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To what degree were the global strategies of Western governments in the twentieth century informed by a colonialist understanding?
In the twentieth century, the wind of change was blowing in the global world, according to a historically significant speech addressed by the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. Macmillan claimed the global policies of the British and other Western colonist countries would take account of the growth of national consciousness in African and Asia regions. However, this assignment is going to argue that, in the twentieth century, the most major global strategies made by Western governments were still chiefly informed by a colonialist understanding of the world, through examples about the causes of the decolonization of India, and the American changing attitudes of European empires and the Marshall Plan.
“The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.”
· Harold Macmillan
During the speech, Macmillan (1960) believed the decolonization would happen due to the kindness of the British Empire to “take account of” the feelings of the people in their colonized regions, and yet the British strategy of leaving India in 1947 did not mean any kindness and made a massive migration to divided India into three parts. Firstly, the British left because they focused on their own interests, and maintaining control of India at that time was not profitable but became a huge financial burden to the British Empire. The economic conditions in Britain were affected by the Second World War, Harris (2001) also states that the old imperial economic systems of the British Empire collapsed after the war. Even though Britain was one of the winning countries in the Second World War, the British’s imperial power was weakened by the huge military spending during the war and the loss of great numbers of population and labor, moreover, there were many cities and public facilities need to be rebuilt as well. A statistic given by Moore (2008), shows before they left, the British government was in debt to India at approximately three billion pounds with a daily increase of seventy million pounds.
Furthermore, during the colonizing history of the British Empire, repressions of overseas resistance always cost a lot of their budgets, while the poor British economic conditions made the British governments start to feel powerless about repressing more resistance. The meltdown of British imperial power after the war provided a chance for Indians to attain freedom, which means increasing numbers of local revolts. In the August of 1942, a civil disobedience movement launched by the Indian Congress party commenced, this large-scale national campaign was very strong at resisting British control. Even though it was smashed by the British in the end, Marwick (2002) argue this campaign further made the British realize the situation that they could not afford any more similar upcoming resistances in India. Eventually, in the colonialist understanding, when the British considered their association with India was not profiting anymore, the decolonization of India would allow the British to disclaim their responsibility and no longer have a financial obligation to it. As Harris (2001) also pointed out that releasing colonies only caused small economic losses to empires.
The second reason why the decolonization of India in 1947 was not taken into account by the British government but a colonialist self-centered strategy, was the last action before the British left, they intentionally created the partition of India with massive migration and chaotic wars in India. White (2009) argued that the migration due to the partition of India is the largest migration compelled by political strategy in history. Although, the British government finally decided to let India become independent, the way the left was the complete opposite of what they asserted in the “Wind of Change” speech.
The chief leader of the Congress Party was Gandhi who advocated Indian unity, just like how it always was in its history for hundreds of years, even though there were different religious believers existed in the same society, they live together peacefully and governed together by themselves in the Mughal Empire which ended in 1707, then the British took control and started colonizing India. Besides the Congress Party, there was another political party in India that wanted to have a total Muslim society that differed from other religious believers in India. The British caught Gandhi in prison and gave the ruling power to the Muslim politician who was going to divide British India by religious beliefs. Therefore, after the British left India in a hurry and mess, as the chosen political party’s wish, the Partition of India made India separate into three parts and led to a great political migration. In the progress of decolonization and the independence of India, all the Hindus had to move to or stayed in India, and all the Muslims had to move to Pakistan or Bangladesh, countless conflicts and violence had arisen in India, which was not British kindness, but the strategy made by a selfish colonialist government.
Giving important aid as financial support to the European alliances through the Marshall Plan and helping the old Western European empires, such as the British, the French, and the Dutch on rebuilding their economies after the Second World War, was a significant political strategy of the USA government. In order to gain more power in the Cold War conflict, the USA needed to strengthen its European allies which were relatively weaker than the USA itself, and then the Marshall Plan was enacted in 1948 and provided more than fifteen billion US dollars to European empires. For instance, the Dutch heavily relied on US aid to reconquer their colony in Indonesia and keep the imperial economic system working. Thus, they were good at attracting US aid according to Grenville (2005), the state of Washington aided the Netherlands with five hundred million US dollars for the reconstruction of the Dutch East Indies Empire.
However, the support for helping the revival of colonialism through the Marshall Plan was demonstratively contradictory with the American argument in Atlantic Charter, as President Roosevelt once claimed in 1943 about the USA would justly terminate the imperial Empires. While the plan was exploiting the African and Asian colonies and putting people back in the imperialist’s control, then the US government started to use excuses to justify the Marshall Plan. Behrman (2007) gave one of the examples, Washington asserted that rapid decolonization during the late 1940s to the early 1950s would badly undermine the European economies, and also let to instabilities in the African and Asia regions. The first half of this statement was valid because the economic system of Western European Empires had depended on their overseas colonies for centuries, but the instabilities in Africa and Asia were not mainly due to the withdrawal of imperialists in their homeland. Furthermore, Djelic (1998) shows that the cruel treatment and violence used on smashing local resistance by the colonizers were the main cause of instability in most of the colonized region.
The changing attitudes about Empires from USA governments were surely informed by colonialist understanding, when they claimed themselves as the justice side in the Cold War period and the World police, they asserted it was the American’s duty to bring the end of Empires in a moral sense. When they needed strong alliances in the conflict against USSR, they broke the announcement which was made with the issue of the Atlantic Charter, then aided old Empires and resurrected colonialism worldwide.
To conclude, the global strategies of Western governments in the twentieth century such as the decolonization of India and the Marshall Plan were mostly informed by the colonialist understanding to maximize their profits and mainly concentrated on their own benefit.
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