HORIZONTAL VIOLENCE

In fewer than fifteen of the one hundred states formed after 1940 was there domestic conflict before or shortly after independence that involved substantial loss of life or forcible exchanges of property.

Instances of horizontal violence in phase 5 should nonetheless be noted. They were more publicized and required greater attention from metropolitan officials than peaceful transitions. The process and results of civil strife influenced decolo­nization in surrounding territories. The underlying tensions and cleavages they reflected illustrate a broader set of problems faced by newly independent states.

In several territories horizontal and vertical violence occurred simultaneously, often in mutually reinforcing ways. Examples are Palestine/Israel, Vietnam, Kenya, Malaya, Algeria, and Angola. The former Belgian Congo could also be listed if one counts Belgian intervention and attempted Katangan secession immediately follow­ing independence. A wide range of groups was embroiled in the civil wars accom­panying national liberation wars. Rebellions in Kenya and Malaya were waged pri­marily by members of specific ethnic groups—Kikuyu in the first instance, Chinese in the second—who wanted their colony’s economic assets radically redistributed. Ranged against them were people from the same communities who opposed the rebellion’s goals, leaders, or methods and groups with less intensely felt grievances against the government. Struggles in Palestine/Israel, Vietnam, and Angola drew in virtually the entire society. Fault lines included religion (Palestine/Israel, Viet­nam), East-West ideology (Vietnam, Angola), and ethnolinguistic identity (all three cases).

Britain, France, Portugal, and Belgium presided over at least one territory in which horizontal and vertical conflicts were intertwined. Most instances of substan­tial horizontal violence in which vertical violence was absent or minimal were in the British empire.³⁰ By far the most significant were the mass killings preceding and following partition of British India. An estimated five hundred thousand Hindus and Muslims lost their lives in the riots and massacres of 1946 and 1947. More than ten million fled their homes, hoping for safety on the other side of hastily and arbitrarily drawn lines between a diminished India and the two noncontiguous components of newly created Pakistan.³¹ In the Sudan, Nigeria, and Cyprus peacefully negotiated transfers of power were accompanied by intense domestic conflict shortly after independence. The principal bases for conflict were religion (in all three), ethno- linguistic identity (all three), and varying rates of economic and political develop­ment among regions within a territory (Sudan, Nigeria). In British Guyana, where the leading parties appealed primarily to racially distinct communities—those of Af­rican descent versus more recent immigrants from India—arson and looting marred the elections of 1961 and 1963. In Burma independence was followed by the enforced departure of many Indians, who had become unpopular for acquiring wealth in the colonial era and had to leave much of it behind. In newly independent Malaya and Pakistan, violent disputes precipitated the breakaway of units—Singapore and Ban­gladesh—that were then recognized as separate states.

In these instances violence occurred among non-Europeans. The Rhodesian civil war, as noted earlier, pitted indigenous peoples against European settlers.

Why Britain presided over so many episodes of horizontal violence is an interesting question. More than other imperial powers, Britain formally acknowl­edged differences of religion, language, continental origin, culture, and political tradition among its non-European subjects. It did so by creating local administrative units for specific groups; by governing a colony’s regions as if they were separate entities; by ruling the populace indirectly through traditional rulers; by encouraging some groups to specialize in certain occupations, such as commerce and military service; and by creating separate voting rolls for groups in response to demands for representation in local legislatures. Policies reflecting a colony’s social diversity often reinforced diversity, as groups became more conscious of their separate identities and interests by the recognition accorded them. Britain’s willingness to permit represen­tation from below increased the likelihood that identities initially defined in cultural or racial terms would become politicized in competition for legislative seats, govern­ment posts, and public sector goods and services. In these settings it was not easy for nationalists to persuade the colonized that they belonged to a single national com­munity. Group-based political competition took highly divisive, ultimately violent forms in India, Nigeria, the Sudan, Uganda, and British Guyana.

Britain’s long-standing policy of encouraging its people to settle overseas cre­ated, in Rhodesia as in other colonies where settlers were present, a deep societal cleavage. Racial differences were politicized and systematically turned into economic inequalities by the Rhodesian whites’ control of public sector institutions. Not until the late 1950s did officials in London question the metropole’s lengthy acquiescence in policy decisions made by the white minority.

These aspects of British policy help explain the paradox that English-speaking colonies attained independence in phase 5 with a minimum of violent opposition from the metropole, yet experienced a high proportion of serious outbreaks of pre- and postindependence domestic violence.