REBELLION

To rebel against the colonial regime was to confront it directly and violently through structured collective action (table 13.1). Rebellions thus had a potential for institu­tional development lacking in the options just discussed.

TABLE 13.1.

COLONIAL REBELLIONS BY INDIGENOUS OR SLAVE POPULATIONS

TABLE 13.1. CONTINUED

Note: This list includes major rebellions threatening European control of a colony, as well as several minor ones confined to a portion of a colony. Except for the Hidalgo revolt, leadership in all cases was provided by non-Europeans (mestizos included).

Sources: Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion; Kevin Gosner, Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Mayan Rebellion; C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins; Brian Lapping, End of Empire; Gary B. Nash, Red, Black, and White: The Peoples of Early America; Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Rebellion in Black Africa; James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant; Karen Spalding, Huarochiri: An Andean Society under Inca and Spanish Rule; Steve J. Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World.

circumstances and leaders changed. Still, a recurring theme was the need to challenge not just specific actions or policies deemed objectionable, but the regime’s basic character. Because of their violent means and far-reaching goals, rebellions had an unmatched capacity to grip the attention of Europeans.

Major rebellions fought in the colonies by non-European peoples¹⁵ put rulers tactically and psychologically on the defensive, at least for a time.¹⁶ They under­mined colonizers’ assiduous efforts to depict themselves as invincible. Rebel leaders’ accomplishments became sources of inspiration for subsequent generations of na­tionalists. In the two most dramatic cases—the Andean uprising led by Tupac Amaru II and the Great Mutiny in India—revolt was so widespread that it was unclear at times whether the metropole could hold on.

Yet prior to phase 5 not a single rebel movement calling for independence at­tained it. The two that came closest to proclaiming independence—movements led by Hidalgo and Morelos in New Spain—were crushed and their leaders executed. The others were not seen by their leaders or followers as leading to sovereign statehood in the sense that we now think of it.

It was not simply the decayed and dying Great Mughal Empire that they wanted to restore in all its glory, but a past symbolized by Shivaji Maharaj, who hated all Mughals as well, the Maratha Confederacy, and King Rama himself, a golden age of Hindu myth when Gods walked on earth miraculously to save their devout supplicants from demon darkness. It was all of these incompatible eras and dreams divided by centuries or millennia, each with its clamoring band of dedicated loyalists clutching tattered banners of faded fortune.... They were all divided by unbridgeable gulfs of belief, by doctrines that taught them to hate or mistrust one another.¹⁷

This was not exactly a propitious setting for appeals to Indian unity or to a future that would mark a great improvement over the past.

The Haitian revolt aimed to change the social status of persons—by ending slavery—but not the political status of the colony. Toussaint L’Ouverture wanted to retain Saint Domingue’s dependence on France to protect the revolt’s achievements. An appeal to French revolutionary ideals, in Toussaint’s view, was the best insurance against reinstatement of a practice violating the rights of man. Other New World slave revolts were likewise focused on social revolutionary goals rather than changes in territorial governance. Indeed, demands that authorities scrap old laws and en­force new ones assumed that the government would remain in place.

Many rebellions brought about a tightening of European control so as to prevent a repeat performance. Peru’s creole population, for example, became decid­edly more royalist after the early 1780s because it feared another uprising like Tupac Amaru’s. Spain’s hold over one of its most important viceroyalties thus became stronger. In New Spain, peninsulares and creoles came together in horrified reaction to the mobilization of Indian and mestizo masses by Fathers Hidalgo and Morelos. At least for a while, elites saw retention of the tie to Spain as a way to protect themselves against a threat from below. After India’s Great Mutiny was crushed the British Parliament abolished the East India Company, ending the loose administra­tive methods associated with company rule. A more bureaucratic, centralized struc­ture was established with direct accountability to officials in London.

In putting down rebellions, colonial authorities harshly repressed the most active groups. Rebel leaders were executed or permanently exiled. Rulers thus man­aged to undermine if not destroy whatever institutional capacity these movements had developed.

Many rebellions were weakened by failure to articulate what they wanted as clearly as what they opposed. Lack of clarity about alternatives to the colonial order could reflect genuine ambivalence on a leader’s part, as was probably the case with Tupac Amaru II. It could reflect military realities. When placed on the defensive, as inevitably occurred, rebels were preoccupied with holding their own and had little time to speculate on what might happen if they won. But a more serious problem was also at work. Given the complex, pluralistic character of many colonial societies, it is not surprising that several groups within a territory might be ready to claim self- determination rights. How could people decide which claims were valid and which were not? Even under optimal circumstances of political freedom (which did not obtain), the choice of electoral or negotiating techniques for resolving the problem would be hotly contested.

What distinguishes pre-phase 5 rebellions from modern nationalist move­ments is the willingness of rebel leaders to experiment with alternatives to the colonial/national self. Early rebellions failed because their alternative identities were even more problematic as mass mobilizers than national ones. Most revolts were highly localized, a consequence of the small scale of many indigenous societies (see chapter 10). Appeals directed to one group embedded in a larger colony often failed to attract a wider following. The Tzeltal Revolt of 1712, for example, involved a small segment of New Spain’s Mayan population. The rebellion led by Juan Santos Atahualpa in Peru appealed to people on the Andes’ forested eastern slopes but failed to attract a mass following in the more densely populated sierra regions. Bambatha’s rebellion did not spread beyond the Zulus; indeed, it was confined to certain regions of Zululand. The more restricted an uprising’s base of support, the broader the base from which government could recruit forces to suppress it.

An obvious way to overcome limitations of small scale was to resurrect a large indigenous polity. Appealing to a real or imagined precolonial past had the advantage of evoking a society uncontaminated by the Europeans’ presence and evil ways. But how appealing would an earlier empire be to those whose ancestors had been con­quered and unwillingly incorporated into it? When Tupac Amaru II tried to rally Amerindians by emphasizing his descent from rulers of the Inca Empire two cen­turies earlier, he alienated Aymaras in Upper Peru (Bolivia) who had kept alive memories of heroic resistance to Inca conquerors.¹⁹ The prospect of a revived Mughal Empire inspired many Indian rebels in 1857. But this very prospect alarmed Sikhs and people identifying with the Mughal Empire’s historic nemesis, the Maratha Con­federacy. Sikhs helped the British crush the rebellion; Maratha-speakers helped frag­ment the movement from within.

Failure of the two most significant pre-phase 5 uprisings in colonial history suggests that symbols of resistance appealing to selected aspects of indigenous his­tory are not guaranteed broad popular support. They are at least as likely to divide as to unite, because the very feature that attracts some people can repel others with dissimilar backgrounds and interpretations of the past. Nationalists searching for nondivisive symbols may have to delve so far back in time that their choices are irrelevant to their major constituencies. A politically inspired choice for the center of independent India’s flag was the wheel associated with the great Buddhist emperor Ashoka. The wheel not only evoked pride that India gave birth to a major world religion. It also avoided reliance on a symbol based on Hinduism or Islam that might offend whichever of the two religious communities was left out. A similarly inspired choice was the name Ghana to replace Gold Coast. Reference to the West African kingdom, which existed from the fourth through eleventh centuries a.d., evoked the image of sustained, successful African self-government. No Gold Coast groups were likely to object because the ancient kingdom was located hundreds of miles from its modern successor.

Effective mobilization for independence evidently requires extensive reference to colonialism as the generator of identities the masses share. Fundamental to the nationalist message is a claim that the negative experience of subjugation by for­eigners can play a positive role in creating the nation. One reason nationalist re­bellions of phase 5 succeeded whereas nonnationalist rebellions of earlier phases failed may be that the former directly acknowledged the realities and impacts of colonialism in ways that the latter did not.