| How It Began
Felix Greene In this excerpt from his book The Enemy: What Every American Should Know About Imperialism (Vintage Books, 1971), British correspondent, film maker, and lecturer Felix Greene talks about empire from the perspective of a British national. From The Enemy by Felix Greene, copyright � 1971 by Felix Greene. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. It was formerly the custom in British schools, even during my own childhood, to hang a large map of the world on the wall of each classroom. The dominant color was red, for this was before the Russian Revolution, and red had not yet been appropriated by the Communists. India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, huge areas of the African continent running from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope, Samoa, Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong, the West Indies, Ceylon -- all colored red. And scattered across every ocean hundreds of islands and small outposts, obscure harbors and refueling stations -- also red. Here on these maps, for the edification of British youth, was spread the British Empire in all its majesty. One-quarter of the land surface of the world, one-fifth of the human population intimately linked with or controlled by our own tiny island. It made us feel very superior. We took for granted that this vast medley of people, of every possible creed and color, were under us because they wanted to be. Who better could they be under? We British were just; our rule was benign. The young men we sent out to administer the empire were hardworking, they lived on a pittance, had enormous self-reliance and were incorruptible. Were we not demonstrating to these backward peoples what good government was? Were we not leading them towards the infinite consolations of Christian civilization? Were we not teaching them, with the patience of a father toward his children, that it was part of God's plan that young men wear trousers and that the breasts of young women be covered? In our generosity we were even providing them with schools where they could learn English and could broaden their minds by reciting Shakespeare.** We built hospitals and clinics to improve their health, and agricultural colleges where they could learn how to grow their crops better. No wonder they respected us. It gave us a curious thrill, as we looked on these maps, to think that all these people scattered around the world saluted our flag and sang "God Save the King" -- our king. What was more, this admirable state of affairs was clearly destined to continue indefinitely because we British were more clever and more humane than the Romans and Spaniards and the others who had tried to run an empire and had made a mess of it. Besides, we were the richest people in the world, our fleet was by far the most powerful and so our empire would go on and on forever, Amen. That, in all its fraudulent innocence, was the vision of the world entertained by our young minds and most of the British people not so many years ago. No one of course mentioned such words as exploitation, expropriation or forced labor. No one told us that the schools "we" provided were paid for by the people we ruled; that the "medical services" on which we prided ourselves often provided only one doctor for 10 thousand or more people (and in one case, Nigeria, only one for 34 thousand people); and that the increased profits resulting from improved agricultural methods benefited the plantation owner and not those who labored for him. ------------------- 'Writing in the New Statesman (April 4, 1969), Sir Jock Campbell gives a marvelous example of the non-education that was provided, until quite recently, in the British colonies. "I was shown over a high school in British Guiana a year or two before it became independent Guyana. The English Literature class were reading an erotic short story in Cornish dialect; for Geography the children were studying the [English] Lake District; for Agriculture, the dust bowl of the American Middle West. They were doing sums in pounds, shillings and pence (when the 'colony' used dollars and cents). And the girls' domestic economy form room was bedecked with ... posters showing how to buy, cook, serve, and carve beef: most of the class were Hindus." No one told us about the conditions of work in the African diamond mines or in the cotton fields of India. No one talked about relative infant mortality rates or expectancy of life. We heard a lot about the cost of running the empire, and the enormous effort it took (the "white man's burden" we called it). But we never heard a word about the millions of pounds sterling (far, far more than the visible budgetry costs) that flowed back each year to British investors in the form of interest and profit; or the millions made by the bankers who financed it all, and by the insurance and shipping companies; or of the salaries and pensions paid out to Britishers from the colonial funds. No one explained to us that much of the cost of the empire was borne by the colonial people themselves. Nor that the costs that were paid for were paid by the British people as a whole through taxation, while the benefits, the fabulous financial benefits, were being reaped by a relatively small handful of individuals. People who run empires have to be disingenuous, and they must not ask themselves too many questions. They need to have at their command a rhetoric of justification that will shield them from realities. They need to be serenely confident that they are doing humanity good. But why bother with justifications' when none were needed? Words and ideas only get in the way, and can be disturbing. There, on the map, was something more real than words. The British Empire -- solid and permanent as Gibraltar. Those maps, of course, no longer hang in British classrooms. The old methods of empire have changed. Such control as the British ruling class still retains is more indirect, less visible. A new empire, the American Empire, has replaced the British Empire as the leading imperialist power. Exercising its power in a structurally different way, but nevertheless seeking the same ends and often with the same means, it is the American Empire which today bestrides the world. Though militarily and industrially vastly more powerful than the British Empire ever was, the new Empire is subject to greater challenge and greater uncertainty and is much less likely to last as long. Empires -- domination of one power over another -- have been a feature throughout recorded history. China, Egypt, Greece, Rome -- all exercised control over peoples outside their own formal borders. These empires of antiquity were primarily concerned with tribute or the plunder of wealth. It was for treasure that Spain sent her galleons and armed caballeros to Mexico and South America; it was plunder that made Spain the richest country in the world in the sixteenth century. The emphasis then was on the looting of gold and silver. Our concern is not with the empires of long ago but of today. A central characteristic of modern imperialism is its emphasis on a different kind of plunder -- the pillage of other countries' wealth through unequal trade and through investment which draws out far more wealth than it puts in. The people of Britain (or more precisely, a relatively small controlling group within Britain) were the first to apply these new methods of plunder on a truly global scale. They became, before long, the real professionals of empire building. The system they developed, in its magnitude, diversity and in the complexity of its operations, dwarfed all previous empires. Never before had so many people � one quarter of the entire human race � been subjugated and put to work for the enrichment of so few. What were the conditions that made it possible for the British to develop such a wondrously profitable system? Of course, innumerable factors contributed to the success, but we can isolate four closely related conditions that were of basic importance: The new technology of the industrial revolution. The availability of an abundant supply of cheap labor. The accumulation of capital. The development of foreign markets. The New Technology As the new steam-powered factories increased their production capacity, the nations of Europe soon realized that commodities could be produced faster than they could be sold in the home market. This does not mean that there was a "surplus" productive capacity in any real sense. The workers themselves needed the goods, but their wages were so low that they did not have the money with which to buy. At this early stage capitalism was already confronted by its own fundamental contradiction -- the capacity to expand production faster than the market can absorb it. The fundamental, built-in, inescapable contradiction of capitalism can (even at the cost of over-simplification) be briefly summarized as follows: The profit an employer makes is secured by selling goods at a price higher than they cost him to make. The total earnings of workers can never match the full value of what they produce or there would be no profit. What is paid out in wages is therefore never sufficient to purchase all that is produced. This basic contradiction is hidden by the complexities of the economic process, and the consequences of the inability of purchasing power to absorb all that is produced can be postponed by enhancing consumer demand by buying on credit -- but this merely stimulates demand today at the expense of tomorrow. There are other methods of boosting consumer demand, by stage-engendered monetary expansion, governmental consumption for military spending and so on. Ultimately, however, the decisive market factor is consumption by individuals. As long as the total amount paid out in wages and salaries is less than the value of the goods manufactured (and in a capitalist system based on profit it must be less) available purchasing power will never be able to absorb the output of consumer goods. British industry, first in the field, was technically the most advanced and the most efficiently managed. In almost every branch of technical innovation British engineers led the way. Others merely followed. Thus the British gained a clear start over other industrializing countries of Europe. Cheap Labor Britain could not have advanced her industrialization so rapidly if, just when owners of factories needed it most, an abundant supply of cheap labor had not made itself available. Britain had been an agricultural country, but with wool becoming Britain's chief export, the landowners found raising sheep more profitable than renting land to tenants. Thousands of peasant farmers were evicted from their cottages, uprooted, often with no warning, from the land that they and their fathers had used from time immemorial. What caused even more widespread suffering were the Acts under which public or "common land" was enclosed. In accordance with age-old tradition all men were free to use these common lands for the grazing of sheep and goats; in the economy of the peasant farmers access to this land was an essential element without which they could not survive. Between 1760 and 1810 no fewer than 2,765 Enclosure Acts were passed. The human suffering they caused is beyond imagination. Thus it happened that when the new factories that were springing up required labor, tens of thousands of homeless and hungry agricultural workers, with their wives and children, were forced into the cities in search of work, any work, under any conditions, that would keep them alive. The emergence of a huge, property-less and impoverished working class was precisely what the new industrialists wished for. They could, and did, dictate their own conditions. The laboring people of Britain were subjected to treatment so inhuman that today we would have difficulty in believing it if the official records were not there for us to read. For wages that would barely keep them alive workers were herded into huge slums that had no sewerage, no adequate water supply, no beauty, no cultural amenities, no playgrounds. The company-built hovels in which they had to live were of such meanness that today it would be illegal to use them to house animals. In the cotton mills near Manchester the workers were required to work fourteen hours a day in a temperature of eighty-four degrees. Children were cheaper to hire than adults, so children frequently became the wage earners while their parents remained unemployed. Pauper children, bought from the Guardians of the Poor, were cheaper still and were shipped in groups from London to the mining towns of South Wales and the northern cotton mills. Boys of nine were sent down the mines to work for fourteen hours a day hewing coal; and in the cotton mills of Lancashire girls of seven would work as "apprentices" from five in the morning until eight at night -- a fifteen-hour work day. In ways such as these did those with wealth and power achieve the continuation of the supply of cheap labor -- the second of the 4 basic factors which made the development of the empire possible. For those looking only at the statistics, Britain showed extraordinary advances during the industrial revolution. Production of cotton, of iron and coal and of every commodity was being multiplied tenfold. Profits were soaring. Wealth was pouring into Britain from all over the world. For the few it was a field day. Money, money, money ... it was rolling in. Money for country mansions; money for huge London houses; money for carriages and servants and elegant clothes; money for weekend parties and tours around the Continent; money for plays and entertainment and fancy-dress balls; money for music and education and seaside holidays; money just for fun. This rich man's London might have been a million miles away from the dark cities where the great mass of the British people were existing in inconceivable degradation. In 1836, at a time of unprecedented "prosperity," thousands of people were literally starving. This was the cost that successive generations of the British working class paid for Britain's industrial leadership, which made possible the "glories of empire." The Accumulation of Capital The third major factor which made possible the new methods of global plunder was the accumulation of capital. This derives from the exploitation of the workers which we have just described. Capital is the wealth produced by the workers but expropriated from them. To put it differently, the worker produces a given amount of value but he is paid not the full amount he has produced but only a part -- the existential minimum necessary to guarantee his return to the same work tomorrow. The value he produced but did not receive, that value which was appropriated (stolen would be the better word) is the source of all capital. "Capital," said Marx, "is but yesterday's frozen or dead labor." This is true whether the capital is represented by money, machinery, factories, or anything else. Accumulated capital, arising from the exploitation of workers yesterday, perpetuates the enslavement of the living workers today. But there is one question on which we must be clear if we are to understand the workings of capitalism. At what stage is wealth created? The capitalist convinces himself that it is he who has created wealth, capital, when he sells an article for more than it cost him. But in actual fact wealth is not created at the time when a commodity is sold but when it is produced. It is true that it is only when he sells an article and gets paid for it that the capitalist can lay his hands on the excess value -- that portion that was not paid to the worker. But this value was already contained in the product itself before it was marketed. The real issue is not whether the accumulation of capital is "wrong" -- for capital is an essential element of progress -- but who owns it, who controls it, and for whose benefit it is to be used. The relatively small group of capitalists who developed British industry had no doubts as to the answers. The capital belonged to them, would be controlled by tl1em and would benefit them. This was, as they saw it, the natural law of things. It never occurred to them to question it. The Development of Foreign Markets From the sixteenth century Britain had recognized the importance of the seas as her main trade highway, and had thereafter built a powerful fleet of merchant and war ships. The aim was trade, and particularly trade which exploited the profitability of cheap labor in the overseas territories. There was the slave trade, organized as a "business-like" operation, in which the British ships plied the "triangle" of trade. The ships transported slaves from Africa to America, carried tobacco and cotton from America to Bristol and Liverpool, and then returned with manufactured goods (including guns, whiskey and Bibles) to the African ports. There were also the products of the East which were handled by the East India Company -- a powerful government organ in its own right. Though the British took the lead in expanding their foreign markets, there was nevertheless a continuous bitter rivalry among the newly industrialized powers. The French, the Germans, the Belgians, the Dutch, as well as the British, were faced with the same problem (factories able to produce more goods than could be sold at home) and all were seeking the same solutions. The wars between France and Britain from 1792 to 1815 were essentially a struggle for markets and for sources of raw material which could be obtained at the least possible cost through the use of cheap labor. The century from Britain's victory over France at Waterloo in 1815 to the start of World War I in 1914, the century during which Britain exercised to the highest degree her world-wide power and plundered her wealth of other nations most successfully, is often referred to as a peaceful period. Pax Britannica it is often called. It was a century of almost continuous strife. Only by the use of aggressive military force was Britain able to seize one after the other, her overseas possessions. 1814 British Guiana 1816 Gambia, Sikkim 1819 Singapore 1821 The Gold Coast 1826 Assam 1833 Falkland Islands 1839 Aden 1840 New Zealand 1841 Hong Kong 1842 Natal, Sind 1846 North Borneo 1849 The Punjab 1852 Burma 1853 Nagpur 1854 Baluchistan 1861 Nigeria 1868 Basutoland 1874 Fiji 1878 Cyprus 1882 Egypt 1884 Somaliland 1887 Zululand 1888 Southern Rhodesia, Sarawak 1890 Kenya, Zanzibar 1891 Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland 1894 Uganda 1900 Transvaal, Orange Free State, Tonga 1906 Swaziland The West Indies, India, Australia, Ceylon, Mauritius and part of North America were already colonized, and with the defeat of the French, Britain had assumed control over large areas of the North American continent. That was only the start. Here is the timetable of British penetration into almost every corner of the world during this century of "peace." There were only fifteen years in that century when Britain was not engaged in some bloody military struggle. So much for Pax Britannica! The development of Britain's global system of exploitation would have been impossible if the small group with capital had not learned to pool their resources, to gather together, to concentrate, to centralize large reserves of money -- the capital that was never rightfully theirs in the first place. Because of the volume of her trade, London became the financial center of the world. Merchant bankers combined the role of both merchants and bankers. A network of credit agencies was established throughout the empire whose sole purpose was to encourage British investments and trade and to increase profits. Branches of London banks were set up in all colonial territories. It was capital that enabled the factories and ships to be built, credits to be extended to cover purchases, the necessary reserves to be built up for insurance. At certain moments the immediate availability of large sums of money enabled the British to jump ahead of others. When, for example, the British Government heard that financial control of the Suez Canal could be seized (it was then owned by the French) if 4 million pounds were found immediately, the Government turned to the bankers and the money was provided overnight. Those making commodities and selling them abroad, the bankers making money by extending credit, the insurance companies, the shipping companies, the entrepreneurs were not of course engaging in their activities for the "glory of empire" or "to bring civilization to the backward people" -- this was merely the rhetoric. They were out for themselves, they were out for profit. And they made it. The empire, this intricate, complex system which was using the cheap labor in Britain and the still cheaper labor in the colonies as a means of amassing wealth, seemed foolproof. Outwardly it gave every appearance of stability and strength. Yet, even as it grew, there were intimations that the system contained its own built-in contradictions which must sooner or later prove fatal. On the eve of World War I, Britain's foreign investment represented one quarter of Britain's total national assets. One-half of Britain's annual savings were being placed abroad. This exported capital brought in huge annual revenues in the form of interest and profits, but it also brought consequences which were detrimental to the economy as a whole. Britain in this sense had become a parasite, drawing its nourishment from the toil of millions overseas. Capital that should have been invested to keep factories in Britain up-to-date went abroad where the returns were greater. Inevitably Britain's industrial plant began to suffer and her manufacturers were less and less able to produce goods in competition with other countries. By 1870 Britain's industrial monopoly was lost. Germany and the United States, especially, were not ready to see Britain's position of supremacy continue unchallenged. Rising later on the industrial scene, they could take advantage of more advanced technology, more modern factories, and little by little these countries began to out-produce and under-sell Britain. Britain was saddled with old machinery and cheap labor scattered in distant colonies, while a growing imperialist rival, the United States, used "free" wage labor and slavery (a "colony" much more conveniently placed within her own territory) to amass sufficient capital eventually to render British factories obsolete. On the eve of World War I Britain was still very powerful. The empire at that time consisted of fifty-five countries, 12 million square miles of territory, over 400 million people. The British navy was the most powerful in the world, and British merchant ships represented 50 per cent of the world's tonnage. The pound was the currency against which all other currencies were measured. But both the United States and Germany had out-stripped British industrial production, and Germany was challenging Britain's naval supremacy on the high seas. In Germany Britain saw still another threat. For several centuries Britain had realized that she would become vulnerable if ever Europe was unified under a single power. Britain had already fought three major continental wars to prevent such unification. She had fought Philip of Spain, Louis of France and Napoleon. Now, in 1914, she felt herself threatened again. Not only was Germany encroaching on Britain's commercial position overseas, but, with plans for a huge expansion of naval forces, her supremacy on the seas. Added to these fears was the possibility that if Germany were victorious in another war she might gain power over all of continental Europe. Britain has no choice. Though in an already weakened position, Britain and her empire had to turn to meet this challenge in the first of two prolonged, destructive, costly and bloody wars. Britain was on the winning side of both, but they brought to an end her position of world supremacy. Just how quickly Britain's military power was supplanted can be seen by the decline of her naval forces. Until after World War I the British navy was supreme; by 1922, under the Washington Treaty, she "granted" equality of naval strength to the United States. For a short period in 1947 the British navy was down to a total active strength of one cruiser and four destroyers. Every empire at the height of its success has appeared indestructible and permanent. With such wealth and massive power at its disposal, such sophistication and administrative experience in its leadership, why should it ever be eclipsed? Yet within every empire there are built-in antagonisms which make its eventual decline inevitable. Today the world supremacy of the United States appears as unassailable as did that of Britain at the height of her imperial might. But America's present power and wealth cannot in any conceivable way prevent her economy from declining. For this very power and wealth require the continued economic enslavement of other peoples and these peoples (and not only in the poor countries) are no longer prepared to submit. All empires rise and fall, and the American empire will be no exception. As the decline of Britain shows us, when empires begin to crumble they may crumble fast. |