The constant gardener
Colonialism
Samir Saul,
University of Montreal
Colonialism is a term which was coined in the twentieth century to
designate a doctrine referring to three distinct processes: colonization,
overseas expansion, and colonial rule. Colonization goes back millennia.
Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans set up colonies understood as extensions or
duplicates of the homeland peopled by emigrants. Settler colonies
reappeared in the modern era with European penetration in the Americas and
later in Algeria, Southern Africa, Australia, and Palestine among other
places. Overseas expansion aimed at empire building was a more recent
process. It may or may not have included large-scale colonization in the
sense of settlement of populations foreign to the colony. Settlers often
acted as surrogates of colonial powers. Empire building was intended to
establish binding ties of dependence of foreign lands toward the home
country. It developed in conjunction with the rise of market economies in
Western Europe and the search for markets and sources of precious metals
and other raw materials. Colonial rule is a specific form of government
imposed on overseas territories by the colonial power, usually by force.
Ultimate, and often immediate, authority was exercised by nominees of the
colonial power.
Colonialism rested on the possibility of taking advantage of the
differential in power between Europe, and later the United States and
Japan, and the rest of the world. It involved violent subjugation, and
sometimes displacement or extermination, of native peoples. The crudest
forms of exploitation, including slave and indentured labour, were common.
Several features distinguish colonialism imperialism, the most obvious
one being that colonialism includes direct rule by the colonial power,
whereas imperialism can function through indirect, albeit very real,
control of nominally independent societies and countries. Both are blatant
negations of autonomy.
The booklet entitled Le colonialisme, published in
1905 by the French socialist Paul Louis, introduced the noun "colonialism"
into the vocabulary. In 1931, it was included for the first time in the
Larousse du vingtième siècle, an
authoritative French dictionary. The term was not neutral. It originated on
the left of the political spectrum and carried with it an explicit
condemnation of the processes described, their connection with capitalism,
and the negative consequences of exploitation and recourse to brute force.
In subsequent usage, the term colonialism came to refer both to the
doctrine and to the three processes it fostered.
Disapproval of the processes preceded the creation of the term. The
founding of Spain's empire in the Americas in the sixteenth century,
involving as it did, a missionary dimension, gave rise to battles between
theologians about the right to conquer, subjugate, and convert "pagans."
The most articulate participant, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566),
was an opponent of the enslavement of native peoples. While religious
motivations meshed with the quest for spices and precious metals in the
case of Portugal and Spain, economic urges were uppermost when Dutch,
British, and French empire building got underway. Spreading the faith, with
or without consent of the converted, became a means of control after
conquest, rather than a reason for undertaking colonial expansion.
With religious proselytizing no longer providing sufficient justification,
secular arguments for colonization became paramount. Between the sixteenth
and eighteenth centuries, mercantilism was the dominant economic doctrine.
It posited that power was measured by the accumulation of precious metals.
The latter were to be garnered by all possible means, including conquest
and piracy. Chief among the peaceful means was the sale of goods abroad. It
followed that, in order to keep specie (or coin money) in the domestic
economy, imports had to be reduced to a minimum. Self-sufficiency, tending
toward absolute self-sufficiency or autarky, represented the mercantilist
ideal. A prerequisite for success was the availability of foreign markets,
the best being colonial outlets protected by strict legislation barring
foreign rivals and forbidding manufacturing in the colonies. Since colonies
represented desirable captive markets, mercantilism abetted colonial
expansion. It provided the doctrinal pillar for colonization, empire
building and colonial rule.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the merits of protectionism and
monopoly were questioned by the rise of the doctrine of free trade. Adam
Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) was a
milestone in setting the new principles on firm theoretical ground. It was
argued that free trade was a more profitable proposition than protectionism
and the maintenance of costly colonial administrations in favour of vested
interests. The point was driven home when, following the independence of
the Thirteen Colonies, trade between Britain and the United States, far
from grinding to a halt, grew appreciably. The French liberal economist
Jean-Baptiste Say summarized the prevailing view when he wrote in his
Cours complet d'économie politique (1803)
that "the real colonies of a trading nation are the independent peoples of
all parts of the world. All trading nations should wish that they all be
independent in order that they may become more industrious and more
prosperous. The more numerous and productive they are, the more they will
provide opportunities and possibilities of trading with them."
During the first part of the nineteenth century, colonial expansion did not
stop but it lost the luster attaching to a national enterprise. Free trade
was the order of the day, especially in Britain where liberals questioned
the need for colonies. Classical economists of the Manchester school lent
legitimacy to the industrialists' need to export to any market capable of
paying, and to their distaste for spending on colonial rule.
An unexpected
transformation occurred occurred in the aftermath of the economic downturn or
depression which began in 1873 in Europe and North America. Colonialism was
one response to this crisis of capitalism. With barriers to trade rising,
production standing still, and new competitors such as Germany and the
United States industrializing, the search for new markets and sources of
raw materials intensified in the direction of colonial expansion. It was
presumed colonies would be useful to avert social unrest by stimulating the
economy and/or by channeling the poor toward overseas possessions.
The practice, if not the doctrine, of free trade began to undergo a process
of qualification. In Britain, authors like Charles Dilke, John Seeley, and
James Froude extolled the growth of their country's colonial domain. In
France, liberal economists looked with favour on colonial aggrandizement.
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu's treatise De la colonisation chez les
peuples modernes (1874) stressed the commercial value of colonies,
their role in sustaining production in the home country and their
importance as places in which to invest capital. Politicians such as
Benjamin Disraeli and Joseph Chamberlain in Britain, Jules Ferry and
Eugène étienne in France, Theodore Roosevelt in the United
States, and Francesco Crispi in Italy, made imperial growth their
stock-in-trade. Ferry tersely defined colonial policy as "the daughter of
industrial policy."
The economic crisis was concomitant with a transformation of the
international context. War and the threat of war, strident nationalism,
militarism, and anxiety about security were characteristics of the
1870-1914 period which spurred the quest for imperial outposts. Colonialism
as a doctrine was infused with war-oriented strategic calculations, the
craving for national prestige, the need to demonstrate power through
territorial enlargement, and the yearning to spread one's allegedly
superior culture. Racist and essentialist views were inculcated. The
application to human societies of Darwinian theories of survival of the
fittest intended to explain evolution in the animal world became
commonplace. As well as an interest-driven movement, colonialism in
imperial societies was a cultural phenomenon sustained by the fascination
for exoticism and the mystique of geographic explorations. By 1914, much of
the world was divided between a handful of colonial powers.
At the start of the twentieth century, the crystallization of colonialism
as a doctrine and increasing acceptance by liberals of the idea that
colonies had economic value elicited a radical critique that gave
colonialism its lasting negative connotations. For example, P. Vigné
d'Octon's La gloire du sabre (1900) and La sueur du burnous (1911) are powerful indictments of
the brutality of colonialism. Confined at first to the condemnation of
militarization, violence, and exploitation, socialist opposition became
more focused when Lenin made the downfall of colonial rule an integral part
of the struggle against capitalism.
The main source of opposition to colonialism came from the colonial world
itself. Resistance took many forms, the most visible being revolts and
warfare. Major uprisings and full-scale wars occurred, for instance, in
Haiti (1791, 1802), Ireland (1798, 1916), Algeria (1834-1847, 1954-1962),
India (1857), Indochina (1880s-1897, 1945-1975), Egypt (1919), Iraq (1920),
Morocco (1921-1934), Syria (1925) and Palestine (1936). By the end of the
nineteenth century, spokesmen and organized movements in the colonized
countries were demanding national self-determination and, in the aftermath
of the World War I, outright independence. Socialist anti-colonialism
gradually combined with rising nationalism in the colonies after World War
I and, even more, after World War II to culminate in decolonization and the
breakup of colonial empires.
Formal colonial rule is now mostly a thing of the past and colonialism as a
doctrine has few defenders. Nevertheless, informal tutelage, often called
neo-colonialism, persists. Colonialism's legacy continues in the form of
distorted and unviable economic structures, underdevelopment, dependency
vis-à-vis former colonial powers, reliance on foreign assistance,
artificial state boundaries, absence of political institutions and
traditions, authoritarian rule, ethnic and religious strife, cultural
alienation, and marginalization or elimination of non-Western languages.
Colonization's role in globalization is moot. It can be viewed as a first
stage of globalization. The colonized world was attached (one-sidedly and
against its will) to the capitalist West, thus laying foundations for
globality. If globalization is but the latest phase of colonialism, then
the link is direct. In contrast, if globalization is a distinct phenomenon,
then colonialism and its legacy are hindrances in that, behind the outward
appearances of interconnectedness and complementarity, they created sharp
and durable structural divides which are obstacles to globalization.