Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  In this way imperialism has perfected itself in the course of time, and the modern type of empire is the invisible economic empire. When slavery was abolished, and later when the feudal type of serfdom went, it was thought that men would be free. Soon, however, it was found that men were still exploited and dominated by those who controlled the money-power. From slaves and serfs, men became wage-slaves; freedom for them was still far off. So also in the case of countries. People imagine that the only trouble is the political domination of one country by another, and that if this was removed freedom would automatically come. But that is not so obvious, as we can see politically free countries entirely under the thumb of others because of economic domination. The British Empire in India is obvious enough. Britain has political control over India. Side by side with this visible empire, and as a necessary part of it, Britain has economic control over India. It is quite possible that Britain’s visible hold over India might go before long, and yet the economic control might remain as an invisible empire. If that happens, it means that the exploitation of India by Britain continues.

  Economic imperialism is the least troublesome form of domination for the dominating power. It does not give rise to so much resentment as political domination because many people do not notice it. But when the pinch is felt, people begin to appreciate its workings and resent it. In Latin America now there is not much love for the United States, and many efforts have been made to create a block of Latin-American nations to oppose the dominance of North America. They are not likely to do much till they get over their habit of frequent palace revolutions and mutual quarrels.

  The visible empire of the United States extends to the Philippine Islands. I have told you in a previous letter how America got possession of them after a war with Spain. This war began in 1898 over the island of Cuba in the Atlantic. Cuba became independent, but in name only. Both Cuba and Haiti are dominated by America.

  About a dozen years ago the Panama Canal was opened. This is in the narrow strip of Central America and connects the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean. It was designed more than fifty years ago by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who made the Suez Canal. But he got into trouble, and it was the Americans who made the canal. They had great difficulties with malaria and yellow fever, but they set out to put an end to these diseases there, and they succeeded. They removed all the sources which bred malarial mosquitoes and other carriers of disease, and made the canal zone quite healthy. The canal is situated in the tiny Republic of Panama, but the United States control it as well as the little republic. To America the canal is a great boon, as otherwise ships had to go all the way round South America. Still, the importance of the Panama Canal is not so great as that of the Suez Canal.

  So the United States went on growing stronger and wealthier and producing, among other things, millionaires and sky-scrapers. They caught up to Europe in many ways and passed it. Industrially they became the leading nation of the world, and the standard of life of their workers became higher than anywhere else. Because of this prosperity, as in England in the nineteenth century, socialistic and other radical theories had little support. American labour, with some exceptions, was most moderate and conservative. It was relatively well paid; why should it risk present comfort for a doubtful betterment? It consisted chiefly of Italians and other “Dagos”, as they were contemptuously called. They were weak and disorganized, and were looked down upon. Even the better-paid skilled workers considered themselves a class apart from these “Dagos”.

  In American politics two parties grew up—the Republican and the Democratic. As in England, and even more so than in England, they represented the same rich classes, and there was little difference of principle between them.

  So matters stood when the World War came and ultimately sucked America into the whirlpool of strife.

  139

  Seven Hundred Years of Conflict between Ireland and England

  March 4, 1933

  Let us cross the Atlantic again and go back to the Old World. The first land that a traveller by sea or air sees is that of Ireland; let us therefore make this our first stop. This green and beautiful island dips into the Atlantic Ocean on the far west of Europe. It is a small island, lying away from the main currents of world history; but little as it is, it is full of romance, and for centuries past it has shown invincible courage and spirit of sacrifice in the struggle for national freedom. Ireland has put up an amazing record of perseverance in this struggle against a powerful neighbour. The quarrel began over 750 years ago, and it is not settled yet! We have seen British imperialism in action in India, China, and elsewhere. But Ireland has had to bear the brunt of it from the earliest days. Yet she has never willingly submitted to it, and almost every generation has seen a rebellion against England. The bravest of her sons have died fighting for freedom or been executed by the English authorities. Vast numbers of Irishmen have left the home that they loved so passionately and emigrated to foreign countries. Many joined foreign armies that were fighting England, so that thus they might have a chance of pitting their strength against the country which was dominating and oppressing their homeland. The exiles of Ireland spread out in many distant countries, and wherever they went they carried a bit of Ireland in their hearts.

  Unhappy individuals and oppressed and struggling countries, all those who are dissatisfied and have little joy in the present, have a way of looking back to the past and searching for consolation in it. They magnify this past and find comfort in thinking of bygone greatness. When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes a haven of refuge giving relief and inspiration. Old grievances also rankle and are not forgotten. This ever looking backward is not a sign of health in a nation. Healthy people and healthy countries act in the present and look to the future. But a person or nation which is not free cannot be healthy, and so it is natural that he or it should look back and live partly in the past.

  So Ireland still lives in the past, and Irish people treasure the memory of the old days when she was free, and remember vividly her many struggles for freedom and her old grievances. They look back, 1400 years ago, to the sixth century after Christ, when Ireland was a centre of learning for western Europe and drew students from afar. The Roman Empire had fallen and Vandals and Huns had crushed Roman civilization. In those days, it is said, Ireland was one of the places which kept the lamp of culture burning till a fresh revival of culture took place in Europe. Christianity came early to Ireland. Ireland’s patron saint, St. Patrick, is supposed to have brought it. It was from Ireland that it spread to the north of England. In Ireland many monasteries were founded and, like the old ashrams in India and the Buddhist monasteries, these became centres of learning, where teaching often took place in the open air. From these monasteries went out missionaries to northern and western Europe to preach the new religion of Christianity to the heathen. Beautiful manuscripts were written and illuminated by some of the monks in the Irish monasteries. There is kept in Dublin now one such beautiful manuscript book called the Book of Kells, probably written about 1200 years ago.

  This period of 200 or 300 years, from the sixth century onwards, is looked upon by many Irishmen as a kind of Golden Age of Ireland when Gaelic culture was at its height. Probably the distance in time lends an enchantment to these old days and makes them seem greater than they actually were. Ireland was split up among many tribes then, and these tribes were continually fighting each other. The weakness of Ireland, as of India, was mutual strife. Then came the Danes and Norsemen and, as in England and France, harried the Irish and took possession of large territories. Early in the eleventh century an Irish king, Brian Boruma, who became famous, defeated the Danes and united Ireland for a while, but the country split up again after his death.

  You will remember that the Normans under William the Conqueror conquered England in the eleventh century. A hundred years later these Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland, and the part they conquered was called the “Pale”, from which probably has come the common expre
ssion “beyond the pale”, meaning outside a privileged circle or a social group. This Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169 hit the old Gaelic civilization hard, and it was the beginning of almost continuous war with the Irish tribes. These wars, which lasted for hundreds of years, were barbarous and cruel in the extreme. The English (as the Anglo-Normans might be called now) always looked down upon the Irish as a kind of semi-savage race. There was the difference of race, the English being Anglo-Saxons, the Irish Celts; later came the difference in religion, the English and Scotch becoming Protestants, and the Irish remaining faithful to Roman Catholicism. So these Anglo-Irish wars had all the bitterness of racial and religious wars. The English deliberately prevented the two races from mixing. A law was even passed (a statute of Kilkenny) prohibiting intermarriages between the English and Irish.

  Rebellion followed rebellion in Ireland, and each was crushed with great cruelty. The Irish naturally hated their foreign rulers and oppressors, and rose in rebellion whenever they had the chance and even without it. “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” is an old saying, and both for political and religious reasons Ireland often sided with England’s enemies, like France and Spain. This enraged the English greatly and gave them a feeling of being stabbed in the back, and they retaliated with all manner of atrocities.

  In Queen Elizabeth’s time (the sixteenth century) it was decided to break the resistance of the rebellious Irish natives by planting English landlords among them to keep them down. So land was confiscated, and the old Irish landowning classes had to give place to foreigners. Thus Ireland became practically a peasant nation with foreign landlords. And these landlords remained foreign to the Irish people even after the lapse of hundreds of years.

  Queen Elizabeth’s successor, James I of England, went forward another step in this attempt to break the spirit of the Irish. He decided to have a regular plantation of foreign colonists in Ireland, and for this purpose nearly all the land in the six counties of Ulster in the north of Ireland was confiscated by the King. There was land to be had for nothing, and crowds of adventurers came over from England and Scotland. Many of these English and Scottish people got land and settled down as farmers. The city of London was also asked to help in this colonizing process, and it formed a special society for the new “Plantation of Ulster”. It was because of this that the city of Derry in the north became known as Londonderry.

  So Ulster became a patch of Britain in Ireland, and it is not surprising to find that this was bitterly resented by the Irish. The new Ulsterites, on their part, hated the Irish, and looked down upon them. What an amazingly clever imperialist move this was of England to break up Ireland into two hostile camps! The Ulster problem still remains unsolved after over 300 years.

  Soon after this plantation of Ulster there was Civil War in England between Charles I and Parliament. On the side of Parliament were the Puritans and Protestants, and Catholic Ireland naturally sided with the King, Ulster backing Parliament. The Irish were afraid, not without reason, that the Puritans would crush Catholicism, and they rose in a great rebellion in 1041. This rebellion and its crushing were even more ferocious and barbarous than the earlier ones. The Irish Catholics had cruelly massacred Protestants. Cromwell’s revenge was terrible. There were many massacres of the Irish, and especially of Catholic priests, and Cromwell is still remembered with bitterness in Ireland.

  In spite of all this terrorism and cruelty, a generation later there was again rebellion and civil war, of which two incidents stand out, the sieges of Londonderry and Limerick. Protestant Londonderry in Ulster was besieged by the Catholic Irish in 1688, and it was most gallantly defended, though the defenders had no food left and were starving. English ships at last brought food and relief, after four months of siege and privation. In Limerick in 1690 it was the other way about; the Catholic Irish were besieged by the English. The hero of this siege was Patrick Sarsfield, who defended Limerick magnificently against great odds. Even Irish women fought in this defence, and Gaelic songs about Sarsfield and his gallant band are still sung in the countryside in Ireland. Sarsfield ultimately gave up Limerick, but only after an honourable treaty with the British. One of the clauses of this Treaty of Limerick was that the Irish Catholics would be given full civil and religious liberty.

  This Treaty of Limerick was broken by the English, or rather by the English landowning families in Ireland. These Protestant families controlled a subordinate parliament in Dublin and, in spite of the solemn promise made at Limerick, they refused to give civil or religious liberty to the Catholics. Instead of this they passed special laws penalizing Catholics and deliberately ruining the Irish woollen trade. Their tenantry was pitilessly crushed and evicted from their lands. Remember that this was done by a handful of foreign Protestant landlords against the vast majority of the population, which was Catholic, and most of which formed the tenantry. But all power was in the hands of these English landlords, and these landlords lived away from their estates and left their tenantry to the cruel rapacity of their agents and rent-collectors.

  The story of Limerick is an old one, but the bitterness and anger that the breaking of a solemn word gave rise to have not yet subsided, and even today Limerick stands foremost in an Irish nationalist’s mind in the record of English perfidy in Ireland. At that time this breach of a covenant, and religious intolerance and repression, and the cruelty of the landlords, drove large numbers of the Irish to other countries. The pick of Irish youth went abroad and offered their services to any country that was fighting England. Wherever there was fighting against England, these Irishmen were sure to be found.

  Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, lived during this period (he lived from 1667 to 1745), and something of his anger against the English can be gathered from his advice to his Irish countrymen: “Burn everything English except their coal!” More bitter still is the epitaph on his tomb in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. This epitaph was very probably written by himself:

  Here lies the body of

  Jonathan Swift

  for thirty years dean

  of this cathedral,

  where savage indignation can

  no longer gnaw his heart.

  Go, traveller, and

  imitate, if you can, one who

  played a man’s part in defence

  of Liberty.

  In 1774 the American War of Independence broke out, and British troops had to be sent across the Atlantic. For a change, Ireland had practically no British troops, and there was talk of a French invasion, for France had also declared war against England. So both Irish Catholics and Protestants raised volunteers for defence. For a while they forgot their old animosities and, cooperating together, discovered their power. England had to face the threat of another rebellion, and fearing that Ireland also might break away, as America was doing, an independent parliament was granted to Ireland. Thus in theory Ireland became independent of England, but continued under the same king. But the Irish Parliament was the same old landlord-ridden, narrow assembly, confined to Protestants, which had in the past sat so heavily on the Catholics. Catholics were still penalized in many ways. The only difference was that a better feeling seemed to prevail between the Protestants and Catholics. The leader of this parliament, Henry Grattan, himself a Protestant, wanted to do away with Catholic disabilities. He succeeded in doing very little.

  Meanwhile the French Revolution took place, and this led to great hopes in Ireland. Curiously enough, this was welcomed by both Catholic and Protestant, who were gradually drawing closer to each other. An organization, called the “United Irishmen”, was started to bring them together and emancipate the Catholics. The “United Irishmen” were not approved of by the government and were crushed. So the inevitable and periodic rebellion came in 1798. This was not a religious fight between Ulster and the rest of the country, as some of the old rebellions had been; it was a national rising in which to some extent both joined. The rising was crushed by England, and the Irish
hero of it, Wolfe Tone, was executed as a traitor.

  Thus it was obvious that the granting of an independent parliament to Ireland had made little difference to the Irish people. The English Parliament at the time was itself a narrow, corrupt affair elected by pocket boroughs and the like, and controlled by a small landowning class and a few of the richer merchants. The Irish Parliament had all these evils, and, in addition, was confined to a handful of Protestants in a Catholic country. Even so, the British Government decided to put an end to this Irish Parliament and to join Ireland to Britain. This was strongly opposed in Ireland, but heavy bribery of the members of the Dublin Parliament induced them to vote their own parliament out of existence. The Act of Union was passed in 1800, and thus ended Grattan’s short-lived parliament, and instead some Irish members were sent to the British Parliament in London.