Explain any four changes that came about in the social life in the new cities under colonial rule.

I POLITICAL ASPECTS

Colonialism is the establishment and maintenance, for an extended time, of rule over an alien people that is separate from and subordinate to the ruling power. It is no longer closely associated with the term “colonization,” which involves the settlement abroad of people from a mother country, as in the case of the ancient Greek colonies or the Americas. Colonialism has now come to be identified with rule over peoples of different race inhabiting lands separated by salt water from the imperial center; more particularly, it signifies direct political control by European states or states settled by Europeans, as the United States or Australia, over peoples of other races, notably over Asians and Africans. To this category should be added Japan’s rule over her dependent territories, lost after World War ii.

Some further features of the “colonial situation” are: domination of an alien minority, asserting racial and cultural superiority, over a materially inferior native majority; contact between a machine-oriented civilization with Christian origins, a powerful economy, and a rapid rhythm of life and a non-Christian civilization that lacks machines and is marked by a backward economy and a slow rhythm of life; and the imposition of the first civilization upon the second (Balandier 1951, p. 75).

The Belgians attempted in the earlier years of the United Nations to broaden the concept of colonialism to include all ethnically distinct minorities discriminated against in their home countries. Contending that such minorities were often in greater need of UN attention than the people in overseas dependencies, the Belgian thesis proposed their acceptance as nonself-governing peoples under Chapter xi of the Charter. This interpretation was generally rejected in the UN and by the colonial and former colonial peoples themselves. The most serious shortcomings of the narrower interpretation are that it excludes the Asian and other non-Russian peoples in the Soviet Union, alleged to be dominated by the Great Russians, and the Africans and Asians of South Africa, barred from the main stream of the country’s life by the apartheid doctrine. South Africa lacks the geographic separation of colonies from the imperial center but can be at least partially brought within the colonial rubric because the dominant group is white European whereas the ruled are of different race and color. The Asian peoples of the Soviet Union are usually placed outside the traditional colonial category even though Western observers often accuse the U.S.S.R. of being the colonial power par excellence.

Definitions of colonialism couched in terms of value and emotion take quite a different form. This is most true of those left-wing analysts who can find nothing but evil in colonialism. Thus the “Great Soviet Encyclopaedia” of 1953 speaks of colonization as the military or economic enslavement of any dependent country and sees it as accompanied by bestial exploitation and extermination of the indigenous population. The more leftward-inclined Asian and African leaders frequently denounce colonialism in similar terms.

Historical evolution of modern colonialism

Modern colonialism started with the fifteenth-century voyages of the Portuguese along the west coast of Africa, which in 1498 brought Vasco da Gama to India. The Portuguese and Spaniards were the first to establish their dominions overseas and clung to them long after their imperialist drive had lost its forward thrust. The Americas were wholly taken over as European domains, the Dutch and British began to stake out their claims in India and the Indies, and France had won and lost more than one empire by 1815. The first blows for anticolonialism were struck by the American Revolution and the subsequent liberation of most of Latin America.

Although Europe’s imperial expansion and growth in power continued during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, the circumstances of the times tended to discourage the extension of colonial holdings. Britain’s command of the seas and its industrial head start gave it a virtual monopoly of access to the world overseas, making unnecessary the kind of exclusive control that colonialism offered. The abandonment of mercantilism and the swing to laissez-faire and free trade made colonies less new than they had been before. Bentham had pleaded that Britain and France should rid themselves of their dependencies; Turgot saw colonies falling from the tree like ripe fruit; and Disraeli, assuming the colonies would soon be independent, regarded them in 1852 as “millstones around our neck.”

China was opened to the penetration of the West but was not subjected to colonial rule. Only in India did the British more or less consistently expand their colonial sway, and France took over Algeria and made its first encroachments in Indochina. In Britain it was even seriously proposed, not long before the start of the scramble for Africa, that there should be a withdrawal from African holdings.

A very different climate of opinion and range of action prevailed in the last quarter of the century. The restraints on colonialism were swept away in the new imperialist flood that speedily completed the partition of the world between the imperial powers. Africa was almost totally divided into European dependencies. In other areas as well, new colonies were carved out or old ones consolidated and extended, as in southeast Asia, where the Dutch, French, and British greatly expanded the scope and intensity of their rule in the Indies, Indochina, Malaya, and Burma. Changing power relationships brought a redivision of territories in the Spanish–American War, in the Boer War, and after World War i with the transfer of German and Turkish holdings.

To assess the causes of the change in the last decades of the nineteenth century would involve the whole range of theories of imperialism, but certain elements particularly related to colonialism may be singled out. Such men as Jules Ferry, Joseph Chamberlain, and Cecil Rhodes justified the revival of colonialism in terms of the needs of the new industrial system and by the demands of a Darwinian struggle between nations and races. The entry of France, Germany, and Italy, followed by Japan and the United States, into the imperial rivalry, not to mention Russia’s expansive mood, seemed to substantiate Lenin’s dictum that only colonial possession gave a complete guarantee against the risks of competitive struggle. The new wave of protectionism and governmental intervention at home restored validity to the assertion of direct political control overseas. Such control seemed particularly justified in tropical Africa, where it was arguable that only the assumption of full responsibility by a Western government could establish the conditions under which modern enterprise could function. This position found powerful support in the prevalent theories holding that certain races, notably the Teutonic or Anglo–Saxon, had a peculiar genius for government.

The transition away from colonialism

Western imperialism reached its highest point before World War i, although several decades went by before World War ii brought a full rejection of colonialism. The Spanish–American War marked the beginning and the end of any large-scale American involvement with colonialism, and the Boer War crystallized the hostility of many, in Britain and elsewhere, to imperialism. The years preceding World War i were the last in which a complacent colonialism could flourish as a part of what seemed the natural order of things. Liberal and socialist attacks on colonialism were growing, although the belief in white supremacy lingered on. The adoption of the mandates system in the Versailles peace settlement was one significant expression of the doubts that were beginning to undermine colonialism. The only significant additions to the colonial domains between the two world wars were short-lived: Mussolini’s anachronistic seizure of Ethiopia and Japan’s drive on China and, later, southeast Asia.

All the forces opposed to colonialism and sap-ping its vitality grew in strength in the interwar years. The success of the Russian Revolution brought into being a world-wide network of agitation against imperialism, and nationalist activities and organizations were multiplying in the dependent territories themselves. In the imperial centers the will to maintain empire steadily declined with the spread of ideas hostile to racialism and colonial domination. World War ii greatly hastened the process through the Japanese displacement of the colonial powers in southeast Asia, the further weakening of those powers at home, the intensification of anti-imperialist opinion throughout the world, and the atmosphere of change that permeated many of the colonies.

After 1945 the flood tide of anticolonialism swept away the colonial system with a speed and thoroughness that matched colonialism’s advance at the close of the nineteenth century. The possession of colonies, so long a matter of pride and prestige, now became a sin to be expiated only, if at all, by the granting of immediate independence. The League of Nations’ indifference to the problem was replaced by the profound involvement of the United Nations in the process of decolonization.

Attitudes toward colonialism

Attitudes toward colonialism have varied greatly from time to time and from place to place. Most frequently, colonialism has been accepted as merely one manifestation of the ever-present truth that the strong dominate the weak. Although the missionary element has rarely been wholly absent, the usual presumption has been that every colony does or ought to exist for the benefit of the mother country.

The justifications of colonial rule cover a wide range, often resting upon the right of the conqueror, perhaps bolstered by a claim of racial superiority. Where the interests of the dependent peoples are taken into account, it is held that an extended period of guardianship is necessary to enable them to “stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Here the mission civilisatrice and the “white man’s burden” come into play. Some French spokesmen for colonialism acclaim it as the universal instrument for the spread of civilization, pointing to themselves and many of their neighbors as products of Roman colonization.

The defense of colonialism is likely to adopt some variant of the criterion laid down by John Stuart Mill, who, in the case of peoples not yet ready for representative government, defended alien rule on the ground that the colonial mode of government was as legitimate as any other if it was the one which in the existing state of civilization of the subject people most facilitated their transition to a higher stage of improvement. Lord Lugard (1922) introduced another element in proposing that the colonial powers were under a dual mandate obligating them to secure the advancement of their dependent territories and to develop them in the interest of the world at large.

The assumptions on which such defenses of colonialism rest have been increasingly subject to challenge in recent decades. The more moderate present-day approach tentatively accepts colonial rule if the authorities devote themselves to preparing their wards for independence, but growing skepticism as to the trustworthiness of the colonial powers has led to the insistence that they accept international supervision in so doing. The UN Charter looked to independence or self-government for all dependent peoples, tightened control over the trust territories surviving from the mandates system, and brought all nonself-governing territories into the international public domain.

The more radical approach denounces the imposition of alien rule as always evil under all circumstances. This starting point eliminates all controversy as to whether one colonial system or policy is better than another by blanket condemnation of all, leaving immediate independence as the only way out. Building on the anticolonial resolution of the 1955 Bandung Conference, the UN General Assembly in its 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence gave this position international recognition. This declaration denounced the alien subjugation of peoples as a denial of human rights and an impediment to peace, proclaimed the right of all peoples to self-determination without conditions or reservations, and repudiated the doctrine of tutelage by asserting that inadequacy of political, economic, social, or educational preparedness shall never serve as a pretext for delaying independence. Asian and African opinion has constantly been moving toward this radical position, pillorying colonialism as the source of most of the world’s troubles and proclaiming that the higher law of anticolonialism renders all remnants of the era of European colonialism illegitimate and open to attack.

The anticolonialists project such doctrines into the future through the use of the concept of neocolonialism, which accuses the imperialists, among whom the Americans figure prominently, of regarding the independence that the colonial peoples have wrung from them as only the occasion to adopt more subtle tactics of domination and exploitation. Overt colonial rule is thus replaced by economic and other forms of control, including the provision of aid, and the nominally free countries are Balkanized and manipulated in the imperial interest.

The colonial and former colonial powers see what has been happening in recent decades in a very different light. They reject the charge of being oppressors and exploiters and point to their accomplishments in advancing their dependent peoples in every sphere, including the granting of independence to hundreds of millions since 1945. However, they differ greatly in the way in which they have envisaged their colonial mission. The position of four of them—Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal—may be briefly sketched to indicate the wide range of variation.

Varying colonial policies

Great Britain

With the exception of the United States, whose colonial holdings were far smaller, Great Britain could adapt itself more easily to the new dispensation than any of the other colonial powers. The entire British policy of regarding colonies not as integral parts of the mother country but as countries with their own distinctive ways of life facilitated autonomous development. The colonial peoples were given an increasing share in the governing councils, public service, and judiciary and thus were started on what came to be a standard cycle culminating in self-government and then independence. This was a cycle through which the older dominions had passed and which was tested again in India, Ceylon, and elsewhere in the interwar decades. World War ii brought both a heightening of the belief that colonial rule imposed responsibility for the well-being of dependent peoples and an acceptance of the need to move speedily to end colonialism. India’s independence, in 1947, started a process of decolonization that dismantled the British empire in Asia and most of Africa and the West Indies; and although difficulties have cropped up where there is a substantial amount of white settlement or race mixture, as in the Rhodesias, Kenya, and British Guiana, the British have been able to transform most colonies into independent states within the framework of long-established policies that were already in operation.

France

France, on the other hand, was forced to undertake a basic reversal in direction. In contrast to the British, the French inclined always to a policy of cultural, economic, and political assimilation. It was characteristic of French policy that the 1944 Brazzaville conference of leading colonial officials decreed that France’s work of civilization in her colo read less