GJ w7: Colonialism

Colonialism in practice

Econ: human and material exploitation

Political: militarised geographical occupation, overthrow political leader, imposition of new political leader & administration controlled by metropole

Cultural: social/radial hierarchies, proliferation of specialised knowledges about colonised subjects, beliefs, practices, physiognomies

Myths’ of Colonialism (the stories former colonial powers like to tell themselves)

a)Colonialism ultimately benefitted the colonised (cultural improvement; technological advances)

b)Colonialism ‘cost’ colonial powers more than it benefitted them (administration as well as significant investments in infrastructure)

c)Former colonies needed to prove their capacity for responsible self-governance

How did ‘Rich’ Countries become ‘Rich’

Niall Ferguson (2011). Civilisation: The West and the Rest. “6 killer apps” that put us ahead of other societies:

• Competition – Decentralized political and economic structures that fostered innovation.

• Science – The systematic pursuit of knowledge and technological advancement.

• Property rights – Legal systems that protected private ownership and incentivized investment.

• Medicine – Advances in public health and medical science that extended life spans.

• Consumer society – Mass production and consumption that stimulated economies.

• Work ethic – A cultural emphasis on discipline and hard work, often tied to Protestantism.

...However colonial expansion by major European powers coincides with other salient developments:

(1736-) ‘The Gin Craze’ —> need to remove ‘undesirable’ populations from metropole? Rather than showcasing "work ethic," chaotic and vulnerable underbelly of Western society

(1478-1834) Spanish Inquisition —> Expanding (and/or escaping) persecution in New World. intolerant, authoritarian religious enforcement, contradicting Ferguson’s idea of a West that prospered through science, reason, and liberalism

(1350 BCE - 1980) Smallpox - European imperial expansion was hugely assisted by accidental biological warfare on indigenous populations - 90% killed

Colonial international division of labour

• IDL, up until at least 1970s

• System of ‘cash crops’ – sugar, cocoa, tea, coffee, rubber

• Raw materials extracted in the colonies → transferred to colonial powers for processing into industrialised products→ ‘value added’ → consumed/exported

• Deliberately protectionist policies – tariffs dropped on imports of raw materials, raised significantly on foreign manufactured goods

• Britain only adopted ‘free trade’ in 1860, once it had acquired a technological and industrial monopoly in places like the Indian subcontinent

Malachy Postlethwayt (d. 1767)

• a British economist and staunch advocate of the slave trade

• “The African trade is so very beneficial to Great Britain, so essentially necessary to the very being of Her colonies, that without it neither could we flourish nor they long subsist.”

How did the slave trade work?

1. Europe, cheaply manufactured goods highly sought after in Africa —> Africa

2. European goods traded with African traders for slaves

3. European ships w/ slaves —> go across “middle passage” to reach the americas (6-10 weeks)

4. Slaves auctioned off in Americas to work for mostly plantations

5. Cotton, rum, coffee and tobacco produced by slaves in Americas —> Europe

6. European traders sell these luxury goods for huge profits & become richer

no labour costs to luxury

In the colonies, labour costs

were kept low by slave labour, indentureship and penal servitude on plantations dedicated to ‘cash crops.’

This prevented the emergence of (potentially more demanding, self-organising) free wage labourers, which predominated in industrialising nations

Low wages in the colonies —> low purchasing power

Therefore, cheap raw materials, produced by cheap

labour were exported to metropole to avail of “value-added consumption” (due to higher wages and greater purchasing power)

WHY DID SLAVERY ‘END’?

Economic motives: it ceased to be as profitable and interfered with the ‘free market’ for newly emergent capitalists

Moral Reasons: The growing prominence of abolitionist movements in slave-owning populations, led by Christian evangelicals

Resistance Movements: Uprisings from enslaved peoples (The Haitian Revolution); Black Abolitionists like Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano and Jeanne Odo

When did slavery “end”?

it didn’t really end:

• modern slavery in American prisons - largst maximum-security prison built on old plantation in Louisiana.

• Forced to work for pennies or nothing at all. Prison-raised cattle sold to McDonald's, Walmart and Cargill

Amount of people in modern slavery

World wide, 49.6 million people in slavery

22.8 Male

26.7 Female

Majority in Asia and the Pacific (29.3mil)

Colonisation

________ involves the actual movement of people, settlers,

administrative systems onto the land of the dispossessed, and

the takeover and direct rule of that territory

Imperialism

________ involves political and/or economic rule, without the direct take-over of the territory

Direct colonial rule (settlement) not always necessary, because economic and social relations of dependency provide both captive labour as well as markets for the metropole’s industry and goods.

US military - colobialism or imperialism

US military - 750 bases in 80 countries. 173000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

Japan: 120 bases, 53 713 troops

Germany: 119 bases, 33 948 troops

South Korea: 73 bases, 26 414 troops

ORIENTALISM

Literary, scientific and cultural texts which consolidated certain ways of seeing and thinking, thereby helped maintain colonial ‘supremacy

Orientalism crucial to European self-conception: irrational/rational, feminine/masculine, barbaric/civilised, lazy/hard-working, sensual/disciplinedOrientalism is the lens through which the ‘other’ was viewed, constructed and controlled

The Orient has become the ‘distorting mirror’ by, and through, which Europe defined itself and celebrated its superiority (Said 2003).

( Western cultures wrote about ‘The Orient’, India and the ‘Arab World’ in a stylised, stereotypical way which form the basis of western ‘knowledge’ about the East)

Words & origins

Bungalow - Bangla (house in bengal style)

Jungle - jangal

Bandana - badnu (deforative tie-dye), bandhana (tying up)

Cushy - khushi (pleasure, or cushions)

Pyjama - payajama

Cot - khāt(bed)

Juggernaut - jagannath yatra (religious procession in Puri, Orissa state, devoted to lord Jagannath)

Avatar - avatāra (to cross down from heaven)

Thug - thag

Pundit - pandit (scholar or priest)

Shampoo - champo (to squeeze, massage)

Punch - panch (5 ingredient drink)

Loot - lut (ransack, violent plunder)

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

• East India Company Colonial Administrator, “examiner of Indian Correspondence”

• “people who are incapable of taking care of themselves must be protected from their own actions & from external injury”

• Infantilisation of whole societies based on race

• “despotism good for development for barbarians”

East India company

EIC - founded 31 Dec 1600, based in London

• in just over 40 years, masters of almost all the subcontinent with inhabitants 50-60mil

• Larger in size and population of the biggest european countries

• 1803 - captured Mughal capital of Delhi

• 200 000 in military (twice the size of British army)

• 1825 - parliament started opposing EIC due to its dangerous power

• EIC transported opium to China & fought the opium wars

• Shipped chinese tea to Boston which was subsequently poured into the harbour. Fear that EIC would take part of the war, deployed by UK

• 1857 - massive rebellin against eployers, 10 000 ish suspected rebels killed along Ganges river

• Related to many famines - Indian famines, Bengal famines, East Punjab, Orissa

The difference principle

• John Rawls

• Evaluating the justice of the divison of goods

• Any inequalities in the division of goods must be to maximum benefit of the disadvantaged

• Disadvantaged have more than they would if resources were equally divided? This is a just system, no problems here

• Focus on defining disadvantage by primary goods: income & wealth

• something about india

POST-COLONIALISM

• formal political independence

But formal independence can coexist with cultural, political and economic dependencies on the former colonial power, making it hard to decide if a country really is post-colonial

Post-colonial theory seeks to explain why political independence has not lead to cultural, political and economic emancipation

Cultural colonisation

• “in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality” (Frantz Fanon. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks: p. 18)

• system of knowledge that objectified the colonised —> control, legitimise colonialism.

• Colonial work justified by portrayals of Africans or Hindus as savages in need of harsh discipline.

• Once colonies were established, new stereotypes arose of impulsive, childlike natives requiring paternal ‘guardianship’

• TLDR:
  - inferiority built on the death/denial of one’s culture & origins
  - objectifying colonial subjects by associating negative traits to them, stereotypes —> “they need to be disciplined”

LEGACIES OF COLONIALISM

o National boundaries of former colonies.

o Educational and religious systems

o Legal traditions; policing practices and military hierarchies.

o Entrenched patterns of economic dependency

o Globalised usage of languages English, French, Spanish, Portuguese

o Status hierarchies based upon race and ethnicity

Algerian War of Independence (1954 - 1962)

The main idea of the theory of justice

• John Rawls (1921-2002)

• Justice should be a part of basic structure of society

• Free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the the fundamental terms of their association -

• hypothetically, make decisions as a group without your personal identity, ignore it (veil of ignorance). make decision best for everyone

• A group must decide what they deem to be just/unjust

How Europe underdeveloped Africa

Book by Walter Rodney (1973)

“European Colonialism was a net positive for Africa” reality

• built schools, railroads, hospitals - negligible amounts, came much later on during colonialism (after the last war soc policy built),

• African independence health, housing & education much better than recently independent states

• Social policy occurred from capitalism in Europe - didn't reach Africa though

• Portugal “we civilised Mozambique, Angola and Guinea” - didn't train a single African doctor under their rule in Mozambique, low life expectancy in East Angola, Portuguese admitted Guinea neglected

• Amenities given to colonies primarily used on white settlers

Healthcare Africa

Algeria:

• white ppl: 39/1000 birth deaths

• Poc: 170/1000 birth deaths

African hospitals:

• 4000 Europeans: 12 hospitals

• 40 million Africans: 52 hospitals

Outbreaks of disease in mines, hundreds died & weren't paid enough to eat properly while the companies flourished. 65% of children died before the age of 2. Most people died of Tuberculosis. 1 doctor for 40 000 patients

Welfare and funding Africa

• diamond mining grew as early as 1912, poverty deepened

• Most wealthy colonies given some privileges

• Giving basic health & literacy in industrial contexts = better workers

• Hospitals built only for workers, places where there was no money to be gained were neglected

• This is why Nigeria, Uganda and the gold coast were better off than Chad, Dahomey & Tanganyika

Travel colonial impacts Africa

• railway & roads only existed for import/export & troops for enacting further oppression

• No communication means - can't talk to friends, can't do trade of African goods within the continent

• No roads between colonies/within colonies which woukd support African development, only for extracting gold or cottonor going to the sea

• Want something built faster? Punish the people working with lashes

• Lack of equipment —> much was built by hand by slaves, although funded by the west: Nairobi airport (Embakasi), Congo railroad from Brazzaville to Pointe Noire

Finance and African colonialism

• banks didn't lend locally, Credit to Natives ordinance 1931 discouraged lending to Africans

• Insurance companies only catered to white settlers & capitalist firms

• Currency boards and central banks denied Africa access to its own funds created by exports - Britain, France and Belgium represented African loans to and capital investment in Europe

• colonial reserves in metropolitan currencies

• “Europe invested so much money into Africa!” That money used came from exploiting Africa

• “ Hospitals, school etc in Africa paid by French & British taxpayers!” They got a SLIVER of money compared to what you earned.

Colonial Development and Welfare (CD&W)

1930, riots in West Indies due to African descendants treatment left stranded there, suffering

• The Royal commission investigated thr grievances

• Findings not published during thr war bc it was too similar to the fascism Brits were fighting

• 1940 began process, then 1944 CD & W got funds etc

• French counterpart: FIDES

• Discourse: “uncivilised natives needed welfare, Africa needed to be made just by becoming Christian”

• Most money from both were not used for developing Africa - 1% & 0.5% respectively allocated to industries

• Barclays set up funds in this, also many high profile ppl took part

• “We need colonies so we have more money than Russia & USA” mr Bevin

• CD & W + FIDES both tried to hide the visciousness of the colonialism

SDOM - Financial Societies for Development of Overseas Territories

• large government subventions

• Private capitalists interested in oil in Africa

Africa brought to the 20th century by Europe discourse

“Africa was modernised by Europe” - no, did not pick up capitalism.

• capitalist societies had bourgeoisie & proletariat - cannot be found within African society necessarily, Africans barred from capitalist gains as traders or owning ginnaries - only Indian & European descent reigned in those territories

• Africans barred from gaining skill, employment involved in technical expertise

• African industrialisation prevented by Europeans, most valuable labour done outside Africa

• South African saying: “ thr white man has no kin, his kin is money”

• We would be complaining about capitalism being so brutal rather than colonialism if Africa had become ‘modernised’ by capitalism

exhaustion of land:

• Exploitation of thr land - gold mining (Tanganyika) and bauxite (Guinea, for aluminum) mined & exported from the land

• No agricultural technical development on par with the West, exhaustion of soil due to agricultural pursuits

Wages and African exploitation

• paid VERY little, took 50 days of work to be able to afford 3 meters of the cotton cloth they harvested

• Peasants had to pay for their own tools, paying the middlemen

• Unskilled labour —> valued less than European labour

• Not permitted to acquire tools which were higher tech, shortening time working

The white saviour narrative

• Ngoni & Yao and Samori ‘tribes’ were killing each other, Livingstone and Stanley saved them - not true

Nationalism discourse

“ Europeans brought nationalism to Africa”

• Africa had states & groups before colonial times

• some larger/across colonies as well in 19th century

• Post colonial countries did pick up on some Euro-nationalist characteristics, but they could've reached these conclusions without Europe

Freedom and power discourse

“colonialism brought Africans freedom”

• no, just because people had wages doesn't mean it was good

• Limited choices of what they could do/engage with is NOT the same as freedom! - just because they coukd be police or interpreters didn't mean they were free

• Just because Africans took initiative or tricked slave owners didn't mean they actually had any systemic sway

post-colonial theory

____ seeks to explain why political independence

—/—> cultural, political and economic emancipation

A Theory of Justice (1971)

John Rawls (1921-2002)

Colonialism & companies in Africa

• Many companies built capital off of the slave trade - Barclay's bank, Wroms et Compagnie

• Unilever (The Niger Company) exploited people, monopolied slave trade

• Diamang - diamond mining company, shareholders in USA, Portugal and Belgium —> invested money into those countries