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Last night I watched the absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR. While slogging through this 3-hour parade of xenophobic melodrama, incoherent action, and kindergarten-level sentiment was a struggle, it did make me wonder about two ideas that I’ve always thought should be in direct conflict with each other but aren’t treated as such: “Anti-Colonialism” and “Open Borders.”
As I understand it, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is that Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space. However, this school of thought seems to be most popular among the same political/intellectual cohort that also champions very loose immigration controls, commonly referred to as “Open Borders” (even though that phrase suggests no control whatsoever, whereas the reality is probably something closer liberal immigration controls). With an “Open Borders” mindset, there is no stopping Groups B-Z from moving into Group A’s space and altering its culture or assuming control of its institutions if any of those Groups does so with enough numbers or organization. “Open Borders,” on principle, refutes the very notion of any group’s ownership of any space, which more or less dismantles the paradigm of “Anti-Colonialism.” How do these two ideas co-exist in the same mind without producing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance?
It seems uncharitable to suggest that the salve for this cognitive dissonance is simply racism; or, to put it how I suppose the “Open Borders Anti Colonialist” would think of it, “intersectionality.” That is, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is not really the wrongness of generic groups subjugating each other but rather the wrongness of one static “Bad Group” (that happens to be largely defined by skin color/geographical origin) subjugating other Groups (of other skin colors), who by the nature of their subjugation and opposition to “Bad Group” are thereby “Good Groups.” “Open Borders,” too, is a policy only sought after when the same “Good Groups” are immigrating into the space of the same “Bad Group,” rather than vice versa. These are intended as strictly one-way ideological roads, and not as equal-use roadmaps for Groups A-Z.
I don’t get the impression that this intersectional solution to the “Open Borders Anti Colonialism” knot is oft-contemplated by the typical “Open Borders Anti Colonialist,” who rather thinks of both notions as having sprung from the same well of humanist good intentions. Is the racial/intersectional question actually essential to this paradigm, or is there some other less invidious key that unlocks the conflict between “Open Borders” and “Anti Colonialism?” in the progressive mindset?
I’ll hand this to RRR: It aptly confounds Western culture-warring by presenting its own set of ideas that may be difficult for some Western progressives to reconcile: It pits noble indigenous revolutionaries against the cartooniest of all racist villains and does so with a strident rallying cry against gun control. One of the protagonists has the stated goal of “putting a rifle in the hand” of every colonial subject, and suggests that a bullet only attains its true value when it kills an immigrant (or, in this exact case, any white person).
The obvious difference between colonialism and immigration (as these two concepts are generally understood by average modern Westerners) is that colonists tend to primarily be interested in exploiting and expropriating a nation's resources (natural and human) for the benefit of the colonist's home country (even if they do temporarily move to the colony in question to run a business, they aren't intending to make it their home, nor do they expect their children to be natives of the colony). Immigrants, even if they do end up changing the culture of the nation they move to, are invested in the success of their new home country, and the value they create stays in that country, modulo a few small cash transfers back to their relatives in their native country.
I expect, however, if you were to bring up any counterfactuals to this way of thinking to your bog-standard progressive, they would fall back on "Who, whom?" (or, as you put it, intersectionality). The mass migration of British people to its colonies (e.g. Australia and the USA before 1776), replacing the native culture with their own? Bad, because it was bad for non-whites. Mass migration of natives of former and current British colonies (e.g. India and Jamaica) to the UK, changing the culture of the UK? Good, because it's good for non-whites. (Also, curry and kebabs are better than steak-and-kidney pie.)
Even without considering the racial aspect of things, a simple rule might be "If a person moves from country A to country B and is immediately wealthier and more powerful than natives of country B, that's colonialism and that's bad. If a person moves from country B to country A and is immediately a member of the poor working classes, that's immigration and that's good."
As a sidebar, one of the things that fans of immigration might need to come to grips with is that the modern world of cheap air travel, global telecommunications and electronic banking makes it much, much easier for immigrants to avoid assimilating into their new country and put down roots there. They can still talk to their friends and family back home every day, travel back home once a year at least, and send them whatever is left of their income after covering their living expenses, invalidating my claim in the first paragraph about immigrants being invested in and benefiting their new country of residence. This is radically different from the immigration of the 1800s that American history textbooks look back upon so favorably.
This is definitely not true in the case of British colonialism in India (to go with the example of the movie being discussed). They invested massive amounts into India over long periods of time. For example, many iconic buildings were built by the British over hundreds of years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhatrapati_Shivaji_Terminus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Museum,_Kolkata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Paul's_Cathedral,_Kolkata
As another example, consider the fact that the British spent 70+ years turning the 7 islands of Bombay into 1 island, and then built a city that currently has a population bigger than the Netherlands and accounts for about 20% of Indian GDP.
https://indianculture.gov.in/stories/bombay-joining-seven-islands-1668-1838
A third example is India Gate, which memorializes the Indian soldiers killed in WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_Gate
Any claim that the British were not invested in the long term success of India is profoundly ahistorical.
I don't think this captures the mood pushed by the zeitgeist. Indian immigrants to the US today and Jewish immigrants in the post-WW2 era both fall into the "is immediately wealthier and more powerful than natives" bucket.
Re: iconic buildings in India built built by the British: the fact that all the buildings you provided as examples were built in a British/Western architectural style, and the Cathedral being specifically a house of worship for the West's dominant religion rather than that of the natives, kind of diminishes the claim that these are investments in "India".
Let's say that the United States becomes a Chinese colony, and the Chinese build several large buildings in America that look like this. Would you consider that an investment in America, its people and its culture? Or would you consider it a massive "fuck you, we own this place now"?
First of all, the architectural style is Anglo-Indian. It's influenced by the British but with many local adaptations. If these buildings were in London they would look out of place.
In any case, I don't see why it can't be both. Victoria Terminus is a functioning train station that was build for the long term. It's not anything like what gets built by people solely focused on resource extraction - e.g. a logging camp or oil well. It indicates a long term investment in infra and human capital as opposed to simply a desire to snatch and grab.
You're also glossing over a non-trivial chunk of what British Colonialism involved: the idea that it was Britain's duty to educate and improve the places they colonized. Literacy worked for Britain, why not Bengal? If a negro sets foot in London he becomes free, so why is he not equally free in Dahomey? (Note: literal argument used by imperial abolitionists.) And given proper education an Indian can of course become as competent a soldier or administrator as a Britain - it is the duty of the colonialists to provide this opportunity.
That's the ideal, at least. You can read Charles Napier's biography to hear it expounded upon in detail, as well as a bunch of complaints about how it's not being lived up to. The British were not universally as awesome as Napier, of course.
As for the China example, I do not identify as American so perhaps the example is inapt. However, suppose hypothetically that China was a) far more advanced than the US and b) made a long term investment in transmitting some of that advancement to the US (even while imposing a China-style political system). I would consider that an investment, albeit one I perhaps resented or opposed for other reasons.
Note also that this stuff was not necessarily unwelcome to many Indians. Various princely states were closely allied with the British and more progressive ones treated Britain as a source of knowledge; for example, the Nizam of Hyderabad built Osmania University with assistance from the British. It became more British (e.g. language changed from Urdu to English) after India conquered Hyderabad in 1948.
I’m honestly not sure how well the “looks like has significant investments in the country” is necessarily a good barometer for colonialism (or colonial-ish actions) necessarily being Actually A Good Thing. At the very least it’s missing the entire subclass of settler colonialists, who often would be investing in the country even for the natives, if only to assimilate them somehow (in that I mean things like residential schools) rather than exterminate them.
Consider the fourth era of domination in Vietnam; the Ming, after conquering it, expended significant amounts of money to build numerous schools and temples, implanted a bureaucracy based on competitive examination (like for centuries in the north), etc. in the region, all while expropriating much of its wealth and competitive advantages (e.g. precious stones and metals, dyes and paints, local speciality woods and other produce) and talent (many of which were sent to the Ming court - art and artists, too, were sent off) while Vietnamese were banned e.g. from exporting gold, amongst other things. A forced program of sinicization and eradication of local culture also occurred. In the end the Ming fucked off after 20 years having depopulated the region significantly.
I don’t think the Vietnamese look at that era of history with fondness, even if there were a small minority of local city elites that were pretty okay with the administration at the time.
That's not what we're discussing.
Scroll up a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/221/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/39886?context=8#context
It was proposed that a distinction between colonialism and immigration is immigrants are "are invested in the success of their new home country". But if you take British India as a central example of colonialism, this distinction doesn't actually distinguish.
Fair enough. Lost the context a bit there reading your reply.
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India has been having famines since at least as far back as Sanskrit existed. It's in the Purana. There were plenty of famines under the Mughals and other empires too, e.g. this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_famine_of_1630%E2%80%931632
In any case, I am merely disputing the claim that the British were not invested in the long term success of India. They clearly were, and on long timescales. I wish my region had rulers with the effectiveness and foresight of the EIC instead of our current NIMBY with globohomo characteristics.
I am not claiming to have clear econometric proof that the British were better than other empires which might plausibly have ruled India. (Though I am fairly convinced that the Mughals were terrible.) Perhaps India would have been better off had the Marathas or the Bengalis driven the British out and taken over, or perhaps not. I don't know.
"Carts belonging to banjaras (carriers) transporting grain from the more productive regions of Malwa were intercepted and supplies diverted to feed Shah Jahan’s [Mughal Emperor] royal army in Burhanpur, who were fighting territorial wars in the Deccan (southern) provinces." - Peter Mundy, a firsthand observer
Not so different. Here's another, this time caused by a combination of bad years plus Maratha armies devastating all the cropland on their way to Mysore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doji_bara_famine
That's the story of most famines around the world, at least since the early modern period - bad weather combined with bad policies, e.g. looting grain carts and trampling fields.
As for the Mughals, I didn't say they were less "oppressive" and I'm not sure what you mean by that. I said they were terrible.
They are generally accepted to have average tax rates on the poor of approximately 50%. That's a lot of money going into state coffers and significantly exceeded other empires, including the British. Where did the money go? Traveling as a tourist shows us many opulent palaces and tombs built by the Mughals, and history books also tell us of the opulence of their courts. History books also tell us of their many wars.
Put aside the historical romanticism - that's a story of warlords looting a nation, building very little, and spending the proceeds on luxuries for themselves. And it still wasn't enough - Shah Jahan's fundamental problem was that money spent on luxuries for the rulers was growing faster than the economy, and his empire was so corrupt that he couldn't stop it. Slapping a rainbow flag with a brown stripe on top of this - I mean a "we love hindus too" flag - doesn't change it. (Yes, I'm throwing in a western culture war reference since America is waking up soon.)
The British did not have that problem. Their stated goal, which they do seem to have acted on, was to grow the economy of India faster than the fraction they extracted. Kill the thuggees because the hurt trade. The Nizams of Hyderabad, with whom they were closely aligned, felt similarly. Hyderabad became so rich that India eventually conquered them to capture that wealth.
And if you travel to Bombay as a tourist you see this. There is no British palace, but there is a a British train station. It's nice and you don't need to be royalty to use it.
I don't see much evidence the Marathas thought things through at that level - there is certainly no Maratha equivalent of John Stewart Mill writing essays for them - but at the same time their culture did not seem as corrupt as the Mughals.
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Seems unlikely, given that 1) Jewish immigration post WWII was quite small; 2) most such immigrants were refugees, and hence unlikely to be either wealthy or powerful. And note that this article on Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union post-1960 indicates that, although they were highly educated, they earned less than native whites.
Do you have a citation for your claim?
I could be wrong about Jews specifically. I was mainly inferring from the fact that Jews have, for all of my lifetime, been considerably wealthier than others. It's possible that this only happened to the children of immigrants. I'll take your word for it that my example should be reduced to only cover Indians.
(Or at least Indians are the only easily identifiable group, due to self-identification with the "Hindu" religious grouping in surveys that also include income.)
Also worth checking whether - by this stated standard - immigration is colonialism in basically every country that uses a merit based system (e.g. Canada, Australia).
Yeah, since most Jewish people in the US are the descendants of people who arrived well before WWII, it seems likely that most in your lifetime are indeed not first generation immigrants.
But TBH I don't see how "immigration is colonialism" works at all; as others have pointed out, colonialism involves political domination, esp the supplanting of political elites and the replacement of political systems. That does not describe immigration.
Left wing Americans routinely brag about how immigration will grant them a permanent majority. So basically, the theory is that an alliance between colonialists and domestic factions will result in political domination.
Or, if you are a right wing person and want right wing mood affiliation, take the same facts and attach the words "great replacement".
Is it your belief that a few thousand British managed to conquer India all by themselves? Indians may not be natural warriors but be realistic. (I know it is a bit difficult to square the Maratha empire with contemporary stereotypes of Marathis.) In all cases it is a story of small numbers of British together with considerably larger numbers of locals conquering a different group of locals. From what I understand of colonialism in the Americas, it was pretty similar - Pizarro certainly did not wage a 20 year campaign and conquer Peru all with only 180 people. He aligned himself with the right locals and tipped the balance.
Right, it was outsiders enlisting (or hiring) locals to help the outsiders take over. That is what colonialism is, by definition: outsiders taking over.
Re immigration, you are positing something completely different: Locals enlisting outsiders to allow those ** locals **to gain political advantage. And note that there is nothing inherent in immigration that gives one group of locals an advantage; nothing prevents right wingers from convincing immigrants to vote for them, as Cuban immigrants do, and as Vietnamese immigrants used to. And, as non-Cuban Hispanics used to in larger numbers, until conservatives pursued policies seen as hostile to them.
I understand now.
Assumption: non-whites lack agency.
When the Nizam of Hyderabad allies with the British for mutual advantage, this is outsiders enlisting locals since Indians lack agency.
When white American Democrats enlist Mexican immigrants to ally with them for mutual advantage, this is locals enlisting outsiders since Mexicans lack agency.
I don't know what you mean by "taking over". In terms of control over daily life that is demanded, certainly American Democrats and their Mexican allies want far more control over my life than the British ever did. All the British wanted was for my local ruler to send them some tax money, and maybe they'd build roads and schools.
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