— Amir Ali (The Indian Express has launched a new series of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and scholars on issues and concepts spanning History, Polity, International Relations, Art, Culture and Heritage, Environment, Geography, Science and Technology, and so on. Read and reflect with subject experts and boost your chance of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. In the following article, political scientist Amir Ali explores the concept of colonialism and examines its emergence and consequences in India.) Understood in its barebones essentials, colonialism is the economic and political process of capturing markets for the purpose of enforcing a particular economic and trading relationship of subordination. The subordination often takes the form of buying primary goods such as spices or cotton from the colonies, and selling them manufactured goods. The manufactured goods are often sold forcibly to the colonised markets, sometimes under the veneer of ‘free trade’. Origins of modern colonialism Colonialism arose initially as a result of the naval expansion of a number of European countries. One of the first great seafaring nations of the world was Portugal. With reference to exploratory and colonial efforts by Portuguese navigators, it was once observed that they ‘had a small nation as a cradle, but then made the whole world their grave’. Portugal and Spain led the Age of Discovery - the search for a sea route - and colonial expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries. But by the 17th century, they were outpaced by the emergence of the French, Dutch and English navies. The point remains that the origins of modern colonialism are rooted in the development of ship-building and the establishment of sea-routes such as the one that went around the Cape of Good Hope on the south western tip of Africa. It reduced Europe’s reliance on the overland trade routes that connected Europe with Asia such as the Silk Route, which passed through numerous Muslim lands. What the development of seafaring, the opening of new naval routes and the domination of powerful navies did was to establish and expand colonial empires in distant parts of the world. This was initially facilitated by powerful trading companies such as the British East India Company, the French East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. Slowly, the capture of colonial markets by the trading companies developed into more overt forms of political control. The political and racial justifications of colonialism The initial commercial impetus for the origins of colonialism was soon supplemented by more overt political elements that were accompanied by ideological forms of justification such as racism. A particularly egregious instance of this is the ‘White man’s burden’ - the supposed historical imperative of white Europeans to bring the inferior non-white races in the colonies up to a desirable cultural standard. Colonialism was thus accompanied by an educational system that was enforced by the colonisers in the form of domination of a particular episteme or form of knowledge over indigenous knowledge systems. Therefore, the effects of colonial rule extended beyond external political control and led to the internalisation of a sense of inferiority among the colonised. The famous Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, in his acclaimed 1978 book Orientalism, explained how colonial countries such as France and Britain dominated their colonies simply by acquiring ‘knowledge’ about them. Said’s book thus reveals the nexus between power and knowledge. Colonial rule in India In order to understand the trajectory that colonialism took in India, the following aspects of British colonial rule help us understand the process. Consolidation of trading company outposts into an overtly political project - The nodal origins of British colonialism in India were important trading centres on the Indian coastline that provided the British with the first point of entry and contact with India as an incipient colony. Captain William Hawkins of the East India Company first landed in the Western port town of Surat during the time of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s reign. Other European colonial powers such as the Portuguese were active on the western Malabar and Konkan coast of India in Goa and Kerala. The British were then able to acquire significant bridgeheads in the west, south and east in the form of what would become the Presidency towns of Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai), and Calcutta (Kolkata). Calcutta became the capital of British India until it was shifted to New Delhi in 1911. Rule through revenue - Consolidation of British power in Bengal was achieved in the June 1757 Battle of Plassey by the British East India Company under Robert Clive. This consolidation was then followed by a crucial political development with the grant of diwani rights or the right to collect revenue in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa that was given to the East India Company by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II after the Company’s victory in the battle of Buxar in 1764. The adverse effects of the activities of East India Company officials such as Governor-General Warren Hastings did not go unnoticed even in Britain. The distinguished British parliamentarian and political theorist Edmund Burke initiated the famous impeachment trial against Warren Hastings. While the trial against Hastings did not lead to his conviction, it highlighted the devastating impact of the East India Company’s exploitation of Bengal. In 1793, the Governor-General Lord Cornwallis, introduced a new revenue model, the Permanent Settlement that consolidated a class of landlords (zamindars) and transformed Indian society by transplanting ideas from British political principles. The late historian Ranajit Guha has detailed this process in his acclaimed book A Rule of Property for Bengal (1963) where he noted how there were also significant European economic and enlightenment ideas that went into the creation of the Permanent Settlement, notably those of the French Physiocrats, who argued that economic value came from the land. Rule by ‘Reform’ - In the early 19th century, there were multiple attempts to rule and ‘reform’ Indian society according to the dominant British philosophy of ‘utilitarianism’, which is associated with thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. This approach stressed the greatest good for the greatest number. It is the subject of a significant book by Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (1959). There is a story of how Lord William Bentinck met James Mill just before departing for India to assume the office of governor-general. Lord Bentinck told Mill that even though he would be ruling as governor-general, it was actually the utilitarian ideas of James Mill that would be behind the ruling. Lord Bentinck’s rule is associated with reform efforts such as the abolition of sati. Rule through education - The early 19th century is also associated with the introduction of an educational system that was very British and Western in its orientation. This is best known through the oft-quoted Minute on Education (1835 ) written by British historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay. In this document, Macaulay emphasised the centrality of English in educational instruction. He aimed at creating a class of educated Indians who would serve as intermediaries between the British rulers and the native population, and would be brown in the colour of their skin, but English in their literary and educational tastes. This policy was criticised for creating a set of ‘anglophile’ Brown sahibs and for its lasting impact on the Indian education system. It led to the demand to further ‘decolonise’ the education system even after independence. Direct rule - The stranglehold of the British was completed with the suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (also known as the Great Indian Mutiny) and diminishing the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, into a mere figurehead. His domain was confined within Delhi from the Red Fort in the North of the city to Palam village in the south. With the momentous developments of the 1857 Mutiny, the East India Company was effectively disbanded and formal British rule was established with direct control of the British crown and the declaration of Queen Victoria as Empress. Rule by drain - While the effects of colonialism were felt in the spheres of political rule and education, there was a more crucial underlying economic logic. Dadabhai Naoroji identified it in his famous drain theory when he complained about how ‘Un-British rule’, as he termed it, was bleeding India of its wealth and resources and destroying her industries. Types of colonialism Most European countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Belgium had colonies all over the world, with Britain leading. At the 1884 Berlin Conference a veritable scramble for African colonies happened. This competition among European countries gave rise to a number of different types or variants of colonialism. Settler colonialism - One of the most important types of colonialism in which an external population presence decided to take control of a land and often drove out the already existing population sometimes through ethnic cleansing and genocide. Planter colonialism - It involved the often strictly enforced requirement to grow a particular crop such as sugar, coffee, cotton or rubber. Often indentured labourers from other colonies were brought in to supplement the work force. Extractive colonialism - It was based on the extraction of valuable resources or particular raw materials such as gold or sandalwood. As the 20th century unfolded and reached its middle decades, the direct holding of colonies, or old-style colonialism, increasingly became financially unfeasible. This was especially the case with the foremost colonial power, Britain, whose most important colony, the veritable ‘jewel in the crown’, India, had to be relinquished, soon after the end of the Second World War. The history of the 20th century gives us a distinction between an older form of colonialism and contemporary neo-colonialism which persists today despite formal decolonisation having taken place in the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America which, however, remain in conditions of economic and political vulnerability. Post Read Questions How did the initial commercial motivations behind colonialism evolve into more overt political control, and how were these actions accompanied by ideological forms of justification? How did the British initially consolidate their colonial presence in India, and how did utilitarian philosophy influence British governance in India? Discuss the key reforms introduced under British rule in the early 19th century. What was Dadabhai Naoroji's 'drain theory', and how did it explain the economic exploitation of India under British colonial rule? How does neo-colonialism continue to manifest despite formal decolonisation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? (Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) Share your thoughts and ideas on UPSC Special articles with ashiya.parveen@indianexpress.com. Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter and stay updated with the news cues from the past week. Stay updated with the latest UPSC articles by joining our Telegram channel – IndianExpress UPSC Hub, and follow us on Instagram and X.
