CONCLUSIONS

Chapter 12 offered Eurocentric explanations for the unusually lengthy span of Euro­pean rule in many parts of the world. Chapter 13 offers complementary explana­tions based on the actions and perceptions of colonial residents, showing that non­European peoples and European settlers alike faced serious obstacles to the successful assertion of autonomy.

A major obstacle to autonomy was the complexity, group insulation, and intergroup competition built into most colonial societies. Residents found it difficult to reach agreement over strategies and tactics even when they concurred on what they did not like. Neither could they readily agree on the kind of polity that should replace what was there. Another set of obstacles was psychological. Among non- European peoples there were recurring patterns of self-destructive behavior, and among settlers a pronounced unwillingness to break with the country that served as their civilizational frame of reference.

Obstacles to autonomy had an institutional dimension. Although the chal­lenge of collective self-determination was far more daunting for non-Europeans than for settlers, both groups had to design strategies to gain control of key sectors. This might mean infiltrating from below the very institutions whose stretch from Europe empowered the metropole to shape colonial life. Or it might mean creating new institutions wholly controlled from the start by colonial residents.

The differential impact of these factors may help explain broad patterns in the history of overseas empires. Because non-Europeans faced more serious problems than settlers in asserting autonomy, one can understand the outcome of the initial round of independence movements. In phase 2 settler elites directed the movements in all cases except one, then subjugated or marginalized non-Europeans in the de­cades following independence. For the same reason one can understand why Brit­ain’s white dominions attained de facto sovereignty before Britain’s colonies of occu­pation. And one can see why colonies in which non-Europeans constituted the vast majority could not easily translate numbers into political power. The demographic edge held by the colonized could in fact be a disadvantage for would-be leaders, who had to design common goals around which to mobilize diverse and competitive constituents.