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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (122422)	12/29/2003 1:31:56 AM
From: marcos	Respond to of 281500

British colonial policy was not at all a military occupation .... in every case i can think of just now, they left in place the existing administration, after maybe cleaning it up a little .... India they took by commerce and held with very few soldiers and many local allies .... you can call this 'playing one off against another', 'divide and conquer', and it was that no doubt in a sense, however on their entry it was to an extent the other way round - local princes were using them to bust monopolies held by the portugues, french and dutch .... this was in the time of company rule, long before the Raj, but they developed then alliances that endured ..... there was near a century of commerce before Clive comes along, during which time any armed brits were merely security for company traders, who were carrying on what was pretty much free enterprise, willing buyers and willing sellers .... in fact with Clive at Plassey, that was really at core a commercial dispute between french and british interests, not completely a proxy dispute on the part of the french either [edit] - remember, India was not a country at the time .... it was a subcontinent of warring principalities .... there was little or no consciousness of nationality among the people, that came along much later - after they had unified the country The Raj did take at times a rather firm hand to certain locals, but this tended to be in defense of other locals .... and, incidentally, in defense of british interests, heh heh .... but they always had native allies, saw themselves as police, and most days most locals regarded them as such .... kumar may jump on me for phrasing it like that, hmm, well that is my impression 'Friends help you move. Real friends help you move dead bodies.' - poster on ihub

To: Sam who wrote (122422)	12/29/2003 2:58:02 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Sam; Re: "Carl, what about Britain and India? True, eventually GB left, but it took quite awhile." The British occupation of India was long and bloody. Pick up a history book on the subject written from something other than a British perspective. In addition, India is not at all as monolithic as the great ethnic regions of the world. That is, the population of the US is almost entirely English speaking. The population of the Arab nations is mostly Arabic speaking. But the population of India is so divided by language that English is an official language of the country. Even now, with the loss of Pakistan and East Pakistan / Bangladesh, Hindi is the primary language of only 30% of the population of India. The language divisions made India easier to divide and conquer, and these effects still have political consequences in the country that the study of a homogenous country like the US cannot begin to appreciate. Like the subjugation of Ireland, the British were faced with rebellions every few decades. The British put them all down quite bloodily. Eventually the British grew too nice to kill enough people (or tired from WW2 perhaps, as they were too tired after WW1 to retain all of Ireland) and they lost India. It was fortunate for India that they had a leader who was able to recognize the change in attitude in Britain in such a way as to gain independence without a repeat of the usual bloody rebellion. Here are some links about the bloody British occupation of India: British point of view: bbc.co.uk Indian point of view: ... The British built the present political-economic system step by step, and within this, there were both beneficiaries and victims. The history of colonial India is a history of rebellions and uprisings of the people who were the victims, and a history of their repression and suppression by the beneficiaries. The British recognized early on in their rule that they could not do in India what they had done in North America to the natives – i. e. a summary annihilation. Instead, they deliberately inculcated a class of loyalists in whose interests it would be to perpetuate their rule. In political terms, the loyalists were those social forces who felt threatened by the popular uprisings and owed their existence to the patronage of the colonial rulers, providing legitimacy to the colonial rule in return. The zamindars or landlords of India as a group belong to this category. The group of traders and merchants of India who arose after the East India Company had decimated the indigenous class of traders and merchants of the pre-colonial India also belong to this category. They formed an alliance with the British to further their narrow aims and sided with the British in suppressing the rebellions. ... geocities.com Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India Vinay Lal, Ranajit Guha’s Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency (Delhi: Oxford, 1983) remains, two decades after its publication, the most articulate and insightful (if not always compelling) work on the subject of peasant insurgency in colonial India. ... ... history of several dozen, and perhaps many more, insurrections, rebels, jacqueries, and iusurgencies that took place in India between 1783 and 1900. ... sscnet.ucla.edu As with the current fracas in Iraq, a lot of what is reality is a matter of a decision by the viewer. Now which is the truth? Was India peacefully ruled by the British for several hundred years? Or were there periodic rebellions that were put down only with what we would call today "excessive force"? If you'd asked the British historians from a few years ago about this question they'd probably go on at length about how the occupation was mostly peaceful. And it was, but every occupation that keeps the peace by extreme bloody measures is peaceful, at least between the rebellions. But my point is not that occupation is, by its nature, impossible. My point is that occupation of large nations is, by its nature, either bloody or unsuccessful. Would you like to know more about what the British did to Indians who rebelled? That the British public knew eactly what they were supporting is clear from the historical records of the time: ... The Times newspaper called for the execution of every mutineer in India and in a debate at the Oxford Union, one speaker roused his audience by declaring,"When every gibbet is red with blood, when the ground in front of every cannon is strewn with rags and flesh and shattered bone, then talk of mercy. ... In the early months of the British recovery, few sepoys were left alive after their positions were overrun. The British soldiers seemed to have made a collective decision not to take prisoners and most actions ended with a frenzied use of the bayonet. On the line of march whole villages were sometimes hanged for some real or imagined sympathy for the mutineers. Looting was endemic and neither the sanctity of holy places nor the rank of Indian aristocrats could prevent the wholesale theft of their possessions. Many a British family saw its fortune made during the pacification of northern India. Later, when prisoners started to be taken and trials held, those convicted of mutiny were lashed to the muzzles of cannon and had a roundshot fired through their body. It was a particularly cruel punishment with a religious dimension in that by blowing the body to pieces the victim lost all hope of entering paradise. ... geocities.com -- Carl