Coloniocene v.2

A Story of Power and Exploitation

By Stella Bennett, Felix Benardo, Cindy Nguyen

Media 1: British Empire at a Glance. What seemingly looks to be a compass displaying the comprehensive size of the British Empire, if you look closer, it is a tracker of each colony. Along the bottom of the compass displays all of the colonies the British had; the compass is currently pointing to Basutoland. Basutoland was a former colony that is current day Lesotho. Other things the British kept track of was each colony’s capital or chief city and its population, the amount of “whites” and “natives”, exports to and imports from the empire and other countries in 1000 of British Pounds, principal products and industries, the time when noon in London, and the amount of time in days and distance in miles by sea from London. (Frank Pitchford & Co. Ltd., 1931)

The Coloniocene, our ‘cene construction, emphasizes the role of colonialism in the creation of the Urbanocene, Metropocene, and Astycene and assumes its position as guilty for the damaged environment and society it spawned. Colonialism heavily relied on the exploitation of foreign land and populations such that the colonizer had the ability to focus on innovation, industrialization, and the expansion of capitalism. In other words, the colonizers’ societies advanced tremendously at the expense of the colonized. Britain amassed one of the vastest empires in the world, colonizing at one point or another more than 90 countries. India was a prominent British colony, and before that a significant unofficial colony through the jurisdiction of the British East India Company. The British, in one way or another, had control over certain parts of India and then the whole country collectively for more than 300 years, making it a relevant case study for the Coloniocene. The Coloniocene tells us that the forces which allow the city to prosper, and are defining factors of the modern era, are the same forces which can be used to strip foreign countries of their resources, culture, and identity.

Figure 1. Scenographic Map. Our original scenographic map is composed of scenes describing the activity which defined the colonial period and features three hidden axes of this narrative. The first, from the bottom-left corner to the top left corner, tells the story of integral institutions put in place by colonial forces in their colonies. Such as slavery, labor force creation and ruling, as well as capitalism and connectivity to the rest of the world. From the bottom-left corner to the bottom-right corner follows the systematic exploitation of the land and indigenous peoples. The historical events depicted along this axis include the trail of tears, the industrialization of cape town harbor, the construction of the Indian railways, and simultaneous destruction of rural areas and homes, and the deployment of colonizers as ruling class. From the bottom-left corner to the top-right corner, or following the river, describes the cyclical nature of empires such as the British and the impermanence of their rule and yet the inescapable and long-lasting effects of it. Riverside scenes include 19th century London, a modern downtown of metallic skyscrapers, anonymous western ruins, and a mammoth tree wrapping its roots around the urban objects nearby. To have all of these actions into a collective scene, it relied on control over colonies, hence India, a famous colony, front and center. (Stella)

The British invaded India in order to expand their empire and exploit new land. They inserted their own government, religious systems, language, and systematically “Europeanized” India by building railways, forcing the English language and introducing Christianity to the religious landscape. They also seriously abused the Indian population, committing several massacres, causing multiple famines, and interfering in religious and ethnic divides. The British ruled according to the Roman idea of divide et impera–divide and rule; in the process they may have united many separate Indian peoples and states into a single country, modern India, yet the legacy of the institutions that the British introduced and left behind in India are still relevant and effectively transformed India into another part of the global urban system. Still the British ultimately failed in multiple forms: they earned the resentment of a vast nation and horrifically disrupted the country’s urban and non-urban development.

Figure 2: Systems Diagram. This is a spatial interpretation of the separate three ‘cenes’ (Metropocene, Astycene, and the Urbanocene in that order from left to right) hidden axes: exploitation, institutions, and impermanence that is applied to India for the case study. All media used to create the individual bricolage could be interpreted into three main delineations as a result of colonialism: connectivity (modes of transportation), capitalism (enforced through urban hubs) and labor forces. Groups of people (labor force) were split up, intermingled with other groups, and sent to nearby colonial cities or brought further through different modes of transportation. However, labor force does not solely represent people, but also the resources extracted to fuel the wealth of the British empire. Three main colonial cities were Calcutta and Mumbai (on the coast) and Delhi (India’s Capital). The Sahibi River, Poor Express, and Rajdani Express were modes of transportation commonly used to and from these major Indian colonial cities. (Cindy & Felix)

Today we are a post-British empire and can look back on the cyclical pattern of conquering, destroying, and retreating. However, just like the Greek, Roman, Mongolian, and Ottoman, empires, the world has critically changed and are defined by institutions like capitalism, white-hetero-patriarchy, land exploitation. These are all remnants and foundations of colonialism that still haunt the global urban system. Many scholars (mostly British) have argued that India gained things from the British occupation, such as democracy, national transportation, unity, and among other things. However, it is more illuminating to consider how India emerged as an independent country during the mid-20th century after most of the world had already been colonized. India, as well as other colonized countries that gained independence had no choice but to retain the institutions which allowed them to survive economically and socially in the Coloniocene. Yet, these institutions reinforce colonialistic ideals that are not suitable for a country recovering from colonialism (Watson).

Media 2: Population of India Shown by Rectangles. This map portrays the population of India in various jurisdictions. The areas that are shaded pink are areas that are under direct British rule while the yellow shaded areas are areas that are under indirect British control through an Indian ruler, also known as princely rule. Each square, no matter the size, depicts a population a million. Hence, the smaller the square, the denser the area is. (Survery of India, 1920)

The colonialist strategy to force more exploitation of the rural areas and local populations in their colonies is to grow small portions economically and then use those settlements as seats of government, systematically creating the Indian urban network. Many of these settlements occurred near the coast where the British had easy access. This is demonstrated in figure 3; beginning in the 1700s, there were urban settlements along the coast, most visibly along the western coast. This matches up with historical colonial cities in western India, such as Bombay, today’s Mumbai, Surat, and Kochi. The commodification of India’s natural environment has led to a removal of the Indian urban population from the experience of nature, just as has happened in so many countries victimized by colonialism. In other words, Indian populations had their own connections and perceptions of nature, but the British invaded and commodified it such that it could fit into their colonialistic narrative. This has contributed to the alienation of the environment from global politics and economics, a major product of the Coloniocene.

Figure 3.1: Change in Anthropogenic Biomes in the UK and South Asia. As the British empire expands as a result of colonialism, its colonies bare the burden to support that growth. Britain’s growth is demonstrated through areas becoming more urban while India’s burden is portrayed through areas that are croplands and woodlands. (Cindy)

Figure 3.2: Size Comparison Between India and Britain. (Cindy)

The dialectic between the colony and the metropole, or the discourse that exists, in this situation, between British and Indian hubs, is not a linear process but rather a lopsided, colonizer-centered dynamic. This is evident in the spots where British forces experimented in India. Colonies were places to test medicine, governmental structures and politics, and weaponry. Ronald Ross, the British medical doctor, was one of the heroes in the scientific movement surrounding research on the transmission of malaria. Nonetheless, a lot of Ross’ work, along with other scientists that conducted research during the colonial regime, relied on the knowledge and results through the exploitation of colonized people deemed for scientific progress to transfer knowledge back to the metropole. While Ross’ findings were instrumental in Malaria efforts for the future, including today, the scientific studies largely began as an effort to save only English colonists who had been dying at unprecedented rates from the disease. By using Indian populations as bodies to experiment on, they appropriated their country’s traditional medicinal solutions. The hidden relationship between colony and metropole includes the hypocrisy of British media in the homeland relative to their actions in the colony. Ad campaigns in London stressed that laboratory animals should not be tested on, in actuality, they tested the rabies vaccine on rabbits and used elephants to perform manual labor. Indian people become like laboratory animals for testing. To the British, Indians were not seen as human but subhuman, another dimension of exploitation for the British. The link between the colony and the metropole is concealed behind the actions of the colonizers in the home country as well as the inactive policing of other colonizing nations, who too were complicit in similar acts of exploitation.

Media 3: Burns of Indians “Treated” with Mustard Gas. “Many suffered severe burns on their skin, including their genitals, leaving them in pain for days and even weeks. Some had to be treated in hospital.” While this article was published in 2007, the author had access to files deemed “SECRET.” While the date of the tests are unknown, the author confirms that these “patients” are Indian and were forced by British Military to conduct these experiments. (Frank Baron, the Guardian, 2007)

This dialectic, defined by corruption and ruthlessness, extended into other more violent realms. The Rawalpindi experiments began in the 1930s and used mustard gas to test on Indians. Hundreds of Indian soldiers were sent to gas chambers where they suffered massive burns on their skin. Many were sent for treatment in hospitals. It is now understood that mustard gas exposure often leads to cancer and other dangerous illnesses. Such findings were significant for Britain in the Second World War as they battled using the strengths of their scientific findings through these bloody tests and resources continuously filtered out of the Indian colony. The story of the British colonial rule emphasizes the power of the Urbanocene, Metropocene, and Astycene as frames to view the modern age. Information developed in the colony, such as the Malaria efforts, was able to spread quickly in major British cities like London due to its large population density over smaller areas. The knowledge originated in Indian cities as the British forced populations to conduct their studies. Powerful state institutions, characterized by the Astycene, reinforce the knowledge received from the colonies in terms of the British military industry, and on the other side, in Indian hospitals and animal centers. The same forces which can activate the city are those which make it vulnerable, and give other nations the capacity to take over weaker states. While the three separate ‘cenes invoke a sense of positivity for the future through their framing, the Coloniocene reminds us that capable nations have the capacity to become exploitative in nasty forms (Evans).

Figure 4: Metropole–Colony Dialectic Bricolage. This bricolage pits various realms of the dialectic against each other. The Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital in Delhi is met by the Taj Mahal, the quintessential image of Indian health in the form of a medical hospital and college in Delhi against the quintessential image of Indian government, the Taj Mahal. Ronald Ross’ English compatriots stand on one side, taking up a portion of the paved road as he occupies a platform outside of the mausoleum. British airships fly over the hospital and an upright mast resides next to the Taj Mahal’s beaming towers. By dividing the narrative into two parts the bricolage shares a message: that every aspect of the colony has other, sometimes non-obvious offshoots. The hospital represents one of the many settings that British colonizers stole and leeched knowledge from, both in the form of already collected data and tests on Indian people. Ross’ crew, perched on the Delhi road, waits to receive orders from their captain who stands in a different realm. Information passed through all networks in the colony, and this characterization indicates the role that medical decisions played in influential governmental decisions, both in India and in Britain. The airships’ purpose is also twofold: one, as obviously British entities of transportation of resources from India back to Britain, and two, for the utilization of those Indian resources at war. (Felix)

Through the exploitation in various aspects of Indians’ lives, Britain was able to expand their empire and control throughout the world as well as grow domestically. While India became increasingly agricultural, Britain’s cities boomed with urban growth. Britain stole economic growth from its colonies; economic growth in India from 1700 to 1950 was only 0.6% while Britain’s economic growth during the same time was 12.6% (Rao). Furthermore, when India became a formal British colony between the 1850s until the 1940s, Britain enacted numerous laws that gave Britain the constitutional right over the lands to rule as well. A clear example of this is the Forest Act of 1865 that gave the British the right to use the forest lands. The British government believed they had the right to exploit land and resources that belonged to the local Indian populations all due to their declaration of India as a colony. The Indian Forest Department, founded by Britain in 1864, owned a fifth of the land in India. The woodlands were harvested to be used as timber for the construction of railways and boats (Rangarajan). However, before the Indian Forest Department’s founding, the British were still exploiting India’s natural woodlands. India was ruled informally by the British East India Company beginning in the 1600s until it became a British colony. Nonetheless, there were British efforts to conserve the woodlands around the 1800s as it was part of Britain’s economic livelihood; colonial control over the woodlands and its commodification led to deforestation and decreases in resources. As visible in Figure 3, woodlands have a large increase throughout the subcontinent during the 1800s and decrease when entering the 1900s. While India gained railways through this action, the British chose to sacrifice their nature while doing so. This caused the distancing between the urban and rural forces that create the urban, similar to the colony-metropole relationship to further develop and benefit the metropole.

Media 4: Woodlands in West Bengal during British Colonialism. This media depicts both the natural landscape of the woodlands as well as the areas that were degraded as a result of deforestation. (Hawkes Collection of Indian Railway Photographs, F.A. Hawkes, 1871–1879, 5)

Britain’s main project in colonial India was the construction of infrastructure, specifically infrastructure that directly supported the institution of capitalism and served the colonizers. By connecting Indian cities to each other, to other British colonies, and to British cities through rail, building commercial ports, installing telegraph lines and instituting a postal system they programmed the city to operate according to the British’s colonial legacy and capitalism. India, having won their independence in the mid 20th century, found itself having to rely on the British institutions of capitalism and urbanism in order to compete, socially and economically, with the rest of the world.

Media 5: Civil engineering: the pier at Madras, India, built using screw piles. While under colonialism, India experienced a large number of renovations and civil engineering projects spearheaded by Britain. However, Britain selfishly constructed these projects because they believed they were benefitting Britain rather than India. (Mitchell, Alexander, 1780–1868)

Sources:

Rangarajan, Mahesh. 1994. Imperial agendas and India’s forests: The early history of Indian forestry, 1800-1878*. The Telegraph. 147–149. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001946469403100202

Watson, Vanessa. 2008. Seeing from the South: Refocusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s Central Urban Issues. Urban Studies Journal. 2259. DOI:10.1177/0042098009342598.

Evans, Rob. “Military Scientists tested mustard gas on Indians.” The Guardian. 2007. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/01/india.military

Rao, Shrinidhi. 2016. British Colonization of India. India Fact. https://indiafacts.org/british-colonization-india/

Allender, Tim. “Learning abroad: the colonial educational experiment in India, 1813–1919. Paedagogica Historica, vol. 45, no. 6, 2009, pp. 727–741. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00309230903335645

Figure 1:

Denis Judd, 2004, “The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj,” Oxford University Press

Mitchell, 2011, “Carbon Democracy,” “Conclusion: No More Counting on Oil”

University of Montreal, “History of Ships: Ships of Discovery,” https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/History/Ships/Ships_Discovery/index.html

History.com Editors, 2020, “Trail of Tears,” https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears

Figure 3:

Ellis, E.C., K.K. Goldewijk, S. Siebert, D. Lightman, and N. Ramankutty. 2010. Anthropogenic Transformation of the Biomes, 1700 to 2000. Global Ecology and Biogeography 19 (5): 589–606. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x.

Figure 4:

R-34 British Airship. 1919. Bain News Service. George Grantham Bain Collection. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014709264/

“An airship being brought to her shed by a landing party of 250–300 men.” 1926. Great Britain. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London. davidrumsey.com

Ross, Ronald Sir. “Observations on malaria/by medical officers of the army and others.” 1919. H.M.S.O., London. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/tykqdasf

“Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital, Delhi: surrounding area.” 1921. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/z6d9jvst/images?id=nu9hxthc

The Taj Mahal, Agra, India; people on the banks of the river in the foreground. Photograph. ca. 1900. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/d5rusn89

Russel, William Howard. Hall, Sydney P. The Prince of Wales’ Tour : a diary in India, with some account of the visits of H.R.H. to the courts of Greece, Egypt, Spain & Portugal. https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-prince-of-waless-tour-of-india-in-1875-6