CONSOLIDATING CONTROL OVER SETTLERS: POLICY DILEMMAS
How to govern Europeans who considered a colony their permanent home presented quite another challenge to officials sent out from the metropole, whom I term metropolitans. Settlers, lying on the colonizer’s side of the racial divide, viewed themselves as civilized and were acknowledged as such by metropolitans.
Hence a major justification for colonial rule—civilizing the uncivilized—did not apply to them. Being culturally as well as racially similar to metropolitans, settlers in rural areas above all, likely the only Europeans for miles around, saw themselves as the extension agents of colonialism. They were primary actors in the private profit sector, colonial treasuries depending heavily on income generated by their plantations, farms, artisanal activities, and commercial houses. Officials held limited political leverage over settlers because settlers held substantial economic leverage over them.Gaining compfiance was even more problematic if settlers had their own institutions of self-government, transplanted from the metropole to a new land. Metropolitans could not question the legitimacy of institutions that replicated those seen as legitimate at home. But self-government by one segment of the population conflicted in theory and practice with metropolitan control over the whole population. If the political tradition settlers brought with them stressed self-rule at the local but not territory-wide level, a workable division of responsibilities could be designed, metropolitans running the central bureaucracy while settlers ran local government affairs. This was generally speaking the pattern in Spain’s phase i colonies. The dominant position accorded creole interests in elected town councils (cabildos) helps to account for the longevity of Spanish rule despite grievances creoles held against metropolitans (peninsulares) in top public sector posts.
But if the metropole’s political tradition was to elect representatives to a national parliament, the only way settlers could continue the tradition was to set up colonywide legislatures and choose their members. This was the pattern in phase i bna and in Britain’s white dominions in phases 3 and 4. The fact that bna settlers controlled both local government and colonywide elected bodies gave them an advantage compared to creoles in Spain’s colonies. It gave them leverage over colonial governors, whose salaries were not paid unless the legislature approved. The location of representative institutions at the center rather than periphery of the public sector enabled the thirteen bna colonies to break with their metropole in phase 2 before Spain’s possessions did with theirs.
Governing settlers would be less of a challenge if metropolitans and settlers had identical or compatible interests. That there was compatibility will be seen later in this chapter. Indeed, it was the key to mutually reinforcing relationships between public and private profit sectors in colonies with substantial settler presence. But interests were not identical, and in some respects they conflicted. As in any political system a contentious issue was how to allocate gains from economic activity. How much should be taxed by government and how much retained in the private profit sector? A special feature here was that not one government but two—in the metropole and in the colony—made compelling fiscal claims. Hence the distribution struggle was between public sectors as well as between government and private interests.
Another recurring point of tension, one distinctive of multiracial colonial situations, was over land and labor policy. Settlers’ livelihoods depended on access to plentiful supplies of commercially viable land. Their interests directly conflicted with those of indigenous peoples occupying good land. Where settlers depended on plentiful supplies of cheap non-European labor, the coercive techniques they used— and called on government to employ on their behalf—were deeply resented by indigenous or slave populations.
If settlers insisted on working the land themselves indigenous peoples faced the even more disastrous option of expulsion from their homes or extermination.A colonial regime had economic incentives of its own to support these harsh measures. But beyond a certain point metropolitans felt they should intervene on behalf of the colonized. The more non-Europeans suffered at the hands of Europeans the more unsustainable became the civilizing rationale for colonialism. And the less plausibly could administrators project to themselves and others the image of benevolent paternalism. Practical concerns intervened as well. Brutal treatment of nonEuropeans might produce violent rebellion. This rebellion might be an uprising of peasants legally bound to work hacienda fields, a revolt among plantation slaves, or murderous raids by people forced to retreat behind an inexorably advancing settler frontier. Whatever the form, a colonial government had to take punitive action. But repression might only inflame a condition driven by widespread desperation. It would consume revenue administrators might prefer to spend on civil service salaries or development. A badly handled war could net a governor unfavorable publicity at home and damage his career prospects. For these reasons top administrators almost invariably favored less harsh land and labor policies than those demanded by settler leaders.
When the interests of metropolitans and settlers diverged, officials had a limited repertoire of options. Harsh repression of settlers was out of the question, given racial and cultural similarities and shared economic stakes. Even moderate measures to limit settler privileges could produce an unpleasantly loud response. Settlers typically had well-placed friends and relatives in the metropole’s capital city. Complaints lodged in high places could get a governor recalled.
If repression was ruled out, governors could still deploy symbols, offer rewards, and make arguments.
Ceremonies stressing the metropole—its power, its cultural appeal, important events in its past, the virtues of its current monarch—told settlers that the country they came from should continue to hold center stage in their identities and loyalties. Appeals to monarchical legitimacy were salient in the Spanish colonies, given the doctrine that colonies were possessions of Spain’s ruler. But appeals could be effective even when no such doctrine was in force—as witness the enormous affection and esteem in which Queen Victoria was held throughout Britain’s white dominions. The idea of rebelling against the queen was never discussed because it was unthinkable. Unusually cooperative settlers were awarded titles and offered the highest administrative posts to which nonmetropolitans could aspire. A governor could manipulate cleavages within settler society, favoring the side most inclined toward his own.Settlers were reminded that without the metropole’s military assistance they were unable to repress rebellions from below or repel invasions from outside. Indeed, when rebellions did occur they often pushed a sobered and scared settler community closer to the metropole. Tupac Amaru’s rebellion had this effect in Peru and Upper Peru. One reason so many phase i plantation colonies in the Caribbean remained under European control until phase 5 may have been settlers’ desires for protection in case the African-descended majority revolted as it had in Haiti.
By adopting the Durham Report’s recommendations for Canada, Britain’s Parliament signaled willingness to accede to settler demands for more self-government. Anticipating and in effect planning for the eventual loss of power as the Westminster model took root in white dominions, Britain’s leaders redefined imperial goals to include transplantation of parliamentary institutions. Responsible government was an artful compromise by which settlers set domestic policy while war powers, defense, currency, and other foreign affairs remained in London’s hands. If this arrangement gave up a great deal it was also the most London could expect under the circumstances.