The European Colonial Empires, 1900-45 PDF

Timeline January 1901 1903 April 1907 April 1908 May 1909 May 1910 September 1911 Formation of the Completion Opening of Young Turks Morley– Formation of Beginning of Commonwealth of the Dutch firs...

Timeline January 1901 1903 April 1907 April 1908 May 1909 May 1910 September 1911 Formation of the Completion Opening of Young Turks Morley– Formation of Beginning of Commonwealth of the Dutch first Imperial revolt in Minto reforms the Union of Italian conquest of Australia conquest Conference Constantinople introduced South Africa of Libya of Aceh held in London in India C H A p T E R FO U R CONTENTS Introduction 87 Empires and power 88 Ireland and the British Dominions 95 Empire and nationalism in the Middle East 97 The European colonial India in crisis 102 Rationalization and empires, 1900–45 resistance in South-East Asia 105 The colonial empires in Africa lecture 3- 13/01 107 The Second World War and empire 109 Conclusion 111 Recommended reading 112 z Introduction The rise of Japan to Great Power status was by no means the only challenge to Great Powers European predominance, for the rise of nationalism more broadly in Asia, Africa Traditionally those states that were held capable of shared and the Middle East brought about one of the most remarkable features of the responsibility for the twentieth century, the collapse of European colonial rule. The scale of this management of the transformation can be seen in the fact that in 1913 very few countries in Asia and international order by virtue Africa had escaped colonial subjugation, and even those that retained their of their military and economic influence. sovereignty, such as Siam (Thailand), Persia (Iran), Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Liberia, found their freedom of manoeuvre constrained by European financial and strategic interests. Within less than 70 years the situation had changed dramatically. Between 1945 and 1980 newly independent states swelled the ranks 87  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES March 1912 1912 June 1913 March 1914 July 1914 November April 1915 1914 Timeline Establishment Formation of First Arab Fractious ‘Home Opening of the British Start of the land phase of French Sarekat Islam Congress Rule’ debate in First World War declaration of of the Dardanelles protectorate in the Dutch meets in Britain leads to a protectorate campaign, in which over Morocco East Indies Paris the mutiny on the over Egypt ANZAC troops were Curragh used extensively at Gallipoli United Nations (UN) of the United Nations (UN) while the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese An international organization empires were either dead and buried or wizened mockeries of their former glory. established after the Second World War to replace the While one might debate to what degree these new states were now free from League of Nations. Since its unwelcome outside intervention, this transformation clearly demonstrates that establishment in 1945, its decolonization was one of the century’s main themes. membership has grown to 193 The rapidity of the decolonization process after 1945 has meant that much of countries. the writing on the European empires has dwelt on the immediate post-war period down to the mid-1960s. The result has been that, until recently, historical accounts decolonization The process whereby an have tended to portray the empires as being largely static in the pre-1939 period imperial power gives up its and then entering into a rapid decline precipitated by the Second World War and formal authority over its the Cold War. This, however, is a skewed and over-generalized view of a very colonies. complex phenomenon. Such an interpretation fails to take into account the many battles that took place between nationalism and imperialism in the inter-war period, and overlooks the fact that after 1945 the European Powers made strenuous efforts to revitalize certain parts of their empires in what is known as ‘the second colonial occupation’. Thus, in order to understand the decolonization process and the nature of the post-colonial states, it is vital to look at the roots as well as the immediate origins of the shift towards independence, and to study the factors that over time led to the erosion of European colonial rule. the roots of decolonization can be traced back to the interwar years between WWI and wwii z Empires and power Before studying the political and economic evolution of the colonial world in the period up to 1945, it is important to examine the state of the European overseas empires at the start of the twentieth century. In 1913 the British Empire extended across more than 12 million square miles, some 24 per cent of the world’s land Dominion mass, taking in the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South A completely self-governing Africa, the Indian subcontinent and large stretches of South-East Asia, Africa and colony which is freely associated with the mother the West Indies. The second largest empire belonged to France, which controlled country. Within the British just less than 5 million square miles, about 9 per cent of the world’s land mass, Empire, the Dominions were including Indochina and much of North, Central and West Africa. Meanwhile, Australia, Canada, the Irish the lesser imperial Powers, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Free State (1922–49), New Zealand and South Africa. Netherlands, Japan and the United States, controlled a range of overseas colonies extending across the globe. Some colonial possessions had already been in the hands of the European Powers for more than four centuries, but the nineteenth century brought a great 88  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES April 1916 May 1916 December March 1917 August 1917 November 1917 March 1919 1916 Easter rising Sykes–Picot Congress and Britain forms the Britain declares Britain issues the Wafd-led in Dublin agreement the Muslim Imperial War Cabinet intention to steer Balfour declaration rebellion signed League sign that includes India towards promising a against British the Lucknow representatives from eventual ‘self- homeland for the control over Pact the Dominions government’ Jewish people Egypt Dominions India and Burma Dependent Empire Map 4.1 The British Empire in 1922 Source: After Brown and Louis (1999) transformation in the European empires. While declining Powers, such as Spain and Portugal, lost control over South America, the industrializing countries, and in particular Britain and France, rapidly extended their possessions, particularly in the latter part of the century. Thus in Asia, Britain gained control over Malaya and Burma, France seized Indochina and the Dutch moved out from their established bases in Java and Ambon to exercise control over the Indonesian archipelago. In addition, and perhaps most famously, this period saw the ‘scramble for Africa’ in which the vast majority of that continent was divided up between the Powers within the space of two decades. The motives for this sudden expansion of empire have been much discussed by historians, leading to great disagreement over whether strategic or economic gain was the primary objective. What is clear, however, is that once the colonies had been subjugated, they provided the imperial Powers with many material advantages. The fact that empires could add to a nation’s power was ably demonstrated in the First World War. During this conflict the British Dominions 89  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES April 1919 May 1919 June 1919 December September 1920 April 1921 December 1919 1921 Timeline Amritsar Start of Turkish Establishment Introduction Congress launches first Establishment of Southern massacre war of of the mandates of Montagu- civil disobedience emirate of Ireland given in India independence system under Chelmsford campaign against British Transjordan and Dominion against Allied the auspices of reforms in rule and allies itself with kingdom of Iraq status as the occupation and the League of India the Muslim Khilafat under British Irish Free partition Nations movement control State contributed just over one million troops to the struggle, India provided another 800,000 soldiers, and West Africa contributed 80,000. Added to this was the mobilization of large numbers of Indians and Africans for service in labour corps. The British Empire, however, did not just provide men; it also acted as an essential source of raw materials, food and, in the case of Canada, munitions. For France too, its empire provided an essential pool of extra resources, namely 600,000 troops and 200,000 labourers. In peacetime as well, the colonies added greatly to the power of the metropolitan country. One vital contribution was that the production and export of raw materials assisted with the development of the metropolitan economy and, moreover, boosted the empire’s foreign currency earnings. For example, the Dutch prospered from their possession of the East Indies, which, owing to their wealth of raw materials, accounted by the 1930s for 14 per cent of the Netherlands’ national income. In addition, colonies could act as useful markets for metropolitan industries that were no longer internationally competitive; in the inter-war era, this was particularly true of the textile industries in the Western European countries. The colonies also continued to act in peacetime as a valuable source of manpower. The British Empire, for example, relied extensively on the use of the Indian army as an imperial police force that could be used to defend interests in South-East Asia and the Middle East. The fact that the mobilization of colonial resources could add significantly to an imperial Power’s strength and international prestige meant that the latter had a considerable interest in modernizing and developing its possessions. This drive for development became one of the key themes in twentieth-century imperialism, but it proved to be a double-edged sword, for one can argue that, ironically, it was this very desire to rationalize and develop the empires that sounded their death- knell. The reason for this is that the effort to bring about modernization necessitated heightened intervention in colonial societies, and that the resultant destruction of the status quo unleashed the forces of indigenous nationalism. Debating the origins of modern Western imperialism Political thinkers and historians have been divided about the motives behind the drive for empire in the late nineteenth century ever since this wave of expansion took place. Various competing explanations exist. One idea that can be seen in the works 90  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES February 1922 February September 1922 October 1923 October 1923 November October 1922 1926 1928 Gandhi calls off the Egypt granted Chanak incident in Establishment of Britain gives self- Failed PKI Formation disobedience independence Turkey in which the Republic of government to revolt in Java of new campaign following by Britain Canada and South Turkey under South Rhodesia Nationalist the Chauri Chaura Africa refuse to follow Mustafa Kemal government massacre the British lead in China of William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism (New York, 1951) and A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe (Oxford, 1954) is that imperialism was an inevitable consequence of the tensions that were building up in Europe during that period, and that imperialist expansion became a zero-sum game, in which one country’s strategic gain was inevitably another’s loss. Linked to this is the argument that colonialism can be seen as a reflection of the belief in the late nineteenth century that the possession of empire was a symbol of Great Power status. However, such interpretations raise serious problems. For example, if strategic imperatives and prestige were so important, why did this great wave of expansion not provoke a war? After all, scholars of the origins of the First World War largely agree that the reasons for this conflict lay in Europe, not in competition in Africa. In contrast to the explanations that dwell on strategy and prestige, a number of contemporary critics of empire, such as J. A. Hobson and V. I. Lenin, argued that imperialism was caused by economic factors, such as the desire to capture new markets for trade and investment. This theory has been countered by the observation that industrialists stood to gain far more from markets in Europe, the United States and Latin America than from Africa, thus demonstrating that the argument that imperialism is a product of capitalism is a chimera. However, in recent years Peter Cain and Anthony Hopkins have forcefully restated the case for economic factors, at least in Britain’s case. In their book British Imperialism 1688–2000 (London, 2002), Cain and Hopkins argue that British imperialism came about to serve the interests of a ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ elite that dominated both the City of London and Whitehall, and that it consisted of both a formal empire, that is the possession of colonies, and an informal empire, in other words economic spheres of influence. This is at first glance a persuasive argument, but, once one begins to think about the anomalies, it raises as many questions as it solves, particularly again in the case of Africa. Another interpretation of imperialism, which has been put forward by, among others, Ronald Robinson (1972) and David Fieldhouse (1973), is that far too much stress has been put on decision-making in Europe rather than on events on the periphery. They have emphasized in their work on informal and formal empire that the shift towards formal control was often as a result of local factors and the interactions between 91  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES March 1930 May 1931 December 1931 July 1932 October May 1934 May 1935 1932 Timeline Congress Failed Statute of Ottawa Independence Start of labour Copper-belt launches the communist Westminster gives Conference leads granted to unrest in strike in North second civil insurrection equal constitutional to the introduction Iraq the British West Rhodesia disobedience in Vietnam status to the of imperial Indies campaign Dominions preference indigenous elites and European communities. While this view has some validity, it also fails to provide a complete explanation, for if peripheral problems were the main cause of expansion, why is it that they all occurred around the same time in the late nineteenth century? Surely the only answer to this lies in the rising European pressure on these societies, which then takes us back to looking at European economic and strategic motives. As with most areas of study, all these arguments have some elements of truth in them, and thus it is wise to conclude in the end that strategic, economic and local factors were important. However, it is also vital not to overlook the fact that the military technology and administrative innovations of late-nineteenth-century Europe provided the imperialists with a marked superiority over those they sought to conquer. Nor should one ignore the fact that the idea of a ‘civilizing mission’, as exemplified by the evangelical Christianity of both Protestant and Catholic missionaries, provided an ideological justification for imperial gain. The drive for empire was therefore a complicated process, and to attempt to describe it by referring to a mono-causal explanation is to fail to do it justice. In order to understand the drive towards modernization and why it proved so problematical, it is important to see that at the start of the twentieth century the controls that the European Powers exercised over their colonial possessions varied greatly in terms of both their nature and efficiency. The most advanced form of imperial governance existed in the British settler colonies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, which had achieved a substantial degree of self- government as Dominions within the empire. The vast majority of colonies, however, were either ruled directly by the imperial government through the protectorates appointment of viceroys and governors, or controlled as protectorates, where a Territories administered by an native ruler was left to exercise power over domestic affairs, but only on the advice imperial state without full annexation taking place, and of representatives from the imperial Power. Protectorates had the advantage that where delegated powers they made imperial control relatively cheap by keeping power over many domestic typically remain in the hands matters in local hands, but at the same time this devolution of authority created of a local ruler or rulers. problems, for it weakened the ability of the colonial power to bring about the Examples include French Morocco and the unfederated profound economic and social changes required for modernization. states in Malaya. Complicating the situation even further was that different types of colonial rule could exist within what we now think of as one colony. In India, a sizeable area 92  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES August 1935 April 1936 August February September April 1940 August 1936 1937 1939 1941 Britain passes the Start of Anglo-Egyptian Announcement Britain declares Muslim League issues Roosevelt and Government of India Arab revolt agreement leading of provincial war on behalf Lahore resolution Churchill issue act allowing Indians to in Palestine to British troops elections results of India calling for a separate the Atlantic take a greater role in withdrawing to the in India Islamic state in post- Charter provincial government Suez Canal zone Raj India of the subcontinent remained under the nominal control of local rulers; these Princely States included such substantial areas as Hyderabad and Kashmir. In Princely States Senegal, the French practice of encouraging assimilation meant that from the The states in British India that remained formally under the 1870s the four original communes were allowed to return one Senegalese control of local rulers rather representative to the National Assembly in France, but the newer additions to the than direct British colony had no representation. A particularly bewildering mixture existed in administration. They included Malaya, where three different types of state existed: the directly governed Straits states such as Hyderabad and Kashmir. Settlements, the partially directly ruled Federated Malay States and various indirectly ruled non-federated protectorates. Another important fact that made utilization of imperial resources difficult was that most of the colonies were comparatively recent acquisitions. Even as late as the 1900s the European Powers were still expanding their existing colonies and adding new territories to their imperial portfolio. For example, Britain merged the Ashante kingdom into its Gold Coast colony only in 1902, the Dutch conquest of the sultanate of Aceh in northern Sumatra was completed in 1903 and France gained its protectorate over Morocco in 1912. All these colonies had to be digested, made to pay for their own upkeep and then readied to contribute to the wider imperial cause. The complex mixture of self-government, direct rule and indirect rule that existed within the barely suppressed territories that constituted the empires clearly complicated the task of colonial administration and acted as an obstacle to economic development. It was therefore only natural that the imperial Powers sought in the early twentieth century to simplify and improve colonial governance in Asia and Africa so that power could be exercised with more authority. However, as the imperial Powers believed that the colonies should be largely self-supporting, modernization had to be brought about mainly through the mobilization of indigenous resources. Development therefore involved two key things: first, higher taxation within the colony to pay for economic and social improvements and, second, the employment by the colonial state of greater numbers of indigenous bureaucrats, police, lawyers and doctors. These requirements led in turn to major changes in colonial rule, namely the introduction of local representation, which was necessary to legitimize higher taxation, and increased education provision, which was needed to train the indigenous population to assist in the development process. The difficulty with the reforms that were designed to underpin the drive towards modernization was that they unintentionally raised expectations that could not be fulfilled. Once any form of representative government was conceded in cities, towns and provinces, there was clearly going to be a desire for this to be 93  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES February 1942 March 1942 July 1942 Timeline Fall of Singapore Cripps mission Congress to Japan to India and launches ‘quit new promise of India’ campaign self-government extended to the national level. Meanwhile, education led to the new urban elite being exposed to Western notions of political rights, such as universal suffrage and self-determination self-determination, which could not be satisfied by the colonial state. The result, The idea that each national not surprisingly, was that liberal education frequently led to the appearance of group has the right to establish nationalist dissatisfaction, which then posed a political challenge to empire. its own national state. It is most often associated with the Moreover, these changes also created a new problem in that they threatened the tenets of Wilsonian position of the traditional collaborators, such as the chiefs, sultans and kings, who internationalism and became a benefited from indirect rule, and inevitably led to resistance from these groups. key driving force in the The desire to rationalize thus led to cries of discontent from two constituencies: struggle to end imperialism. first, from the traditional elites, who had little to gain from political change, and League of Nations second, from the nascent nationalist movements, who felt frustrated that the An international organization reforms did not go far enough. established in 1919 by the Reinforcing these problems in the early twentieth century were outside peace treaties that ended the First World War. Its purpose pressures, for the wars between the Great Powers, the rise of new ideologies and was to promote international the workings of modern capitalism also buffeted the colonial system. The major peace through collective external influence prior to 1939 was the First World War, which for many reasons security and to organize had a deleterious impact on the future of empire. The key effects can be broken conferences on economic and disarmament issues. It was down into three problem areas. The first was that the sheer magnitude of the formally dissolved in 1946. mobilization of imperial resources, both economic and military, stimulated discontent within the empires, and that this could be satisfied only by political mandates concessions. The second problem was that by the end of the war, the Allied Powers The colonial territories of Germany and the Ottoman ostensibly sought the defeat of Germany in order to promote the principle of self- Empire that were entrusted to determination and to bring an end to unwarranted territorial aggrandizement. Britain, France, Japan, Accordingly, it was decided at the Paris Peace Conference that the former Ottoman Australia and South Africa territories in the Middle East and the German colonies in Africa and Oceania under the supervision of a League of Nations should be transferred to the victors not as colonial possessions, but as trusteeships Commission. in the form of League of Nations mandates. These mandates were to be ruled in the interests of the inhabitants with self-determination as the eventual goal. This Khalifat Movement clearly had broad implications for the future of all European colonial possessions, The protest movement that swept through the Islamic for it implied that trusteeship should be the fundamental principle guiding world from 1919 to 1923 in imperial rule. Accordingly, it helped to incite the rise of nationalist agitation for opposition to the harsh greater self-government. The third problem, again connected to the collapse of treatment meted out by the the Ottoman Empire, was that the harsh treatment meted out to the Ottoman Christian powers to the Ottoman sultan, who as sultan, who as Caliph acted as one of the leading Islamic spiritual leaders, led to Caliph was one of the outrage in the Muslim world. The reaction, from Morocco to the Dutch East protectors of the faith. Indies, was the rise of the Khalifat Movement, which marked the beginning of Islamic resurgence, but which also played an important part in the development see Chapter 19 of nationalism and anti-imperial sentiment. 94  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES Other international factors also created difficulties for the imperial Powers. As early as 1905 Japan showed in its war in Russia that non-Europeans could resist Western encroachment, and in the inter-war era this impression was reinforced by Kemalist Turkey’s defiance of Britain in the early 1920s and by the rise of Chinese nationalism later in that decade. In addition, the establishment of the Soviet Union and its espousal of a virulently anti-imperial ideology inspired resis­ tance, while the Great Depression brought ruin to many colonial economies, thus provoking an interest in political salvation. Under the influence of the drive for development and the changed inter­ national environment, the inter-war years were to prove an important transitory period in the history of the colonial empires. In those colonies, such as India and Indonesia, where the development process was already well advanced, imperial rule now entered into a running battle with indigenous nationalism, while in others, such as those in Africa, where political and economic transformation was only beginning, the storm clouds started to gather. Moreover, instability was sparked by the fact that the rise of print and broadcast media and the spread of literacy meant that reports of unrest or even imperial retreat in one part of the European empires could inspire disturbances elsewhere. However, in order to understand events in the key imperial possessions in Asia and Africa, it is necessary to look first at the highly volatile conditions in Ireland and the Middle East. z Ireland and the British Dominions The new challenge to empire in the post-1918 period was demonstrated most emphatically by the fact that the early 1920s witnessed the first major act of decolonization – the independence of Ireland. While Ireland was a very idiosyncratic case owing to its long and complex relationship with Britain, its example was very important because its efforts to free itself from British shackles demonstrated that it was possible for colonies to fight to achieve national liberation. Since before the Middle Ages Ireland’s proximity to England and its strategic importance had made it an integral part of British life. Ireland was therefore never formally conceived as part of the British Empire but seen as part of the kingdom itself – the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland. Yet the English attitude towards Ireland was undoubtedly colonial. Ireland contained a clear settler element and there had been extensive dispossession of ‘native’ land. The Westminster government had the right of veto over Irish legislation, the key positions in the Irish executive were more often than not filled by Englishmen, Catholics were only enfranchised by the Emancipation Act of 1829 and the Presbyterian community, while possessing the franchise, was in practice not represented at all. As a result of this treatment of Ireland as a British dependency, at least one, and arguably two, distinct Irish nationalisms – Irish (Catholic) republicanism and Ulster (Protestant, specifically Presbyterian) unionism – emerged in the 95  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES nineteenth century. Both drew upon the same sources of inspiration, the American and French revolutions and the United Irishmen Rebellion of 1779, and upon the same grievances – political, economic and social discrimination by an Anglican ascendancy which had almost as much contempt for the Presbyterians as it did for the Catholics. While Irish Catholics embraced republicanism in pursuit of self-determination, Ulster Protestants sought equality rather than secession. Thus the beginning of the Home Rule movement in 1870 ultimately pitted the pre- dominantly Presbyterian north-eastern counties of the island, who saw ‘Home Rule as Rome rule’, against the rest of the island, who saw Home Rule as the first step towards independence. British–Irish dynamics were dramatically changed by the outbreak of the First World War, which reinforced both Ulster loyalism and Irish republican militancy. Representing the Presbyterian community, the newly formed Ulster Volunteer Force set aside its own battle to keep Ulster British and enlisted as a whole in the British army. By thus showing its loyalty to the flag, it ultimately ensured that Ulster could opt out of Home Rule and that Ireland would be partitioned instead. Although almost as many Irishmen as Ulstermen enlisted in the British army, in the end it was the actions of a couple of hundred Irish republican ‘volunteers’ which went down in Irish history and sent shock waves around the world. Seeing Britain’s preoccupation with war in Europe as Ireland’s opportunity, on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, this group proclaimed the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin. What came to be known as the Easter Rising was quickly and brutally suppressed; an estimated 3,500 suspected revolutionaries were detained, of whom 170 were tried and convicted, and 16 executed. Despite, or perhaps because of, the heavy-handed British attempts to restore order, the idea of Irish independence now flourished as never before. In 1919 the Irish Republican Army unleashed a guerrilla war that lasted for two and a half bitter years. In the end, both sides compromised, for in 1921 they agreed that southern Ireland would be given Dominion status as the Irish Free State, while the north-east counties would remain part of the United Kingdom. There was, however, no hiding the fact that this was a substantial defeat for Britain which had broad implications for the future of empire as a whole. Across the empire nationalists could now take heart from the knowledge that when faced with a crisis Britain might retreat rather than fight to the bitter end. Ireland’s new status as a Dominion also provided little consolation for the British, for Britain’s relations with the Dominions were undergoing considerable change in the post-First World War era. The problems that Britain had with the Dominions can be seen as symptomatic of the general difficulties that the metro- politan Powers faced, for, while the government in London sought to use the Dominions to supplement its own power, the latter wanted greater independence. autarky A policy that aims at achieving Even before the First World War some thinkers in Britain, such as Joseph national economic self- Chamberlain, Lord Milner and their acolytes, had espoused the idea that the sufficiency. It is commonly constituent parts of the empire should draw closer together to form an autarkic associated with the economic bloc. The apparent imperial unity during the First World War stimulated further programmes espoused by Germany, Italy and Japan in interest in this concept, with Milner proposing the need for some kind of imperial the 1930s and 1940s. federation that would see a pooling of defence resources, preferential trade terms 96  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES and perhaps even an imperial parliament. However, the Dominions, and in particular Canada, South Africa and Ireland, had very different ideas for the future. Instead of greater assimilation with Britain, they sought to gain more autonomy for themselves within the empire and to be treated as equals by the metropolitan government. After the First World War they accordingly made it clear that they were not prepared to see their armed forces subsumed into an imperial army and navy. In addition, when the Lloyd George government was on the verge of hostilities against Kemalist Turkey in the Chanak incident of 1922, Canada and South Africa indicated that they would not feel bound to go to war as their interests were unaffected. After some debate the pendulum swung in the Dominions’ favour. In 1926 the Balfour Report confirmed the equal constitu- tional status of the Dominions with Britain, which was then given legal sanction by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. A chance to reverse this process, at least in the field of economic co-operation, was offered by the Depression. The decision by the National Government of Ramsay MacDonald in 1931–32 to end Britain’s traditional policy of free trade raised the prospect, long cherished by imperialists, of the empire forming a protectionist economic bloc. Accordingly, at the Ottawa Conference in 1932, Britain and the Dominions discussed the introduction of a system of imperial preference, whereby goods produced within the empire were to be subject to preferential tariffs compared with goods produced outside. The end result was less favourable than the followers of Chamberlain and Milner had anticipated, for the Dominions were not willing to sacrifice the growth of their own nascent industries for the sake of Britain, and thus made only restricted concessions to British products. The imperial preference system, though, did lead to one important achievement, which was that it laid the basis for financial co-operation in the form of the Sterling Area. At least here the Dominions proved to be very useful to Britain, for the recovery of sterling after the tribulations of 1931, when it had been forced to forgo its parity with gold, was of vital importance to British power. z Empire and nationalism in the Middle East The other major new challenge to empire was the extension of British and French influence into the Middle East. Here too, the European imperial Powers faced the task of dealing with an upsurge of nationalist sentiment. This might seem surprising when one considers that much of the region had only recently been conquered by Britain and France from the Ottomans. However, the unfortunate fact was that, by taking control of this area, they inherited the anti- colonial dynamic that had already risen in opposition to Turkish control. By the turn of the twentieth century the Ottoman Empire was in its last throes. This gave rise to two distinct developments: first, increased European interest in Arab nationalism The belief that all Arabic- Ottoman territories in the Middle East and, second, the emergence of local speakers form a nation that nationalisms, most notably Arab nationalism. The European interest in the should be independent and declining Ottoman Empire was driven by colonial and hegemonic competition united. 97  Istanbul SOVIET CE UNION E GRE SOVIET UNION T U R K E Y Caspian Sea MALTA Soviet Zone CYPRUS SYRIA Teheran Tehran Mediterranean Sea LEBANON Baghdad AFGHANISTAN TUNISIA I R A N PALESTINE IRAQ Tripoli Benghazi Abadan British TRANS- IA Zone ER TRIPOLITANIA Cairo JORDAN G AL CYRENAICA KUWAIT IN D IA BAHRAIN FEZZAN EGYPT QATAR L I B Y A Riyadh S A U D I MUSCAT Re TRUCIAL and A R A B I A d STATES OMAN Se French ed fin a de un ry SUDAN ADEN n da British ou Arabian Sea PROTECTORATE B ERITREA Italian Khartoum YEMEN 0 miles 400 Socotra 0 km 400 Aden Colony Map 4.2 The Middle East in 1922  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES dating back to Napoleon’s abortive occupation of Egypt, which had clearly revealed the inability of the Ottoman army to protect its own territory. This triggered further European intervention, such as the French occupation of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from the 1830s onwards, the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911. This scramble for territory was propelled by the power imbalance between the Ottoman Empire and the European states but, at the same time, it was regulated by the intra-European balance of power in what came to be known as the Eastern Question. The combination of Ottoman weakness and steady European penetration created the environment for the rise of Arab nationalism, the belief that all Arabic speakers form a nation that should be independent and united. The movement has its origins in the nineteenth century. It started among intellectuals in different geographic centres such as Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, drawing upon a variety of intellectual traditions, secular and religious, but also a shared history dating back to the Arab conquests following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. Muslim intellectuals such as Rifaa Rafi Tahtawi, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammed Abdu saw the Arab national revival through Islam. In fact, the latter two emerge as the ‘fathers’ of modernist or reformist Islam. Many Christian see Chapter 19 intellectuals such as Butrus al-Bustani, Shibli Shumayyil and Farah Antun promoted secular nationalism, focusing on the Arab language and culture. Another facet of the emerging nationalist debate was the territorial unit. For example, Ahmed Lufti al-Sayid advocated a distinctly Egyptian nationalism while Muhammed Rashid Rida promoted pan-Arabism. Until the First World War pan-Arabism notions of Arab autonomy within an Ottoman framework competed with notions Movement for Arab unity as manifested in the Fertile of independence. Crescent and Greater Syria Ottoman centralism and European colonialism influenced Arab nationalism schemes as well as attempted in no uncertain terms. The relationship between European colonialism and Arab unification of Egypt, Syria and nationalism can best be described as one of love and hate in that Arab nationalism Libya. embraced some European ideas passionately while, at the same time, fervently opposing European domination. Ultimately European colonialism strengthened the sense of Arab national identity. No matter how much progress and modern- ization were introduced by the colonial administrations, self-government was still preferable to foreign rule. However, the European portrayal of Islam as backward also planted the seeds of self-doubt. Ironically, this resulted in the retarding of social transformations, as nationalists often felt compelled to defend religious and cultural traditions they would otherwise have reformed on the sole basis that they were indigenous and non-European. However, it also resulted in the rejuvenation of Islamic thought. In the same way that Arab nationalism adopted anti-European characteristics, it also developed anti-Turkish ones. In fact, it could be argued that the Arab nationalist debate began with the demand for greater autonomy for the Arabic- speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire rather than in reaction to contact with the West. This becomes clear when examining the institutional origins of the Arab nationalist movement, which lie in a number of small and often secret societies formed in opposition to the Turkification policies of the Ottoman central government from 1875 onwards. They sought Arab autonomy, the recognition 99  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES of Arabic as the official language and the restoration of Arab pride, and even went as far as rejecting the sultan’s claim to be Caliph as a usurpation of Arab rights. One event which had a profound impact on Arab nationalism was the 1908 Young Turks Young Turk revolution. The reorientation from the Ottoman dynasty to the Name given to a group of Turkish nation in the long run strengthened those Arab nationalists who sought young army officers who in 1908 pushed the Ottoman independence rather than autonomy, for it encouraged many Arabs to think about Empire towards reformist their future in their own nationalist terms. This also had implications for the policies and a more overtly intellectual direction of Arab nationalism in the sense that, just as the Turks Turkish nationalist stance. rewrote their history books, toning down the Ottoman characteristics, Arab Caliphate nationalists reached back to the pre-Ottoman days of the Arab Caliphate, when The office of the successor to the Middle East had flourished under Arab-Islamic civilization. Finally, the Young the Prophet Muhammad in his Turk revolution also marked the point when Arab nationalist ideas ceased being political and social functions. The Caliphate was abolished the property of a few intellectuals and started to spread to the general population, by the Turkish president truly becoming a mass movement. A key example of this was the convening of the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in first Arab Congress in Paris in 1913, which brought together Arab nationalists 1924 after the dismemberment from different intellectual traditions ranging from Egypt to Iraq. of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Thus, when the First World War led to the final disintegration of the Ottoman Turkish Republic. Empire, the victorious European states found that Arab nationalism was already a potent force. This was to cause great problems, for Britain and France had hoped that their increased influence in the Middle East would provide both strategic and economic benefits, and their initial intention was to exert close control over both their existing colonies and protectorates and the new mandates. The strength of Arab nationalism was, however, to force them to tailor their ambitions to local circumstances. Under the League of Nations’ mandate system, France added the Levantine states of Syria and Lebanon to its existing North African possessions of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, while Britain increased its sphere of influence, hitherto limited to Egypt, Aden and the Gulf states, by receiving responsibility for Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. The mandate system involved an interesting contradiction. On the one hand, in a spirit of realpolitik, it stipulated that the Ottoman Empire, as the losing party, should lose its ‘overseas’ territory to the victors, thus reducing it to the ‘rump’ state of Turkey. It then divided the mandates between Britain and France in line with the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, a treaty that was as cynical an exercise in balance of power politics as could be imagined. And, finally, the League, by deeming that the Ottoman territories were not ready for independence, gave credence to beliefs in some European quarters that empire rather than independence was the ‘natural’ condition in the Middle East. Yet, on Fourteen Points the other hand, the League also endorsed Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which A speech made by the included the right to self-determination, and made it clear that it was the duty of American president Woodrow the mandate powers to prepare the population for independence and to aid with Wilson on 8 January 1918 in which he set out his vision of institution- and state-building. It therefore set the mandate Powers on a collision the post-war world. It course with the indigenous populations. included references to open Empire might still have been the natural state of affairs in European thinking, diplomacy, self-determination but as far as the Arabs were concerned, they had just been cheated out of inde- and a post-war international organization. pendence. After all, they too had joined the fight against the Ottomans, and had received promises of independence, in writing, in the 1915–16 100  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES Hussein–McMahon correspondence. Britain and France were therefore faced with a difficult challenge for, in acquiring the mandates, they were put in charge of territories which had been on the verge of independence and had established nationalist movements, and where the inhabitants saw themselves as equals not subjects. Not surprisingly, friction quickly emerged between the European administrators and the Arab populations. The worst case was Palestine, where both Arabs and Jews believed that their aspirations for statehood had been sacri- ficed at the altar of British imperial interests. This sense of betrayal was shared by see Chapter 5 the Kurds, who had been promised a state of their own at the Lausanne Conference only to find that it did not serve British interests to fragment the Iraqi mandate, especially if it threatened the disputed oil-rich area of Mosul. Influenced by their strategic and economic interests, Britain and France attempted to find local collaborators with whom to share power. In the French mandates and Palestine, France and Britain used partition as a tool to assure the dominance of key allies. In its territories France carved Greater Lebanon out of Ottoman Syria, transforming it into a multi-ethnic and multi-religious republic under Maronite Christian hegemony, while, even before the mandates had been granted, Britain partitioned Ottoman Palestine along the Jordan River to create a wholly new entity, Transjordan. This was placed under the rule of Emir Abdullah, the son of the Hashemite Sharif Hussein of the Hejaz on the Hashemites Arabian peninsula. Meanwhile Britain put Abdullah’s brother, King Faisal, on the The family of the Sharifs of Mecca who trace their descent throne of Iraq, which in 1932 became the first of the mandates to become an to the Prophet Muhammad. independent state. The effort to assert control over the newly acquired mandates was further complicated by the parallel struggle for independence in the ‘old’ colonial possessions such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. Egypt had come under formal British occupation in 1882 and was a colony in all but name until the First World War. With the Ottoman entry into the war, Britain severed Egypt’s formal ties to the Ottoman Empire and transformed it into a British protectorate. During the war, British administrators attempted to reform Egypt by establishing a bicameral legislature in which the British effectively constituted the upper house. Not surprisingly, this met with resistance from the elites upon whom the British traditionally relied. This fuelled Egyptian nationalism, with the result that, at the end of the war, British authority was challenged by the Wafd Party and by rioting in the major cities. As in Ireland, Britain was forced to concede and in 1922 Egypt became a ‘sovereign’ independent country, although it was forced to sign an Anglo-Egyptian agreement to cover the protection of British imperial Suez Crisis communications in Egypt, Egypt’s defence against foreign aggression, protection The failed attempt by Britain of foreign interests and minorities in the country, and control of the Sudan. Apart and France in 1956 to take from these reserved points, Egypt embarked upon reform, drawing up a advantage of a war between Israel and Egypt by seizing constitution based on that of Belgium, setting up democratic institutions and control of the Suez Canal and holding its first free elections in 1923. However, the continued British presence bringing down the government remained a thorn in Egypt’s side. Relations were renegotiated in 1936 and, again, of Gamal Abdel Nasser. It is in 1954, two years after the Egyptian monarchy had been overthrown and an Arab often taken as a symbol of the collapse of European nationalist regime had taken power. But it was not until the 1956 Suez Crisis imperialism and the rise of the that Egypt was finally to rid itself of the last colonial vestiges. Third World. 101  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES The French experience in Algeria and Tunisia was similar, in that the elites of these two colonial possessions started to turn from co-operation with the colonial power to rallying against it in the name of nationalism and independence. Before the First World War both Algeria and Tunisia had seen outbreaks of violence against French rule. These had been popular in nature, were often sparked by ulama religious incidents and placed the ulama in leadership positions. In the inter-war Clerics or Islamic scholars who period the nature of the challenge changed with the appearance of distinctly are learned in theology and the shari’a. nationalist political parties led by the intellectual elites, who were inspired by acts such as the Turkish resistance to the European Powers. In Algeria a number of small political groups emerged but at this stage posed little threat to French rule. In Tunisia resistance to the French was embodied by the Destour (‘Constitution’) Party which pursued independence from a combined Tunisian nationalist-Islamic platform in the 1920s, and then by the Neo-Destour Party with a secular- nationalist agenda from 1934. The situation in the Middle East in the inter-war period was therefore one of lingering unrest and instability. Rather than adding unconditionally to the power of the European empires, their commitments in the region proved to be expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, the virulence of Arab nationalism proved, as with Ireland, to be an inspiration to other ethnic and religious groups elsewhere in the empires who were seeking independence from imperial rule. z India in crisis One of the chief concerns for the British was that the changing international environment and the instability in Ireland and the Middle East might affect the most important colony of all – India. In the period before 1914 Britain had already begun to liberalize the political system in India. For example, in the wake of the great revolt of 1857 the government established representative bodies, such as the viceroy’s advisory council, provincial legislatures and municipal councils. Such bodies were necessary in order to legitimize the higher taxation that followed from the increased cost of policing and administering India. In addition, by allowing Indians limited power at the local level, the British sought to win over the political elite, thus turning them into collaborators. To a degree this latter aim worked, for the leading voice of Indian nationalism, the Indian National Congress Congress (hereafter Congress), which was established in 1885, tended to pursue a moderate Shorthand for the Indian agenda. However, the British policy also created problems for the future, for, in National Congress, a nationalist party first formed an effort to conciliate the Muslim community, it was given votes for its own in India in 1885. Congress reserved seats. By such actions the British exacerbated the growing sense of played the most important religious communalism within India. This was dangerous, because already factors role in bringing about Indian such as the activities of Christian missionaries had helped to stimulate a Hindu independence in 1947 and since then has been one of the revival and interest among Muslims in the Islamic resurgence. The result was that major political parties in radical politicians, such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, began to use Hindu imagery in Indian politics. their efforts to construct a more assertive form of Indian nationalism. Meanwhile, in response, Muslim leaders created their own national organization, the Muslim 102  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES League, in order to counter Congress, which was already largely Hindu dominated, and to create a common identity for India’s many disparate Islamic communities. The first stage in India’s political evolution culminated in the Morley–Minto reforms of 1909, which allowed for Indian majorities in the provincial legislatures. But if Britain had hoped that this would be enough to quieten India then the First World War and the general imperial instability precipitated by that conflict proved it wrong. As noted in Chapter 1, India played a substantial role in the fighting, and the government was forced to raise income tax and tariffs to meet its defence expenditure. The heavy burden placed on the Indian people naturally led to unrest. The degree of discontent was demonstrated in 1916 when the Muslim League and Congress overcame their antipathy and signed the Lucknow Pact, in which they agreed to push forward a common reform programme. In order to appease this latest wave of agitation, the British government in 1917 declared its intention to steer India towards responsible ‘self-government’ within the empire. Accordingly, in 1919 the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms were introduced which devolved more powers to, and increased Indian representation at, the provincial level. Britain’s largesse was, however, not enough to satisfy Congress. Inspired by the unrest in Egypt and Ireland, and in association with Indian Muslims affected by the Khalifat Movement, Congress in 1919, under the leadership of the British-trained lawyer Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, launched the first of its non-cooperation campaigns calling for an end to British rule. The first non-cooperation campaign witnessed the start of the struggle for Indian independence that would end in 1947. However, in the period before 1939, although the Indian issue proved to be a heavy burden for the British government, neither side proved strong enough to vanquish the other. The British attempted to control the situation through a dual policy of concession and repression. In the field of political reform it continued to try to assuage moderate Indian opinion by incrementally making moves towards full representative government at the provincial level, while at the same time maintaining its own strict control over military and financial matters at the political centre. In particular, it hoped that, by allowing Indians to exercise power at the provincial level, it could tame local politicians and divide them from the national-level leaders, such as Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. At the same time, whenever it was necessary, it used repressive legislation to contain outbreaks of non-cooperation, and periodically detained tens of thousands of Congress members. However, aware of the potential for criticism from the Left in Britain and from anti-imperial opinion elsewhere in the world, and fearful of provoking even greater dissent within India, the government was careful to act within the letter of the law. The result of these policies was that they were enough to slow down Congress’s progress but not to defeat it. Meanwhile, Congress similarly proved unable to defeat the British. Given Britain’s hesitation about using excessive force, it might be argued that Congress should simply have tried to make India ungovernable by organizing a mass insurrection. The problem here, however, was that Congress was not an organization capable of mounting such a challenge. In part, this can be seen as a moral problem, in that the sort of protest necessary to dislodge Britain would 103  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES Plate 4.1 Indian nationalist leader and organizer of the Indian National Congress’s campaign of non-cooperation, Mahatma Gandhi, with his wife, shortly before his arrest for conspiracy, January 1922 104  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES require violence, which was unacceptable in principle to Gandhi and his supporters. However, there were other motives at play. As with many other nationalist organizations in the decolonization period, the ideas that Congress espoused primarily reflected the interests of the educated urban bourgeoisie and the rural landlords. Accordingly, it backed away from the potential dangers of mobilizing the whole population for revolution. Indeed, it is noticeable that when, during the 1930s, socialists within Congress called for the construction of a mass party that would take up class issues, this was decisively rejected in favour of an all-nation approach. Also important in this respect was that Congress was financed by Indian industrialists, who clearly had little interest in seeing a mobilized proletariat. Another problem was that Congress saw itself as the sole legitimate voice of Indian nationalism. It was therefore temperamentally disinclined to co-operate with other political parties, such as those representing Muslims or the ‘untouchables’, and thus found it difficult to construct a coalition of forces opposed to British rule. It is, for example, noticeable that there was very little Muslim involvement in the second non-cooperation campaign of 1930–34. The competition between Britain and Congress was not, however, a complete stalemate, for over time the need to appease Indian opinion led to a steady weakening of ties between Britain and India. Apart from reasons of imperial prestige, India was important to Britain for two reasons – its economic value to the British economy and as a source of military manpower. However, the need to assuage Indian opinion steadily eroded India’s contribution in these two areas. The problem was that as the British gradually allowed Indians to take a role in provincial government and to be consulted about central government policy, this led to greater Indian interest in both revenue collection and expenditure. Accordingly, the government in India found itself forced to raise duties on imports, even on goods from Britain, to finance its rule, as this was preferable to causing problems by raising taxation. This naturally had a deleterious effect on the export to India of British goods, in particular the cotton textile products of Lancashire. Further exacerbating this problem was that the customs duties provided a wall behind which India could establish import substitution import substitution industries. The British and Indian economies thus began to diverge. In addition, The process whereby a state attempts to achieve economic Indian opinion was increasingly vocal in its criticism of Britain’s widespread use growth by raising protective of the Indian army to police the empire in Asia at India’s expense. The situation tariffs to keep out imports therefore was that, while Britain engaged in its trial of strength with Congress, and replacing them with the foundations of British rule were already eroding. indigenously produced goods. z Rationalization and resistance in South-East Asia Just as British rule in India was weakened over the long term by the confrontation with nationalism, so this phenomenon also existed elsewhere in the British, French and Dutch empires. In South-East Asia a good example of the problems faced by the Europeans can be seen in the Dutch East Indies. At the start of the twentieth century, the Dutch introduced what it termed an ‘ethical policy’, advocating greater education provision and centralizing political reforms in order to provide the 105  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES foundations for the economic development of the Indonesian archipelago. This policy culminated in 1918 with the formation of the Volksraad, a central representative assembly with limited political powers. However, these reforms in turn unleashed forces that the Dutch found increasingly difficult to control, particularly when allied to a number of disturbing influences from outside. The first major problem came with the formation in 1912 of the Sarekat Islam movement, which, as its name suggests, was an organization that sought greater political rights for Muslims. It was in part inspired by the Islamic resurgence that occurred throughout the Muslim world, but it also represented local concerns, overseas Chinese and, in particular, the fear that the overseas Chinese population in Java was The descendants of the benefiting disproportionately from the improving economy. Within a short space Chinese who emigrated to South-East Asia in the of time Sarekat Islam developed into a mass movement that the Dutch could not nineteenth and early twentieth ignore, although, like the British in India, they did try to disarm its effectiveness centuries. They have tended to by pushing it into local politics rather than dealing with its claims at the national act as a merchant class and as level. Economic reforms complicated the problem further by stimulating the such have stirred up a good deal of resentment among the growth of a trade union movement and interest in socialism. The result was that indigenous people who envy in the period following the First World War, the combination of an economic their wealth and doubt their recession, the Khalifat Movement and increased activities by socialists culminating loyalty to their adopted in the appearance of the Communist Party of Indonesia, the PKI, led to 15 years countries. of unrest. Indeed, in 1926 and 1927 the PKI engaged in abortive insurrections in Java and Sumatra. Fortunately for the Dutch, the indigenous opposition to their Guomindang (GMD) rule by secular nationalists, Islamic parties and socialists was hopelessly disunited. The Chinese Nationalist party founded in 1913 by Sun Nevertheless, the authorities were forced to bring in severe measures, such as Yatsen. Under the control of increasing powers of arrest, curbing union power and sending into internal exile Jiang Jieshi, it came to power the leading secular nationalists Ahmed Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta. Thus, by in China in 1928 and initiated the 1930s the ‘ethical policy’ had been abandoned and Dutch rule had been forced a modernization programme before leading the country to become increasingly strict. It is therefore no surprise that the Indonesian into war against Japan in nationalist movement should have been so violently opposed to the Dutch 1937. It lost control over returning after the Second World War. mainland China in 1949 The revolutionary activities of the PKI were but one manifestation of a as a result of the communist victory in the civil war. From phenomenon that more broadly affected South-East Asia in the inter-war period 1949 it controlled Taiwan, and within which lay the roots of many future conflicts, namely the influence on overseeing the island’s the region of political events in China. From the first, the rise of Chinese ‘economic miracle’, until its nationalism in the early twentieth century struck a resonant chord with the electoral defeat in 2000. overseas Chinese population in South-East Asia, who became major financial backers of Sun Yatsen’s Guomindang (GMD) party and began to organize their Comintern The Communist or Third own political associations, particularly in Malaya. However, the influence of the International founded in GMD’s strident nationalism and modernization policies went beyond Chinese Moscow in 1919 as an circles, providing, for example, a model for one of the major nationalist parties in organization to direct and Indochina in the 1920s, the VNQDD (Vietnamese National Party). Also support the activities of communist parties outside important was that the strong Comintern presence in China helped to foster Russia. It was abolished in communist activity in the region. Mirroring the actions of the PKI, in 1931 the 1943 in a short-lived effort by Indochinese Communist Party launched a short-lived insurrection in Vietnam, Stalin to reassure Britain and which was suppressed with great ferocity by the French authorities. Meanwhile, the United States that the Soviet Union no longer sought in Malaya the local communist party inspired a series of labour disputes, to export Marxism-Leninism. culminating in a general strike in 1940. 106  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES Thus, by the end of the 1930s, on the surface South-East Asia was no nearer independence than it had been 20 years earlier, for colonial rule remained intact and had in some areas become more authoritarian than ever. However, this apparent stability was merely a veneer. In reality, sophisticated nationalist movements that drew on a variety of political affiliations, including communism, were waiting in the wings for the opportunity to deliver a deathblow to European colonialism. They would not have to wait long. z The colonial empires in Africa At first glance Sub-Saharan Africa seems to have been far more stable than the Middle East, India and South-East Asia, but here too important changes were SPANISH MOROCCO 0 miles 1000 TUNISIA O Canary Is. CC 0 km 1000 RO (Sp.) MO ALGERIA KINGDOM L I B YA OF EGYPT (Br. occupation) RIO DE ORO ERITREA SOMALILAND FRENCH WEST AFRICA Fr. BR. FR. Br. It. IT. GAMBIA ANGLO EGYPTIAN FRENCH SUDAN PORT GUINEA (Condominium) NIGERIA EQUATORIAL EMPIRE OF SIERRA ETHIOPIA LEONE AFRICA LIBERIA GOLD COAST CAMEROONS A (Br. & Fr. mandates) D TOGOLAND AN G KENYA (Br. & Fr. mandates) U BELGIAN EQUATORIAL CONGO GUINEA RWANDA–BURUNDI Indian CABINDA (Belgian mandate) TANGANYIKA Ocean Atlantic Ocean ANGOLA NYASALAND NORTHERN RHODESIA Portuguese UE IQ AR SOUTHERN B SC SOUTH RHODESIA M British ZA GA WEST AFRICA MO DA BECHUANA- British mandate (South LAND MA Africa French mandate) SWAZILAND French mandate (Br. protectorate) SOUTH Belgian AFRICA Belgian mandate BASUTOLAND (Br. protectorate) Spanish Italian Map 4.3 Africa in 1922 Source: After Holland (1985) 107  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES taking place as the development imperative began to exercise its influence. Initially, as the European Powers digested their recent conquests in Africa, they decided that, owing to the scarcity of administrators and the vast geographical distances involved, the most efficient type of political control was ‘indirect rule’. This involved allowing tribal chiefs to exercise power at the local level and the use of customary law to settle disputes and regulate society. An intellectual justification for devolving power to chiefs was provided by anthropologists, who argued that ordinary Africans should be allowed to evolve politically and socially at their own pace and be protected from the tempest of modernity. In reality, indirect rule did not always involve a simple perpetuation of tradition. For example, in areas such as South-Eastern Nigeria, where no strong tradition of chiefs exercising power existed, leaders were imposed on the local population and in Bechuanaland (Botswana) long-exercised restraints on the abuse of power by chiefs were removed. All the European Powers engaged in such practices, even the French, who in public espoused the idea of assimilation, but it was the British who, inspired by the activities of Lord Lugard as governor of Nigeria from 1912 to 1919, turned ‘indirect rule’ into a doctrine. In contrast to the position in much of the world, colonial control over Sub- Saharan Africa was not greatly disturbed by the First World War, but during the inter-war period a series of factors led to the undermining and revision of the ‘indirect rule’ system. One of the most important was that in some areas of Africa the development of industrial-scale commodity production either began or accelerated. These industrial commodities included the gold and diamond mines of South Africa, the copper mines of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and the Belgian Congo, and the tin mines of northern Nigeria. This led to a number of consequences, such as urbanization, unionization of workers and a vast increase in migrant labour, all of which undermined the traditional forms of control. In addition, the development of these products and cash crops, such as cocoa and coffee, for the world market meant that Africa was increasingly susceptible to fluctuations in commodity prices. The result was that in the 1930s the Depression had a marked effect on a number of colonies, causing discontent with colonial rule and sometimes violent strike movements, such as that in the Northern Rhodesian copper-belt in 1935. zambia today The unrest that emerged in the 1930s was not nearly as serious as the problems that Britain had to face in India, but there was fear for the future. This led both Britain and France to consider, particularly in regard to West Africa, plans for encouraging development through improved agricultural methods and increased welfare provision. Furthermore, the serious disturbances that wracked the West Indies between 1934 and 1938 reinforced this tendency, for they clearly demon- strated what could happen if colonies were neglected. The intended reforms did not, however, sit comfortably with the continuation of ‘indirect rule’, but rather mirrored the efforts elsewhere in the empires to make colonial administration more rational and efficient. Thus, on the eve of the Second World War, ideas about empire in Africa were beginning to come into line with practice elsewhere. 108  T H E E U R O P E A N C O LON I A L EM P I R ES In addition to the changes arising from increased economic activity, there were other challenges to the reliance on ‘indirect rule’. In British West Africa one important factor was that the educated indigenous bourgeoisie in the coastal cities began to organize political movements against colonial control. Before the scramble for colonies in the nineteenth century this group, which was heavily influenced by Western political thought, culture and religion, had played an important role in the civil society of the trading ports. However, as European rule expanded, they had been marginalized in favour of the chiefs and found that a colour bar increasingly blocked their entry into the professions or, if they were employed by the state, their prospects for promotion. This naturally led to discontent and gradually, in areas such as Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, local urban-based political organizations