Nineteenth century imperialism and structural transformation in colonized countries

Abstract

The advent of industrialization in Europe in the eighteenth century transformed the economic structures of the early industrializers, so that secondary industry and services came to provide increasingly larger proportions of output and employment. As an integral part of this process of industrialization, the pioneering capitalist countries conquered territories in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, ushering in the era of imperialism. Private property rights and free labour were the central features of a liberal ideology that, as discussed by Farshad Araghi in Chapter 5, was propagated by the imperial powers in the nineteenth century to justify their formal and informal control of much of the world. However, despite such promises, in most colonized countries the objective of imperialism was to reshape land and labour regimes so as to facilitate a transfer of resources to the metropolitan country, a process that I have called ‘export-led exploitation’ (Bagchi 1982: Ch. 2). Imperial conquests began in the sixteenth century and reached theirapogee in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Bagchi 1982: Ch. 3-4, 2005). European conquest was followed in most of the larger colonies by the greater insinuation of commercial markets into economic activities and even the growth of some large-scale industry. Nonetheless, these colonies failed to industrialize under imperialism. The imperial powers reconfigured prevailing social and economic mechanisms governing the control of labour and land, using violence and rigged market transactions so as to favour metropolitan capital and the imperial state, extracting surplus from the colonies and semicolonies that was largely reinvested in the imperialist countries. The imperialist countries therefore ruled their domain not with the objectiveof creating institutions that would usher in capitalism, as they knew it in their own countries, but with that of consolidating their rule and extracting tribute for the metropolitan country. The structures of control in the colonies in most areas of economic and social life were shaped by imperialism so as to impede the transformation of the economy away from the predominantly rural primary sector and the growth of free markets. Of course, imperialobjectives were contested by the ruled, and their resistance and movements also greatly influenced the outcomes that were witnessed. This chapter explores the main reasons for the lack of structuraltransformation in the colonial and semicolonial countries in the era in which the North-Western European countries and their overseas offshoots were experiencing industrialization and high rates of economic growth. It does this, firstly, by examining some prevailing myths in the understanding of rural social structures under imperialism. Next, it summarizes the main processes that were witnessed in the colonized countries in the nineteenth century under imperialism, before reviewing these processes in somewhat more detail in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Cumulatively, it is demonstrated that global capitalism and capitalist colonialism were born together, and that colonialism was the most important factor preventing the upward movement of incomes and the rural and social transformation of colonies in Africa and Asia and the newly independent semicolonial states of Latin America.