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nation's laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because "the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy."

What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America?

"America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America," was Jinnah's reply. "Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed" -- he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles -- "the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves." He leaned toward me, dropping his voice to a confidential note. "Russia," confided Mr. Jinnah, "is not so very far away."

This had a familiar ring. In Jinnah's mind this brave new nation had no other claim on American friendship than this - that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the BoIsheviks. I wondered whether the Quaid-i-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers. He was stressing America's military interest in other parts of the world. "America is now awakened," he said with a satisfied smile. Since the United States was now bolstering up Greece and Turkey, she should be much more interested in pouring money and arms into Pakistan. "If Russia walks in here," he concluded, "the whole world is menaced."

In the weeks to come I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam's thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan. "Surely America will build up our army," they would say to me. "Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in." But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. "No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan."

This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan's own uncertain position as a new political entity. Actually, I think, it was more nearly related to the even more significant bankruptcy of ideas in the new Muslim state -- a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze.

Jinnah's most frequently used technique in the struggle for his new nation had been the playing of opponent against opponent. Evidently this technique was now to be extended into foreign policy. ....

No one would have been more astonished than Jinnah if he could have foreseen thirty or forty years earlier that anyone would ever speak of him as a "savior of Islam." In those days any talk of religion brought a cynical smile. He condemned those who talked in terms of religious rivalries, and in the stirring period when the crusade for freedom began sweeping the country he was hailed as "the embodied symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity." The gifted Congresswoman, Mrs. Naidu, one of Jinnah's closest friends, wrote poems extolling his role as the great unifier in the fight for independence. "Perchance it is written in the book of the future," ran one of her tributes, "that he, in some terrible crisis of our national struggle, will pass into immortality" as the hero of "the Indian liberation."

In the "terrible crisis," Mahomed Ali Jinnah was to pass into immortality, not as the ambassador of unity, but as the deliberate apostle of discord. What caused this spectacular renunciation of the concept of a united India, to which he had dedicated the greater part of his life? No one knows exactly. The immediate occasion for the break, in the mid-thirties, was his opposition to Gandhi's civil disobedience program. Nehru says that Jinnah "disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people who filled the Congress" and was not at home with the new spirit rising among the common people under Gandhi's magnetic leadership. Others say it was against his legal conscience to accept Gandhi's program. One thing is certain: the break with Gandhi, Nehru, and the other Congress leaders was not caused by any Hindu-Muslim issue.

In any case, Jinnah revived the moribund Muslim League in 1936 after it had dragged through an anemic thirty years' existence, and took to the religious soapbox. He began dinning into the ears of millions of Muslims the claim that they were downtrodden solely because of Hindu domination. During the years directly preceding this move on his part, an unprecedented degree of unity had developed between Muslims and Hindus in their struggle for independence from the British Raj. The British feared this unity, and used their divide-and-rule tactics to disrupt it. Certain highly placed Indians also feared unity, dreading a popular movement which would threaten their special position. Then another decisive factor arose. Although Hindus had always been ahead of Muslims in the industrial sphere, the great Muslim feudal landlords now had aspirations toward industry. From these wealthy Muslims, who resented the well-established Hindu competition, Jinnah drew his powerful supporters. One wonders whether Jinnah was fighting to free downtrodden Muslims from domination or merely to gain an earmarked area, free from competition, for this small and wealthy clan.

The trend of events in Pakistan would support the theory that Jinnah carried the banner of the Muslim landed aristocracy, rather than that of the Muslim masses he claimed to champion. There was no hint of personal material gain in this. Jinnah was known to be personally incorruptible, a virtue which gave him a great strength with both poor and rich. The drive for personal wealth played no part in his politics. It was a drive for power. ......

Less than three months after Pakistan became a nation, Jinnah's Olympian assurance had strangely withered. His altered condition was not made public. "The Quaid-i-Azam has a bad cold" was the answer given to inquiries.

Only those closest to him knew that the "cold" was accompanied by paralyzing inability to make even the smallest decisions, by sullen silences striped with outbursts of irritation, by a spiritual numbness concealing something close to panic underneath. I knew it only because I spent most of this trying period at Government House, attempting to take a new portrait of Jinnah for a Life cover.

The Quaid-i-Azam was still revered as a messiah and deliverer by most of his people. But the "Great Leader" himself could not fail to know that all was not well in his new creation, the nation; the nation that his critics referred to as the "House that Jinnah built." The separation from the main body of India had been in many ways an unrealistic one. Pakistan raised 75 per cent of the world's jute supply; the processing mills were all in India. Pakistan raised one third of the cotton of India, but it had only one thirtieth of the cotton mills. Although it produced the bulk of Indian skins and hides, all the leather tanneries were in South India. The new state had no paper mills, few iron foundries. Rail and road facilities, insufficient at best, were still choked with refugees. Pakistan has a superbly fertile soil, and its outstanding advantage is self-sufficiency in food, but this was threatened by the never-ending flood of refugees who continued pouring in long after the peak of the religious wars had passed.

With his burning devotion to his separate Islamic nation, Jinnah had taken all these formidable obstacles in his stride. But the blow that finally broke his spirit struck at the very name of Pakistan. While the literal meaning of the name is "Land of the Pure," the word is a compound of initial letters of the Muslim majority provinces which Jinnah had expected to incorporate: P for the Punjab, A for the Afghans' area on the Northwest Frontier, S for Sind, -tan for Baluchistan. But the K was missing.

Kashmir, India's largest princely state, despite its 77 per cent Muslim population, had not fallen into the arms of Pakistan by the sheer weight of religious majority. Kashmir had acceded to India, and although it was now the scene of an undeclared war between the two nations, the fitting of the K into Pakistan was left in doubt. With the beginning of this torturing anxiety over Kashmir, the Quaid-i-Azam's siege of bad colds began, and then his dismaying withdrawal into himself. ....

Later, reflecting on what I had seen, I decided that this desperation was due to causes far deeper than anxiety over Pakistan's territorial and economic difficulties. I think that the tortured appearance of Mr. Jinnah was an indication that, in these final months of his life, he was adding up his own balance sheet. Analytical, brilliant, and no bigot, he knew what he had done. Like Doctor Faustus, he had made a bargain from which he could never be free. During the heat of the struggle he had been willing to call on all the devilish forces of superstition, and now that his new nation had been achieved the bigots were in the position of authority. The leaders of orthodoxy and a few "old families" had the final word and, to perpetuate their power, were seeing to it that the people were held in the deadening grip of religious superstition.

**acharya** · (This post was last modified: 08-27-2009, 03:51 AM by acharya.)

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=4&EventId=424

Professor Kathleen Burk

It seems to me that one ought not to look at the history of the British Empire - or of any empire, for that matter - as one of a simple rise and fall. Granted, if one looked at a series of maps, if one paid attention only to the broad trajectory, that is clearly the historical theme. However, as those of you who have attended my earlier lectures this year will already realise, the history is more of a series of waves, depending on when and where: most would see the loss of the American colonies in 1783, for example, as a decline. From the 19th century, of course, British naval supremacy symbolised and supported the increasing amount of territory brought into the red parts of the map of the globe. This expansion was also symbolised and supported by the international dominance of the pound sterling as the currency of choice and of London as the financial centre of the world. Both of these supports began to fall away in 1914, and whilst the empire increased as a result of the First World War - this is when Great Britain acquired Palestine - there began the final slow, withdrawing roar. We are all familiar with the general story of the post-1945 withdrawal, but I want tonight to put it in context by giving it some sort of unified history.

Empires can be land-based or seaborne, formal or informal. Formal empire requires political and, at least by implication, military control; informal empire normally refers to economic predominance. For many decades and in many places, Great Britain maintained an informal empire, with one of the best examples being large parts of South America in the nineteenth century, especially in Argentina. A notable factor which set the British Empire apart from other empires was the large number of settler colonies. The first was Ireland, from the Anglo-Normans to the Elizabethans and the planting of the Scots in Ulster. Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and Kenya were all settler colonies. Numbers of white settlers went out with the intention of remaining, rather than to make their fortune and return to Great Britain. I cannot think of any other European empires which set out to populate their colonies in the same manner and to the same extent.

One distortion which arose from the early concentration on colonising Ireland is that those looking overseas for opportunities tended to look westwards across the Atlantic, rather than to the opportunities presented by Asia or Africa. There was, in fact, much overseas commerce carried out by the merchant adventures or the great trading companies: three examples are the Muscovy Company, set up in 1555 to trade with Russia, the Levant Company, set up in 1592 to trade with Turkey, and the East India Company. set up in 1600 to trade with Asia, and destined to become the longest lasting, the richest and the most powerful of all trading companies. However, these companies normally limited themselves to trading outposts and had little desire for political involvement beyond that needed to defend their economic and trading positions. It was to that part of the world which was yet empty of population, in European terms, and free of Spanish or French involvement that the English turned.

If we look back to the 16th century, when England - or some Englishmen - first began to think about planting colonies, one of the first interesting points is that the term âempireâ had a very different meaning from what it has today. During the 16th century, England was sometimes described as an empire, but what that meant was that England and its monarchs had, for centuries, been independent from the domination of other powers, and this included the Pope - Henry VIII, for example, was keen on its use after his break with Rome. In other words, âempireâ referred to isolation, as it were, rather than to dominion over other lands [Canny]. The term âBritainâ or âGreat Britainâ arose from the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, plus the principality of Wales, came together as one; it was King James VI and I who came up with the name, based on the old Britannia, and phrases such as âthe Empire of Great Britaineâ were used. However, the term still did not necessarily mean a territorial empire.

PICTURE 2: JOHN DEE - Yet, there had been men during the 16th century who urged this territorial expansion, and called it by its modern name. It was John Dee, a pioneer of the mathematics of navigation, and astrologer to Queen Mary (a subject in which he had tutored the young Princess Elizabeth), who invented the phrase PICTURE 3: TEXT - âBrytish Impireâ, and sketched out the English claim to an empire of the North Atlantic. PICTURE 4: QUEEN ELIZABETH I WITH GLOBE - He set this down in 1578 in a statement for Queen Elizabeth of âHer Majestyâs Title Royalâ to the lands in question. Dee was joined by Richard Hakluyt, editor of volumes of reports on explorations by Englishmen. Hakluytâs âDiscourse on Western Plantingâ - these colonies were called plantations - was issued in 1584, and summed up the arguments and justifications for the colonisation of America. First of all, it would increase the possibilities for trading; it would also increase naval and military resources, such as timber. Colonies would help to defend Great Britain against the Spanish and French, because they would provide bases from which England could attack their shipping. Colonies in America would provide a destination for Englandâs surplus population, as well as give these âlustie youthsâ increased chances to make something of themselves. And finally, America would provide a religious refuge for those fleeing from the ungodly Catholic powers, Spain and France. At this point, however, these arguments made little lasting impact on Queen Elizabeth or on much of the political class, who were focused on the threats from Europe, but others were more responsive.

Men from Bristol led by John Cabot had discovered North America in 1497, PICTURE 5: SIR HUMFREY GILBERT - but it was not until 1583 that Sir Humfrey Gilbert led the first serious attempt to colonise North America. Gilbert was one of a number of ambitious and rapacious Elizabethans, a veteran of the colonisation of Ireland, who burned to acquire land and treasure for themselves and for England. Because the southern parts of the New World were entirely locked up by Spain, Gilbert looked to the north, reaching Newfoundland seven weeks after starting out. He formally claimed 400 miles of the coast, but his crew then demanded to return to England. He finally agreed, but some miles out, âin very foule weather, and terrible seasâ, his ship broke up and he was cast into the waves. Gilbert was followed by Sir Walter Ralegh, but he, too, was unsuccessful, and later died when King James ordered his execution.

PICTURE 6: JAMESTOWN IN VIRGINIA - It was in 1607 that the first relatively successful plantation or colony was established, and this was in Virginia. What drove the planters was greed, although some obeisance was made to bringing God to the natives. PICTURE 7: JOHN WINTHROP - Religion, however, was the driving force for the Puritan âGreat Migrationâ of the 1630s to Massachusetts; their intention was to establish a theocracy. The Quakers wanted both economic improvement and religious freedom when they established Pennsylvania, PICTURE 8: LORD BALTIMORE - as did the Catholic peer Lord Baltimore when he ensured that Maryland would be a refuge for his co-religionists. The West Indies was about sugar, whilst Newfoundland began as a fishing settlement.

A point to make is that all of these colonies were the result of private enterprise: when Cromwellâs Parliament tried to claim that England should control the colonies because the state had established them, all of the colonies, whatever their religious or political sympathies, contested this claim by pointing out that whilst most Britons had remained safely at home, they and their predecessors had braved the elements and endangered their own economic resources by venturing across the wild ocean. The government became more involved when the European conflicts extended to the colonies. The Seven Yearsâ War of 1756 to 1763 - known in the colonies as the French and Indian War - essentially began on the North American continent, where France claimed Quebec and much of the Mississippi Valley; it was as a result of this war that Great Britain gained the huge French colony of Quebec, to join with the Maritime Provinces. MAP OF THE EMPIRE IN 1763 - The government began steadily to encourage settlers to move there, in order that they might outnumber the French Catholics already resident. Even so, they did not support them but only protected them, the duty of any government.

The Seven Yearsâ War was a watershed for the British Empire, as it was now proudly called. Parliament needed to raise taxes to pay off Britainâs huge national debt and to pay for the military protection of its North American and West Indian colonies. The British government believed that the colonists should help to pay for their own protection, and Parliament for the first time imposed internal taxes on the colonies; all taxes before had been customs and excise duties. PICTURE 10: AMERICAN COLONIES - The colonists had heretofore had a role in the imposition of internal taxes, and their refusal to pay taxes on which they had not been able to vote - no taxation without representation - and the hardening of the British position, encouraged the evolution of the conflict into one over parliamentary supremacy, and the consequent outbreak of war. The outcome of the American Revolution, or War for American Independence, was not so much an American victory as a British inability to maintain control. Britain was, at the same time, fighting France, Spain and the Netherlands, on land and sea, and her resources were need more urgently elsewhere. The loss of thirteen of her American colonies was a profound economic loss as well as a great blow to her prestige. It brought to an end what historians call the First British Empire.

PICTURE 11: MUGHAL EMPIRE - But by 1783, Great Britain had interests elsewhere, particularly in India, which in due course replaced the American colonies as the jewel in the crown. From 1526 until the British took hold, the territory of India was dominated by the Mughal Empire, although â Indiaâ as such did not exist: rather, the Empire was split up into what were effectively regions, such as Bengal, each of which was ruled by a subordinate ruler. PICTURE 12: EAST INDIA COMPANY - Thus when the East India Company began establishing trade links on the sub-continent, it did so primarily with individual rulers. From the beginning of the 17th century, it held a monopoly of English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa; by the end of the 17th century, its most important settlements were on the coast of India. Calcutta in Bengal had been largely founded by the British; by the 1720s, Bengal was very rich.

From the 1720s, the French East India Company also traded on a considerable scale in Asia, with their headquarters in Pondicherry, close to Madras. For forty years, conflict between the two trading companies often broke out, until the French were beaten in battle in 1760 and withdrew in 1761 - two years before their defeat in Quebec on the Plains of Abraham. Shortly before this, however, conflict between the Company and the ruler of Bengal exploded into violence: the Nawab of Bengal feared that he was losing control of his country to the British. At the Battle of Plassey in June 1757, the British defeated the Bengali army - or rather, they bribed their way to victory - and put their own candidate on the throne. This did not serve for very long - the new ruler refused to grant the Company what it wished - and he was deposed in favour of yet another ruler. Finally, in 1765, the British demanded the diwani, or right to rule, from the Mughal Emperor. PICTURE 13: MAP OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY IN INDIA IN 1765 - Therefore, by 1765, the East India Company became the outright ruler of the whole of Bengal, as well as of other smaller territories: in short, it became an Indian territorial power. There was now a second British Empire.

When the British political class began to realise that the East India Companyâs activities were going beyond commerce to conquest, there was increasing unease. If it was primarily a company, why was it collecting taxes, why was it now a political ruler? It seemed obvious that the resources devoted to the Companyâs military forces would be better devoted to expanding commercial links; furthermore, there was an increasing stench of greed and corruption, which many feared threatened British liberties and virtues; thus, was the Company the appropriate vehicle for British commercial activity in India? A monopoly no longer sat well with many people. Governmental investigations into Company affairs ended in 1813 by the British government assuming some responsibility for the Indian Empire.

PICTURE 14: MAP OF THE EMPIRE IN 1815 - The next several decades saw an imposition of despotism, a terrible economic depression, and the displacement of Indians from leading offices of wealth and power. Matters came to a head in 1857 with the Great Rebellion, which the British called the Indian Mutiny, essentially the revolt of the Bengal Army. This rebellion or civil war was a turning point. In May 1858, the British exiled the Mughal Emperor to Burma, which they also controlled, thus formally ending the Mughal Empire. The East India Company was also abolished, and the British government established direct rule under the British Crown. Over the following decades, the British relationship with India developed in different ways. PICTURE 15: THE VICEROY LORD CURZON AND HIS WIFE AT A DURBAR - The panoply of British power developed, whilst at the same time, barriers went up against the Indians, even those loyal and educated Indians of rank. Because of the Mutiny, British attitudes shifted from relative openness to dislike and distrust, and even racial xenophobia. The strict subordination to the British of both Indians and mixed race was strongly enforced by the memsahibs. More positively, however, there was a gradual development of opportunities for Indians to take part in government. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 with the object of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians, but it had relatively little influence until after the First World War.

PICTURE 16: LORD MINTO - As it happened, the drive for political change came from the British themselves, in particular from Liberal Party politicians. The Government of India Act of 1909 gave Indians limited political rights and responsibilities; it also granted separate electorates and communal representation for Muslims and Indians, perhaps an unwise step. The claims by Indians for self-government were strengthened by their participation in the First World War, when India provided well over a million soldiers as well as a substantial financial contribution; PICTURE 17: IMPERIAL WAR CABINET - by 1917, India had native representation in the Imperial War Cabinet. This crucial contribution, and the repeated statements by Western allies that the war was being fought for democracy and the righrs of nations, raised Indian aspirations for greater self-government. The Government of India Act of 1919 extended the franchise and gave increased authority to centre and provincial legislative councils, but the viceroy remained responsible to London, not to an Indian-based legislative body.

The series of British negotiations with the representatives of Indian political pressure groups had not been driven by the desire to one day give India her independence: rather, it was to find some way to keep her within the Empire and under some control. In 1910, roughly half of the British Army was stationed in India, whilst the Indian Army itself numbered a quarter of a million men, largely officered by the British and with a huge resevoir of manpower at its back; basically, the Indian Army was the imperial army and police force, as well as serving with valour in the Great War. As a military training ground, India had every sort of climate and terrain. In economic terms, by 1913 she accounted for nearly 10% of British trade and was by far the UKâs most important customer. India remained the most important part of the Empire. The British government strove to meet Indian desires, but it saw the 1919 Act as embodying its maximum concessions, which did not satisfy Indian political demands. PICTURE 18: MASSACRE AT AMRITSAR - There was opposition, which the British repressed, including the horrific massacre at Amritsar, with General Reginald Dyer thereafter receiving promotion. PICTURE 19: MAHATMA GANDHI - The massacre provided very great impetus for the movement for freedom and paved the way for Gandhiâs Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920 and 1921. Gandhi was a member of the Congress Party, and he led it in a general campaign of nonviolent non-cooperation during the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, in 1935, another Government of India Act was passed, which essentially gave India home rule. The main problem was whether or not there would continue to be separate electorates: the Congress party, which was primarily Hindu, insisted on a unified electorate, whilst the Muslim League insisted on the continuation of separate electorates, arguing that Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations. The Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, decided that the system of separate electorates at both provincial and central levels would continue.

At the outset of the Second World War, Britain made India a belligerent without consulting Indian elected councils. This angered Indian officials, and led Congress to declare that India would not support the war effort until it had been granted complete independence. Agreement was therefore reached between them that India would be granted full independence once the Axis powers were defeated, if India gave her full co-operation during the war. In the winter of 1945-46, the British worked with Congress and the Muslim League to devise a governmental structure for the soon-to-be independent state. However, Congress and the League could not agree, and by mid-August 1946 a frenzy of rioting ensued between Hindus and Muslims. PICTURE 20: MAP OF THE PARTITION - In July 1947, Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which set a deadline of midnight on August 14-15 for âdemarcation of the dominions of Indiaâ into India and East and West Pakistan. As a result of the Partition, 10 million Indians fled their homes to seek sanctuary across the line, and the Indian ÂEmpire became two, and soon three, states.

After 1783 and the loss of the American colonies, India increasingly became, and remained, the major imperial concern of the British, who saw significant parts of the Empire, as well as non-imperial territories, in geographical relation to India. PICTURE 21: MAP OF CENTRAL ASIA - The 19th century âGreat Gameâ with Russia, which extended from Constantinople on the Bosphorus to India, taking in Egypt, Turkey, other Arab lands, Persia and the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Central Asia and North-West India, was primarily about India, although it also had ramifications in China. Essentially, as the Russian Empire moved steadily east, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind the construction of the Siberian Railway and its branches, the British feared that their goal was India. The Russians hoped so too, or at least to pick it up on their way to absorbing great chunks of China. They threatened Persia, with its border with India; they threatened Afghanistan, which was able to defend itself, against both the Russians and the British; and they threatened Tibet. In 1907, a Russia weakened by defeat in the Russo-Japanese War sat down to negotiate with Great Britain about their outstanding imperial conflicts. Persia ended up being parcelled into Russian and British spheres of interest; Russia agreed that Britain had a special interest in Afghanistan, whilst Britain agreed not to use this interest in a manner threatening to Russia; and they agreed that Tibet would be a neutral buffer state. However, the Agreement still gave Russia, whose power was now on the increase, much scope for expansion in Asia, and Britain could do little to halt it. However, India was no longer threatened by the Russian Empire, which had turned its attention primarily to China.

The British Empire in China was of a different sort from that in India or Africa: it was an âinformal empireâ, not an âempire of ruleâ. Great Britain was interested in trade,not in political control. One characteristic was that the region retained nominal independence, whilst succumbing to foreign influence; with the help of local collaborators, Britain was able to enjoy power without the costs of responsibility. She had influence from favourable commercial agreements with ostensibly sovereign states; she also had preponderant influence in strategically vital territories, gained from diplomatic pressure and the appointment of key advisers. However, behind these financial and commercial links always lurked the threat of force, of âgunboat diplomacyâ, provided by the Royal Navy. It was gunboat diplomacy which destroyed the restrictions which had shackled British trade and opened up China to foreigners. But the foreigners were not only the British, and Britain soon found that she had to defend her position from other Powers - who did want to impose an empire of rule - as well as from the Chinese themselves.

PICTURE 22: CHINA IN 1842 - At the beginning of the 19th century, China was virtually closed to foreigners. The East India Company had developed trading links with China in the 18th century, but all trade was supervised by the Chinese and the British were confined to a small enclave around the port of Canton or of Macao. The main British imports were silk and, overwhelmingly, tea, which was fast becoming the British national drink. But - how to pay for the tea, given that the Chinese wanted virtually nothing from Britain? The answer was opium. From 1773, there was a highly lucrative export of Bengali opium; by the mid-1830s, over one-half of the tea exported to Great Britain was being paid for by British merchants with opium bought in Calcutta. PICTURE 23: OPIUM WAR - It was the attempt of the Chinese Government to stamp out the trade in opium which opened up the country to foreign incursions, since the British reaction was to send in the gunboats. The outcome of the 1840-1842 Opium War was the Treaty of Nanking, the first of what the Chinese were to call the âUnequal Treatiesâ. PICTURE 24: HONG KONG IN 1848 - First of all, China ceded the island of Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity, and this rapidly became one of Britainâs most important commercial bases in Asia; PICTURE 25: THE TREATY PORTS - five Chinese port cities were opened to foreigners for residence as well as trade (the number of these increased between 1842 and 1860); and British officials would henceforth communicate with the Chinese on terms of equality, rather than being treated as barbarians beneath their notice.

For the remainder of the century, there were repeated conflicts with the Chinese, the most dangerous being the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900 against all of the Powers. PICTURE 26: THE BRITISH LEGATION BEING ATTACKED; PICTURE 27: THE AMERICAN MARINES - In 1886, Britain completed the takeover of Burma, PICTURE 28: BURMA - which she had begun in the early 19th century as she advanced from India; this acquisition protected the approaches to both India and China. Equally sporadically, she incorporated the Malayan mainland and Singapore, and portions of Borneo, into her political and economic networks. This period also saw increasing competition with the other Powers, particularly with Russia and, later, Japan. In the 1870s, Japan began to join the other Powers in encroaching on Chinese territory, an advance which enraged Russia, and the two of them came increasingly close to conflict. In February 1904, Japan launched an attack on the Russian concession of Port Arthur; in due course, they destroyed the Russian Pacific Fleet. Russia then sent the Baltic Fleet to the Pacific, but it was met by a Japanese fleet and was also destroyed. On land the Russians fared little better, being defeated in a series of battles.

PICTURE 29: MAP OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE AFTER THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR OF 1904-5 - Japanâs defeat of Russia in 1904 had profound consequences. For one thing, it signalled the end of Russian expansion in East Asia, and she turned her attention back to Europe. But this had an important result for Great Britain as well. From the beginning of her activities in China, her most threatening competitor had been Russia. This was now changed, and it was Japan who increasingly posed the greatest threat to British interests in China. After 1916, China descended into political turmoil and disintegrated into semi-autonomous territories run by warlords. There was no central authority. The rising nationalism of the Chinese added another factor, since it had no coherent doctrine and no unified political movement. British expatriates were sometimes hysterical about this nationalism, but the British government tried cautious sympathy and negotiations - pointless, as they offered no concessions. The British position during the 1930s drifted gently downhill as the Japanese pressure grew stronger. The Japanese sweep down the Chinese coast in the second half of 1937, the beginning of the undeclared Sino-Japanese War, presaged the impending end of the British informal empire. Because of their non-combatant status, their commercial centres of Hong Kong and Shanghai were untouched, and British business did very well for a year or two. But by 1940, Japan and Britain seemed on the brink of war because of Britainâs harbouring of Chinese refugees and hosting a number of Chinese government agencies in Hong Kong. Yet, it was not until 8 December 1941 that the long-awaited attack by Japan on Hong Kong came, following the attack on Pearl Harbour; the colony surrendered on Christmas Day. PICTURE 30: JAPANESE CONTROL OF SHANGHAI - On the same day, the Japanese invaded the International Settlement at Shanghai and the British Concession at Tiensin. Both enclaves ceased to exist and all British nationals were interned. Thus, after almost precisely a century, the informal British empire in China came to a decisive and unmistakeable end. After the war, the British retrieved Hong Kong and the New Territories, which they had leased in 1898 for ninety-nine years, but somehow, it was just not the same.

There was another part of Asia, another part of the Empire, which was not lost, and this was Australia. PICTURE 31: CAPTAIN JAMES COOK - In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed up the coast of Australia on the first of his great voyages of exploration into the Pacific, visiting what was to be called Botany Bay, and ascertaining that it might support European settlers. Eighteen years later, a colony was established. PICTURE 32: THE âFIRST FLEETâ 1788 - After a prodigious journey round the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean, a fleet of eleven vessels containing 736 convicted criminals, a Governor and some officials, and an escort of marines founded in 1788 a British colony on the eastern coast of Australia in what later became New South Wales. This was the first European settlement of any kind in Australasia. It was an almost foolhardy move, given that the British government had no real knowledge as to what conditions would be like. Why did they go to Australia? Was it because they wanted to establish a base in the Pacific? Did they see commercial possibilities? The traditional explanation is that New South Wales was colonised primarily to provide a convict settlement is a plausible one. Transportation had for decades been an important part of the British penal system; their destination had been colonial America, but with the loss of the American colonies after the revolution, that option had disappeared. Very large numbers of convicts had accumulated in Britain, and they had to go somewhere.

Once the new colony was established, the British continued to send convicts, some 160,000 by 1852. However, from the landing of the âFirst Fleetâ, non-convict settlers also went, and their numbers increased as the opportunities for the immigrant became more and more apparent. In 1826, settlement began in Western Australia, and in 1834 in Victoria. PICTURE 33: MAP OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 1901 - The slow emergence of six colonies over the century resulted in their consolidation in the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Some whites from NSW had crossed into New Zealand to use it as a base for voyages into the Pacific and to trade with the Maoris, and in 1840, the British government annexed it, an order which had to be imposed by force against the Maoris. In Australia and New Zealand, as in the Cape of Good Hope which they had taken from the Netherlands and annexed in 1806, the British established constitutional arrangements on the same principles as those in British North America: essential imperial control was to be maintained, but otherwise the white communities were to rule themselves as much as possible. This rather sums up the difference in their relationship with Britain of the settler colonies in comparison with the others. It may also account for the fact that the relationship with Australia and New Zealand remains close; in these cases, one would speak not of the decline of Empire, but of its evolution into the Commonwealth.

This is emphatically not the case with the Empire in the Middle East. Britainâs âmoment in the Middle Eastâ [ Monroe ] was substantially about protection: protection of the route to India and later to Australia, protection of the route to oil, and, after 1945, protection of her status as a world power. Her intention was not formal control but formal influence - in other words, an informal empire - with the desired outcome a series of friendly buffer states. However, the threat from other imperial powers, particularly France and Russia, and then Germany, encouraged Britain to extend and exercise this control. Her serious involvement began in 1875, with the purchase of 44% of the shares in the Suez Canal Company, and ended in 1956, with the dÃ©bÃ¢cle of the Suez Crisis. There was then a slow dÃ©nouement, as Britain withdrew from East of Suez during the period from 1968 to 1971: the desire to remain had gone.

The Suez Canal, which was built by the French, was opened in November 1869. PICTURE 34: THE FIRST VESSELS THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL - In October 1874, the opportunity arose of securing a large block of shares in the Suez Canal Company. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, was an imperialist who had a realistic view of the strategic importance of Egypt and the Canal; he moved quickly and, with the financial aid of the Rothschilds, he bought the shares just hours before the French Government tried to do the same. It was the need to protect the Canal that provoked the British government into invading Egypt in 1882 and assuming predominate financial and political influence. As the 19th century drew to a close, Britainâs position was subject to increasingly threatening pressure from other powers. To consolidate her power and eliminate these threats as far as possible, she came to agreements with her imperial rivals to settle, inter alia, most outstanding Middle Eastern conflicts. The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 recognised the predominant position of Britain in Egypt and of France in Algeria and Morocco, whilst the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, as noted above, split Persia between the two powers. This allowed the three to form an alliance during the First World War.

As a result of this war, Britainâs Empire grew by the acquisition of substantial territory in the Middle East. For a century, threats to India had been parried in part by a policy of keeping the Ottoman Empire together and using Turkish Arabia, Persia and Afghanistan as a shield against Russia. These were countries which Britain did not herself particularly want to occupy, but which she could not afford to have occupied by other countries. With Turkeyâs entry into the war as an ally of Germany, Britainâs approach to the Middle East changed, since Arabia was now enemy country. The Eastern Mediterranean needed to be secured, and military reforcements were sent to Egypt and a protectorate declared. Cyprus, a leasehold since 1878, was annexed on the day that Britain went to war witrh Turkey. There was also a new thrust, and this was into Mesopotamia, to prevent it from attack by the Turks or penetration by German agents, and to safeguard the sources of oil. After a number of reverses, Turkey surrendered and thereby lost her entire Middle Eastern territory.

PICTURE 35: MAP OF THE MANDATES - At the Peace Conference in 1919, it was split between Britain and France: Britain received the Mandates for Iraq, Trans-Jordan, and Palestine, whilst France received Syria and the Lebanon. The Empire was now at its greatest extent: it controlled 25% of the globe and 20% of its population. However, Palestine immediately became a problem, largely because of competing claims on the territory: there was the indigenous Palestine population, and there were the incoming Jews, to whom the British Government had promised the establishment of a national home in Palestine. The British tried to balance the claims of both populations, but as war drew closer, this became more and more difficult.

World War II ended with Britain apparently still dominant in the Middle East. Cyrenaica and Tripolitania had been added in 1943 to the other captured Italian ex-colonies, Somalia and Eritrea, as part of the informal empire. But over the succeeding decade or so, she suffered one defeat after another. First of all came Palestine, from which the US more or less forced Britain to withdraw, and she resigned the Mandate in May 1948. PICTURE 36: ISRAELI CELEBRATIONS - Note that this was the only imperial territory after the American Revolution from which Britain was forced out. The state of Israel was then declared. In 1951, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company lost control of Persian oil, and, after a joint MI6/CIA coup to remove the prime minister and restore the Shah, Britain resigned dominant influence in Iran to the US. However, the final and most cataclysmic end of Empire in the Middle East was the Suez Crisis. PICTURE 37: NASSER - As a reaction to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Nasser, the Egyptian leader, PICTURE 38: PORT SAID AFTER ANGLO-FRENCH ATTACKS - the British, French and Israelis invaded to secure the Canal and the Canal Zone. PICTURE 39: EISENHOWER AND DULLES DISCUSSING SUEZ - Eisenhower, the American President, was intensely furious, and sanctions against Britain were put into place: her loss of oil was not made up, and the pound, which was plummeting, received no American support. Furthermore, the American Sixth Fleet was moved into a menacing position, although no one expected anything to happen there. The Americans feared that this imperial assault would drive the Arab peoples closer to the Soviet Union; furthermore, it took place just before an American presidential election, and during the Hungarian Uprising, with the resulting Soviet invasion of Hungary. Suez was a profound turning-point. The long-term result was an accelerating withdrawal from the remainder of the Empire and a disinclination to become involved abroad. Certainly, it was now clear that the UK could not involve itself in any foreign policy which required the use of force without at least the acquiescence of the US.

PICTURE 40: AFRICA ABOUT 1850 - And finally, there is Africa. For Britain, the colonial drive here was as much defensive as offensive: most politicians and officials wished for no political responsibility for a territory, unless and until some other power wanted it. Exploration and occupation were led by those on the ground, and it took quite a long time for the British government to become interested in Africa. Sierra Leone had been founded by the British in 1787 as a home for freed slaves, but Africa was a matter for the private sector, not the government. The two groups who maintained a high level of interest were explorers and missionaries, and it was the stories of the explorers which really stimulated interest in Africa.

PICTURE 41: MAP OF WEST AFRICA - If the traditional interest in Egypt was based on strategic considerations, the traditional interest in West Africa had always been trade: Britain sent manufactured goods to West Africa in exchange for slaves, which were shipped to the West Indies in exchange for sugar and other tropical goods, which were shipped back to Britain. After 1807, with the end of the slave trade, palm oil took the place of slaves. In West Africa during the 1870s and the 1880s, the competition came from France. In East Africa, it was Germany. In South Africa, it was the Boers, although in this case, the British expanded from Cape Colony into the Boer states. Fundamentally, by the 1880s, countries were grabbing land in Africa wherever they could, leading to the so-called Scramble for Africa. There were new countries, Italy and Germany, and older ones such as Belgium, who believed overwhelmingly that they had to have colonies. Great Powers, like Britain and France, had colonies, and thus so should any state which presumed to be a Great Power. Most of the world outside of Africa had already been absorbed by other empires, so that left this final continent. In many cases, land was grabbed not because of its intrinsic worth, but to keep someone else from controlling it. PICTURE 42: THE AFRICAN CONTINENT IN 1910 - By the turn of the century, Liberia and Abyssinia were the only African countries which remained independent. The British controlled most of a highway of land from the Cape to Cairo, and would do so after 1918, when she took over Tanganyika; she had her colonies on the west coast, pre-eminently Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast; and she had Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

PICTURE 43: THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1939 - For most of the period between the two world wars, British defence policy was focused on the Empire; what World War II then made clear was that in military terms, it was simply a burden. From the early Cold War period, in any case, Britainâs attention was concentrated on Europe, firstly by NATO and later by the desire to join the EEC. NATO was vital to Britainâs security against the Soviet and associated threats. A major reason for the growing desire to join the EEC was a fundamental economic change: whilst from the end of World War I until the mid-1950s, the Empire as a whole was by far Britainâs main trading partner, the position then declined substantially. In short, it became more and more clear that in terms of national power and wealth, the colonial empire and the Commonwealth could no longer provide Great Britain with the military and economic security she required.

But there were other reasons. The prime one was imperial overstretch. Great Britain simply could not hold what she had. Governments were trying to change life in Britain, and all of the financial and human resources were required for that - and any left over had to go into her commitments to NATO and her other foreign policy responsibilities. In the Empire itself, the dependent peoples were making it increasingly clear that they wanted nothing less than their independence: the example of the Japanese defeating the Western Powers had been searing, and nationalism was a potent force. For decades, Britain had been murmuring something about trusteeship: her imperial responsibilities were to guide and hover protectively over these peoples until they were ready for self-government, although no one could state just when they would be ready. This approach was no longer acceptable, and Britain had to decide whether to resist or resign. The will to empire had never been one based solely on a cost-benefit analysis: many people took great pride in the Empire, and saw it as an essential part of Britainâs identity and as defining her position in the world. By the 1960s, there was a reversion to the idealism of the mid-19th century, that the British, through their Empire, were spreading freedom and improvement across the world [ Marshall ]. But by this period, Britain had not the resources - Suez had made this manifestly clear - and, increasingly, she had not the will to resist the calls of the colonies for freedom. She would withdraw from the Empire, leaving behind her dozens of independent states.

This mostly took place in groups. By the Statute of Westminster of 1931, the Dominions essentially became independent. India and Pakistan gained their independence in 1947, although at great cost, followed in 1948 by Burma and Ceylon, later to be called Sri Lanka. The Gold Coast became independent as Ghana in 1957, followed in the period from 1960 to 1968 by the African colonies: Nigeria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Botswana, Zambia, Gambia, Lesotho, and Swaziland. In 1997, the lease on the New Territories in China ran out, and China re-took control; at the same time, Britain re-ceded Hong Kong to China. There was now left only about sixteen British overseas territories, ranging from Gibraltar to the Falklands to the Cayman Islands to Bermuda to the Sovereign base areas on Cyprus to the British Antarctic Territory.

Was the Empire a Good Thing? This is a question which continues to raise emotions high - some of you may have seen the journalistic squabbles over this very question during the past fortnight. That is truly an unanswerable question, since it depends on where you are and what is important. Do the ex-colonies remember the violence or the schools and medicines? Colonies inherited many institutions and structures - although some of these are no longer have the same resonance as they do in Britain - and the English language, of very great importance today. There is no doubt of the supreme value of the Empire to Great Britain: to develop from an off-shore island menaced by many greater powers to the supreme international power herself - to the possessor of the largest empire the world has ever known - was no mean feat. The habits inculcated by it, which include professional armed forces and a diplomatic corps of high quality, an ability to walk easily abroad and an openness to foreign influences which is probably unique in the modern world, contribute to Britainâs continuing international position, one which is not based on her geography nor necessarily on her wealth. But it can also encourage a nostalgia about past glories which might interfere with the reality of todayâs world. I do not myself particularly subscribe to that argument, but perhaps a valedictory lecture is not the place for such musings. Rather, to quote John Ebdon, if you have been, thank you for listening.

Â© Professor Kathleen Burk, Gresham College, 21 June 2006

**acharya** · (This post was last modified: 08-27-2009, 04:20 AM by acharya.)

Professor Kathleen Burk

Date/Time: 10/10/2005
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=4&EventId=420

Venue: Barnard's Inn Hall

The loss of the American colonies in 1783 deprived Great Britain of what was seen as the jewel of the Empire, and heralded the end of the First British Empire. But India soon came to replace North America as the jewel. This lecture will look at the first inroads by the East India Company, at the conquest of India from France and from the Indians themselves, and at the unusual way in which it was governed.

INDIA: THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

Professor Kathleen Burk

PICTURE 1: TITLE - My intention during my three years as Professor of Rhetoric has been to give an overview of British external relations. During my first year, I concentrated on Anglo-American relations; last year I focused on Anglo-European relations; and for my final year, I want to look at Britain and her Empire, beginning this evening with India.The perception of many Britons of the place of India in the Empire is coloured by the peaceful withdrawal of British authority and by the structures of politics and government left behind: a semi-representative political system, a trained civil service and a university system in which to train an Ã©lite to run the country. But the story is darker than such a summary implies. One shorthand might be greed, violence, despotism, adaptation, weakness and scuttle. Alternatively, it might be trade and commerce, defence and expansion, economic development, political development, and gradual withdrawal, leaving a former colony well able to govern itself and to develop successfully. The fact that the story ended more or less successfully can mask the fact that the first century and a half of British involvement in India was dominated by violence and despotism. The Great Mutiny of 1857, or the Great Rebellion, or the First War of Independence - all names by which this event is known - was a watershed, forcing changes in the manner in which the British governed India. The subsequent century saw the development of forces for change in both India and Great Britain which climaxed in 1947 and the independence of India - and Pakistan.

PICTURE 2: MAP OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE - From 1526 until the British took hold, the territory of India was dominated by the Mughal Empire. â India â as such did not exist: rather, the empire was split up into what were effectively regions, such as Bengal, each of which was ruled by a subordinate ruler, a nawab or viceroy, or perhaps a nizam or prince. Thus when the East India Company began establishing trade links on the sub-continent, it did so primarily with individual rulers. PICTURE 3: TEA CLIPPERS AT THE EAST INDIA DOCKS AT DEPTFORD - This is a picture of tea clippers at the East India Docks at Deptford. The East India Company was the great overseas trading company which dominated British trade with India until the mid-19th century. From the beginning of the 17th century, it held a monopoly of English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa. By the end of the 17th century, its most important settlements were on the coast of India. PICTURE 4: MAP OF INDIA IN 1765 - It owned the island of Bombay outright, whilst at Madras and Calcutta, Indian rulers had given the English grants of territory that included growing towns. Although during the earliest years of trading the main focus had been pepper and spices, during the 17th century it was textiles: Indian cotton goods were desired through Europe, and there was a lively re-export market in the Americas and along the West African coast. At the beginning of the 18th century, the English operated out of the great Mughal port of Surat on the west and Madras on the east. Calcutta in Bengal in the north had been largely founded by the British; by this time, they had built a fort there and exercised control over the town. Bengal was very rich, and from the 1720s, the shipments from Calcutta usually amounted to at least one-half of all East India Company cargoes from India.

The 1720s are important for another reason, which is that from that period, the French East India Company was also trading on a considerable scale in Asia. Their headquarters were in Pondicherry, close to Madras. Anglo-French conflict is an important reason for the abrupt change in British activities in the sub-continent from largely peaceful trading in a period of stability to wars and conquests: the need to fight the French increased the size of the Companyâs arm, thereby massively increasing the Companyâs need for revenue. This would have repercussions in due course. Meanwhile, in 1744, fighting broke out between the British and French at sea, a reflection of the fact that a Franco-Spanish alliance had declared war on Great Britain. The French retaliated against the British seizures at sea by attacking and taking Madras in 1746. In 1746, hostilities began on land in south-east India in the territories claimed by the Nawabs of Arcot and later those of the Nizams of Hyderabad. The British and French fought out their own rivalries in part as allies of contestants for the succession in both regions of Indian âcountry powersâ. War ebbed and flowed across southern India with little break between 1746 and 1761: in 1760, the British won a decisive victory at Wandiwash and the French stronghold of Pondicherry surrendered the following year. Arcot became a client state of Great Britain. Under British protection, a Carnatic state was gradually built up which the Company was formally to annex at the end of the 18th century.

PICTURE 5: SIRAJ-UD-DAULAH - Meanwhile, however, in 1756, relations between the Company and the Nawab of Bengal exploded into violence. This is a picture of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah. The Nawab, as had rulers in other parts of India, maintained the outward forms of rule by the Mughal Emperor in Delhi, but he was essentially the independent ruler of Bengal. The British presence was becoming too intrusive for an ambitious ruler to leave unregulated, and Nawab feared that he was losing control of part of his territory. He tried to impose constraints on the Company, which the Company, contemptuous of the fighting qualities of the Bengalis, rejected. As a result, he attacked and on 20 June 1756 took control of the British centre, Calcutta. The British who surrendered the fort were well treated, but later that night, some European soldiers got drunk and assaulted the native guards who, in their turn, sought justice from the Nawab. He ordered the confinement of those soldiers who had misbehaved. They were put in a room of 18 feet by 14 feet 10 inches, with only one window. The morning after that hot night, many were found to have died from suffocation. PICTURE 6: PUTATIVE PICTURE OF THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA -The incident gave rise to a huge outcry in England, primarily due to an exaggerated report by the defender of Calcutta, John Holwell: he claimed that 146 died, but modern historians consider that it was more likely 50 [Marshall], and that the Nawab did not intend it to happen.

PICTURE 7: ROBERT CLIVE, OR CLIVE OF INDIA - For the Company, it was vital that Bengal be grabbed from the Nawab. The hero was Robert Clive, known to his later admirers as âthe conqueror of India â. He first went out to India in 1743 as a civil servant for the Company, but soon transfered to the military service; he returned to England in 1753, where he lived, shall we say, in an ostentatious manner. However, he was summoned to return to India when the troubles in Bengal erupted, and he arrived in Madras in 1756, immediately securing the British forces there. He then moved to Calcutta, and in early 1757 he captured Bengal. On the 23rd of June, at the Battle of Plassey, the forces of the East India Company under Clive defeated the army of Siraj-ud-daulah. The battle lasted only a few hours - indeed, the outcome had been decided long beforre swords were drawn. There was another Bengali, Mir Jafar, who wanted the Nawabâs throne; he was persuaded to throw in his lot with Clive. In addition, the majority of the Nawabâs soldiers were bribed to throw away their weapons, surrender prematurely, or even to turn their weapons against their own army. In short, the Battle of Plassey was won by bribes rather than by bravery. PICTURE 8: CLIVE OF INDIA - Nevertheless, as demonstrated by this rather bad picture, Cliveâs reputation in Great Britain did not suffer thereby.

The new Nawab, Mir Jafar, refused to make what the Company considered would be an adequate grant of funds, and he was deposed in favour of another ruler. Finally, in 1765, Clive took the decision to demand the diwani, the right to rule, from the Mughal Emperor: he had decided that only direct control of the whole resources of Bengal would give the Company the funds it required - maintaining an army was an expensive business. PICTURE 9: MAP OF INDIA IN 1765 - Therefore, by 1765, the East India Company had become the outright ruler of small areas in the south and of the whole of the great province of Bengal; it held the Nawab of Arcot in a tight grip, which gave it effective control over the Carnatic territories of the south-east; and it had taken the Wazir of Oudh under its protection and was maintaining garrisons in his dominions. In short, the Company had become an Indian territorial power. However, it is probably the case that in 1765, British supremacy over the whole of the sub-continent was envisaged by few.

During the second half of the 18th century, the balance of Great Britain âs imperial interests began to shift from the west to the east, a swing which was greatly encouraged by the loss in 1783 of most of her American colonies. When the stimulus was perceived as commerce, no one objected; however, as the British political class gradually realised the form the Companyâs activities were taking beyond trade, there was increasing unease. Conquest disturbed them, for a number of reasons. First of all, the resources devoted to military conquest would be better spent on developing commercial links; secondly, the reports of greed and corruption aroused fears that these forces might eat away at traditional British liberties and virtues; and thirdly, following from that, was the question as to whether the Company was the appropriate vehicle for British commercial and administrative activity in India. What began as limited governmental investigations into Company affairs and activities in India ended in 1813 by the British government assuming some responsibility for the Indian Empire.

It is fair to say that this decision was not taken quickly or lightly. The state hardly had the expertise or indeed the resources to deal with the problems of India. However, once Clive had taken Bengal, large territorial revenues poured into the coffers of the Company; this transformed the London view of India, and acted as a spur to those, such as the Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, who believed that the state had a ârightâ to a share of the revenues, not least because the state had provided military and naval assistance to the Company in time of need. It took several years for this to be agreed - many in the Commons believed that the Government was illegitimately stealing private wealth - but by 1767, the government established its entitlement to Â£400,000 a year from the Company. Unfortunately for the Company, even beyond the loss of a proportion of its revenue, they became subject to parliamentary enquiries into its shortcomings: the collapse of the Companyâs finances in 1772 threatened the stream of revenue from Bengal to Westminster, and acrid reports about greed and corruption refused to go away.

PICTURE 10: WARREN HASTINGS - The great set piece of this crisis was the parliamentary impeachment of Warren Hastings, charged with tyranny, rapacity and corruption while the first Governor-General of India from 1774 to 1785. In Bengal, Hastings did not pretend, as Clive had done, that the Nawab remained sovereign; rather, he stripped him of his powers. He required loans from Indian bankers, whether they would or no: essentially, it was claimed at his trial, he extorted money from them. However, he also created an efficient and economical system for collecting the land revenue, the main source of the Companyâs financial stability. PICTURE 11: POLITICAL CARTOON ATTACKING THE EAST INDIA COMPANY - What he did not do was what virtually every other official in India did: trade on his own account, and extract what funds he could from the Indians, a habit greatly facilitated by conquest - as one Company official pointed out, it was a question of âwhether it should go into a blackmanâs pocket or mineâ. The picture shows the reaction of one cartoonist to the activities of the Company and its servants. The approach of the Company to the payment of its employees was small salary and large perquisites; Hastings, rather, expended much of his princely salary on institutions in Bengal and on purchasing Mughal manuscripts and works of art. When he returned to England, he carried back a modest Â£80,000 - he later claimed that he was astonished at his own moderation. But he was dogged by implacable enemies from his days in India, and although he was acquitted of all charges, the ten-year ordeal destroyed his financial resources. Fortunately, the Company came to his rescue, and he was able to live out his years in some comfort. But he refused a peerage.

One outcome of the political fighting was the passage of the India Act of 1784, again under William Pitt. One real problem of the Companyâs activities in India was the mixing up together of its commercial activities and its revenue-collecting activities. If it was primarily a company, why was it collecting taxes? If it was a government, why was it involved in trade? What this act required was that the government should review and if necessary revise the Companyâs despatches sending out instructions to India. Because of the confusion of activities, the government began to interfere in commercial matters, causing a great deal of tension. However, it now had the upper hand, a power made manifest in 1813 with the renewal of the Companyâs charter, which underlined the Crownâs âundoubted sovereigntyâ over all of the East India Companyâs territories.

The years after the passage of this act saw a social transformation in India. Under what was called the âPermanent Settlementâ, tax levels on the land in Bengal were fixed âfor everâ, but at a very high level, and rights to land were thereby created that could be bought and sold. Many of the old landowners, unable to pay the taxes, sold out, whilst tens of thousands of high-caste Bengali Hindus consolidated their position within the framework of the Permanent Settlement. Thousands of them entered the world of service and trade in what was now the pre-eminent town of Calcutta ; many of them were especially keen to have a liberal English education. A new Ã©lite was gradually created, one which had perforce to support the British. The members of this Ã©lite were vastly more influential with the British than were the Mughal noblemen and former Rajas: the hierarchy was truly turned upside down.

During the period of the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, the imposition of despotism, a terrible economic depression, and the displacement of Indians from leading offices of wealth and power all took place. The first of these stemmed from the change in ideas as to how to govern India. Whilst the earlier imperialists had notions about basing governance on English principles, those now in charge moved to the idea of Oriental despotism: they were primarily military commanders, and preferred to have all law and power centralised in the hands of the Company. Military power was to be used both for external defence and for the consolidation of power. Roughly two million armed men were wandering around the provinces looking for military jobs, and the countryside was also infested with bandits; the Company determined that these threats had to be eliminated. The problem here was that military justice clashed with ideas of the rule of law. As the military frontier made headroads into civil society, army commanders were inclined to suspend civil justice and enforce martial law, executing men on the slightest of pretexts. In other words, the rulers considered themselves above the law.

At the same time, changes instituted by the Company stimulated a terrible economic depression which lasted for over twenty years. For one thing, the sweeping away of native courts and soldiers eliminated their purchasing power; unfortunately, the new rulers bought Western, not local, goods, in addition to which wealth became increasingly concentrated in the main colonial centres. As well, much less money flowed into India in payment for Indian exports, which meant less domestic purchasing power. It did not help that the Company no longer used Indian commercial and banking systems, but ran its own. In short, demand contracted, unemployment rose, and millions descended into poverty.

This combination of despotic rule and economic depression was the context within which Indian society was forced into what the British thought of as their traditional way of life. Many of those who had been artisans, soldiers and servants now became peasants tied by heavy taxes to the land; the movement of travellers was restricted; and those who worked for the Company and its governing structures, whilst gaining privileges thereby, were nevertheless prevented from rising above a certain level: the soldier never became an officer, a business employee never a director. These privileged soldiers and servants were selected according to criteria of caste and race and blood, thereby emphasising their importance in a way never before prescribed, and freezing these attributes as marks of status. Privilege and power amongst the Indians themselves became frozen.

PICTURE 12: LORD DALHOUSIE - It was the British themselves who shook the aedifice. This is a picture of Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General from 1846 to 1856. Dalhousie had a strong belief in the superiority of British principles and procedures. It followed that British rule was more beneficial to the Indians than that of their own princes, and he therefore annexed teritories whenever he could. He fought the second Sikh War in 1848-49 and annexed the Punjab. He introduced the Doctrine of Lapse: formerly, when the ruling family of a state lacked a direct heir, they adopted one; Dalhousie now forbade the right of adoption, and if a ruling family lacked a natural heir, Dalhousie annexed the state. In this manner, six formerly independent states were added to the Indian Empire.

He made changes to the system. He re-organised the administration; he laid down the main lines of development of the railway system, set up telegraphs and reformed the postal system; public works projects, such as the construction of roads and bridges, were undertaken. He promoted mass education and laid plans for the first universities (the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were opened in 1857 after his departure). But he also encouraged Anglican missionaries, which threatened Hindu and Muslim religious leaders, whose authority had been enhanced by the earlier withdrawal of state authority over them; he attacked native customs, including suttee or the burning of widows; he spurned the new âaristocracyâ, repudiated caste and threatened their status and economic privileges; and, most dangerous of all, he tried to produce a more disciplined, European-style, Bengal army, thereby threatening the status and privileges of the soldiers, not least that of avoiding flogging. He failed to restrain the blatant greed for land and money which drove the Briton in India, especially those of the lower middle class, which greatly offended Indians of rank, who were still looked up to by most Indians as their natural leaders. The combination of simmering discontent, economic depression and the mutiny of many of the Bengal soldiers sparked off the Great Rebellion of 1857, which threatened to destroy a substantial portion of the Indian Empire.

PICTURE 13: MAP OF THE REBELLION - This map shows the main areas of conflict. On the 10th of May 1857, sepoys or Indian soldiers, drawn mainly from Muslim units from Bengal, mutinied in Meerut. The rebels marched to Delhi and offered their services to the Mughal emperor; for the next year much of north and central India were in revolt against the British. Some of the long- and medium-term causes of the insurrection have already been indicated; the immediate cause was rifle cartridges. There was a very convincing rumour that the cartridges had been greased by a combination of pig and cow fat, offensive to the religious beliefs of both Hindu and Muslim; because the sepoy had to bite off the end of the cartridge, he had either to taste the fat or be flogged. Under threat by their British officers, the soldiers mutinied. The revolt of the Bengal Army neutralised British power in the central Ganges valley and opened the way for widespread attacks by the civilians as well, who attacked Company institutions such as courts and revenue treasuries, which had strengthened the rights of the new landlords against the peasants; they also attacked Europeans, both male and female.

PICTURE 14: THE MUTINY - Here is a contemporary picture of the fighting. One point which emerges is that sepoys fought on both sides - indeed, the majority sided with the British. The Punjab remained loyal, and provided a stready stream of Sikh and Pathan recruits; the Madras and Bombay armies remained loyal; and most of the princely states remained untouched. In the areas of fighting in the north and in central India, it was effectively a civil war. The unprepared British were terrified; however, the prompt arrival of British troops re-directed from duties in China and the Persian Gulf enabled them to neutralise Bengal and most of Bihar. As they regained strength, they attacked the rebels with a savagery which was matched by that of their enemies. For the British both in India and in Great Britain itself, the slaughter at Kanpur was convincing evidence of the essential barbarity of the Indian. The Nana Sahib, with some reluctance, became leader of the rebels in that area and, after a three-week siege, took the surrender of the 400 British in Kanpur, to whom he gave a safe-conduct. As they boarded boats to take them downriver to Allahabad, many were massacred. Passions were running high, because reports had arrived of vicious British reprisals at Varanasi, followed by the news of a line of gibbets along the road to Allahabad. However, the Nana Sahib, far from ordering the massacre, organised the rescue of some British women who had been abducted during the chaos. They, along with other surviving women and children, perhaps 200 in all, were lodged under his protection. With the avenging British advancing rapidly from Allahabad, the idea seems to have been to use them as hostages. But they were not. As the insurgent commanders discussed escape, the order was given to kill them all. The soldiers did not wish to do it, so five men, two of whom were actually butchers, were recruited from the baszaar, and they proceeded to hack them to death. As one historian has noted, âfor sheer barbarity this âmassacre of the innocentsâ was rivalled only by the disgusting deaths devised for dozens of equally innocent Indians by way of British reprisal.â [Keay] PICTURE 15: ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE MUTINY - The last major sepoy rebels surrendered on the 21st of June 1858 at Gwalior, one of the principal centres of the revolt, but the fighting continued until the 21st of May 1859, when the final battle was fought at Sirwa Pass, and the defeated rebels fled into Nepal.

This rebellion or civil war was a turning point. In May 1858, the British exiled the Mughal Emperor to Burma, which they also controlled, thus formally ending the Mughal Empire. PICTURE 16: CARTOON SHOWING THE DEMISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY - But, as this cartoon showing the blowing-up of the East India Company illustrates, it too was abolished, and the British government established direct rule under the British Crown. Queen Victoria was now Queen of India and, as in Great Britain itself, her position was buttressed by an hierarchy of hereditary nobles and the award of honours. The Star of India, a royal order of Indian knights, was introduced in 1861, and the first tour by a member of the royal family took place in 1869. The position of Secretary of State for India was established, and he would be represented in India by a viceroy with his headquarters in Calcutta, which now replaced Delhi as the capital. A major Indian grievance was eliminated by the renunciation in 1858 of the âdoctrine of lapseâ. About 40% of Indian territory and 20-25% of the population remained under the control of 562 princes of diverse religions and ethnicity. Their love of ceremonial pomp became proverbial, while their domains lagged behind the British-controlled territory in terms of social and political transformation. The composition of the Indian Army was modified: whereas before the mutiny the proportion of Indian soldiers to British was 9:1, afterwards it was 2:1. And, because colonial rulers regarded Dalhousieâs attacks on religious customs and traditions as a primary cause of the rebellion, they were stopped, and Hindu and Muslim priests regained British recognition and support of their sanctity.

PICTURE 17: BENJAMIN DISRAELI - The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a strong supporter of the Empire, and he believed it needed a strong symbol which would tie it to the affections of the British people. PICTURE 18: QUEEN VICTORIA AS EMPRESS OF INDIA - In 1876, on his advice, the Queen announced to Parliament that, satisfied that her Indian subjects were, as she said, âhappy under My rule and loyal to My throne,â it was now appropriate for her to assume a new title. It was later revealed that she was now the Empress of India, and in January 1877, âin a vast tented city around the Ridge whence British forces had recaptured Delhi some twenty years earlier, the new imperium was solemnised at an Imperial Assemblageâ, with an attendance of 84,000. [Keay]

PICTURE 19: LORD AND LADY CURZON AT A DURBAR - Over the following decades, the British relationship with India developed in different ways. The panoply of British power developed. This picture shows the Viceroy Lord Curzon and Lady Curzon in a formal moment, PICTURE 20: THE TIGER HUNT - while this one shows them at play - or at least Lord Curzon at play, since Lady Curzon looks less than thrilled with her position. At the same time, the barriers went up against the Indians, even those loyal and educated Indians of rank. British attitudes shifted from relative openness to dislike and distrust, and even racial xenophobia. British families and their servants lived in cantonments at a distance from Indian settlements, and male social clubs became symbols of exclusivity and snobbery. Their children were sent back to Great Britain to be educated. The strict subordination to the British of both Indians and those of mixed race was strongly enforced by the memsahibs. In short, analogies with the relationship of American whites to their former slaves easily come to mind.

More positively, there was a gradual development of opportunities for Indians to take part in government. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 with the object of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians, but, it must be said, the Congress was considerably more influential after the First World War than it was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The drive for political change came from the British themselves, in particular from Liberal Party politicans. The first steps towards self-government were taken in the late 19th century with the appointment of Indian councelors to advise the viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members; participation in legislative councils was subsequently widened with the Indian Councils Act of 1892. PICTURE 21: JOHN MORLEY AND LORD MINTO - These two pictures are of John Morley, Secretary of State for India, and Lord Minto, his Viceroy in India. Their Government of India Act of 1909 gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures, or councils. Where once they had been appointed, some were now to be elected. The Government also granted separate electorates and communal representation for Muslims and Hindus, a move welcomed by the Muslim League, which felt threatened by the vast preponderance of Hindus, but opposed by Congress. This particular decision, which entrenched these positions, was perhaps unwise.

However, the Morley-Minto reforms were a milestone, because, step by step, the elective principle was introduced into membership of Indian legislative councils, even though the electrorate was limited in the first instance to a small group of upper-class Indians. Communal electorates were later extended to other communities and made group identification through religion a factor in Indian politics. PICTURE 22: INDIAN SOLDIERS IN WORLD WAR I - The claims of Indians for self-government were strengthened by their participation in the First World War, when 1.5 million Britons and Indians left India to fight. India also contributed over Â£146 million towards the war, and suffered both inflation and shortages of essentials. [Brown] Their contribution was substantial and crucial. The picture shows the cover of a popular song entitled âIndia Repliesâ, in this case to the call for the help of the Empire. PICTURE 23: THE IMPERIAL WAR CABINET -

Indeed, by 1917 their contribution was such that India had native representation in the Imperial War Cabinet, as demonstrated by the two gentlemen at the left in the second row.

This curcial contribution, and the repeated statements by the Western allies that the war was being fought for democracy and the rights of nations, raised Indian aspirations for greater self-government. In August 1917 the British government formally announced a policy of âincreasing association of Indians in every branch of the administrration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.â Embodied in the Government of India Act of 1919, these reforms were the maximum concessions the British were prepared to make. The franchise was extended and increased authority was given to centre and provincial legislative councils, but the viceroy remained responsible to London, not to an Indian-based legislative body.

PICTURE 24: AMRITSA R - To the surprise of the British, some of whom mumbled about ingratitude, the 1919 reforms did not satisfy Indian political demands. The British repressed opposition, and reimposed restrictions on movement and on the press. Nevertheless, there were mass protests across the subcontinent, instigated by the Indian National Congress. In April 1919 a peaceful demonstration in Amritsar quickly descended into violence. In response to arson attacks on British banks, Government offices and private property, and the general loss of control in the city, the British Governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael OâDwyer, declared martial law. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer took over control of the city. His instructions stated that âNo gatherings of persons nor processions of any sort will be allowed. All gatherings will be fired on.â On 12 April Dyer issued a proclamation declaring âall meetings and gatheringsâ of more than 5 people forbidden. On 13 April, thousands of Indians were gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh or Park in the heart of Amritsar city; this was the day when Sikhs celebrated the beginning of the harvest by coming together in community fairs. The gathering was in defiance of the proclamation. British and Gurkha troops marched to the Bagh and at the command of General Dyer opened fire, concentrating on the areas where the crowd was thickest. The firing lasted for about 10 minutes. The only way out of the park was manned by the troops, and so people could not escape. When the firing ended, hundreds had been killed, including a 7-week-old baby, and thousands injured. Back in his headquarters, Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been âconfronted by a revolutionary army,â and had been obliged âto teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.â He was supported by the Governor. In the storm of outrage which followed, Dyer was promoted to major-general and retired. Although the event was condemned worldwide, he had significant support at home, but it made the army extremely nervous about again policing civil disobedience.

PICTURE 25: MAHATMA GANDHI - Most importantly, the massacre provided very great impetus for the movement for freedom and paved the way for Gandhiâs Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920 and 1921. Gandhi was a member of Congress, and he led it in a general campaign of nonviolent noncooperation during the 1920s and 1930s. At the 10-year review of the 1919 Act, prospects of further reforms encouraged greater agitation and showers of demands from various groups. The Simon Commission, whose duty it was to take evidence and make recommendations, recommended further constitutional change, but it was not until 1935 that a new Government of India Act was passed. What was at issue was whether or not there would be a continuation of separate electorates.

PICTURE 26: JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH - You will probably recognise these two pictures, as you recognised Gandhi. On the left is Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader with Gandhi of the Congress Party. On the right is Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League. The Congress Party insisted on a unified electorate; given the minority status of Muslims, Jinnah not surprisingly insisted on the continuation of separate electorates: his argument was that Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations. The decision of the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald was that the system of separate electorates at both central and provincial levels would continue.

At the outset of the Second World War, Great Britain made India a belligerent without consulting Indian elected councils. This angered Indian officials, and led Congress to declare that India would not support the war effort until it had been granted complete independence. Agreement was therefore reached between them that India would be granted full independence once the Axis powers were defeated, if India gave her full co-operation during the war.

In the winter of 1945-46, the British worked with Congress and the Muslim League to devise a governmental structure for the soon-0to-be independent state. However, Congress and the League could not agree, and by mid-August 1946 a frenzy of rioting ensued between Hindus and Muslims. PICTURE 27: VICEROY THE LORD MOUNTBATTEN, LADY MOUNTBATTEN AND GANDHI - In March 1947, Lord Mountbatten was sent to India as Viceroy: this is a picture of him, Lady Mountbatten and Gandhi. Mountbatten feared the forced evacuation of British troops. He suggested the partition of the Punjab and Bengal in the face of raging civil war, but Gandhi and Nehru both refused: Gandhi suggested that Mountbatten offer Jinnah the leadership of a united India, but Nehru would not agree. In JUly 1947, Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which set a deadline of midnight on August 14-15 for âdemarcation of the dominions of India â into India and East and West Pakistan. PICTURE 28: MAP OF PARTITION - This map shows the Partition, as a result of which 10 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fled their homes to seek sanctuary across the line. As you can see, the Punjab was caught in the middle, and Sikhs bore the brunt of the suffering. PICTURES 29-30: FLIGHT - These next two pictures show the flight of those caught on the wrong side. PICTURE 31: DEATH - This picture shows the fate of those who failed to escape.

PICTURE 32: INDIA TODAY - This map of India today reflects the history of British relations with India. Three of the four largest cities, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, owe their early leap into wealth and power to the East India Company. Lucknow and Kanpur, Allahabad and Amritsar, hold deep memories of terror and slaughter. Pakistan and Bangladesh reflect the early insistence of the British on treating the two religious communities as though a deep crevass separated them - and by 1947, one did. After 1783, India increasingly became the major imperial concern of the British, who saw parts of the rest of the Empire in geopolitical relation to India - the control of the Suez Canal is one obvious example. Their negotiations with the representatives of Indian political pressure groups were driven not by the desire to one day give India her independence: rather, it was to find some way to keep her within the Empire and under some control - her army was needed, and in general she was the most important part of the Empire. But by the beginning of the Second World War - and certainly by its end - India âs independence was assured. The Labour Government had backed independence from the late 1920s and wished to free India as soon as possible. But it is also true to say that Great Britain no longer had the resources, the strength or the will to restrain India from embarking on the path she wished to take. India now received her independence without embarking on war with the imperial centre - unlike the case with the Dutch and French Empires. Great Britain left behind some appalling historical memories, but she also bequeathed a democratic political system, a trained civil service, an educational system, a transport system of some magnitude - India had the 4th largest railway system in the world - and the English language. All of these still remain. It is not such a contemptible legacy.

Â© Professor Kathleen Burk, Gresham College, 10 October 2005

12-15-2009, 09:29 PM

[quote name='Guest' date='15 December 2009 - 03:26 PM'

And what has the above to do with "colonial History of India "?

ramana · 01-27-2010, 05:16 AM

And while at it read K.M. Pannicker's "Asia and Western Dominance"

SOURCE

The Chapters on India are very good and insightful. My grief is that between the generation that fought the British and the next a great chasm developed which made us all ignorant.

**acharya** · 05-23-2010, 01:22 AM

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3633486

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fre...946197D6CF

**acharya** · 05-24-2010, 07:48 AM

[size="6"]Why did the British Empire collapse so suddenly?

I note that even in 1945 it was thought of as a "Superpower" along with the USSR and the USA. Though by this stage it may have been nothing more than an illusion who or what caused the empire to collapse so suddenly? I note that in the space of 15 years most of it gained independance. Is the world a better place since the fall of colonialism, what do you think?

[/size]

Thank you for your help.

Well the main reasons were economic.

WW1, The Great Depression of the 1930's and then WW2, all happened one after the other, and exhausted Britain financially.

In 1945 Britain was still a military Superpower, with a huge Army, Navy and Air Force, but Britain was financially in a ruinous state, and Britain itself badly needed rebuilding, and this was the priority.

Actually, it did not suddenly collapse, but began with the British Mandate ending in the Middle East in 1933 and ending with Hong Kong in 1997.

IMPORTANT POINT -There was also no major military confrontations with the British, apart from with the Mau Mau in Kenya and Communist Rebels in Malaysia, the British won both of these conflicts. Britain decolonised over a period of around 30 years, almost always peacefully, and without any major challenges from the colonials, at least not militarily.

Prior to WW2 Britain ended its control of much of the Middle East, with Iraq, Jordan, Saudi, The Gulf States etc becoming independent. Canada, Australia and New Zealand were already Semi Independent Dominions by then.

Between 1947 and 1950, India, Pakistan, Israel and Burma becoming independent.

Then in the 1950's Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, South Africa,Malaysia, Nepal became independent.

In the 1960's Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi, Botswana, Uganda, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Cameroon, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Bahamas, Guyana, Singapore, Brunei, Cyprus, Malta,Belize, Papua, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Mauritius etc all became independent.

In the 1970's Britain pulled out of Aden(Yemen), Sychelles, and various smaller colonies in the South Pacific(Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu) and the Caribbean became independent, or were ceded to Australia or New Zealand in the case of Pacific Territories.

Zimbabwe only technically became independent in 1980, and Hong Kong as late as 1997!

Britain STILL has various colonies; Gibraltar, Bermuda,Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks &Caicos Isles,Barbuda, Falklands, Chagos Islands, Tristan Da Cunha, Asuncion, St Helena, Channel Islands, Pitcairn Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territories etc.

Britain introduced an Industrial Base, Organised Economy, Advanced Agriculture, Modern Legal and Judicial Systems, Road and Rail Networks, Electricity, Schools, Hospitals, Civil Service etc in its colonies.

Also, nations such as USA, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Israel, Iraq etc would simply NOT EXIST without the British Empire having existed first!

So, colonialism had its good points, and importantly, Imperialism was a thing of ITS time, not OUR time, and we must always judge history in the context of the values, culture, politics, norms and attitudes of that time.

Are former colonies now run better than under the British?

Some are, but some arent, particularly in Africa sadly; places like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Sudan etc have gone backwards in almost every way since the British left, so for that matter has Burma, Iraq, Papua New Guinea etc.

2 years ago

07-30-2010, 02:39 AM

[url="http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/british-prime-minister-david-cameron-refuses-indias-koh-i-noor-diamond-demand/19573215"]British PM Refuses India's Koh-i-Noor Diamond Demand[/url]

Not that the thieves will return the loot without putting up a fight, they should be reminded every now and then.

BTW, Cameron is direct descendant of one of the Brit Kings.

Quote:But during an appearance on India's NDTV channel today, Cameron -- who is in the country to boost Anglo-Indian trade -- politely refused to relinquish the crown jewel. "What tends to happen with these questions is that if you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum will be emptied," he said. "I know there is also a great argument about the original provenance of the Koh-i-noor diamond. I'm afraid this will disappoint viewers, but it's going to have to stay put."

Cameron was clearly thinking of other artifacts snatched during Britain's glory years -- such as the Elgin Marbles, torn off the walls of Athens' Acropolis at the turn of the 19th century, and Egypt's Rosetta Stone -- which are also wanted by their original owners.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 08-16-2010, 08:33 PM by Husky.)

http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2010/08/e...turns.html

Quote:Friday, August 13, 2010

East India Company Returns

The East India Company, the original global brand, is [color="#0000FF"]about to return after a 135-year absence[/color].

Indian entrepreneur Sanjiv Mehta is relaunching the famous East India Company with the opening of a luxury food store in London on Saturday. Mr Mehta hopes the company will once again be a worldwide business force.

[color="#0000FF"]Well, what better way to open a new chapter for the future, than for an Indian to take over the reins?[/color]

[color="#800080"](:kots[/color]

If I were Mehta, I would even expand the brand to luxury tourism - hotels, cruises, etc.

Posted by [color="#FF0000"]san[/color] at 8/13/2010 06:14:00 PM

Labels: colonialism, global economy, india, uk

Reactions:

6 comments:

Sandeep said...

[color="#0000FF"]I think its a bad idea. Owned by an indian doesnt make a difference.

He should have let the dead company be.

I hope he is not allowed to trade in india.[/color]

[color="#800080"](Second that. EIC's natural death was the best thing in the circumstances.

This tasteless resurrection by an "Indian" is incredibly sordid and morbid. Suppose one can look forward to him naming his grand/kid Churchill or some'at. <- No doubt "San" will find some reason to clap about that too and magically interpret/invert that as another "victory over the Empire".)[/color]

8/14/2010 12:36 AM

Inferno said...

[color="#0000FF"]Ã¢â¬ÅIt is the final triumph of a system of domination when the dominated start singing its virtues.Ã¢â¬Â[/color]

8/14/2010 11:32 AM

Sameer said...

Wishing all a [color="#0000FF"]Happy Independence Day[/color]...

Jai Hind. Jai Bharat..

-Sameer

[color="#800080"](Oh the irony. What independence?)[/color]

8/14/2010 11:53 AM

san said...

Well, East India Company is no longer the ruler of India. I kind of feel it's like the Tata purchase of Corus or JLR, or Mittal's acquisition of Arcelor.

[color="#800080"](Sure. And I expect Africans will next purchase them old slave ships that mass-murdered 'em - when these didn't carry them off to a future of slavery - and then convert these to luxury liners to carry them across from continent to continent. <- It's just an extension of the same argument, nah?

No wait, my analogy hit a snag when it came to realism: Africans *aren't* stupid, unlike the Indians of the age. But the good news is that Fatal Stupidity is a crime that conveniently punishes itself.)[/color]

8/14/2010 3:10 PM

Pankaj said...

Dear Rajeev,

Want to share this article about Commonwealth from Business Standard with you :

http://business-standard.com/india/story...ono=404572

8/14/2010 11:49 PM

exosing christianity's true agenda said...

I agree that this is a great idea. Does this mean that the new East India Company can "borrow" and "keep in trust" all the queen's paintings, jewels, and wealth?

Also, will this new company be pushing heroin on the locals? Maybe we can get some angry paki attack dogs to do this since the limeys are responsible for all their suffering.

8/15/2010 2:12 PM

[color="#800080"](At least this last person is funny. Even if it's not a laughing matter.)[/color]

Husky · (This post was last modified: 08-17-2010, 07:50 PM by Husky.)

Found linked off the twitter updates section on the LHS of the Rajeev2004 blog, which introduced the link with:

Quote:churchill racist xist bigot like most brits RT @ZoomIndianMedia: Churchill's documented christian hatred of the Hindu http://is.gd/eklMs about 8 hours ago

http://beta.epw.in/newsItem/comment/188592/

Winston ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s Plan for Post-war India

Seems lefty media E&P decided to do a little reveal on Britain's wartime poster-boy, so fondly remembered. Ought to give modern Britannia that other side of him to remember: the English Hitler.

ramana · 08-17-2010, 09:17 PM

NYT Book Review on Churchill:

Book Review: Two Churchills

Quote:August 12, 2010

The Two Churchills

By JOHANN HARI

CHURCHILLÃ¢â¬â¢S EMPIRE

The World That Made Him and the World He Made

By Richard Toye

Illustrated. 423 pp. A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt & Company. $32

Winston Churchill is remembered for leading Britain through her finest hour Ã¢â¬â but what if he also led the country through her most shameful one? What if, in addition to rousing a nation to save the world from the Nazis, he fought for a raw white supremacy and a concentration camp network of his own? This question burns through Richard ToyeÃ¢â¬â¢s superb, unsettling new history, Ã¢â¬ÅChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s EmpireÃ¢â¬Â Ã¢â¬â and is even seeping into the Oval Office.

George W. Bush left a big growling bust of Churchill near his desk in the White House, in an attempt to associate himself with ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s heroic stand against fascism. Barack Obama had it returned to Britain. ItÃ¢â¬â¢s not hard to guess why: his Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and tortured on ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s watch, for resisting ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s empire.

Can these clashing Churchills be reconciled? Do we live, at the same time, in the world he helped to save and the world he helped to trash? Toye, one of BritainÃ¢â¬â¢s smartest young historians, has tried to pick through these questions dispassionately. Churchill was born in 1874 into a Britain that was coloring the map imperial pink, at the cost of washing distant nations blood-red. He was told a simple story: the superior white man was conquering the primitive dark-skinned natives, and bringing them the benefits of civilization.

As soon as he could, Churchill charged off to take his part in Ã¢â¬Åa lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples.Ã¢â¬Â In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, he experienced, fleetingly, an instant of doubt. He realized that the local population was fighting back because of Ã¢â¬Åthe presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own,Ã¢â¬Â just as Britain would if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding instead that they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a Ã¢â¬Åstrong aboriginal propensity to kill.Ã¢â¬Â

{Colonial Imperialist}

He gladly took part in raids that laid waste to whole valleys, writing: Ã¢â¬ÅWe proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.Ã¢â¬Â He then sped off to help reconquer the Sudan, where he bragged that he personally shot at least three Ã¢â¬Åsavages.Ã¢â¬Â

{Genocidal modern Genghis!}

The young Churchill charged through imperial atrocities, defending each in turn. When the first concentration camps were built in South Africa, he said they produced Ã¢â¬Åthe minimum of sufferingÃ¢â¬Â possible. At least 115,000 people were swept into them and 14,000 died, but he wrote only of his Ã¢â¬Åirritation that kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men.Ã¢â¬Â Later, he boasted of his experiences. Ã¢â¬ÅThat was before war degenerated,Ã¢â¬Â he said. Ã¢â¬ÅIt was great fun galloping about.Ã¢â¬Â

{Crypto Nazi concentration camp supporter}

After being elected to Parliament in 1900, he demanded a rolling program of more conquests, based on his belief that Ã¢â¬Åthe Aryan stock is bound to triumph.Ã¢â¬Â As war secretary and then colonial secretary in the 1920s, he unleashed the notorious Black and Tans on IrelandÃ¢â¬â¢s Catholics, to burn homes and beat civilians. When the Kurds rebelled against British rule in Iraq, he said: Ã¢â¬ÅI am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.Ã¢â¬Â It Ã¢â¬Åwould spread a lively terror.Ã¢â¬Â (Strangely, Toye doesnÃ¢â¬â¢t quote this.)

Of course, itÃ¢â¬â¢s easy to dismiss any criticism of these actions as anachronistic. DidnÃ¢â¬â¢t everybody in Britain think that way then? One of the most striking findings of ToyeÃ¢â¬â¢s research is that they really didnÃ¢â¬â¢t: even at the time, Churchill was seen as standing at the most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum. This was clearest in his attitude to India. When Gandhi began his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he Ã¢â¬Åought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.Ã¢â¬Â He later added: Ã¢â¬ÅI hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.Ã¢â¬Â

{Was he a Christian dogmatist? IOW his oppostion to India was based on his hatred towards Hinduism.}

This hatred killed. In 1943, to give just one example, a famine broke out in Bengal, caused, as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proven, by British mismanagement. To the horror of many of his colleagues, Churchill raged that it was their own fault for Ã¢â¬Åbreeding like rabbitsÃ¢â¬Â and refused to offer any aid for months while hundreds of thousands died.

Hussein Onyango Obama is unusual among ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s victims only in one respect: his story has been rescued from the slipstream of history. Churchill believed the highlands, the most fertile land in Kenya, should be the sole preserve of the white settlers, and approved of the clearing out of the local Ã¢â¬Åkaffirs.Ã¢â¬Â When the Kikuyu rebelled under ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s postwar premiership, some 150,000 of them were forced at gunpoint into detention camps, later called Ã¢â¬ÅBritainÃ¢â¬â¢s gulagÃ¢â¬Â by the historian Caroline Elkins. Obama never truly recovered from the torture he endured.

This is a real Churchill, and a dark one Ã¢â¬â but it is not the only Churchill. He also saw the Nazi threat far ahead of the complacent British establishment, and his extraordinary leadership may have been the decisive factor in vanquishing Hitlerism from Europe. Toye is no Nicholson Baker, the appalling pseudoÃÂhistorian whose recent work Ã¢â¬ÅHuman SmokeÃ¢â¬Â presented Churchill as no different from Hitler. Toye sees all this, clearly and emphatically.

So how can the two Churchills be reconciled? Was his moral opposition to Nazism a charade, masking the fact that he was merely trying to defend the British Empire from a rival? Toye quotes Richard B. Moore, an American civil rights leader, who said that it was Ã¢â¬Åa most rare and fortunate coincidenceÃ¢â¬Â that at that moment Ã¢â¬Åthe vital interests of the British EmpireÃ¢â¬Â coincided Ã¢â¬Åwith those of the great overwhelming majority of mankind.Ã¢â¬Â But this might be too soft in its praise. If Churchill had been interested only in saving the empire, he could probably have cut a deal with Hitler. No: he had a deeper repugnance to Nazism than that. He may have been a thug, but he knew a greater thug when he saw one Ã¢â¬â and we may owe our freedom today to this wrinkle in history.

{I put it differently. Churchill with his Christian outlook realised Hitler was creating a new Christianity out of its Judeo-Roman ethos and this would lead to a new Europe which would be Germano-Christian and this would lead to eclipse of the Anglo-Saxon world. That is the prime reason for his opposoing Nazism, for Baker and Toye show he was no different in his attitudes as the Nazis.}

This is the great, enduring paradox of ChurchillÃ¢â¬â¢s life. In leading the charge against Nazism, he produced some of the richest prose poetry in defense of freedom and democracy ever written. It was a check he didnÃ¢â¬â¢t want black or Asian people to cash, but as the Ghanaian nationalist Kwame Nkrumah wrote, Ã¢â¬Åall the fair brave words spoken about freedom that had been broadcast to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been intended.Ã¢â¬Â Churchill lived to see democrats across BritainÃ¢â¬â¢s imperial conquests use his own hope-songs of freedom against him.

{Irony!}

In the end, the words of the great and glorious Churchill who resisted dictatorship overwhelmed the works of the cruel and cramped Churchill who tried to impose it on the worldÃ¢â¬â¢s people of color. Toye teases out these ambiguities beautifully. The fact that we now live at a time where a free and independent India is an emerging superpower in the process of eclipsing Britain, and a grandson of the Kikuyu Ã¢â¬ÅsavagesÃ¢â¬Â is the most powerful man in the world, is a repudiation of Churchill at his ugliest Ã¢â¬â and a sweet, unsought victory for Churchill at his best.

{God acts in mysterious ways!}

Johann Hari is a columnist for The Independent newspaper in London.

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