Impacts of Colonialism in the two most populated countries of the world
It would be irresponsible to deny that the current socio-political structures all over the globe have been majorly influenced by European colonialism.
From the acceptance of English as the only international language to the adoption of western clothing in almost every country around the world, imperialism has been knitted into the very fabric of global culture, despite its decline happening more than half a century ago. Smaller nations might have accepted these influences due to their dependence on the superpowers, but the most indirect influence can be seen in the two most populated countries of the world: India and China.
India prides itself for being the largest democracy and China constantly propagates itself as the only competitor to American global dominance. Both of these nations, however, still bear the scars of their separate phases of colonialism and although their continuous rise in global economics is commendable and largely credited to the economic impacts of western influence, the social and political affects have left gaping wounds — the pain of which can be felt even today.
The British entered India in the 17th Century with the establishment of the East India Company and its speeding acquisition of land and commencement of trade with the local rulers. A landmark moment in the consolidation of British power in India was overthrowing the reigning Nawab of Bengal in 1757 and installing a puppet.[1]
Prior to the arrival of the British, India contributed to 25% of the global GDP[2] and Bengal, being one of the most prosperous states, was its primary shareholder. It was only a matter of time before the same fate was ruled out for the rest of the Indian kingdoms and by Mid-19th century, India had effectively become a British colony.
The imperialistic mentality of creating a civil society and uplifting the less civilized did not necessarily apply to India since the masses of this region had had a well-defined and highly functional societal structure for centuries.[3] The British imposed their western customs and etiquettes upon a population which had been following their own culture from eons.
They had no regard for the local culture and the inclusion of natives in their own governance and even though the Sepoy Mutiny and the subsequent revolts of 1857 compelled the British Crown to be more inclusive in its policies towards India[4], very little was done to implement this at a mass scale.
In reality, Britain followed the policy of tokenism where certain individuals of the Indian society, mainly the corrupt rulers of a vast number of divided states, were appeased to maintain British dominance over the country. The majority of the population was treated as second-class citizens, with signs such as ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’[5] being a fairly common sight in most buildings of British associations and clubs in the sub-continent.
The colonizers wanted to settle in the country without interacting with the locals and moreover, by exploiting the native population. The resounding effect of this discrimination and policy of appeasement can be seen till date in the country where upper-caste leaders constantly discriminate against the lower-caste population, which forms the majority, while providing token baits to some of their leaders in order to limit their reach in the social and political spectrums of society.
Many of the colonial laws have even endured the independence and post-colonial revolutions and are heavily used by the ruling governments of 21st century independent India — the most abhorrent of which is the sedition law. The current government of India, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party, has been widely regarded as an autocratic government, and has been an avid utilizer of this draconian law in the recent past — curtailing basic human rights such as the right to speech by implementing it against a plethora of dissenters of the ruling party.[6]
While the negative outcomes of British colonialism in India far outweigh the positive ones, credit has to be given to the British Raj for modernizing the Indian economy. The British eased the internal trade communication of the country by building a railway system, the Indian Postal Service and better roadways, services which are still in use in the nation.
However, it would be careless to ignore the fact that Britain did this for the benefit of their own economy. The immense development of Britain’s industries were majorly due to its exploitation of India as a producer of raw materials. One country’s industrialization emerged out of de-industrializing another, India went from producing clothing to producing cotton.[7]
The adversity of this de-industrialization was reflected in wide-spread famines and mass migrations due to the subversion of existing markets. “Hundreds of thousands of displaced, now jobless textile laborers were evicted from their lands or unable to eat as wages declined, taxes increased, and the cost of rice and other foods rose … A series of crippling famines hit India in 1769, 1783, and 1791, which resulted in about 30 million deaths.”[8] These had far-lasting impacts on the Indian economy which remained an agrarian economy until decades after gaining independence from the British Crown.
European empires had hugely vested interests in China as well due to China being one of the world’s leading producers of silk, tea and porcelain. However, unlike India, China had a more unified ruling empire, the Qing Dynasty, which made it difficult for the foreign forces to infiltrate and monopolies on the Chinese economy.
The Chinese administration had adopted a policy of isolationism and had only one port, Canton (modern-day Guangzhou), open for international trade ridden with heavy limitations and not much benefit for the foreign traders. Moreover, the British also lacked the capital to trade profitably with China and hence, a barter system, mostly dependent on smuggling opium from India to China, was introduced for Chinese trade.
The dire effect of this trade was the “exponential increase of opium in China between 1790 and 1832 [which] brought about a generation of addicts and social instability.”[9] Additionally, due to the exhaustion of resources while importing more and more opium, there was limited capital available to acquire other valuable items such as silver.
To tackle this catastrophic impact of imperialism and the decreasing import of silver upon which the Chinese currency depended, the Qing dynasty banned the import of opium and subsequently engaged in a number of clashes with the British government known as the Opium Wars. Due to the surmounting power of the British armed forces, the Chinese lost these wars and had to transfer the control of Canton and other great portions of southern China over to Britain[10], mandated by the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and the Beijing Convention (1860) respectively.
Although China never officially became a imperial colony, the invasion nevertheless drastically impacted the Chinese social structure. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries flocked to the country in order to convert the population and ‘save their souls,’
While the introduction “of mathematics, science, geography and other important elements of knowledge into the syllabus and the publication of standardized textbooks by protestant missionaries for their schools and colleges was a major success in developing the education sector in China,”[11] the more impacting result was the tension which rose between the different Chinese communities.
Chinese Christians started facing discrimination and were often brutally massacred by other Chinese individuals who considered them traitors, the trailing blow of which can be seen in modern-day China as well where Muslim and Christian Chinese citizens are seen as outsiders by a vast majority of the country’s population.[12]
Even the supposedly secular Chinese government has been constantly attempting to merge Confucianism with their communist ideologies. On top of the psychological and social disruptions that imperialism created, a heavy blow was received by the centuries old Chinese political structure as well which had grim effects on the general population, much like those in the British Raj.
“European intervention and Manchu misrule made governing more difficult, and a succession of natural disasters led to famines,”[13] which further aggravated the already growing tension between different Chinese communities who were left destitute and unable to support themselves.
As in the case of India, the Chinese economy was the only element of society which slightly benefitted from colonialism. The introduction of modern medicines and better healthcare services improved average life expectancy, which in turn supported more stable economic relations within the country.
Moreover, “during the colonial era, China witnessed the introduction of modern machinery-based industrialization,”[14] but the introduction of these machineries was not sufficient for an effective establishment of industrialization until the Chinese declared itself a republic in 1912, successfully overthrowing the Qing Dynasty.
A major factor for the slow growth of industrialization in China is attributed to the Qing Dynasty’s reluctance towards the aforementioned modern-day machineries, which could have resulted from the aggressive nature of imperialism in general. While many have argued that imperialism brought about a sense of modernism in China and opened it to the international markets, the unfair trade agreements between the Chinese government and the imperialist powers “had adverse effects on the development of China’s economy and precipitated a disastrous decline in rural economy and society.”[15]
The Chinese farmers were dependent on the price regulations set by the imperialist governments and had no say in the cost evaluation of their own produce.[16] Hence, the one-sided trade agreements essentially converted China into a free-trade economy, devoid of local restrictions, which only benefitted the colonial powers.
The colonial influences in China and India bear striking resemblance, despite having their various distinctions. While India was an official British colony and China was only under heavy influence from the imperialist governments, many of the events in the imperial timelines of both the nations occurred concurrently.
“The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement in China (1850–1864) and the Mutiny in India of 1857 occurred almost simultaneously after a period of deep penetration of Western imperialist power in these societies.”[17] Both of these nations also possess deeply shared cultural and social histories as well.
Buddhism played a significant role in developing the cultural identities in both countries, and both of them were agrarian societies where businesses relied on locally-sourced produces. Even the formation of modern, unified nation-states in China and India happened simultaneously after the end of World War II.
Although both nations followed a policy of self-sufficiency after gaining independence, most of the similarities started disappearing after the end of their respective colonial annexations — primarily due to the contrasting governance systems in the two countries.
“The Chinese state under communism has launched a much more radical and successful attack on agrarian hierarchical society (including its religious aspects) than anything the Indian [socialist democratic] state has been able or willing to do. This is immediately clear when one looks at literacy rates, relative poverty, land cultivation rights, and gender relations.”[18]
However, both the nations are riddled with internal tensions and rampant corruption in its bureaucracies — caused by the Machiavellian imperial practices established in the region.
To conclusively reiterate the points put thus far, the negative outcomes of imperialism in both the nations significantly overshadow the positive ones. While the modernization of these countries is solely credited to the foreign governments which ruled over them, either directly or indirectly, it will require a long time to recover from the devastating conditions in which they were left at the time of their independences.
The colonial powers did not leave without instigating serious internal conflicts within and between the two countries. As religious tensions started increasing during the mid-1940s, the British left the sub-continent to deal with its own issues after dividing India and Pakistan.[19]
This resulted in some of the bloodiest wars in the region, the bitterness of which is still reflected in the diplomatic relations and the citizens of these two countries. The dominance of Britain over Hong Kong even after China’s independence has made it extremely difficult for the two regions to reintegrate,[20] resulting in the Chinese government’s autocratic attempt to seize control over the region.
Moreover, the formation of national borders by the British without the consent of local governments has left India and China in a constant dispute over Tibet. The tension increased exponentially after India provided sanctuary to Dalai Lama, Tibet’s holy leader, following the communist Chinese government’s persecution of Buddhists in the region.
Due to the heavy reliance of the common people on manual labor during colonial times, both the countries have been dealing with overpopulation since decades. The colonial powers abused the two countries until they saw a value in them and left abruptly to let them struggle with their internal conflicts once their priorities had changed.
Undermining these lasting adverse impacts of imperialism in the Indo-China region would be a disrespect to the hitherto struggles faced by the masses there.
[1] Stanley A. Walport, “British Raj,” Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/British-raj.
[2] Whitney Howarth, “Imperialism and De-Industrialization in India,” Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/whp-1750/xcabef9ed3fc7da7b:unit-3-industrialization/xcabef9ed3fc7da7b:3-2-global-industrialization/a/imperialism-and-de-industrialization-in-india-beta.
[3] “Impacts of British Imperialism in India,” History Crunch, December 17, 2019, https://www.historycrunch.com/british-imperialism-in-india-impacts.html#/.
[4] Stanley A. Walport.
[5] T. C A Srinivasa-Raghavan, “‘Dogs and Indians Not Allowed’,” Business Standard, August 20, 2015, https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/dogs-and-indians-not-allowed-115082001135_1.html.
[6] Sonakshi Awasthi, “These Five Indian Laws Owe Their Origin to British, but Are Still in Practice,” The Indian Express, August 11, 2018, https://indianexpress.com/article/research/these-five-indian-laws-owe-their-origin-to-british-but-are-still-in-practice-4789251/.
[7] Whitney Howarth.
[8] Whitney Howarth.
[9] Tao He, “British Imperialism in China,” Boston University Guided History, http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/tao-he/.
[10] Kenneth Pletcher, “Opium Wars,” Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars.
[11] Mohammad Shakil Wahed, “The Impact of Colonialism on 19th and Early 20th Century China,” Cambridge Journal of China Studies 11, no. 2 (2016): 55, doi:https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.1643.
[12] Peter Van Der Veer, The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 206.
[13] Bridgette Byrd O’Connor, “Struggle and Transformation in China,” Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/whp-origins/era-6-the-long-nineteenth-century-1750-ce-to-1914-ce/63-imperialism-betaa/a/read-struggle-and-transformation-in-china-beta.
[14] Mohammad Shakil Wahed.
[15] Elizabeth Lasek, “Imperialism in China: A Methodological Critique,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 15, no. 1 (1983): 50–64, doi:10.1080/14672715.1983.10404865.
[16] Thomas Rawski, “Economic Influence in China’s Relation with the West,” FOOTNOTES 13, no. 9 (August 2008), https://www.fpri.org/docs/media/Rawski.pdf.
[17] Peter Van Der Veer, 223.
[18] Peter Van Der Veer, 5.
[19] “The End of British Empire in India,” The National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/empire/g3/cs3/background.htm.
[20] Tao He.
