Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  All the profit from investments did not come over to England. Much of it remained in the debtor country and was re-invested by British capitalists. So that the total volume of British investments abroad went on increasing without any fresh money or goods being sent out from England. In India we are frequently reminded of the vast British investments in the railways, canals, and numerous other works, and an enormous sum is said to represent the “debt” of India to England on this account. Indians challenge this on many counts, but we need not go into that here. But it is worth noting that these huge investments do not represent much fresh capital from England. They represent the re-investment of profits made in India. In the days of Plassey and Clive, as I have told you, a huge amount of gold and treasure was actually taken away from India to England. After that the exploitation of India took different and less obvious forms, and part of the profits of it were invested in the country.

  England found that the only possible way to carry on the profession of money-lending on a world scale was to accept payment of interest in goods. She could not insist on gold, as I have shown you above. This had two important results. England allowed foodstuffs to come from abroad to feed her population, and allowed her agriculture to suffer. She concentrated on manufacturing articles industrially for sale abroad, and ignored the plight of her farmers. If she could get cheap food from abroad, why should she trouble to raise it herself? And if she could make more profit by industry, why should she bother about agriculture? So England became a purely industrial country, dependent for her food on foreign countries.

  The second result was that she adopted the policy of free trade—that is, she did not tax the foreign goods that came to her ports, or taxed them very little. As she was the leading industrial country, she had little to fear for a long time from any competition as regards manufactured goods. Taxing foreign goods thus meant taxing foreign food and raw material that came to her. This would have raised the price of the people’s food and of her own manufactured articles. Besides, if she stopped foreign goods from coming in by heavy taxation, how were the foreign debtor countries to pay their tribute to England? They could only pay in goods. This was the reason why England adopted free trade when all other industrial countries were protectionist—that is, were protecting their growing industries by taxing foreign goods coming to them. The United States, France, Germany were all protectionist.

  The nineteenth-century English policy of neglecting agriculture and concentrating on industry and getting food from outside and living in comfort on tribute from abroad seemed a profitable and agreeable one. But it had its dangers, as are obvious enough now. The policy was based on England’s supremacy in industry and on her huge foreign trade. But if this supremacy should go, and with it her foreign trade dwindle, what then? How would she then pay for her food? And even if she could pay for the food, how would she get it from abroad if a powerful enemy stood in the way? During the last World War her people almost starved, because her food supply was nearly cut off. An even greater danger than this is the progressive dwindling of her foreign trade because of foreign competition. This competition became marked in the ’eighties of the nineteenth century, when the United States of America and Germany began to seek foreign markets. Gradually other nations became industrialized and joined this quest, and now almost the whole world is to some extent industrialized. Each country is trying to make most of the goods it needs and to keep out foreign goods. India wants to keep out foreign cloth. What, then, is Lancashire to do, and the other British industries dependent on foreign trade?

  These are hard questions for England to answer, and there seem to be hard times in store for her. She cannot even retire into her shell and live a self-sufficing existence, producing her own food and necessities. The modern world is far too complicated for this. And even if she could cut herself off, it is doubtful if she could produce enough food for her over-grown population. But these questions are of today; they had little importance in the nineteenth century. So England then gambled with her future and banked on continued supremacy. It was a great game, and the stakes were high—to be the leading nation of the world or collapse. There was no middle stage for her. But the Victorian middle-class Englishman was not lacking in self-confidence or conceit. His long prosperity and success, and leadership in industry and business, had convinced him of his superiority over the rest of mankind. He looked down on all foreigners. The peoples of Asia and Africa were, of course, backward and barbarous, apparently created to give the English an opportunity of exercising their inborn genius for ruling and improving the backward races of mankind. Even the peoples of the European Continent were ignorant and superstitious foreigners. The English were the chosen people at the pinnacle of civilization, the vanguard marching at the head of Europe, which itself was at the head of the rest of the world. The British Empire was a semi-divine institution which put the final seal on the greatness of the race. Lord Curzon, who was a Viceroy of India thirty years ago, and who was one of the ablest Englishmen of his time, dedicated a book of his to “those who believe that the British Empire is, under Providence, the greatest influence for good that the world has ever seen”.

  All this that I am writing about the Victorian Englishman seems rather far-fetched and extraordinary, and perhaps you may think that I am trying to be humorous at his expense. It is strange that any sensible person should behave in this way and adopt this amazing, conceited, and self-righteous attitude. But national groups will believe almost anything, if it tickles their vanity and is to their advantage. Individuals would never think of acting in this crude and vulgar manner towards their neighbours, but nations have no such compunction. We are all, unfortunately, made that way, and strut about praising our own national virtues. The Victorian Englishman was a type which is found, with minor changes, almost everywhere. All the European nations have had their national prototypes of him, so also in America and Asia.

  The prosperity of England and western Europe was due to the growth of industrial capitalism. This capitalism marched ahead in its ceaseless search for profits. Success and profits were the only gods that drew the worship of the people, for capitalism had nothing to do with religion or morality. It was the doctrine of cut-throat competition between individuals and nations, and the devil take the hindmost! The Victorians prided themselves on their tolerance in religion. They believed in progress and science, and their very success in business and empire proved to them that they were the elect who had survived in the struggle. Had not Darwin said so? Their tolerance in matters of religion was really indifference. An English writer, R.H. Tawney, has described this state of affairs rather well. God, he says, had been put in His place, away from earthly matters. “There was a limited monarchy in Heaven, as well as upon earth!” This was the view of the prosperous bourgeoisie, but churchgoing and religion were encouraged for the masses, in the hope that this might keep them from revolutionary ideas. Tolerance in religion did not mean tolerance in other matters. There was no tolerance in matters to which the majority attached importance, and under any strain all tolerance disappears. The British Government in India is supremely tolerant about religion, and makes a virtue of it. As a matter of fact it does not care in the least what happens to religion. But even a little criticism of its politics or anything that it does makes it prick up its ears, and no one can then accuse it of tolerance! The greater the strain, the greater the fall; and if the strain is great enough, the government sets aside all pretence of tolerance and indulges in open and unabashed terrorism. We see this in India today. A short while ago I read in the papers that a boy hardly out of his ’teens had been sentenced to eight years’ rigorous imprisonment for writing threatening letters to some British officials!

  The growth of capitalist industry brought many changes. Capitalism functioned on a bigger and bigger scale; it was more profitable and more efficient for big concerns to function than small ones. So huge combines and trusts grew up, controlling whole industries, and they swallowed up the smal
l independent producers and factories. The old ideas of laissez-faire collapsed before this, as there was far less chance or opportunity for individual initiative left. The powerful combines and corporations dominated governments.

  Capitalism led also to another and fiercer phase of imperialism. As competition between the industrial Powers grew in the second half of the nineteenth century, they looked farther afield for markets and raw materials. All over the world there was a fierce scramble for empire. I have already told you in some detail of what happened in Asia—in India, China, Farther India and Persia. The European Powers now fell like vultures on Africa, and divided it amongst themselves. Here also England took the largest share—Egypt in the north and huge slices of territory east and west and south. France also did well. Italy wanted to share in the booty, but, much to every one’s surprise, she was severely beaten by Abyssinia. Germany got a share, but was not satisfied. Everywhere imperialism, shouting, threatening, grasping, was rampant. Rudyard Kipling, the popular poet of British imperialism, sang of the “white man’s burden”. The French talked of the mission civilisatrice, the civilizing mission of France. The Germans, of course, had to spread their Kultur. So these civilizers and improvers and bearers of other people’s burdens went in a spirit of utter sacrifice and sat on the backs of the brown man and the yellow and the black. And nobody sang about the black man’s burden.

  The world was not big enough for all these grasping rival imperialisms. The fierce capitalistic urge for markets pushed each country on, and often they clashed with each other. Several times war seemed to hang in the balance between England and France. But the real clash of interests came between English and German industry. Germany had caught up with England in industry and shipping and challenged her in every market. But she found the best parts of the earth’s surface already occupied by England. Proud and high-spirited and chafing at being kept back by other nations, she prepared strenuously for a great struggle with them. All Europe prepared, and armies and navies grew. Alliances were made between different countries, till there seemed to be two armed hosts facing each other—the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, and the Dual Alliance of France and Russia, with England privately attached to them.

  Meanwhile, at the end of the century England had a little war of her own in South Africa. The discovery of gold in the Boer republic of the Transvaal led to this war in 1899. The Boers fought with amazing courage and perseverance for three years against the leading Power of Europe. They were crushed and had to acknowledge defeat. But soon after the British (the Liberal Party was then in office) performed a wise and generous deed by offering full self-government to their recent enemies. A little later the whole of South Africa became a free Dominion of the British Empire.

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  Civil War in America

  February 27, 1933

  The Old World, with its conflicts and intrigues, its kings and its revolutions, its hates and its nationalisms, has taken up a great deal of our time. Let us now cross the Atlantic and visit the New World of America, and see how this fared after it had shaken off the grasping hand of Europe. The United States in particular demand our attention. From small beginnings they have grown and grown, till today they seem to dominate the world situation. England has no longer pride of place today; she is not the world’s money-lender now, but is an unhappy debtor country, like all the others in Europe, asking the United States for kind and generous treatment. The mantle of the money-lender has fallen on America; wealth pours into her, and she breeds millionaires in surprising quantities. But, as in the case of Midas of old, her touch of gold has not brought her much joy, and her masses are suffering from want and poverty today in spite of her millionaires.

  The thirteen seaboard States that broke off from England in 1775 had a population of well under four millions. Today the city of New York alone has about double that population, and the whole of the United States have a population of a hundred and twenty-five millions. There are many more States now in the Union, and they extend right across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. The nineteenth century saw the growth of this great country, not only in extent and population, but also in modern industry and commerce, wealth and influence. The States had many difficulties and troubles and some wars and entanglements with Europe, but the greatest of their trials came from a bitter and devastating civil war between the States of the North and those of the South.

  A few years after America became free there was the Revolution in France, followed by the wars of Napoleon. Both Napoleon and England tried to destroy each other’s commerce, and in doing this came into conflict with the United States. American overseas commerce was quite paralysed, and this led to another war with England in 1812. Nothing much happened as a result of this two years’ war. In the course of this war, when Napoleon had been disposed of at Elba and England had her hands free, the British managed to capture Washington, the capital city, and they burnt down and destroyed all the important public buildings including the Capitol, the building where Congress is held, and the White House, the residence of the presidents. Subsequently the British were defeated.

  Even before this war the States had added a large slice of territory in the south. This was the old French colony of Louisiana, which Napoleon sold to them, as he was quite unable to defend it from British naval attacks. A few years later, in 1822, a purchase, from Spain this time, brought Florida to the States, and in 1848 a successful war with Mexico brought several States in the south-west, including California. Many of the names of cities in this south-western part are Spanish still, and remind one of the days when the Spaniards or the Spanish-speaking Mexicans ruled here. Everybody has heard of Los Angeles, the great city of Cinemadom, and of San Francisco.

  While Europe was having its repeated attempts at revolution and repression, the United States kept on spreading westward. Repression in Europe helped immigration, and tales of vast territories and high wages attracted large numbers from the European countries. As the population spread to the west, new States were formed and added to the Union.

  Between the northern States and the southern there was a great difference from the very beginning. The northern were industrial, where the new big machine-industry spread rapidly; in the south there were large plantations worked by slave labour. Slavery was legal, but in the north it was not popular and had little importance. The South depended entirely on slave labour. The slaves were, of course, Negroes from Africa. No white people were slaves. “All men are born equal,” says the Declaration of Independence, but this applied to the whites, not to the blacks.

  The story of how these Negroes were brought from Africa is a very sad one. The slave trade began early in the seventeenth century, and a regular supply was kept up till 1863. At first, cargo-boats passing the West African coast—a part of it is still called the “Slave Coast”—picked up the Africans, whenever they could do so easily, and carried them to America. Among the Africans themselves there was very little slavery; only prisoners of war or debtors were so treated. It was found that this carrying of Africans to America and selling them as slaves was a very profitable business. The slave trade grew, and was subsidized as a business chiefly by the English, the Spanish, and the Portuguese. Special ships— slave-traders—were built with galleries between decks. In these galleries the unhappy Negroes were made to lie down, all chained up, and each couple fettered together. The voyage across the Atlantic lasted many weeks, sometimes months. During all these weeks and months these Negroes lay in these narrow galleries, shackled together, and all the space that was allowed to each of them was five and a half feet long by sixteen inches wide!

  Liverpool became a great city on the foundation of the slave trade. As early as 1713, in the Peace of Utrecht, England extorted from Spain the privilege of carrying slaves between Africa and Spanish America. Even before this England had supplied slaves to the English territories in America. An attempt was thus made in the eighteenth century to make the Africa–America slave trade an Englis
h monopoly. In 1730 Liverpool had fifteen ships engaged in this trade. The number went on growing, till in 1792 there were 132 ships employed by Liverpool in the slave trade. The early days of the Industrial Revolution led to a great advance in cotton-spinning in Lancashire in England, and this led to a demand for more slaves in the United States. For the cotton used by the Lancashire mills came from the great cotton plantations of the southern States. These cotton plantations were rapidly extended, more slaves were brought over from Africa, and every effort was made to breed Negroes! In 1790 there were 697,000 slaves in the United States; in 1861 the number rose to 4,000,000.

  Early in the nineteenth century the British Parliament passed stringent laws against slavery. Other countries in Europe and America followed. But even when the slave trade was thus outlawed, Negroes were still carried from Africa to America, with this difference, that the conditions of their journey were far worse. They could not be carried openly, so they were hidden away from sight on loose shelves, one on top of the other. Sometimes, an American writer tells us, “one crowded on to the lap of another, and with legs on legs, like riders on a crowded toboggan!” It is difficult to imagine the full horror of all this. Conditions were so filthy that the slave ships had to be abandoned after four or five voyages. But the profits were huge, and during the height of the trade at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries as many as 100,000 slaves were carried every year from the African Slave Coast. And remember that the carrying away of this number meant the killing of far greater numbers in the raids to capture the Negroes.