Deprovincializing Racial Capitalism: John Crawfurd and Settler Colonialism in India

Onur Ulas Ince

doi:10.1017/s0003055421000939

Abstract

Recent literature on racial capitalism has overwhelmingly focused on the Atlantic settler-slave formation, sidelining the history of European imperialism in Asia. This article addresses this blind spot by recovering the aborted project of British settler colonialism in India through the writings of its most prominent advocate, John Crawfurd. It is argued that Crawfurd’s vision of a liberal empire in India rejected slavery and indigenous dispossession yet remained deeply racialized in its conception of capital, labor, and value. Crawfurd elaborated a “capital theory of race,” which derived racial categories from a civilizational spectrum keyed to the capitalist organization of production. His proposals accordingly revamped the conventional terms of colonization by representing India as overstocked with labor but vacant of capital and skill that only European settlers could provide. The article concludes with the broader implications of a transimperial analytic framework for writing connected histories of racial capitalism and settler colonialism.

Highlights

It is becoming rarer to see “capitalism” invoked without a chain of adjectives in which “racial” often concatenates with “settler colonial” and “white supremacist.”
The rediscovery of capitalism in the intersectional mode has no doubt been timely and generative.1. Exceptions notwithstanding, it has been marked by a certain provincialism that overwhelmingly focuses on racial relations as they have unfolded in the Americas, a tendency shared with the “new history of capitalism” that has effectively turned out to be a new history of American capitalism (Rockman 2014)
The theoretical edge of both fields has been to frame the history of capitalism in decidedly colonial terms, exposing the roots of republican and market liberties in the subsoil of invasion, dispossession, and enslavement

Summary

Introduction

Few subjects have as quickly gained popularity in the critical quarters of social sciences and humanities as “racial capitalism.” It is becoming rarer to see “capitalism” invoked without a chain of adjectives in which “racial” often concatenates with “settler colonial” and “white supremacist.” The rediscovery of capitalism in the intersectional mode has no doubt been timely and generative.1 Exceptions notwithstanding, it has been marked by a certain provincialism that overwhelmingly focuses on racial relations as they have unfolded in the Americas, a tendency shared with the “new history of capitalism” that has effectively turned out to be a new history of American capitalism (Rockman 2014).

Results

Conclusion