Parallel and Divergent
Aspects of British Rule in the Raj, French Rule in Indochina, Dutch Rule in the
Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), and American Rule in the Philippines
by David
Steinberg
David.Steinberg@houseofdavid.ca
Home page http://www.houseofdavid.ca/
1. Similarity of General
Culture
1.1 European Cultural
Background of the Imperialists
1.2 Racism, Social Darwinism,
Orientalism
1.3 Marginality of Concern with Empire
1.3.1 British Raj
1.3.2 French Indochina
1.3.3 Dutch East Indies
1.3.4 The Philippines
B Land and People of the
Empires
2.1 British Raj
2.2 French Indochina
Box - The Malay Archipelago
2.4 The Philippines
C. Origin of the Asian Empires
3.1 British Raj
3.2 French Indochina
3.4 The Philippines
D. Defensibility of the
Empires
4.1 British Raj
4.2 French Indochina
4.4 The Philippines
F. Philosophies, Objectives
and Realities of Government
5. Official objectives and theory
5.1 British Raj
5.2 French Indochina
5.4 The Philippines
Box - The ‘Colons’ Factor
Box - Dealing with
Nationalists
6.1 British Raj
6.2 French Indochina
6.4 The Philippines
7. Policies Between the Wars
Including Reform Attempts
7.1 British Raj
7.2 French Indochina
7.4 The Philippines
F. Second World War and
Decolonization
8.1 British Raj
8.2 French Indochina
8.4 The Philippines
9.1 British Raj
9.2 French Indochina
9.4 The Philippines
G. Conclusions
Table
– Summary of Aspects of Colonial Rule
Table - Origin and Nature Military and Civil
Governance Origin and Impact
1. Similarity of
General Culture
1.1 European Cultural Background of the
Imperialists
I wrote this essay to better understand the
development of the British Raj
in
India which is my more central concern.
In that context, it is useful to consider the other European empires in Asia
and the American ruled Philippines. All of these great powers largely shared the
common European higher culture of their day as well as being influenced by more
particularistic national characteristics concerning the form
of, and attitude toward, government, national self-image, economic and military
challenges etc.
Like so many people in all times and places, the
decision makers, officials and propagandists of the major imperialist nations
in Asia (France, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA) tried to rationalize their actions in the context of their values. This
was a particularly strong challenge given that all of these countries trumpeted
their support for human rights. In
addition, all four of the major imperialist nations were fundamentally
democratic.
The one partial exception was France prior to 1871.
Metcalfe’s statement (below) could
apply equally to the Dutch, Americans or French -
“Of necessity, as they sought to come to terms
with the existence of their new dominion, the British drew upon a range of
ideas that had for a long time shaped their views of themselves and, more
generally, of the world outside their island home. As products at once of
Britain's own history of overseas expansion and its participation in the
larger intellectual currents of Europe, these ideas included settled expectations of how a 'proper' society
ought to be organized, and the values, above all those of the right to property
and the rule of law, that for the English defined a 'civilized' people. As they
extended their conquests to India, the
British had always to determine the extent to which that land was a fundamentally different, 'Oriental' society, and
to what extent it possessed institutions similar to those of Europe; how far its peoples ought to be transformed in
Europe's image, and how they should be expected to live according to the
standards of their own culture” Thomas R. Metcalfe, Ideologies of the Raj, (pp.
1-2)
1.2 Racism, Social Darwinism, Orientalism
The century from about 1850 until about 1950 saw
many technical triumphs, a huge increase in the belief in science and technology
as panaceas, a decline of religious belief and, a not unrelated, increase in
xenophobic nationalism often buttressed by social Darwinism, scientific racism, racial
anti-Semitism and unbridled capitalism embraced and supported by the state.
This racist perspective worked against according
oriental subject people equality as human beings. In India this is illustrated
by the replacement of the Utilitarian
view that Indian cultures, languages, customs were primitive and inferior[1] while Indian people, minus their culture and acculturation were the
same as Europeans to the “Orientalist” racially deterministic view that Asian
people were by nature different, and in most things inferior, to Europeans.
The Utilitarian view led to the belief that erasing
Indian culture and acculturation, and replacing it with a
scientific-rational-European total upbringing and education would turn Indians into
ideal rational men. When this would be completed, in the words of Lord Macaulay, a leading exponent of the utilitarian point of view, in his historically
important Minute on Indian Education (1835) -
Come what may, self-knowledge will lead to self-rule,
and that would be the proudest day in British history.
It may
be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown
that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government; that, having become instructed
in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European
institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I
attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day
in English history. To have found a people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery
and superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would
indeed be a title to glory all our own.[2]
The Orientalist racially deterministic view led to
the belief that educating Indians as Europeans led only to corrupt Indians showing
the worst features of both races[3]/civilizations. This approach naturally led to the marginalizing of
Eurasians[4].
1.3 Marginality of Concern with Empire
1.3.1 British Raj
Although India was of great importance to Britain
both economically and in maintaining Britain’s position in the world there was
little general interest in its welfare. Though the Conservative party
passionately embraced the Empire, and the Liberal party considered the Empire
to be a heavy moral responsibility, many writers have remarked that the few
days Parliament dedicated to debating Indian issues were marked by the very
sparse attendance of MPs. There were prominent British politicians, most
notably Winston Churchill, who tried to make India
a party issue. However, to their credit, some statesman, such as Ramsay
MacDonald, William Wedgwood Benn
and Stanley Baldwin tried to maintain it as a non-party
issue. Unfortunately, this resulted in excessively cautious decision making.
This approach resulted in the Government of India Act 1919 and the Government of India Act 1935 both of
which were too little and too late to win the cooperation of most nationalist
opinion.
In fact, aside from the small number of Britons
connected to India by family or service, concern with India was centred in
narrow political circles of which the following were the most important:
Ø
The Lancashire cotton trade for
which India was the most important export customer for its product as well as
being a minor supplier of raw cotton.
The main concern of this group was to maintain its position in the
Indian market, which implied opposing any imposition of import tariffs, and
retarding the development of the Indian cotton industry. Their concern for the
wellbeing of India and Indians was non-existent;
Ø
Government patronage managers who
enjoyed the filling of the limited number of lucrative positions particularly
that of viceroy
and the governorships of the three presidencies (Bengal, Bombay, Madras). The fact
that these positions were frequently filled with politically involved aristocrats,
often in payment of a political debt, shows a high degree of insouciance of the
British political establishment regarding their responsibility for hundreds of
millions of Indians. In this connection, one has only to survey the viceroys
between Hardinge
and Montbatten
to get the point –
·
Lord Chelmsford (viceroy 1916
to 1921)
India made a massive contribution
to the British war effort in World War I. The
mishandling of the war effort by British authorities (disaster in Iraq, coerced
recruiting for the Indian army, inflation, cutting off of vital imports etc.)
led to inflation and wide-spread social distress and potential unrest. In
addition, the wartime propaganda about fighting for freedom etc. led to a strong demand
for “home rule” after 1915 among the numerically small but rapidly growing
and important westernized elite.
Lord Chelmsford was considered unimaginative and not very intelligent[5]. However, he
was selected at this time of unprecedented crisis because no first class talent
in British politics was willing to leave the center of power in London during
the First World War. Among the mediocrities available, he was supposedly
selected because he was the only fellow
of All Souls at hand in India (see Gopal, Sarvepalli, “ALL SOULS AND INDIA, 1921-47”). In fact,
contrary to what might have been expected, like Lord Irwin he turned out to be a
strategic thinker and reformer making a major contribution to Indian political
development (see Robb 1976).
·
Earl of Reading (viceroy 1921
to 1926) - a brilliant jurist sent when what was needed was a dynamic
politician capable of restoring rapport between the British and the Indian
political classes – i.e. brilliant but the wrong man for the time and place.
·
Lord Irwin (viceroy 1926
to 1931) – when sent he had not accomplished much in life and was not known
to have any interest in India. He made, from the British point of view, serious blunders which decreased the prestige of the Raj, undercut its
Indian supporters, strengthened the Indian nationalist movement and led to a
split in the Conservative party in Britain.
These were:
Ø
He proposed, and
then supported, against opposition, the decision to have an all-white
constitutional Statutory Commission (Simon Commission). This gave a badly
needed issue to unify and revivify the flagging nationalist movement;
Ø He negotiated the Gandhi-Irwin
Pact to buy Gandhi’s attendance at the second Round
Table Conferences in London and a temporary suspension of the second
civil disobedience campaign at the price of treating Gandhi as the leader
of India and thus making the Congress Party into a
sort of shadow parallel government. This
undermined the support for the British Government of India among its most important
supporters and made the task of governing India almost impossible.
Ø He made the “Dominion Status”
announcement (31 October 1929) –
The goal of British policy was stated in the declaration of August 1917
to be that of providing for the gradual development of self-governing
institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government
in India as an integral part of the British Empire…. I am authorized on behalf
of His Majesty's Government to state clearly that in their judgement it is
implicit in the declaration of 1917 that the natural issue of India's
constitutional progress, as there
contemplated, is the attainment of Dominion Status.
This statement thoroughly upset the Conservative and Liberal parties
while it did little to propitiate the nationalists because:
o
It did not give any time for the realization of
dominion status;
o
Dominion status in 1917 meant internal
self-government with the UK being in charge of defense and foreign affairs and
a theoretical right to disallow colonial legislation[6]. This was
similar to the commonwealth status enjoyed by the
Philippines[7] 1935-46.
Dominion status was redefined in 1926 when the Balfour
Declaration, recognized the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire as fully autonomous
i.e. virtually independent states. It will be noted that the wording of
Irwin’s statement essentially stated that the British government remained
committed to giving India the pre-1926 version of dominion status[8]. This was in line with the clear, if undiplomatic, statement of Sir Malcolm Hailey, Home Member to the Government of India, on 8
February 1924 -
The pronouncement of August 1917 spoke of '… the
gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the
progressive realization of responsible government in India '. That is also the
term used in the Preamble to the Act … The expression used in the Act is a term
of precision, conveying that the Executive in India would be responsible to the
Indian Legislature instead of to the British Parliament. If you analyse the
term full Dominion Self-Government ', you will see that it is of somewhat wider
extent, conveying that not only will the Executive be responsible to the
Legislature, but the Legislature will in itself have the full powers which are
typical of the modern Dominion. I say there is some difference of substance,
because responsible government is not necessarily incompatible with a
Legislature with limited or restricted powers. It may be that full Dominion
self-government is the logical outcome of responsible government, nay, it may
be the inevitable and historical development of responsible government, but it
is a further and a final step.[9]
Even so, Conservative opposition prevented any mention of dominion status in the Government of India Act of 1935.
In fact, the first statement that
Britain was committed to give India dominion status of the post-1926 (Statute of Westminster) variety
was made in a minor speech of the Viceroy in 1940. It is worth quoting Rizvi’s text (pp.
148-149) -
The reaction
was somewhat different in Britain. Linlithgow's mention of 'Dominion Status of
Westminster variety' evoked protests from the diehards who tried to bring
pressure on Zetland to
dissuade Linlithgow from coming to terms with the Congress, The
difficulty, as Morley had complained thirty years before, lay in synchronizing
clocks in different hemispheres.
'It was not easy to devise a formula that could pass for self-government in
India, and for the British Raj at Westminster.' Sir Henry Page-Croft, a
diehard who was to become a parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Churchill
Government, declared himself 'astonished' that in order to placate the Congress
'the Viceroy should have gone out of his way to stress that Dominion Status was
of the same kind as that provided by the Statute of Westminster'. A few days
later he again warned Zetland:
The Viceroy seems to have made a most definite
statement which goes far beyond the intention of Parliament, which statement
some of us regard as most dangerous and seriously to embarrass Parliament in
dealing with any alteration of the constitution should it become necessary, at
the end of the war.
·
Earl of Willingdon
(viceroy 1931 to 1936)
Willingdon had been a very progressive governor of Bombay (1913-18) and
Madras (1919-24). He got along well with upper class Indians and had many India
friends. He also genuinely wanted the Indians to achieve self-government.
Unfortunately he was not very intelligent[10]
and time had rather passed him by. Like Van Mook, he
believed that no progress could be made in a situation of disorder. In the case
of India this required that Congress cease its program of civil disobedience,
cease claiming to be the sole spokesman of the Indian people, cease claiming
the right to be a parallel government and start behaving as a responsible
democratic party, like those in Britain, dedicated to achieving its supporters’
goals through constitutional means. Having been landed by Irwin with a
situation of severely weakened morale among government officials and the
government’s traditional supporters[11]
he used a two pronged approach of encouraging the Home government to make a
generous constitutional settlement while trying to re-establish the government’s
ability to rule[12]
through applying repressive measures aptly called “civil
martial law”[13].
Though this was successful it eventually became clear that in the long run, the
British had to get the support of Congress as they could
not permanently rule through the use of emergency powers.
·
Marquess of Linlithgow (viceroy 1936
to 1943)
Linlithgow was really an aristocratic party hack. If not for his birth it
is doubtful whether he would have risen higher than the chairmanship of a
parliamentary committee or, at most, a second level ministerial post. He was
high minded, cautious, unimaginative, hard working and extremely unempathetic[14]. He lacked the ability to put people at their
ease and they generally felt uncomfortable with him.
·
Viscount Wavell (viceroy 1943
to 1947)
Wavel was a man of great
integrity, capable if rather unlucky soldier, an intellectual and a poet. It
might fairly be said that his personality was polar opposite to those of Irwin
and Montbatten. He knew and loved India and wanted to
help it achieve independence. He forced Churchill to provide food to the
victims of the Bengal famine of 1943 which had been almost
ignored by Linlithgow. However, he was no politician and did not like
politicians and politics, whether Indian or British. He had did not have any of
the social graces required to develop a relationship with the key political
figures.
Wavel was selected by Churchill (see: Wavel 1973; Mason 1982; Marshall 1977) for
two reasons which show his lack of concern for India:
Ø
He did not like
Wavell and wanted to force his retirement from the army to clear the way for
the appointment of Montbatten as Commander in Chief, South-East Asia;
Ø
No major political
figure was willing to take the post which would amount to political exile. Atlee, Lord Halifax (formerly Lord Irwin) and Eden were
considered to be suitable and indeed would have been.
|
Sir
Stanley Reed, the highly respected editor of The Times of India from 1907
until 1924 wrote the following (Reed pp. 79-80) Those whose work and responsibility lay in India
were often baffled to understand what possible justification there was for
many of the appointments made. When they peered below the surface it was
frequently to learn that the last consideration was fitness for the job.
"Lord A." was selected because his wife had held a position at
Court; "Mr. B." because he was a failure in his political office
and it was desirable to get rid of him without friction; "C."
because he was a junior Whip or a Parliamentary Private Secretary… This
practice prevailed almost to the end. One of the
evening newspapers announced a certain name; it seemed to me so grotesque,
knowing the circumstances; I could not believe it possible... To everyone's
amazement the official announcement was made two days later, with
consequences everyone should have foreseen….
(A)ll blinked their eyes when Sir George Clarke was taken from his
desk as Secretary to the Committee of Defence and sent to Bombay. What was
the reason? It can be given in his own words. "Haldane had produced his
scheme of Army Reform. As Secretary to the Committee of Defence I tore it to
pieces in a note, and a precis was sent to each member of the Cabinet.
Haldane was told to carry on. After that, of course, there was no place for
me in the Committee of Defence and they sent me here." |
1.3.2 French Indochina
Historically there was little public or political
interest in the empire[15]. Indochina started out as an initiative
of the French Navy and was run largely for the benefit of French prestige,
French settlers (colons) and French investors in that order. No real, as
opposed to rhetorical, interest was taken in the native population though any
sign of unrest was brutally suppressed.
It was true that the colonies, African and Asian,
had proved valuable to France in the depression: in 1927 France imported 11.4 per cent of its goods and raw materials from the empire and exported 14.7
per cent; by 1936 the figures were 33.6 per
cent and 33.1 per cent.[16] Colonial soldiers and factory workers had been
important in the First World War, even if their importance had apparently been forgotten by the late 1930s.[17] Despite the National Colonial Exposition of 1922 and the vast International
Colonial Exposition at Marseille in 1931, the
idea colonial had not, however,
become a popular one: the colonies remained a
minority interest. For the general public they were `exotic', and colonialist propaganda, evoking that
feeling, could not make them less so.[18] The French proletariat, as Ho Chi Minh put it,
thought of a colony as 'nothing but a country full of sand
below and sun above, with a few green palms and a few
brown natives'.[19]
Quoted
from Tarling Imperalism
in Southeast Asia: a fleeting passing phase p. 272
1.3.3 Dutch
East Indies (Netherlands’
East Indies (NEI), Netherlands India, modern Indonesia)[20]
The degree of public and political interest in the
NEI was much higher than in the case of the other imperial powers. This is accounted for by three factors
·
The Netherlands’ standing as a
middle power was due to that tiny country’s ruling the huge, populous and
potentially wealthy NEI;
·
Income from the NEI was of great
importance to the Netherlands’ economy[21];
·
It was a hugely important source
of employment for Netherlands’ university graduates.
1.3.4 The Philippines
There was never much imperialist sentiment in the 19th and early
20th century USA. For that reason the United States defined its
colonial mission as one of tutelage, preparing the Philippines for eventual independence.
B. Land and People of the
Empires
2. Diversity and
Integrity of: the British Raj (Indian
Subcontinent); French Ruled Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos); the
Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia); and the Philippines
2.1 British Raj
India
is a subcontinent with variations in geography, language and culture exceeding the
parallel variations in Europe. Underlying all these differences is the
underlying unity of the Hindu
religion and culture. In 1940, the Indian total population 360 million[22] while the UK population in 1941 was 48.2 million.[23]
Two of the most important divisions in the British
Raj, compromising in 1937 modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were:
·
Religion – Overall, about 25% of the population of
the Raj was Muslim
and about 70% were Hindu.
Only in the Northwest (modern day Pakistan) and in the Northeast
(modern day Bangladesh)
were Muslims a majority.
·
The British directly ruled about two-thirds of the
area of the Raj (called British India) containing about three-quarters of the
population. The remaining area was divided up into almost 600 Princely or Native States.
In the words of Hodson[24] -
The
Indian States presented a unique problem, and a highly complex one, in the
progress to independence. They varied enormously, from principalities the size of France to petty
estates unworthy to be ranked as political entities yet neither part of British India
nor subordinate to any other government than the Crown itself. Their citizens
were not British subjects, but, in international status, ‘British protected
persons’. Some of the States were ancient monarchies
whose history went many centuries back beyond the advent of European power;
some had been former feudatories or satrapies of the Mogul Empire which had
asserted their independence of the Delhi throne; others were fragments from the
breakup of Mogul dominion after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, or of the
more limited empires of the Mahrattas, the Sikhs, or the Muslim overlords of the Deccan and the south; a few were
deliberate creations of the British….
Geographically,
India was one and indivisible; communications, common economic interests, and
close ties of cultural affinity, linked States and provinces. Only two things
separated the Indian States from the rest of India, the historical factor that
the States had not been annexed by the British, and the political factor that
the States maintained the traditional monarchical form of government.
Did
these factors, however, really segregate the States from the Provinces and
create an impassable political barrier between them? The freedom of the Indian
States from foreign subjugation was only relative; the paramount power
controlled the external affairs of the States and exercised wide powers in
relation to their internal matters. The whole of the country was, therefore, in
varying degrees under the sway of the British Government.
As suggested by the name Indochina, the native population
was heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian culture and religion[25]
(mainly Buddhism[26]).
Population 1936
|
|
Millions |
% of Total French Indochina |
|
Cochinchina
(in the south – major city Saigon)[27] |
4.6 |
20.0 |
|
5.7 |
24.8 |
|
|
8.7 |
37.8 |
|
|
Total Vietnam |
19.0 |
82.6 |
|
|
|
|
|
3.0 |
13.0 |
|
|
1.0 |
4.3 |
|
|
Total French Indochina |
23.0 |
100 |
|
Population France |
41.5[30] |
|
Although containing many minority groups all three
countries have one predominant ethnic group and have long, if fluctuating
histories as states (see: Vietnam; History of Cambodia-Khmer
Empire; History of Laos-Lan Xang). This is a major distinction between Indochina, on the one hand, and
India, Indonesia and the Philippines, on the other. As regards ethnic groups in Indochina –
Ø
"Vietnamese" population (Annamite for the
French administration, also known as Kinh ethnic group) always represented more
than 80% of the total population of Annam, Cochinchina and Tonkin..”[31]
Ø
Cambodia is ethnically homogeneous. More than 90%
of its population is of Khmer origin and speaks the Khmer
language, the country's official language. The remainder include Chinese,
Vietnamese,
Cham,
Khmer Loeu,
and Indians.”[32]
Ø
Laos More than 80% of the population are Lao, while
most of the remainder belong to various indigenous minorities such as the Hmong
and the Yao. There are small Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese minorities.”[33]
|
“The Malay Archipelago is a vast archipelago
located between mainland Southeastern Asia (Indochina)
and Australia.
Straddling the Indian and Pacific
Oceans, this group of some 20 000 islands, the
world's largest archipelago by area, constitutes the territories of Indonesia,
the Philippines,
Singapore,
Brunei, the Malaysian
states of Sarawak
and Sabah along
with the Federal Territory of Labuan, East Timor, and most of Papua
New Guinea.[34]
“ The native
populations of Malaysia, Indonesia (excluding New Guinea) and the Philippines
have related linguistic (Malayo-Polynesian) and ethnic (Austronesian) origin. Indian cultural
and religious influence was felt throughout the region. Indian influence was least
profound in the Philippines (see Hinduism
in the Philippines; Buddhism in the Philippines; Maradia Lawana[35])
and in the Outer Islands of Indonesia, more important in Malaysia
(see Hikayat Seri Rama) and strongest in Java (see: Kakawin Rāmâyaṇa; Kakawin Bhāratayuddha) where Hindu (see: Majapahit
Empire; ) and Buddhist (see Srivijaya; Sailendra) kingdoms lasted
until the rise of Islam and Bali (Ramakavaca) which remains predominantly Hindu until
today. In Java a native spiritual tradition, (Kebatinan or Kejawen) co-exists with Islam.
Subsequently all, except Bali, were converted to Abrahamic religions by
foreign missionaries.
In the case of Malaysia[36]
and Indonesia Arab traders played a key role. In the case of the Philippines
Spanish rule fostered the Catholic faith. However, the Southern Philippines
include a significant Muslim population.
However, traces of Hindu influence remain in the Malay
language, literature and art, while “[t]he
influence of Hinduism and classical India remain
defining traits of Indonesian culture; the Indian concept of
the god-king
still shapes Indonesian concepts of leadership and the use of Sanskrit in
courtly literature and adaptations of Indian mythology such as the Ramayana
and Mahabharata.”[37]
“Islam is Indonesia's
dominant religion
with approximately 88% of its population identifying as Muslims, making
it the most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world.”[38]
However, Indonesia has major Christian,
Hindu
and animist
minorities.
The peoples of the
Malay Archipelago, though similar in language and ethnic origin,
developed into many isolated communities due to separation by the sea and,
within islands, separation by mountains and jungles. This prevented the rise
of a shared sense of national identity. The boundaries of
present day Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines mirror the final
boundaries between the British, Dutch and Spanish empires respectively within
the Malay Archipelago rather than any distinction of language, culture or
ethnicity. The sense of national identity of Indonesians and Filipinos are
products of the nationalist movements of the 20th century, in the
case of Indonesia, and the late 19th century in the case of the
Philippines. The rise of nationalist movements, in turn, was a response to
Western rule and Western education which led to acceptance of Western norms
including the normative nature of nation states, the right of
self-determination for peoples, democracy and human rights. |
2.3 Dutch
East Indies (modern Indonesia)
Indonesia, excluding the former Netherlands territory on New Guinea (present day Indonesian
provinces of Papua and West
Irian Jaya) is part of the Malay
Archipelago.
“Most Indonesians are ethnically Austronesian , particularly in central and
western Indonesia, although much of eastern Indonesia is Melanesian.
There are, however, around 300 distinct native ethnicities in Indonesia and 742
different languages and dialects.”[39]
Outside New Guinea the languages are of the Malayo-Polynesian group. The national
language is Indonesian
is a standardized dialect of the Malay
language though the most widely spoken language is Javanese.
Indonesia is made up of about 18 thousand islands
about 6,000 of which are inhabited (see Geography of Indonesia). Java is by far the most populous island in
Indonesia, with approximately 62% of the country's population.
With 130 million inhabitants at 940 people per km², it is also the most
populous island in the world. If it were a country, it would be the second-most
densely-populated country of the world after Bangladesh,
except for some very small city-states. Approximately 45% of the population of
Indonesia is ethnically Javanese”[40]
At the time of the Second World War, the population
of Indonesia was about 72 million as compared to the Dutch population of about
9 million.[41]
The Dutch at times claimed that they wanted to
develop a sense of Indies nationality while at other times they claimed that
valid political institutions could only be rooted in the many diverse indies’
societies and ethnic groups[42]. This view, strongly propounded by Colijn[43], led to the conclusion that there never was or could be an Indonesian
nation and that Dutch rule and coordination would always be required even if
local autonomy were to be granted. This view parallels those of the
anti-nationalist Conservative politicians in the UK and the associationists in
France. In Colijn’s view the Volksraad should never have been established; it
promised a non-viable (autonomous Indonesian nation) future.
“The Philippines constitutes an archipelago
of 7,107 islands with a total land area of approximately 300,000 square
kilometres (116,000 sq. mi).” [44]
(See Geography of the Philippines.)
In 1940 the population of the Philippines was about
16.4 million[45]
as compared to the United States population of 131.7 million for that same
year.[46]
About two-thirds of the population lived on the island of Luzon which includes
the capital Manila.[47]
“About 90% of Filipinos are Christians, where 81%
belong to the Roman Catholic Church, and the 9% composed of
Protestant denominations…. Approximately
5% of Filipinos are Sunni Muslim. They primarily settled in parts of Mindanao and
the Sulu archipelago.”[48]
C. Origin of the Asian Empires
3.1 British Raj
“The British East India Company … [b]ased
in London … presided over the creation of the British Raj.
In 1617, the Company was given trade rights by the Mughal
Emperor. 100 years later, it was granted a royal dictate from the Emperor
exempting the Company from the payment of custom duties in Bengal, giving it a
decided commercial advantage in the Indian trade. A decisive victory by Sir Robert Clive at the Battle
of Plassey in 1757 established the British East India Company as a military
as well as a commercial power. By 1760, the French were driven out of India,
with the exception of a few trading posts on the coast, such as Pondicherry.”[49]
“The efforts of the company in administering India
emerged as a model for the civil service system in Britain, especially during the
19th century. Deprived of its trade monopoly in 1813, the company wound up as a
trading enterprise. In 1858, the Company lost its administrative functions to
the British government following the 1857 uprising which began with what the
Company's Indian soldiers called the Sepoy Mutiny or Indian Rebellion of 1857. India then
became a formal crown colony.”[50]
3.2 French Indochina
“France assumed sovereignty over Annam and Tonkin after the Sino-French
War, which lasted from 1884 to 1885.
French Indochina was formed in October 1887 from Annam,
Tonkin, Cochin China, and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added after the Franco-Siamese War of 1893. The
federation lasted until 1954.
The French formally left the local rulers in power, who were the Emperors of Vietnam, Kings
of Cambodia, and Kings of Luang Prabang, but in fact gathered
all powers in their hands, the local rulers acting only as figureheads.”[51]
“Beginning in 1602 with the founding of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch
took three centuries to establish themselves as rulers of what is now
Indonesia, exploiting the fractionalisation of the small kingdoms that had
replaced Majapahit….
Although the full extent of the colonial territory was not established
until the early twentieth century[52], it was these
boundaries that formed the modern nation of Indonesia that was declared in 1945….
[The of the Dutch East India Company] went bankrupt
at the end of the 18th century and after a short British rule under Thomas Stamford Raffles, the Dutch state took
over the … possessions in 1816.”[53]
3.4 The Philippines[54]
In the wake of the Spanish-American War, “Spain was forced to
cede the Philippines to the United States in exchange for 20 million United States dollars with the Treaty of Paris in 1898.”[55] United States forces then bloodily defeated the
Filipinos in the Philippine-American War.
“A civilian government was established by the
Americans in 1901, with William H. Taft as the first civilian governor of the Philippines. English
was declared the official language. Six hundred American teachers were imported
aboard the USS Thomas. Also, the Catholic
Church was disestablished, and a considerable amount of church land was
purchased and redistributed.
Some
measures of Filipino self-rule were allowed, however. An elected Filipino legislature
was inaugurated in 1907.
When Woodrow
Wilson became the American President, in 1913, there was a
major change in official American policy concerning the Philippines. While the
previous Republican administrations had
envisioned the Philippines as a perpetual American colony, the Wilson
administration decided to start a process that would gradually lead to Philippine
independence. U.S. administration of the Philippines was declared to be
temporary and aimed to develop institutions that would permit and encourage the
eventual establishment of a free and democratic government. Therefore, U.S.
officials concentrated on the creation of such practical supports for
democratic government as public education and a sound legal system. The Philippines were granted free trade
status, with the U.S.
In 1916,
the Philippine Autonomy Act, popularly known as
the Jones Law, was passed by the U.S. Congress.
The law which served as the new organic act (or constitution) for the
Philippines, stated in its preamble that the eventual independence of the
Philippines would be American policy, subject to the establishment of a stable
government. The law maintained the Governor General of the Philippines,
appointed by the President of the United States, but established a bicameral
Philippine Legislature to replace the elected Philippine Assembly (lower house)
and appointive Philippine Commission (upper house) previously in place. The
Filipino House of Representatives would be purely elected, while the new
Philippine Senate would have the majority of its members elected by senatorial
district with senators representing non-Christian areas appointed by the
Governor-General.”[56]
D. Defensibility of the
Empires
The
British, as dominant naval power, could easily defend its Asian possessions at
least until the early 20th century.
The Americans as a rising naval power could do likewise. France could
not have defended its Asian colonies against Britain but, it was a major
European military power which Britain would think twice about offending. Here
the situation of the NEI was quite different. The Netherlands could not have
defended the NEI against seizure by the British, Americans or French or, after
about 1910 by the Japanese. What kept the NEI safe was the benevolent
protection of the British navy. The temptation for stronger powers to seize the
NEI to gain markets or access to resources was reduced when, in 1870, the Dutch
instituted a 'Liberal Policy' opening the markets of the Netherlands East
Indies to foreign imports and its resources for exploitation by foreign
investors.
E. Benefits from the Empires
to the Metropolitan Country – i.e. National Interests Served by the Colonies
4.1 British Raj
British Material Self-interest in India
|
The material self-interest was economic and
strategic. India was a captive market, for long prevented by a system of countervailing
excise duties from protecting its cotton-manufacturing industry from the
products of Lancashire. Even after the Fiscal Convention of 1920 had thrown
out this system, and established that when the Government and Legislature of
India, acting for the benefit of India and in response to Indian opinion,
were agreed on fiscal policy, the Secretary of State would not exercise his
overriding power on behalf of any British interest, it remained true that
British control of Indian government conveyed substantial economic
advantages. At least it prevented the development of Indian economic policy
on autarkic lines which most British people honestly believed to be harmful
to India—and which would certainly have been harmful to Britain.
Strategically, India became the trunk of a systematic corpus of imperial
defence whose limbs stretched from Hong Kong to the Middle East, from East
Africa to the northern passes of Burma. Apart from the Indian forces
themselves, it was an essential overseas training-ground and cantonment for
the British Army. And for this India paid. Such benefits were not lightly
yielded to political pressure. A less tangible but nevertheless very
powerful interest was the prestige and authority that Britain gained in world
affairs from being master of an immense empire of which India was the heart.
Without that empire and the naval power that cemented it she was but a
medium-sized European country. With it, she was great among the greatest,
boasting a world-wide Pax Britannica. Without India, the subordinate empire
would be scarcely more than a string of colonial beads. Pride is less easily
sacrificed than even major material interests. Quoted from Hodson pp. 3-4. |
"In the years before 1914 India's imperial
commitment meant three things in practice: that India should be retained as
a market for British exports. which meant that the Government of India should not
impose insurmountable barriers, especially tariffs, to the flow of British
merchandise to India; that the Indian army be kept available for the
imperial cause; and that the Indian administration should ensure that
repayment of interest on guaranteed debt bonds was made smoothly and that
adequate revenue and remittance was available for the Home Charges.
Isolating the imperial factor in India policy allows us to pin-point the
fundamental dichotomy of British rule in India. Each prong of its triple commitment
cost the Government of India money…. As an India Office memorandum pointed out
in June 1931: If a Federal Government were established in India, the aggregate
charges under these three heads (Defence, Service of the Debt, and Salaries and
Pensions) would, at a very conservative estimate, absorb three-quarters of the
total revenues of the Federation, and a very large proportion of these payments
would have to be made in sterling. This fact illustrates vividly the direct
interest which the British Government must continue to retain in the financial
administration of India, and explains why it is necessary to impose such
measures of Parliamentary control as may be sufficient to ensure that these
obligations are met. . . There is no escape from the conclusion that so long as
the British Government retains obligations which absorb so large a proportion
of the total revenues of India, it must retain a direct interest in the
financial administration of the country. This by no means implies that
financial administration must remain under close or detailed control, but
merely that provision must be made to ensure that the financial stability and
credit of the country will be maintained, as unless this can be ensured the
obligations falling on the British Government could not be met. This, from the
purely British point of view, is the primary object of the [financial]
safeguards."[57]
In practice British latitude was constrained.
Ø India as a market for British exports – The Fiscal Autonomy Convention of
1922, a bid to win the support of industrial and political India, allowed
the Government of India to set protective tariffs even if they hurt UK exports.[58]
Ø Sterling Charges on the Government of India – The British Government ensured that the Rupee was maintained at the
high rate of R.1=1s 6d in the face of strong Indian opposition. This required an extremely tight monetary
policy at a time of depression. It
is clear now, and was clear then, that the interests of the Indian economy were
being subordinated to those of the British tax payer who would have had to pick
up the tab if the government of India could not meet its Sterling obligations.
Ø British Indian Army - The financial stress on the Government of India put severe limits on
the Indian Army. In the period after 1918 military expenditures continued to be
the largest item of government expenditure (Sen pp. 152-3).
".. 35.7% of India's national expenditure was devoted to the military...
compared to that of Britain itself (16.8%) and Canada (0.6%)"[59]. In this context, there was a strong reaction when Imperial planners
attempted to use Indian troops to cheaply garrison Britain’s new empire in the
Middle East. This led to a struggle between, on the one side, the India Office,
the Government of India and Indian political opinion vs., on the other side the Imperial General
Staff. In the end, the position of the Indian government was agreed to, i.e. that
“…except in the gravest emergency, the Indian Army
should be employed outside the Indian Empire only after consultation with the
Governor-General in Council. . . . The …Indian army should not be required
permanently to provide large overseas garrisons is supported. Units required
for such purposes should be maintained in addition to the establishment laid
down for the Indian Army, and the whole cost, direct or indirect, of recruiting
and maintaining such units should be borne by His Majesty's Government, or by
the dependency or colony requiring their services. This position held for the
rest of the decade; the Indian army could still play a limited imperial role,
but at London's expense."[60]
“How important was India to
Britain in 1929? A third of the British army trained there, still free of cost to the British
taxpayer. The Indian army, one of the largest standing armies in the world, was under
complete British control, and protected strategically vital Middle Eastern oil
and Malayan rubber. Indeed the area it patrolled, from Cairo to Peking, absorbed
a third of Britain's overseas trade. India was the biggest customer for
Britain's largest export industry, Manchester cotton
goods. India accounted for a fifth of British overseas investment. At a
more personal level, many Conservative MPs had family connections there via the army or
civil service. In the 1929 parliament fully a fifth of the Conservative MPs themselves had served in
the colonies, or armed services or both. The Indian empire had played a
central part in the Conservative imagination since Disraeli. Although from 1917
British governments had been committed to move by stages towards eventual self-government for
India within the empire, the Conservative party, at least, had solid reasons for making the
transition safe and slow. They recognised
that possession of India was essential if Britain were to remain
a first-rate power.”
“What made the retention of the empire important was, above all, the
sense of French greatness: losing it would be unpopular, even if it was not a popular endeavour.
‘For us', the Free French leader Charles de Gaulle wrote in May 1942,
'the outcome of the war must be the restoration at
one and the same time of the complete territorial integrity of the French
Empire, of the heritage of France, and of the total
sovereignty of the French nation.’[61] The measures that the French had taken to hold
on to Indo-China had not helped their cause. They had
not been able to come to terms with Vietnamese nationalism. Fear, Milton
Osborne suggests, 'drove the French to reject any significant liberalization
of their rule ... the middle ground of genuine constitutional opposition
of the sort which emerged in India was not available.[62]
“Had Gandhi tried
civil disobedience in Indo-China, Ho Chi Minh observed, he 'would long since have ascended
into heaven'.”[63]
Quoted
from Tarling Imperalism
in Southeast Asia: a fleeting passing phase p. 272 -273
4.3 Dutch
East Indies (modern Indonesia)
American interests in the Philippines before the
war were the following in steeply declining importance:
·
As a naval and air base close to
Japan which the USA considered a potentially hostile
power. The position of the Philippines was such as to potentially block
Japanese access to the South Pacific;
·
As a “civilizing mission” preparing their “little brown brothers”
for independence;
·
Commercial benefit. This was quite minor. Although the USA did supply the bulk of imports
to the Philippines it might very well have done so in any case. Unlike the case for NEI, FIC, present day Malaysia
and India, there were no strong domestic lobbies which supported the maintenance
of the Philippines as a dependency of the USA. In fact there were strong
lobbies which were keen to see it independent. Two of these were US sugar
growers who wanted Philippine sugar excluded fro their domestic market and
groups calling for the reduction or elimination of Asian immigration which
wanted to impose the most restrictive controls on the entry of Filipinos into
the USA.
E. Philosophies,
Objectives and Realities of Government
5. Philosophies and Objectives
5.1 British Raj[65]
5.2 French Indochina
“The bureaucracy of colonial
government was split between proponents of assimilation and advocates of
associationism. In other words, divided between those who believed in the
acculturation of colonial populations to French republican rights and values
and those who favoured a less ambitious style of indirect rule that minimised
change in the prevailing social order while denying political inclusion to most
colonial subjects. Neither policy was adopted throughout the empire. Nor was
either alternative consistently applied in individual colonies. But the
interwar period is generally considered to have marked the ascendancy of
associationist pragmatism in imperial administration. We should be wary of
viewing these doctrinal arguments too rigidly. As Alice Conklin has argued,
French imperial practice in the late Third Republic was the product of several
paradoxes. These, in turn, arose from the nuances in colonial administrative
and judicial methods born of adaptation to local conditions. A republican democracy withheld basic rights and
freedoms from its overseas subjects, amplifying the exclusion of French women
from the metropolitan electoral process by insisting that colonial peoples of
both sexes were generally incapable of making informed political choices. A
republican state founded on hostility to hereditary privilege relied on tribal
chiefs and colonial monarchs to maintain order in vast swathes of the empire.
Anticlerical republicans committed to secular education defended France's
continued reliance on missionary educators in rudimentary colonial school
systems. French liberals attached to individual freedom and equal access to
justice accepted the use of forced labour and a separate legal code - the
indigënat - for the vast majority of colonial subjects. These contradictions
were the stuff of argument between supporters of associationism and their
opponents. Yet, for all that, this
political community of republican imperialists concurred that French
colonialism could be a constructive force for progress.” Thomas p. 6
In principle Dutch rule in the Indies aimed at
developing the population’s ability to govern itself with the aim of developing
the Indies as a more equal, and autonomous, partner of the European Netherlands
within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
In practice, the government, proclaimed the
need for an educated electorate before any concession of Dutch power could be
permitted while starving the education system of funds thus ensuring that any
transition of power would be over centuries rather than years or even decades.
The Dutch government closely controlled the Indies through the
government-appointed Governor-General
who in turn controlled the country through a highly trained, overwhelmingly
Dutch elite civil service. They ran a highly centralized, autocratic police
state[66].
5.4 The Philippines
6. Nature of Rule in Reality
A. The ‘Colons’ Factor
Ideally, one might hope that
Europeans resident in colonies, in daily contact with at least some elements of
the native population, would be more understanding of the realities and
aspirations of the colonized. However, in general, European residents (‘colons’ in French)
tended to be the most resistant to the growth of indigenous capacities for
development and the according of rights to native peoples.
The influence of European residents was most
extreme and unremittingly negative in the French empire[67]; seriously negative in the NEI[68], especially after the communist
rebellion of 1926; occasionally negative and important in the Raj, mainly
before 1930; and, of little account in the Philippines.
B. Dealing with Nationalists
The Americans closely allied themselves with wealthy nationalists in the
Philippines.
The British repeatedly attempted to split the nationalists to encourage
the formation of a large, powerful, stable and politically legitimate
nationalist party willing to rule India under British approved rules in
partnership with the British. If successful, this would have isolated
radical nationalists opposed to constitutional methods and maintaining the
British link. The radicals would either have to join the moderates or become an
isolated fringe. The British were never able to get this strategy to work.
The French denied the legitimacy of nationalism in their colonies and
would not talk to the nationalists.
The Dutch government mainly saw nationalism as a police rather than a
political matter. They would not allow officials to talk to
nationalists. They took the view that:
· The native population was uninterested in
politics; the nationalists being a tiny, westernized, self-serving clique;
· The radical nationalists were unprepared to
cooperate even had the Dutch been interested in such cooperation;
· The moderate nationalists, who were very
interested in cooperating with the Dutch, were of little interest or
importance.
6.1 British Raj
|
Pillar of British Rule |
Eroding Factor/Process |
|
Acquiescence of the vast
majority of Indians |
Gandhi/INC non-cooperation
movements from 1919 |
|
Active partnership and support
of key groups such as the land owners, the princes and the moneyed and
martial classes |
British policy on exchange
rates and tariffs gained Congress the support of many Indian industrialists
while the non-cooperation movement of Gandhi/INC attracted support of some of
the land-owning and money-lending groups. |
|
British in depth knowledge of
the grass roots reality vital to maintaining control |
Indian provincial ministers
(from 1922), provincial autonomy (from 1937), Indian district officers
(gradually from about 1920), urbanization (the British always understood and
controlled rural areas better than cities). |
|
British dominance of modern
economic sectors. |
Indian capitalists took over
control of most of the modern sector during the 1930s. |
|
British dominance of modern
(Western) scientific, technical and administrative skills |
In the early days of British
rule the only scientifically trained personnel were British physicians who
consequently undertook some interesting tasks. These were joined by military
and then civilian railway and civil engineers. The British soon set up
medical and engineering colleges in India and encouraged the growth of
English education. These, together with the experience gained by Indians in
the British administration of India, and in the legal profession, and
self-education by Indians literate in English, created a cadre of Indians
with the skills needed to develop India on modern lines. |
|
Support of the small, but
important and rapidly growing English-educated urban classes |
British racist behaviour,
social contempt, denial of access to the ICS etc. had alienated much of this
group before WW I. This group provided much of the leadership for the INC |
|
Monopoly of key policy and
administrative positions by the almost exclusively British Indian Civil Service
which usually numbered about 1000. |
Intake into Indian Civil
Service was half British half-Indian from the early 1920s. |
|
Monopoly of key police
positions |
Gradual Indianization from the
early 1920s. |
|
Exclusively British officered
Indian Army. |
Slow program of accepting
Indian commissioned officers from 1918. |
|
British military units
stationed in India and paid for by the Indian tax-payer. |
Prestige of these forces
severely dented by British incompetence in the defence of Malaya,
Singapore. and Burma.
Burma had been part of the Raj until 1937. An empire that cannot defend its
territories looses much of its legitimacy. |
|
British control of the seas
around India. |
The British fleet would have
been hard put to defend India in the context of a simultaneous war against
Japan and Germany even before World War I but its total inability to do so in
World War II was demonstrated to the world by the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse
on 10 December 1941, and the capture of Singapore naval base by a numerically much
inferior Japanese force. |
British rule was highly bureaucratized and
generally locked into the British concept of rule of law. Censorship was
generally mild and, even then, tended to be limited to the vernacular press.
6.2 French Indochina
French administration tended to be disorganized,
confused (different government departments involved), highly repressive (see
eg. Foster) and as economically exploitative as could be
managed. A general feeling, among the French, in France and in the colonies,
was that any native who did not see French rule as an invaluable gift must be
either ignorant or miscreant against whom severe measures were justified.
6.3 Dutch East Indies
When involved in colonial wars within Indonesia the
Dutch practiced the same level of brutality[69] as the Americans did in the Philippine-American War; the British in the
Indian Mutiny; and,
the French whenever their military was called in. After
pacification, the Dutch ran a highly organized, tightly administered, generally
humane (unless you were a “coolie” labourer on starvation wages) regime which concentrated on extracting
maximum benefit for the Netherlands out of their Indonesian milch cow.
6.4 The Philippines
The USA allied itself with the upper class
landowners working with them to establish the Philippines as a modern
independent state by 1946. (See 3.4 above).
7. Policies Between the Wars Including
Reform Attempts
7.1 British Raj
The Raj, like the British and French empires,
seemed at its height at the victorious conclusion of the First World War in
November 1918. However, as was the case for Britain and France, the war had led
to economic and psychological exhaustion. Factors included: the cost to India
of participation in WW I and its inflationary impact; the unwise enactment of
the Rowlatt
Acts; the related Punjab disturbances climaxing in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre;
the impact of the Spanish
Flu; economic instability in the 1920s; and, pressure for home rule from 1916, the Non-cooperation Movement of the early
1920s and 1930s.
In these difficult conditions the British enacted
two major democratizing reforms leading ultimately to Indian independence – the
Government of India Act 1919 (enacting
the Montagu-Chelmsford
reforms) and the Government of India Act 1935. The latter was preceded by the Simon Commission and the Indian Constitutional Round
Table Conferences, London 1931-1933.
7.2 French Indochina
The Popular Front
government tried to effect a minor reform of colonial policy in 1936 which was,
however, defeated by the bureaucracy and colons.
The Dutch established a powerless and racially
unrepresentative[70] local parliament (the Volksraad[71]) in a 1916 reform. This met for the first time in 1918. In the closing
days of World War I, in the context of fears of a possible Communist takeover of
the Netherlands, the Governor General, without authorization from the
Netherlands, promised the Volksraad real power[72] and Indies autonomy[73]. Once the panic had passed right wing governments ruled in the
Netherlands[74].
The only major outcome of the promise was the
launching of a committee to investigate needed reforms[75]. This recommended autonomy for the Indies. The report was forwarded to
the Netherlands which was involved in revising the national constitution. The
recommendations for autonomy were rejected. The revised constitution
reclassified the status of the Indies, Curaçao and Surinam as parts of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands rather than as colonies. This enabled the Dutch to claim
that anyone advocating Indonesian
independence was committing sedition[76].
In the late 1930s the Dutch rejected with contempt,
using spurious logic, the Soetardjo Petition[77] in which the Volksraad requested the reorganization of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands.
Far too late, and from a position of weakness, the
Governor-General announced, on June 16, 1941, that revisions to the
constitution would be considered right after liberation[78]. The holding of a round table conference aimed at the development of a
reformed empire with full Indonesian internal autonomy was promised in the radio address by Queen Wilhelmina
on 7 December 1942.
7.4 The Philippines
F. Second World War and
Decolonization
8. Second World War
8.1 British Raj
The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared India to be
at war with Germany without consulting Indian political leaders or the Central
Legislative Assembly. Although constitutionally this was acceptable it was
politically insensitive. The Congress ministries in the Hindu majority
provinces were ordered to resign by the Congress High Command and did so. The
key Muslim majority provinces, Bengal and Punjab, continued to be governed by
Muslim political leaders. British
bureaucrats, for the duration of the war, governed the Hindu majority provinces
more absolutely than they had at any time in the previous half century. The
Viceroy, governors and Indian Civil Service ensured maximal war production and,
overall, a huge Indian war effort.
The British government made two initiatives to gain
an interim political settlement and the restoration of political rule in the
Hindu majority provinces –
·
The “August Offer” in 1940 made just after the fall of France. In the words of Hodson (pp. 84-85)
On 8th
August the Viceroy issued a statement which became known as the August Offer. Lord
Linlithgow declared:
It is clear that earlier differences which had
prevented the achievement of national unity remained unbridged. Deeply as His
Majesty's Government regret this, they do not feel that they should any longer,
because of those differences, postpone the expansion of the Governor General's
Council, and the establishment of a body which will more closely associate
Indian public opinion with the conduct of the war by the Central Government. .
. .
… There is still in certain quarters doubt as to the intentions of
Majesty's Government for the constitutional future of India, and … as to whether the position of minorities, whether political or
religious, is sufficiently safeguarded. . . .
. . It has already been made clear that my
declaration of last October does not exclude examination of any part either of
the Act of 1935 or of
the policy and plans on which it is based. His Majesty's Government's concern
that full weight should be given to the views of minorities in any revision has
also been brought out …
… They could not contemplate transfer of their present
responsibilities for the peace and welfare of India to any system of government
whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India's
national life. Nor could they be parties to the coercion of such elements into
submission to such a Government.
. . .
There has been very strong insistence that the framing of the new
constitutional scheme should be primarily the responsibility of Indians
themselves. . . . His Majesty's Government are in sympathy with that desire and
wish to see it given the fullest practical expression, subject to the due fulfilment of the obligations which Great
Britain's long connection with India has imposed on her and for which His Majesty's Government cannot divest
themselves of responsibility. It is clear that a moment when the Commonwealth
is engaged in a struggle for existence is not one in which fundamental
constitutional issues can be decisively resolved. But His Majesty's Government
authorise me to declare that they will most readily assent to the setting up
after the conclusion of the war with the least possible delay of a body
representative of the principal elements in India's national life in order to
devise the framework of the new Constitution, and they will lend every aid in
their power to hasten decisions on all relevant matters to the utmost degree.
Meanwhile they will welcome and promote in any way possible every sincere and practical
step that may be taken by representative Indians themselves to reach a basis of
friendly agreement, first upon the form Which the post-war representative body
should take and the methods by which it should arrive at its conclusions, and,
secondly, upon the principles and outlines of the Constitution itself. . . .
Whatever might be said of
the substance of this declaration, its structure and terminology were such as
to make it as unattractive as possible in India.
·
The Cripps Offer made under American and Labour party pressure
as Britain was being comprehensively defeated in Burma and Malaya.
Churchill, who opposed India’s desire for
independence, probably had little interest in actually making a settlement as
opposed to appearing reasonable to the Americans. However, there was probably
little prospect of any settlement because of the demands of each of the key
parties –
Ø
The British were impressed with
India’s war effort under Linlithgow’s leadership and were determined to
maintain complete control of the Indian war effort, and the Indian Army for the
duration of the war;
Ø
The INC demanded immediate
independence and majority rule though they would probably have settled for a
very large slice of power immediately including a large measure of control over
the Indian war effort. There was a strong element in the Congress leadership
which wanted to make a separate peace with Japan;
Ø
Organized Muslim opinion
demanded that any transfer of power into Indian hands include a Muslim veto and
Muslim equality in the central government even though Muslims were only 25
percent of the Indian population.
The Cripps Offer effectively made Indian independence
and partition soon after the war inevitable.
Being realistic, the post-war Labour government
set about seeking the best way to bring this about.
|
Concessions to Self-Rule by
the British Government |
What Was Ceded |
|
Eventual responsible
government for British India. Pace and form to be decided by British
Parliament |
|
|
“Dominion
Status” announcement - 1929 |
|
|
Dyarchy in provinces |
|
|
Provincial autonomy and
proposed central federal structure for all of India. It gave the princes a veto
on whether the central federal government would come into existence. The
princes refused to accede and the federal part of the act never came into
force. |
|
|
|
|
|
Linlithgow 10 January 1940
speech at the Bombay Orient Club, |
For
thee first time it was formally conceded that the British Government's object
was to grant India the 'full
Dominion Status . . . of the Statute of Westminster
variety' and that the British government would do its best to 'reduce to the minimum the
interval between the existing state
of things and the achievement of Dominion Status'. |
|
Linlithgow statement on 'War Aims' and 'War Effort' 18 October 1939 |
"His Majesty's Government
will, at the end of the war, be prepared to regard the scheme of the Act as open to modification in the
light of Indian views."[79] This was significant since previously HMG had refused to reconsider
the federal portion of the Act even though it had been rejected by almost all
Indian political opinion. |
|
“August
Offer” of August 1940 |
Essentially replaced the veto of the
princes on the adoption of responsible central government by a veto placed in
the hands of the Muslim minority. " … (HMG) could not contemplate transfer of their
present responsibilities for the peace and welfare of India to any system of
government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in
India's national life. Nor could they be parties to the coercion of such
elements into submission to such a Government." |
|
Cripps Offer
1942 |
This in effect conceded
India's right to write its own constitution for independence right after the
war. It removed the princely ande Muslim vetoes by giving provinces and
princely states the right to opt out of the independent Indian union. This
was a big step in making Pakistan a reality. |
8.2
French Indochina
The Vichy French ruled
Indochina 1940-45 under Japanese control. On 9 March 1945 the Japanese carried out
an armed takeover killing, imprisoning or driving out the Vichy garrisons. They
then “encouraged” the monarchs of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to declare their “independence”
as allies of Japan. At the end of the war, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh
dominated Democratic Republic of Vietnam
claimed sovereignty over all of Vietnam. In fact, it effectively controlled the
north but had a weak hold on the south. The British
occupying force in southern Vietnam restored French rule in that region.
Negotiations between the French and the Viet Minh,
during which the French were willing to offer very limited autonomy, eventually
broke down after a series of rogue initiatives by aggressive local French
commanders[80]. This led to France’s ultimate defeat in the French Indochina War.
8.3
Dutch East Indies
Out of view of the population, the Dutch air
and naval forces
resisted the Japanese. However, in plain view, the NEI government surrendered
to the Japanese
invasion forces without a land
battle. This undoubtedly save many civilian lives but it shattered any
respect the Indonesians may have had for Dutch military prowess. This had major
long-term effects.
Partly due to Indonesian
hostility, the Dutch had virtually no knowledge of the situation in the Indies
when the war unexpectedly ended in August 1945[82].
When the British arrived in Batavia (Jakarta) in
mid-September 1945 to accept the Japanese surrender and release prisoners of
war and civilian detainees, they found Java more or less controlled by the
self-declared Republic of Indonesia. (For details see Drooglever,
Dennis, Anderson, Reid,
van der Post and other sources in the bibliography)
Key Official Netherlands
Government Statement and Agreements on the Future of Indonesia
-
Radio address by Queen Wilhelmina on 7 December 1942
-
Dutch Proposals for Indonesian Settlement 6 November 1945
-
Dutch Proposals for Indonesian Settlement 10 March 1946
-
the Linggadjati
Agreement
-
the Renville Political Principles
8.4 The Philippines
Tydings-McDuffie Act under which the Philippines became a Commonwealth.
|
Autopsies of empire, particularly by British writers
for whom the subject is of great forensic interest, tend to focus on the
shared experience of colonies scattered throughout the world. In that the
entire British empire was wiped out in the space of a few decades, they
understandably look for tell-tale lesions common to British colonial rule
worldwide. Perhaps, for instance, the British electorate, enamoured of social
spending at home, had come to recognise empire as an imposition, the pax
Britannica as a 'tax Britannica'. Perhaps the failings of Britain's
class-ridden society with its elitist educational system had finally betrayed
the empire by precluding the innovative compromises that twentieth-century
dominion demanded. Or perhaps reliance on the now largely obsolete concept of
naval power had fatally reduced imperial clout. These and many other causes for the demise of the
British empire make good sense. But it was not only the British empire that
succumbed in the space of a few decades. So did all the West's other colonial
enterprises. There may, therefore, be some merit in dissecting not a
particular empire but a particular arena of empire. Comparing the cadavers of
British, Dutch, French and American empire in the Far East may focus
attention on contributory causes of a regional nature and may reveal failures
in the very concept of empire. If there
was one major surprise about decolonisation in the East it was the speed with
which it came about. In the 1930s, although few expected empire to last
indefinitely, a couple more generations still looked a safe bet. As late as
1950, with India, the Philippines and Indonesia already independent,
Europeans and Asians in Malaya, Singapore, Vietnam and Borneo were still
thinking in terms of decades rather than months. Decades, in the case of Hong
Kong, would prove right; but for the rest it was as if some unforeseen force
had taken over, depressing the accelerator of history and scattering empire
to the winds. The force
in question seems to have been that cliche of the period, the 'revolution in
communications'. Impossible to quantify and difficult to incorporate into a
historical narrative, the twentieth century's catalogue of advances in
long-distance transport, mass media and instantaneous communication would
make the structures of formal empire look antiquated and superfluous. This
applied, of course, throughout the world; but in the East the impact was
particularly dramatic, partly because of the war and partly because of
existing traditions of travel, trade and migration around the west Pacific
rim. The war
brought to the East the whole paraphernalia of a modern communications
infrastructure, something which to this day some parts of the once colonial
world lack (notably most of sub-Saharan Africa). Malayan and Javanese
villages received their first radio sets courtesy of Tokyo's propaganda
effort. Airstrips were built, under both Allied and Japanese direction, in
places which even now scarcely justify an air service. Roads and rail tracks,
like the notorious `death railways' of Sumatra and Siam, were carved through
the jungle. Wharves, dockyards and ferries opened up whole archipelagoes in
the Philippines. And then
came American matériel. Vehicles, ships and planes, radios, telephones
and radar flooded the East courtesy of the US war effort and then continued
coming under a variety of aid and reconstruction programmes. Whole airlines
sprang into existence using superfluous US army transports and whole
automotive industries were jump-started by the maintenance requirements of US
army vehicles. Later a country like Laos, though still awaiting a television
service, would find itself inundated with television receivers. South
Vietnam's airports would briefly become the busiest in the world. The ease
of contact, and the ability to exert long-range influence which resulted,
might have been superfluous elsewhere. Not so in the Far East. To the peoples
of the west Pacific rim, the island-girt Java and South China Seas have
always formed an integrated trading basin, like the Mediterranean,
criss-crossed by routes of migration and exchange. Vietnamese, Malay, Bugis,
Chinese, Indian and Arab navigators have travelled and traded within and
beyond the region since 2000 BC…. Under colonial auspices new products and new
markets brought a dramatic increase not only in the region's external trade
but also in its internal trade. American emphasis on the 'Open Door' in
China, British obsessions with free trade and free ports, and the inability
of the Dutch to withhold free access to their island world in the Indies encouraged
a highly competitive and uniquely open trading climate. Migration also
boomed, especially of Chinese and Javanese labourers to the plantation
economies of Malaya and Sumatra. The Chinese commercial networks which
dominate the region today were as much a product of empire as the great
European- and American-owned `hongs' of the China coast. Ascribing the Far East's late twentieth-century
economic 'miracle' to the liberation of its peoples from the tentacles of
empire may, therefore, be simplistic. There seems to be a continuum in the
history of the East to which, albeit for its own purposes, empire
substantially contributed. In this sense the white men did 'come and go
leaving all things as they were'. |
9.1 British Raj
9.2 French Indochina
A very good outline of post-war developments in
French Indochina is contained in Tarling 2001 (pp. 272-279).
|
Hubertus Johannes van Mook (1895–1965) was of Dutch parentage, born
in the NEI. He was a member of the elite Indies civil service (BB) which ran
the NEI with almost military rigor[84]. From his student days during
the first World War he believed that the NEI should be developed into a
quasi-independent country whose natural rulers would be the permanently
resident Dutch, the Indo-Europeans and the tiny class of educated natives[85]. When, van Mook took up his career in the BB he found a country deeply
disturbed by war time pressures ruled by a Netherlands whose government was
becoming more right wing and controlling[86]. Van Mook fought against the economic
exploitation of the NEI[87] and for his view of the future. To this end he
was a founder of the Stuw group[88]. When appointed to the Volksraad,
he used it as a platform for his views. During
World War II, he was Minister of the Colonies in the Netherlans government in
exile in London and later Lieutenant Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies based in
Australia. In
September 1945 he became the top Dutch official in the NEI and may have been
one of the few key Dutch decision makers to really work for Indonesian
independence. However, he believed that independence could, and should, come
only after the Dutch had first restored their rule, stamped our disorder[89] and followed all the forms and stages so dear to
the legalistic Dutch approach. The refusal, and probably the inability, of
the leadership of the self-proclaimed Republic of Indonesia, to play by his
rules led to his practical actions and recommendations converging with those
of the Dutch politicians, military leaders, colonials, investors etc. whose
aim was the reestablishment of colonial rule perhaps with cosmetic changes.
The bulk of the Netherlands political leadership embraced this position
because: ·
They
were convinced that the Netherlands could not recover economically without
the resources of the NEI; ·
They
considered that the Netherlands without the NEI would be a powerless and
ignored tiny power in Europe whereas with the NEI they would be a significant
economic and political force; and, ·
Their
legalistic mindset was highly offended by the “illegal” Indonesian
declaration of independence and its “unconstitutionality” in terms of the
Netherlands constitution of 1922 which was formulated without any input from
the Indonesian people and against the recommendations of the Dutch NEI
government’s reform recommendations. To Van Mook the full, though transitional
restoration of Dutch rule was an essential precondition for the restoration.
He simply closed his eyes to the fact that the Republic had maintained order
over much of its territory while Dutch settlers and Dutch and Dutch-led
soldiers caused much of the chaos and actively provoked violence. When blocked by Dutch military weakness and
British authority from restoring Dutch rule in Java where the population was
overwhelmingly anti-Dutch. Van Mook set up Dutch-supported puppet governments
first outside Java and after the first police action (anti-Republic military
offensive) on Java itself. |
9.4 The Philippines
See Independent Philippines and the Third Republic (1946–1972)
G. Conclusions
Comparative Summary of Aspects of
Colonial Rule
|
Issue |
Indian Raj |
French Indochina |
NEI |
Philippines |
|
Conscious preparation for Independence |
From 1919 indianization of Indian
Civil Service, Army etc. and provincial government under the from Government of India Acts of 1919 and
1935 |
The French denied the
possibility of independence at any time. |
See above |
See
above |
|
Economic Benefit of Colony to Metropolis |
Moderately important |
Moderately important |
Very important |
Not important |
|
Education |
poor |
Tiny elite only |
Tiny elite only |
Major effort |
|
Health |
poor |
Serious effort |
Serious effort |
Serious effort |
|
Indigenous Access to Top Admin. Posts |
From 1919 |
no |
Almost none |
yes |
|
A |