Actually, even today, fifty years after independence, India’s economy is still only about as large as Britain’s.
How much longer could European Empires last without WW1?
- Thread starter sirjackalot
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Orangecar
Banned
These kinds arguments downplay not only how bad and incompetent Portguteuse colonialism was but also downplay the roles Africans had in winning their own argument. You fail to mention any of the Africans or the role that they played as if they were passive and needed an example from skme white guy to take action. I see a lot of these arguments and they mostly come from those who aee ignorant of African history and African independence movements.
They didn't need marxist movements to fight for independence. For example starving the peasant population in Mozambique to .grow cash crops is a much bigger motivation to fight than marxism.
Anti colonial movements rose out of a need to fight for advocate for civil rights because it was racist and unfair. So long as the colonial system is racist(which an inherent featute of all colonialism) then people will fight against it. Africans are not passive people waiting to be rescued. They had independence movements that predated both world wars. Nearly all colonies grew their anti colonial movements as colonies began to grow. Pre ww1 most African colonies were new and as the various colonial governments expanded infastructure and government institutions wjich expanded rule beyond just a couple of chiefs who did all the dirty work for the whites you saw an immidiate growth of national identity and calls for greater rights, which were all denied and then replaced for calls of independence when the time was right.
And even before then, you have student orgimisations of students studying abroad who will become the future leaders of these new nations already discussing these issues in the University halls of London and Paris. Orginisations such the West African Students Union had already been discussing what indpendence would look like in the 1920's and its members would all go on to play a major roles in African independence movements. The British and French cannot stop students like this, as they need educated Africans who will be sent to the capital where they will run into Indian students with close links to the Indian independence movments who will infleunce them in their thinking. Even without it with modernist ideas of egalitsrianism it is inevitable that people wil fight against being treated as subhumans by foriegners. Remember it was the independence leaders who sought to become british and french but when racism excluded them they had no choice but to lead the working masses against the whites. For the working masses ideology wasn't a big factor in rebelleion and most of them could not speak the language of the colonial master so unlike their middle class leaders they felt zero kinship to their colonizers, it was material conditions as well as an awareness that they were being ruled by alien foriegners that forced their hand
Actually, I didn't mention it at *all* - I mean, I wasn't offering a treatise, just a short post. The difficulties of Portuguese governance are fairly well known...
And yet, for all that, the Portuguese colonial empire lasted longer than any other European colonial system! No disrespect to indigenous resistance movements, but this does seem to show how difficult an armed revolt can be against a government with the willpower and means to fight back - especially when the resistance movement has to contend with the frictions of tribal identity.
Consider also that what is happening in Portuguese colonies, especially in Africa, is not taking place in a vacuum: In a history where there have been no world wars, it's hard to argue that decolonization by the major colonial powers (principally Britain and France) would take place quite as early as it did in OTL (i.e., the 1950's and early 60's). This will reduce both pressure on Portuguese governments and example for resistance for independence movements. (I am not offering a timeline on when it *would* have happened, since there are a lot of variables in play, but it's not unreasonable to take prewar British projections that decolonization would have taken place two to three decades later than actually happened as a tolerable starting point.)
Of course, it is also possible that a timeline with no world wars could even result in an occasional *earlier* case of loss of a colony. For example, it's quite possible to posit (as some ATL's here have done), a KMT government securing power by mid-century - here, in the absence of a major communist insurgency, and quite probably also a Japanese invasion (Japan's alliance with Britain not having been dissolved), and turning aggressively nationalist and demanding the immediate turnover of Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhouwan. The British and French might have the means to resist by force, but the Portuguese would not...
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Rankin Inlet
Banned
Rhodesia was never Boer/Afrikaner dominated. Throughout the entire colonial and UDI era, the government was dominated by Anglos, who were the vast majority of Rhodesian whites. This is in fact the reason Rhodesia voted against joining the Union of South Africa in 1922 - they feared being outnumbered by Afrikaners, who dominated in 3 of the 4 provinces of SA. (The only province Anglos were the dominant white group in was Natal, which was the least white of all SA's provinces - whites were 8.8% of Natal, compared to 36.8% of Orange Free State) On pretty much everything (Apartheid, breaking ties with the UK), the Afrikaners outvoted the Anglos.
How would guerrilla war develop without the technology and historical experience of the World Wars? The technological gap between European armies and colonized populations would eventually close, but wars of liberation could be more difficult if something like the AK-47 doesn't exist until a decade later than OTL.
Population growth as the global south undergoes the demographic transition would probably make colonialism untenable in the long run. The colonial Empires were established when Europe had more than twice the population of Africa (~400 million vs. ~140 million at the beginning of the 20th century).
Africa didn't overtake Europe's population until the 1990s, I don't know how that would change without the World Wars.
Population growth as the global south undergoes the demographic transition would probably make colonialism untenable in the long run. The colonial Empires were established when Europe had more than twice the population of Africa (~400 million vs. ~140 million at the beginning of the 20th century).
Africa didn't overtake Europe's population until the 1990s, I don't know how that would change without the World Wars.
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Will most forms of colonial mineral and vegetable produce keep their value at a higher level for longer? Without two world wars, and blockades, cutting off Europe from the tropics, and one war cutting off Southeast Asia from Europe and North America, there will be less pressure to develop all sorts of synthetic substitutes.
That will add to the incentives to hold on to colonies, while also bringing revenue to a subset of owners and spin-off industries within the colonies, some European, maybe some native.
That will add to the incentives to hold on to colonies, while also bringing revenue to a subset of owners and spin-off industries within the colonies, some European, maybe some native.
xsampa
Banned
It seems that culture in the colonies would split between nativized and Europeanized groups. That doesn’t mean the nativized groups would be totally isolated from global culture, it would just mean they retain traditional writing systems, clothing and religious beliefs while producing media in and speaking mostly in their native language. For example, there was a Bengali feminist in 1890s who produced a science fiction novel about gender in the future, in Bengali.
On the other hand The Europeanizeds would be viewed by colonizers as more loyal and assimilate into the global culture in exchange for equal rights and maybe even a vote.
On the other hand The Europeanizeds would be viewed by colonizers as more loyal and assimilate into the global culture in exchange for equal rights and maybe even a vote.
xsampa
Banned
It would evolve into a mixture of Jim Crow, Austria Hungary and the USSR
Jim Crow: Racialized/culturalized regimens of terror against dissenters or perceived dissenters
A-H: Multiple parliaments, plenty of separatist groups, ethnic intermixture, multi ethnic but assimilated Leitkultur
uSSR: multiple administrative tiers, internal passports
Jim Crow: Racialized/culturalized regimens of terror against dissenters or perceived dissenters
A-H: Multiple parliaments, plenty of separatist groups, ethnic intermixture, multi ethnic but assimilated Leitkultur
uSSR: multiple administrative tiers, internal passports
Wait, what?
When one-twelfth of Imperial India has the same population as Great Britain, this just wont work. Any attempt at a United Empire on representative lines will immediately disintegrate since the Indians won’t accept anything but redistributive wealth transfers and the white nations would never accept that. It would be like today trying to merge the entire continent of Africa into the US as states 51-130.
I cannot think of anything more intellectually vacuous, meaningless, and useless than to reply to a post with simply "wait, what?," without the slightest elaboration of what such a comment pretends to entail.
Amitsar massacres happened all over throughout the colonized territories and generally most Europeans ignored them. At the same time when Gandhi was launching a non-violent campaign for Indian independence, in French Indochina there were a number of peasant protests and uprisings, the Nghe-Tinh Soviets in 1930 - the French response was to call in airstrikes on the demonstrators. French repression in Algeria still had broad support in the metropole until bombs started exploding in Paris itself and too many men were conscripted for the war. The British of course, were extremely brutal in their repression in Kenya. None of these seriously called into question colonial rule among the colonizers.
Among the colonized of course, these massacres would be increasingly less tolerable, but the far greater apparent strength of European colonial governments and greater complicity by colonized elites would to some extent counter-act this.
The French were planning to introduce semi-automatic rifles when WW1 broke that off, decades before the OTL Garand, and the Russians had the equivalent of assault rifles with the Fedorov Avtomat, the idea of military technology stagnating without WW1 is deeply flawed imo. Military doctrine would lag behind OTL, but the vast and rapid increase in military technology between 1870 to 1914 showed that if anything advances in military technology would probably be even faster without WW1.
Far more important is that with a more cohesive and global imperial system it would be far more difficult to actually supply rebels with arms: this is part of why I think these Asian territories would be the first to go, since they have the most independent states surrounding them which could serve as conduits for weapons and supplies to rebels.
Almost certainly not, since both territories had imperial disputes (Iran - Britain and Russia, China - Britain, Japan, France, Germany, United States, Russia) which prevented them from being truly carved up in territorial terms. Deepening of spheres of influence and imperialist penetration of the economy would happen, but not formal colonialism.
Furthermore there were already very large diasporas of these people around the world, plenty of Indians had been scattered throughout the British colonies in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Africa, Fiji, and the Chinese to the Western United States, Cuba, traditional Southeast Asia communities, and the Lebanese went to French West Africa. Without the disruptions to the labor market and the need for labor in rebuilding the European economy however, one is unlikely to see any great degree of immigration to Europe however, and instead mostly intra-imperial migration.
The short answer is that the colonial empires will last only as long as the populations of the home countries are prepared to allow their governments to do what is needed to preserve them, be that economic development of the colonies or military repression of the colonial population or measures in between the two. Individual colonies may gain self governance or even independence as time goes on, but when the home population says no the empires will end very quickly.
Marc
Donor
Another factor that isn't considered enough. Having what was happening being shown in your living room. There is a powerful argument that that television has had the greatest moralizing effect on modern society. One thing to vaguely hear, or casually read, about an atrocity being committed, another to actually see and hear the screams...
Well, no that's not how the Marxists interpret it. It's the same fundamental class struggle and both are exploited from the same source (both agrarian and industrial), but colonialism downgraded the native culture and denigrated them as mere "savages", in some areas like Algeria and South Africa it tried to import its own proletariat to subvert the native ones, the Marxists use the term "super-exploitation" to describe the economies of the nations on the global periphery like colonies as opposed to the standard exploitation of the aforementioned Ruhr workers, and addition to lacking the vote, segregation, even less ability to enjoy the fruits of labor by way of wages, etc. Franz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" explains the Marxist view on colonialism fairly succinctly but with its own innovations.
When colonialism began to come to an end, the situation was sort of similar to "giving them the vote to end colonialism" but instead it was creating a native bourgeoisie that continued the ideas and practices of the Europeans for them. As Sartre says in the intro to Fanon's book:
"The European elite undertook to manufacture a native elite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of Western culture; they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words "Parthenon! Brotherhood!" and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open "...thenon! ...therhood!" It was the golden age."
"It came to an end; the mouths opened by themselves; the yellow and black voices still spoke of our humanism but only to reproach us with our inhumanity. We listened without displeasure to these polite statements of resentment, at first with proud amazement. What? They are able to talk by themselves? Just look at what we have made of them! We did not doubt but that they would accept our ideals, since they accused us of not being faithful to them. Then, indeed, Europe could believe in her mission; she had hellenized the Asians; she had created a new breed, the Greco-Latin Negroes. We might add, quite between ourselves, as men of the world: "After all, let them bawl their heads off, it relieves their feelings; dogs that bark don't bite."
"A new generation came on the scene, which changed the issue. With unbelievable patience, its writers and poets tried to explain to us that our values and the true facts of their lives did not hang together, and that they could neither reject them completely nor yet assimilate them. By and large, what they were saying was this: "You are making us into monstrosities; your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of humanity but your racist methods set us apart." Very much at our ease, we listened to them all; colonial administrators are not paid to read Hegel, and for that matter they do not read much of him, but they do not need a philosopher to tell them that uneasy consciences are caught up in their own contradictions. They will not get anywhere; so, let us perpetuate their discomfort; nothing will come of it but talk. If they were, the experts told us, asking for anything at all precise in their wailing, it would be integration. Of course, there is no question of granting that; the system, which depends on overexploitation, as you know, would be mined. But it's enough to hold the carrot in front of their noses, they'll gallop all right. As to a revolt, we need not worry at all; what native in his senses would go off to massacre the fair sons of Europe simply to become European as they are? In short, we encouraged these disconsolate spirits and thought it not a bad idea for once to award the Prix Goncourt to a Negro. That was before 1939..."
And later:
"These differences are born of colonial history, in other words of oppression. Here, the mother country is satisfied to keep some feudal rulers in her pay; there, dividing and ruling she has created a native bourgeoisie, sham from beginning to end; elsewhere she has played a double game: the colony is planted with settlers and exploited at the same time. Thus Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavored by every means to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonized societies."
So the Marxists do acknowledge fundamental differences in exploitation and economy between the workers in the Ruhr and miners in Togo - fundamentally it's the same struggle but obviously there is far more nuance.
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With only common foreign policy and a customs union it's not possible to vote yourself the wealth of someone else, for that you'd need also a common social and economic policy. Now how the single kingdoms are represented in a grand parliament, or whether or not such a parliament even exists is a different question. If you want loose enough association pick past examples such as the USA under the articles of confederation or current ones such as the EU. For the UK as part of such a union it would be advantageous to redistribute some wealth, the faster the other kingdoms are raised up the more UK sourced goods they can consume.
If you merge Africa and the USA into such a union then African states would be commanding the majority of senators and representatives (if there's some united all African party running against the Dems and Reps) but the constitution is still there as a block towards any grand redistributive ideas beyond the already existing mechanisms.
A tight set of rules is needed to make something like this work, this should go without saying, and the idea would also have to convince the Indians. Chances are that with rampant scientific racism being socially accepted and encouraged in much of Europe at the time this question should have been solved that this would have indeed failed.
Hmm, available as PDF on the internet... thank you for the reading material. I feel like your post is more about the nature of exploitation itself, and i'm very lousy at philosophy. For me it's pretty much a given that as soon as you have organized society you have exploitation, only the degree may vary, and that only organized society can give one sufficient pleasantries of life.
The part of "manufactured elite" is interesting, it's how Japan, South Korea and China have come as far as they did - send out people to get educated and when they return they put into positions of power and authority to use their new skills for the country, and traditional clothing and customs quickly gave way to western business suits. Get organized enough to effectively exploit yourself, so you won't be exploited by foreigners so to speak. While they did that on their own as opposed to having the people handpicked by anothe rcountry it still fulfills the accusation of a whitewashed and branded elite, especially in China they were very eager to discard the old domestic institutions and knowledge and replace it by new heavily inspired by Western ones, yet it's hard to see how the countries would be equally well or better off had they not done it, it's just is fact that if you want to modernize you have to get the institutional knowdlege from somewhere and engage in potentially unequal trade to get money to turn that knowledge into productive equipment that's needed to be independent.
Darzin
Banned
This is the point I made with Portugal. I'm sure other countries decolonization helped motivate them but the people of Mozambique and Angola are going to want independence regardless. Portugal in our timeline was not weakened by either world war and had a government totally dedicated to keeping the colonies, the Angolans and the people of Mozambique did not win militarily the PORTUGUESE people rose up an overthrew their own government in order to decolonize. People are just not going to see the point of spending blood and treasure to subjugate far flung lands. In democracy where people can vote out their government it only takes one election to lose the colonies. It's true without the wars Britain and France can militarily hold their colonies but eventually the populace is going to demand a withdrawal. Look at Vietnam, Look at Algeria, Look at Afghanistan. Look at Angola. All these wars were won militarily but in all of them lack of public support forced the foreign power to leave. I don't think a Britain fighting to hold Ghana or a Belgium fighting to hold the Congo will have different result.
Rankin Inlet
Banned
And this is also why Rhodesia was significantly less racist than South Africa at the time (although it was hardly a beacon of equality and tolerance either) - Southern African territories dominated by Anglos (Rhodesia, the Cape, Natal) were less racist than Southern African territories dominated by Afrikaners (Transvaal, Orange Free State). South African comedian Trevor Noah talks about this in his excellent memoir, Born a Crime. Generally, Anglo-dominated territories used a series of qualifications that were slanted in favor of whites, but still allowed some black people to vote, whereas in Afrikaner-dominated territories, black people had no suffrage whatsoever.
Here's an article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Qualified_Franchise
I feel like the empire can outlive colonialism. Colonialism, i.e the cultural replacement and settlement of the ruling class is a type of imperialism, but not the only one. Persia used the 'do what I say because i'm the king, but follow your culture and beliefs,' method. Rome integrated local elites into their system and centralized to a point where Gaul was as invested in the empire as Italy. The soviets set up a bunch of states separate from themselves that were still wholly used to support the USSR after ww2 and make communism look good.
Without the wws, we could see the empires gradually make progress away from colonialism and grant rights to the natives, while integrating them in a way that the overseas territories need the european government. Do i believe it likely? No, especially for Britain- India is too big, SA and Rhodesia are too racist even for the standards of the time and wouldn't accept London's efforts, and the chance for an imperial federation had passed before 1900.
Without the wws, we could see the empires gradually make progress away from colonialism and grant rights to the natives, while integrating them in a way that the overseas territories need the european government. Do i believe it likely? No, especially for Britain- India is too big, SA and Rhodesia are too racist even for the standards of the time and wouldn't accept London's efforts, and the chance for an imperial federation had passed before 1900.
Will be National Identify develop in these Colonies like Africa and Asia in the This World ?