WHERE DO CRITICS AND DEFENDERS DISAGREE?

In constructing this imagined debate I rely heavily on twentieth-century authors located at one end or the other of the spectrum of informed opinion. Although their examples are taken mainly from Asian and African territories acquired in phase 3, the basic arguments apply to other times and places as well.

Critics and defenders of empire accentuate their differences. But agreement ex­ists and should be identified because it shows that the debate is not all-encompassing. The two sides concur that colonial rule should be judged by whether it helped or harmed the non-European subject population. Neither side disputes that govern­ments and private interests in metropoles acquired valuable resources that would not have been as readily or cheaply available had empires not been in place. Neither side denies that European settlers generally fared quite well, at least after the initial hardships of relocating in strange lands. There is debate over how much metro­politans and settlers gained in income, wealth, and status, with gains set far higher by critics than by defenders. But from the standpoint of moral judgment this disagree­ment is immaterial. Defenders do not argue that colonialism was justified solely or primarily because Europeans benefited from it. Rather, they try to show that, in situations in which one assumes or can demonstrate that rulers did gain, non­European subjects also benefited.

To a surprising degree critics and defenders concur over factual matters. When disputes over facts do arise they are treated as peripheral to the main argument. In one such dispute, the French government estimated the number of Algerian Muslims killed following the Setif massacre of 1945 at 1,020 to 1,300, while nationalists in Algeria and other Arab countries placed the toll between 45,000 and 50,000? But numbers were not really, or ultimately, the issue. Algerian nationalists would have been outraged had a thousand compatriots been killed. And even if the French government had conceded the 50,000 figure, officials would have defended their actions as the regrettably necessary response to a savage, unprovoked uprising in one of France’s departements. In order to highlight more important issues I assume that neither side disputes—or wants to spend time disputing—the other’s factual claims.

Disagreements arise over the following issues:

—Definition and measurement of terms

A major reason colonial rule was unjust, according to critics, was that it facilitated and profited from extensive economic exploitation of non-Europeans. Defenders do not disagree that exploitation, when it occurs, is morally repugnant. Rather, they argue that exploitation did not occur or was far less extensive than critics assert and that in many instances colonized peoples benefited from foreign rule. How can the two sides diverge on this basic point if, as I posit, they do not part company over the facts? The answer is that they have different understandings of “exploitation,” based on differing conceptions of how value is added in economic activity. Critics emphasize the role non-European labor played in generating wealth and the colonial origin of natural resources that became marketable commodities.

Critics and defenders also part company over how to measure exploitation. To take a simple hypothetical example, say both sides agree that table 17.1 accurately describes the per capita income of non-European residents of an island and of Europeans about to land there, just before initial contact. Fifty years after the island has become a colony the incomes of non-European and European residents are assessed. Assume agreement by both sides that changes over the five decades were due solely to activities of colonized and colonizers on the island and that these activities were not undertaken prior to foreign rule.

Critics see in these figures unassailable evidence of exploitation. Europeans gained three times more than indigenous people, and the income gap between the two groups rose from 300X to 700X. Looking at the same figures, defenders would

see evidence not only that exploitation had not occurred but that the opposite was at work.

Did colonial government contribute to economic exploitation? Critics point out that government’s coercive powers were used to support private profit ventures, including land alienation by settlers. Where official policies had their intended effect of keeping indigenous labor costs below free-market levels, forcing people to carry out unwanted tasks, restricting the best-paying jobs and contracts and the most pro­ductive land to Europeans, undercutting local artisans through discriminatory tariff policies, and so forth, the public sector made possible otherwise unattainable levels of exploitation. Defenders see government using its coercive and legal powers to cre­ate orderly, predictable, relatively peaceful settings conducive to productive activity. Without protection for private property rights, they argue, far less European capital and technology would have been invested overseas, with results benefiting all parties.

Should exploitation be measured in subjective as well as objective terms? Suppose the hypothetical island’s indigenous inhabitants did not consider them­selves poor before contact but did do so afterward, because of their close proximity to far wealthier Europeans. A growing sense of impoverishment thus coincided with rising prosperity. For critics, the way people think and feel about their circumstances should count, in this case on the negative side of the ledger. Defenders tend to discount subjective factors as irrelevant or misleading, especially when objectively measurable indicators point in the opposite direction.

Disagreement over how much exploitation occurred leads critics and defend­ers to use different terms to describe conditions in ex-colonized countries.

All of the countries named as “underdeveloped” in the world are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now preoccupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation. African and Asian societies were developing independently until they were taken over directly or indirectly by the capitalist powers. When that happened, exploitation increased and the export of surplus ensued, depriving the societies of the benefit of their natural resources and labour.⁴

From this perspective, even if incomes of colonized people on the island rose from 100X to 300X, the gap that matters is between 300X and the far higher income the colonized should have received had the surplus over subsistence not been so unfairly distributed and so much of it siphoned off to the metropole.

Defenders reject the concept of underdevelopment because it ignores the con­tributions of European factors of production, relies on questionable zero-sum as­sumptions, and depends too heavily on counterfactual speculation. Defenders prefer “development,” referring to actual as opposed to hypothetical increases in per capita production and consumption.

An advantage of using these two terms is that semantic and measurement disagreements between critics and defenders are made explicit. The extent of dis­agreement is less clear when both sides use the same word—like “exploitation”—to point to different phenomena.

—Selection of comparative frames of reference

Evaluation is ultimately an act of comparison. In effect, one places phenome­non X next to a real or imagined scenario suggested by standard Y and concludes that X is better or worse than the situation derived from standard Y. Obviously, the standard selected can profoundly influence the judgment reached.

Here is the contrast as drawn by Cesaire:

Every day that passes, every denial of justice, every beating by the police, every demand of the workers that is drowned in blood, every scandal that is hushed up, every punitive expedition, every police van... brings home to us the value of our old societies. They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few.... They were democratic societies, always. They were cooperative societies, fraternal societies. I make a systematic defense of the societies destroyed by imperialism.⁵

While Rodney does not portray the past in such glowing terms, he stresses the organizational and technological achievements of African peoples, using Europeans’ descriptions to support his argument:

Indeed, the first Europeans to reach West and East Africa by sea were the ones who indicated that in most respects African development was comparable to that which they knew. To take but one example, when the Dutch visited the city of Benin they described it thus:

“The town seems to be very great. When you enter into it, you go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes street in Amsterdam.... These people are in no way inferior to the Dutch as regards cleanliness; they wash and scrub their houses so well that they are polished and shining like a looking glass.”⁶

In contrast, defenders of colonialism use a standard relying heavily on worst­case scenarios. Their precolonial world is better described in Hobbesian than Rous- seauian terms. Among features described are social practices repressed on humani­tarian grounds when Europeans took over, including human sacrifice, slavery, killing of twins, persecution on allegations of witchcraft, widow burning, and live burial of criminals. Civil war, brigandage, anarchy, and despotism figure prominently in the story. Here is how Lord Lugard frames the comparison:

When I recall the state of Uganda at the time I made the treaty in 1890 which brought it under British control, or the state of Nigeria ten years later, and contrast them with the conditions of today, I feel that British effort—apart from benefits to British trade—has not been in vain. In Uganda a triangular civil war was raging—Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Muslims, representing the rival political factions of British, French, and Arabs, were murdering each other. Only a short time previously triumphant paganism had burnt Christians at the stake and reveled in holocausts of victims. Today there is an ordered Government with its own native parliaments. Liberty and justice have replaced chaos, bloodshed, and war. The wealth of the country steadily increases.⁷

When compared with this panoply of evils European rule appears quite attractive.

Justifying British rule in India, Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “There is now little or no room for the successful freebooters, chieftains, and despots who lived in gorgeous splendor, while under their cruel rule the immense mass of their country­men festered in sodden misery. But the mass of the people have been, and are, far better off than ever before, far better off than they would be if English control was overthrown or withdrawn.”⁸

Critics regard the denial of self-government as one of colonialism’s most per­nicious features. In their view, forcibly preventing people from shaping their collec­tive affairs is intrinsically wrong, regardless of whether popular engagement in civic life has results an outside observer may or may not like. Denial of self-government was especially obvious in colonial situations, where the power gap between rulers and ruled was marked by observable racial and cultural differences. Insult was added to injury when Europeans claimed colonized peoples were incapable of governing themselves. How could non-Europeans refute these insulting charges—or at least test their validity—when the very people leveling the accusation refused to permit experi­ments in self-rule?

While not denying that power passed at some point from a few non-Europeans to a few Europeans, defenders doubt that political participation was widespread in precolonial times, above all in large states where democratic norms were unknown and communications technologies too poorly developed to gauge popular opinion even if rulers wanted to do so. Defenders question whether, from a democratic perspective, replacement of autocratic indigenous monarchs by autocratic Euro­peans was a retrograde step.⁹ Defenders add that when non-European rulers were culturally or physically distinct from their subjects—as in the Ottoman, Mughal, and Inca empires—their replacement by another group of foreigners, this time from Europe, did not constitute a loss of political autonomy. Autonomy had already been lost. Karl Marx, in some respects a defender of British rule in India as well as a penetrating critic, wrote of the subcontinent that “what we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton.”¹⁰

When discussing economic changes introduced under colonial rule, critics point to instances in which land and other productive assets used by indigenous peoples were confiscated. People deprived of their traditional means of livelihood suffered declines in living standards as well as a profound threat to their way of life. Critics contrast precolonial patterns in which people worked for their own benefit with colonial economies in which slave and corvee labor further enriched the most privileged elements.

Defenders tend to ignore such instances or minimize their economic and moral meaning, dwelling instead on the introduction of technologies, commodi­ties, animals, and crops that improved living standards for many non-Europeans.

Adam Smith’s chapter entitled “On Colonies” in The Wealth of Nations draws this comparison:

Before the conquest of the Spaniards there were no cattle fit for draught either in Mexico or in Peru. The lama was their only beast of burden, and its strength seems to have been a good deal inferior to that of a common ass. The plough was unknown among them. They were ignorant of the use of iron. They had no coined money, nor any established instrument of commerce of any kind. Their commerce was carried on by barter. A sort of wooden spade was their principal instrument of agriculture.... In this state of things, it seems impossible, that either of those empires could have been so much improved or so well cultivated as at present, when they are plentifully furnished with all sorts of European cattle, and when the use of iron, of the plough, and of many of the arts of Europe, has been introduced among them.... In spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires are, probably, more populous now than they ever were before.¹¹

Another way to evaluate European rule is to compare colonies with territories not formally taken over. This raises the question whether colonial rule was a necessary condition for sustained economic development in non-European regions. Twentieth­century critics and defenders alike concur that economic development is desirable.¹² They agree that economic and cultural interchange between Europeans and other peoples can have positive outcomes for all concerned. The debate is whether develop­ment would have taken place to the extent and at the pace it did had the informal influence of European merchants and missionaries not been reinforced by formal rule. Cesaire writes of the nineteenth century that “the technical outfitting of Africa and Asia, their administrative reorganization, in a word, their ‘Europeanization,’ was (as is proved by the example of Japan) in no way tied to the European occupation.... the Europeanization of the non-European continents could have been accomplished otherwise than under the heel of Europe.”¹³ Japan’s successful defensive moderniza­tion thus becomes a standard for comparison with territories deprived of similar opportunities for self-initiated development. For Cesaire, Japan demonstrates that a bad means (colonialism) is not necessary for a good end (economic development).

In contrast, Gann and Duignan cite Ethiopia, where defensive modernization did not occur despite external security threats, as the standard for comparison with European accomplishments in Southern Rhodesia.¹⁴ By implication the Ethiopian case shows that in many places modernization would not have taken place had Europeans not initiated it. Defenders throw out a challenge to critics: “If you accept modernization as a desirable goal, you may have to accept a means to attain it in materially and technically backward societies that you find abhorrent. If you reject the colonial means you should admit that you are also rejecting backward societies’ most likely prospect of realizing a goal you favor.”

Another way to draw comparisons is to contrast a society’s experience of colonial rule with what one imagines its history would have been had it remained independent. There is no way, of course, to prove or disprove the validity of counter- factual thought experiments. But it is the very freedom to unfold a favored scenario without fear of contradiction that makes hypothetical speculation so attractive when contentious issues are debated. Nothing can prevent colonialism’s critics from imag­ining a rosy alternative past, or its defenders from imagining a grim alternative one. In general, critics posit a non-European setting in which the costs of Europe’s politi­cal dominance are absent but the benefits of its informal influence are present. This scenario leaves open the option of defensive modernization by indigenous leaders if only Europeans had not prematurely grabbed power. The Malaysian scholar Hussein Alatas writes,

It was colonial bondage which blocked the flow of assimilation from the Western world. Had there been a free intercourse between independent Acheh and the Western world from the 16th century onward, Acheh and similarly other Indone­sian states would have reached an advanced state of development by now. In­stead, the Dutch destroyed Acheh by a prolonged war. Until now, Acheh has not recovered its former status.... Like Japan, Russia, Turkey, and Thailand, by the 19th century [Indonesian] states would have recognized the benefits of modern science and technology from the West, as they did recognize similar benefits from other societies in the past.¹⁵

In contrast, defenders assume that had Europeans not ruled, their presence in other sectors of overseas societies would have been minimal. The defenders’ scenario is the Hobbesian state of nature allegedly obtaining in the precontact period. De­fenders lament that colonial officials are not given credit for preventing bad things that would have occurred absent foreign rule. G. B. Masefield of Britain’s Colonial Agricultural Service writes, “No glory attached to the service for the famines that never occurred, the pests and diseases that did not devastate crops, and the steep hillsides that were prevented from being exposed to the disaster of soil erosion by their painstaking labours.”¹⁶

—Emphasis on selected aspects of the colonial situation

The vast scope of the colonial enterprise permits critics and defenders to focus on those features that strengthen their respective cases while deemphasizing or ignoring features stressed by the other side. Thus critics underscore psychological and cultural dimensions, above all else the legacy of humiliation and individual and collective self-hatred among the colonized. Loss of pride in one’s culture and the declining integrity and autonomy of non-European cultural life under the triple as­sault are deemed among the most morally indefensible consequences of colonialism. Defenders spend virtually no time discussing such matters, focusing rather on Euro­pean economic and technological accomplishments. During the first 50 years of rule in colony X, goes the usual defense, 3,100 miles of railroad track were laid, 16,480 children attended secondary schools, 6 new crops were introduced, and exports rose fourfold. These changes benefited everyone, including non-Europeans.¹⁷

This is a classic instance of protagonists arguing past each other. Critics em­phasize subjective aspects of colonialism that are difficult to measure, while de­fenders cite readily measurable objective indicators. Critics praise cultural practices and values abandoned as societies set out toward European-style modernization. Defenders praise adoption of cultural practices and values consistent with modern­ization. Critics mourn the precipitate decline of cultural diversity. Defenders cele­brate the global spread of a few cultures they consider superior and the cross-cultural communication made possible by widespread adoption of European languages. Crit­ics talk about what happened to the colonized, defenders about what colonizers did for the colonized. Critics view the world from the ground-up perspective of subject peoples coping with deeply disruptive changes arbitrarily imposed by foreigners. Defenders view the world from the top-down perspective of rulers working dili­gently, under trying circumstances, to bring about progress in societies incapable of transforming themselves.

Cesaire contrasts the way evaluation is framed by opposing sides:

They talk to me about progress, about “achievements,” diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, reli­gions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibili­ties wiped out. They throw facts at my head, statistics, mileages of roads, canals, and railroad tracks.... I am talking about millions of men torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life—from life, from the dance, from wisdom.... I am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys.¹⁸

Even when the two sides converge on the same topic and appeal to shared values, they manage to evade each other’s arguments. Cesaire and Rodney mourn the deaths of thousands in forced-labor railroad construction gangs. The French, writes Rodney, “got Africans to start building the Brazzaville to Pointe Noire railway, and it was not completed until 1933. Every year of its construction, some 10,000 people were driven to the site—sometimes from more than 1,000 kilometres away. At least 25% of the labour force died annually from starvation and disease.”¹⁹ On the other side, Gann and Duignan write that “an ordinary freight train used nowadays in Africa will do the work of 15,000 to 20,000 carriers for one-fifth to one-tenth the cost. The steam engine thus relieved the sweating African porter from his age-old labors.... Africa’s scarce manpower could at last be used in pursuits more profitable to the economy than head porterage.”²⁰

These writers agree that reducing the burden of exhausting physical labor is a good thing. Critics correctly point out the increase in this kind of labor, leading to tragic loss of life, during the railroad’s construction. Defenders correctly point out the reduction in heavy labor, leading to widely shared economic gains, after con­struction was completed. One side examines railroads before they were operative but not afterward; the other does the reverse. Neither directly engages valid observations made by the other.

Nor does either side seriously engage the problem of morally assessing tech­nologies with multiple, contradictory uses. A rail line carries trade goods that under­mine some occupations and foster others. It can end the economic and intellectual isolation of a hinterland and simultaneously integrate a colony with the international economy on unequal, dependent terms. Trains carry troops dispatched to crush a colonial rebellion and nationalists bent on mobilizing mass disaffection. Can con­demnation or praise summarize the complex, often unintended impacts of new transport and communication technologies?

Railways, telegraphs, wireless, and the like, writes Jawaharlal Nehru in his autobiography, Toward Freedom,

were welcome and necessary, and because the British happened to be the agents who brought them first, we should be grateful to them. But even these heralds of industrialism came to us primarily for the strengthening of British rule. They were the veins and arteries through which the nation’s blood should have coursed, increasing its trade, carrying its produce, and bringing new life and wealth to its millions. It is true that in the long run some such result was likely, but they were designed to work for another purpose—to strengthen the imperial hold and to capture markets for British goods—which they succeeded in doing. I am all in favor of industrialization and the latest methods of transport, but sometimes, as 1 rushed across the Indian plains, the railway, that life-giver, has almost seemed to me like iron bands confining and imprisoning India.²¹

—Interpretation of Europeans’ stated intentions

In assessing the morality of an action one can focus on the intentions of the actor or on the consequences of the act, whether intended or not. Critics and defend­ers of colonialism disagree on both counts, but their perspectives on intentionality are instructive. Critics highlight situations in which European motives are crudely self-serving or opposed to the rights and interests of colonized peoples. The implica­tion is that colonialism cannot be good because the motives driving it are bad. Defenders highlight rulers’ claims that they are trying to benefit their subjects, for example, by spreading a superior civilization, saving souls, stimulating economic growth, and bringing law and justice and order to societies lacking them. Colonial­ism cannot be all that bad, defenders imply, if many of the motives driving it are good—or are believed to be so by those whose behavior one is judging.

The debate is joined over statements justifying colonial rule on grounds of altruistic intentions. A typical formulation is by Sir John Malcolm, governor of Bombay in the early nineteenth century. Britain’s aim in India, said Malcolm, is “to pour the enlightened knowledge of civilisation, the arts and sciences of Europe, over the land, and thereby improve the condition of the people.”²² Was this a typical example of hypocritical rhetoric, designed more to mislead than enlighten? Or did the governor genuinely believe what he was saying? If Malcolm was sincere, was this goal uppermost in his mind or far down on his list of reasons for Britain’s presence? Supposing Malcolm was sincere and that the goal was primary, was it proper or improper to propose “pour[ing]” his country’s civilization over the civilization(s) of another land? Critics and defenders disagree on all these counts, especially the last. Critics see Malcolm’s project as ethnocentric, brazenly arrogant, and ignorant, hence morally indefensible. Defenders see the project as praiseworthy to the extent that Malcolm was motivated by the desire to do good, whether or not one shares his conception of the good. Defenders consider it inappropriate, if not unfair, retroac­tively to apply the enlightened standards of present-day times and places to the actions of a man in phase 2 Bengal. Defenders might add that policies consistent with Malcolm’s goal were moral if they actually did “improve the condition of the people.”