European conquests in the Age of Empire
The world-system becomes global
I continue today with my discussion of conquest in human history, drawing upon the Encyclopedia of Invasions and Conquests,1 and supplementing the historical descriptions of the Encyclopedia with the world-systems analysis of Immanuel Wallerstein2 and Andre Gunder Frank.3 Through these sources, we see that the European conquests during the Age of Empire promoted the expansion of the capitalist world-economy and the geographical division of labor between core and peripheral, creating a global structural inequality among nations.
The historical facts of the Age of Empire
The French reversal of the Revolution in Haiti
Toussaint L’Ouverture, a slave with administrative responsibilities in a French-owned plantation, joined a slave insurrection and led it to the independence of the colony of Saint-Domingue, with a political system under his authority. The newly independent state assisted the new French Republic in the repulsion of English invading troops. Subsequently, Napoleon sent French troops to recapture the island. They took Toussaint prisoner, and he died in prison. The cost for retaking the island was high, compelling France to abandon the once-lucrative colony. General Jean Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of Saint-Domingue in 1804, and he renamed the new nation Haiti.
The Rise of the British in East Asia
The rising power of France in the 1790s was damaging to Dutch interests in the East Indies. The power of the British East India Company had been rising in Asia, largely on the basis of Indian and Chinese tea. When Napoleon conquered continental Europe, the Dutch in the East Indies found they had no support from home. So, the Dutch sold their interests in Ceylon to the British, and the Dutch government in exile agreed that Britain would occupy Dutch possessions around the world, to deny them to Napoleon.
English rule in India
Britain established its first trading post in India in 1639, when it purchased a harbor on India’s southeastern coast, which became the port of Madras. The British constructed fortifications for the harbor and began to purchase high-quality cotton textiles, trading with both the declining Moghul Empire and the rising Bangalis, both of whom barely tolerated British merchants. A fortified base was constructed on the Hooghly River on the Ganges Delta, establishing the trading center of Calcutta in 1690. The British also occupied a defunct Portuguese port at Surat. All three ports were operated by the British East India Company. The Company initially had contracts with the Moghul emperors for tax collection in the areas around Madras and Calcutta, and when the Moghul Empire collapsed, the British continued to collect taxes and formed military units to protect their trading posts and routes. The military units were mixed European and local; they became the basis for the Indian army, which at first was a business enterprise rather than a governmental operation.
Because the British East India Company provided stable and peaceful trade that was able to defeat bandits, it attracted Indian merchants. And various Indian states, taking advantage of the Moghul decline, also contracted with the company. Frequently, the Company attained trading rights in exchange for military protection, thus enabling British merchants to have access to markets all over India. The British East India Company maintained control over Bengal, Madras, and Calcutta and their surrounding areas, which rapidly attracted Indian merchants and artisans looking for a peaceful place to do business. The Company increasingly acted like a government, taxing and making judicial decisions. British control expanded in 1750, as a result of the Seven Years’ War, which marked the end of French influence in the region.
In 1756, Bengal attacked Calcutta and forced the British to evacuate, but the British launched an avenging force that was able to recapture Calcutta, defeat the Bengali army at Plassey, and attain control over Bengal. The British defeated a Bengali-led coalition in 1764, removing any serious competition in northern India.
The arrive of Warren Hastings as governor-general in the mid-1770s marked the establishment of Britain and the East India Company as the master of India. He posed as an Oriental-system absolute monarch, with just and fair practices in law enforcement, taxation, and the judicial system, thereby attaining local support. Hastings also extended power to the northwest by dividing and conquering recalcitrant states. The passage in London of the India Act of 1784 reduced Hastings’ power, causing him to resign. His successor, Lord Cornwallis, furthered the policy of fair taxation and extended the control of the company to the south. The subsequent governor-general, Richard Wellesley, sent British forces up the Ganges from Calcutta, forcing the cooperation of the state of Oudh, enabling the British to control the main trade route in India.
In the British taking of power in India, we see that trade is not free trade. Trade cannot exist without peace, and peace requires military force, which is never neutral, but operates in defense of merchants of particular nationalities. In the case of India, the British East India Company, which was both a commercial and military operation, entered a situation of weak and rapacious local rulers, establishing its position by offering safe trade routes and fair business practices for Indian merchants, as it gradually secured rights for British merchants in India. For Indian merchants, the British were a better option than local rulers, even though it meant outside domination. Even for the mass of Indians, who remained impoverished, the British established a higher level of peace, safety, and legal justice.
The Encyclopedia maintains that the British ruled peacefully for 100 years. However, this was an apparent peace that obscured fundamental differences in Indian and British economic interests, which would express themselves as the system evolved. As Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein note, India in the period 1750 to 1850 was converted from an exporter of manufactured goods to an exporter of raw materials, including indigo, silk, opium, and cotton, in accordance with an assigned peripheral role in the world-economy. Prior to 1800, India had been one of the world’s major centers of cotton textile production; but by 1840, Indian textile manufacturing had virtually disappeared as a result of British colonial economic policies, with a tariff structure that favored British manufacturers. These policies destroyed not only the Indian textile industry but also its iron and steel industries. The Encyclopedia, in focusing on the interests of Indian merchants in a particular context, obscures the extent to which British rule in India promoted the underdevelopment of India and the development of Great Britain.
Reflecting this long-term conflict of interests, a revolt against the British East India Company broke out in 1857, as the Encyclopedia notes. As a result, the British government took over the operations of the Company.
European control of the Caribbean
We saw in my last commentary that Jamaica was initially colonized by Spain in 1509, but it was captured by British forces in 1655, and subsequently remained in British hands. When the British government outlawed slavery in the British Empire in the 1830s, some 310,000 slaves were freed in Jamaica. The emancipated slaves immediately took possession of unclaimed land. However, abusive taxes and discriminatory laws limited their capacity to produce, which led to an uprising of the black population in 1865, quickly and brutally suppressed. Jamaica is considered the most “British” of the Caribbean islands.
St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands, was settled by Denmark. It was used as a base of the Danish West Indies Company, which controlled the three islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John, which were bought by the Danish king in 1755. Sugar was the main crop on the islands, on a base of slave labor. Following the abolition of slavery, there was a decline in sugar production. In 1867, the United States entered into negotiations to purchase the Danish West Indies, and an agreement was reached in 1917.
Cuba, as noted in my last commentary, was colonized by Spain beginning in 1511, leading to a sugar exportation economy on a base of African slave labor. A war for independence from Spanish rule was launched in 1868, which failed to attain its goals of independence and the abolition of slavery. A second war of independence, led by José Martí, was initiated in 1895, which resulted in the U.S. military occupation of 1898 and the establishment of a Cuban republic under U.S. tutelage in 1902. An advanced liberation movement emerged in Cuba during the twentieth century, culminating in the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959.
The Puerto Rican population periodically rebelled against Spanish colonial rule, particularly in 1868, but the rebellions were suppressed. Puerto Rico became a possession of the USA in 1898, in accordance with the peace terms establishing the end of the Cuban-Spanish-American War.
British conquest of Ashanti (Ghana)
The British conquest of Ashanti was initiated in 1824. Various military incursions against the Ashanti led to peace treaties in 1831 and 1844, which guaranteed the security of Britain’s African allies and expanded British influence in the area. In 1873 and 1874, further British military advances attained definitive British control, which mandated Ashanti payment of an indemnity in gold, the abandonment of Ashanti claims with respect to neighboring provinces and populations, and the elimination of the practice of human sacrifice. Ashanti King Kofi was deposed in 1875, and the Ashanti nation broke up into various factions, but continued to endure. In 1875, Great Britain declared the Gold Coast to be a colony of the British Crown, encompassing territory that did not include the Ashanti.
In 1894, following a British military expedition, Ashanti King Prempah was obligated to accept protectorate status. The following year, when Prempah refused to pay an indemnity, the British again invaded, taking Prempah prisoner and exiling him to Seychelles. In 1900, in response to the British attempt to gain possession of the Golden Stool of Ashanti kings, the Ashanti laid siege to the British fort in Kumasi. The fighting was costly to both sides, but the British were finally able to repress the rebellion. On January 1, 1902, the Ashanti Empire was declared to be a British possession.
The Ashanti people had migrated into the area (modern Ghana) in the seventeenth century and had established themselves as a major power in the region by the 1740s, with a bureaucracy, police, and a standing army. They controlled trade centers to the markets deep in the interior, in which the slave trade was the primary business. On the coast, the Ashanti had to deal with European powers who had constructed forts and trading posts, including the Portuguese, Dutch, Danes, and British. Rival African powers in the region often allied with the European powers in their conflicts with the Ashanti. After 1807, the British were actively involved in suppressing the slave trade.
The French occupation of Algeria
Algiers had long been a part of the Ottoman Empire until it was invaded by France in 1830. Whereas the Ottoman rulers had confined themselves to the coastal and urban areas, the French attempted to control the Berber population in the rugged terrain of the mountainous countryside. As they moved into the countryside, the French presented themselves as liberators from Ottoman rule, but they found only resistance, led by Abd al-Kadir, who sought to eliminate foreign dominance and establish a united Islamic state. His movement had organized an administration that maintained a tax system and a standing army of 10,000 with strategically placed forts, along with a system of Muslim schools and courts. By 1846, the French had amassed more than 100,000 troops in the country, leading Abd al-Kadir to surrender and go into exile.
The French occupation was solidified by the encouragement of immigration. By the time of Abd al-Kadir’s defeat, immigrants numbered some 109,000 from all parts of the Western Mediterranean, mostly laborers and craftspeople, with some wealthy French who bought large estates. The new population tended to settle along the coast, and they were protected from the hostile country folk by large numbers of French soldiers. Periodic uprisings by the native population were put down, and French control was consolidated by 1900.
Algeria was legally declared a part of France in 1848, and a French-style government was installed in 1871. The Europeans dominated the government and the courts. Interaction between the French and the native Berber population primarily took the form of the employment of Berbers by the French; in addition, a small percentage of Berbers attended French schools. The Encyclopedia writes, “By 1831, the centenary of the invasion, the French occupation appeared to be a rousing success. French writers trumpeted the civilizing influence of the French presence and the economic progress the country had enjoyed. Underneath the façade, however, was a growing discontent among the Muslim population.” This discontent would lead to movements for equality and liberation in the twentieth century in Algeria. The “Battle of Algiers” would become one of the most celebrated events of the twentieth century struggle between the national liberation movements of the colonized and the forces of the European colonial empires.
French occupations in Africa
In the second half of the nineteenth century, France occupied a significant part of Africa. Between 1854 and 1864, France waged war against the Tukulors in Equatorial Africa, a campaign that took them toward the Niger River. They solidified their hold on the upper Niger area during the next twenty-five years, and then launched wars against the Mandingo of the Ivory Coast, claiming the area in 1898. Meanwhile, forces from the French possessions along the Congo River joined with invading troops from the French colony of Algeria to capture Chad. France thus became the dominant force in the Sahara, with the possibility of establishing a transcontinental land link from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans.
France also took possession of North Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century, including Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. By World War II, French possessions across the upper part of the continent included Mauritania, Senegal, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, French Guinea, French Sudan, Upper Volta, and Niger. Her equatorial colonies included Chad, Gabon, and the Middle Congo. And France held Versailles Treaty mandates to Togoland and Cameroon.
The Encyclopedia writes: “For much of the nineteenth century, France exercised the traditional mercantilist view of colonies—that they should exist for the benefit of the mother country. Exclusive import and export rights were maintained not only to profit the French, but also to keep out other European countries. The population of the colonies remained subject to French rule, with little chance of gaining French citizenship and legal rights. Only Algeria came to be regarded as a department in the French governmental system. Local French administrators attempted to apply French political philosophies, but found the native populations so hostile to their presence that the governors resorted to whatever measures were necessary to maintain order.”
British occupation of Ceylon
When Napoleon took control of Europe, Britain sought to take possession of the colonies of the Western powers, which was possible as a result of British naval superiority. In 1796, the British captured the ports of Ceylon, including the principal Dutch base at Colombo. Initially, the island was governed by the British East India Company, replacing the Dutch East India Company. Unlike the Portuguese and the Dutch, the British did not cooperate with the local power structure, thereby provoking local revolts. In 1798, the British government took over the country, installing Frederick North as governor-general. North’s abusive form of rule intensified local opposition, the strongest of which came from the mountain kingdom of Kandy. Sri Wickrama Rajasinha fought the British until 1815, when he finally was captured and deported to India, ending a 2,300-year-old line of rulers.
The British administration of Ceylon was intended to introduce progress. The British abolished forced labor and broke down the traditional feudalism of the island. However, in promoting coffee plantations and establishing British-style schools and civil service system in accordance with a peripheral economic role in the world-economy, British rule was promoting the underdevelopment of Ceylon in the long term.
European penetration of China
British military actions in China from 1839 to 1842 came to be known as the Opium War. The illegal importation of opium from India to China through the bribing of Chinese officials was practiced openly, and it proved lucrative for all involved. But the wide introduction of the drug offended many in Chinese society, who saw it as a foreign attempt to weaken their culture. In January 1839, an imperial high commissioner from Peking began a crackdown, withdrawing all Chinese labor from foreign warehouses and taking possession of 20,000 cases of opium. Six weeks later, shots were exchanged when the Chinese government sent twenty-nine war junks to stop Chinese smugglers under the protection of two British frigates, which were seeking to supply the British in Hong Kong.
Several military engagements between British and Chinese forces occurred in 1841 and 1842, resulting in the British taking of Canton, Hangchow, Shanghai, Chinkiang, and Nanking. The Chinese Emperor agreed to the Treaty of Nanking, which opened China to foreign exploitation by guaranteeing trading rights that favored outside interests. The treaty also gave the British $21 million. And it entitled the British to exclusive use of the “treaty ports” of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai. It set low tariffs, and it made no mention of opium. The practice of granting treaty ports in China soon extended to other countries, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan had staked out the entire Chinese coast in separate economic spheres of influence. The elimination of the “unequal treaties” of the nineteenth century would be a common demand of republican, nationalist, and communist movements in twentieth century China.
German occupations in Africa
Germany was late in taking up colonization in Africa. The largest of the German colonies was Southwest Africa, stretching from the Portuguese colony of Angola southward for 900 miles to the Orange River, near the British Cape Colony. Encountering tribal warfare between the Herero and Nama tribes, the German Imperial Commissioner signed in 1885 a treaty of protection with the Herero. The Nama rejected the treaty terms, and instead waged a guerrilla war, which provoked the Germans to conduct punitive expeditions, until their surrender in 1894.
The Nama and Herero were cattle herders who had no interest in trading cattle products to the Germans. When a plague of rinderpest virtually wiped out their cattle, they had to sell their lands and possessions to buy vaccinations or new cattle. This led to the acquisition by German colonists of the best land available, leaving the Africans impoverished and subject to abuse. In January 1904, with an African population of some 200,000 and a German population of about 4,700, a Herero rebellion erupted. According to the Encyclopedia, the Herero—being unable to assault the well-fortified towns—killed every German adult male on isolated farms who could bear arms, sparing women, children, and non-Germans. The German governor had orders to put down the rebellion by any means necessary, and with the aid of reinforcements from Germany, he was able to drive the Herero into the desert, placing guards at every water hole.
With the Herero defeated, a Nama rebellion broke out in October 1904. Guerrilla war waged for a year, and both sides suffered greatly, but the Nama capitulated in October 1905.
Following the First World War, Germany lost her African colonies of Southwest Africa, Southeast Africa, Cameroon, and Togoland. In the debates leading up to the peace settlement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the USA called for the German colonies to be converted into projects of African self-government, but this call was unheeded, and the territories were granted as possessions to other European colonial powers. Germany had entered the process of African colonization with the intention of attaining access to raw materials, but had no success in attaining this goal.
The Belgian Congo
In 1879, Belgium’s King Leopold II established the Association Internationale Africaine, an apparently scientific and philanthropic society, with the primary purpose of attaining access to rubber and ivory in the Congo. It was a private venture owned by Leopold, reflecting the lack of support for colonies in the Belgian government. The Association hired famous explorer Henry Stanley to establish treaty relations with tribes in the area. The treaties required each region in the colony to supply a set amount of rubber and ivory per year, as well as a full-time labor force equal to 10% of their population and a part-time labor force equal to 25%. The treaties included payment for rubber and ivory, but at prices fixed by the Association that were far below market value. These arrangements were sanctioned by an international conference held in Berlin in 1884-1885.
The treaties were enforced though a private police force composed of white employees and locally recruited Africans, which terrorized the population into obedience, including the use of body mutilation, torture, rape, pillage, and looting. These abuses were exposed by the English naturalist and writer Mary Kingsley, whose writings inspired E. D. Moral to investigate and publish a series of articles, called “The Congo Scandal,” in 1900. Leopold denied the allegations, but investigations sponsored by the British House of Commons and the Belgian Parliament confirmed Moral’s findings. Some estimates indicated that the population of the Congo was reduced by one-half to two-thirds during the rule of the Association, as a result of murder, starvation, decrease in birthrate, and disease.
French occupation of Indochina
In 1862, France invaded the territory around Saigon and the Mekong River delta. The success of these military invasions compelled Annam emperor Tu-Doc to cede the three provinces of Cochin China and the island of Pulo Condore to France. The establishment of French administration over the newly acquired territories led to the arrival of French bureaucrats and merchants. Cochin China was declared a colony in 1874, and Annam was declared a protectorate. Responding to civil disturbances and the activities of Chinese pirates, the French sent more troops in 1884, which occupied the northern province of Tonking. In 1887, France created the Union Indochinoise, which included the colony of Cochin China as well as the protectorates of Tonking, Annam, and inner Cambodia, united under the direction of a governor-general.
In 1893, France sent an invading force up the Menam River to Bangkok, demanding the territory east of the Mekong River, which included Laos, which was under the control of independent Siam. In treaties singed in 1904, 1907, and 1909, the French and the British agreed that Siam would remain independent, and it would function as a buffer zone between Indochina, under French occupation, and Burma, under British occupation. In the twentieth century, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh would have something to say about these agreements.
British colonization of Kenya
International trade tied to local populations in eastern Africa initially was controlled by Arabs in 500 C.E. and subsequently by Persians, Ottomans, and Portuguese. British interest in the region was signaled by the formation by the British merchant William McKinnon of the British East Africa Association, which gained the support of the British government, and which became in 1888 the British East Africa Company. The interest of the British merchants was in access to Uganda and the secure transportation of Ugandan exports though Kenya to the coast. In accordance with this interest, the British government declared Uganda and British East Africa protectorates in 1894 and 1895. The following year, work was initiated on the construction of a railroad from the interior, crossing the Great Rift Valley and through the African swampland to the coast. The line from Mombasa to Lake Victoria was completed in 1902. In 1905, East Africa’s status was upgraded from protectorate to colony.
British colonization was led by Lord Delamere, the largest landholder in the colony, and the number of white settlers reached 3,000 by 1912, who established the city of Nairobi, which ultimately would become the capital of Kenya. The white settlers took over the lands of the two largest populations, the Masai and the Kikuyu. A system of forced labor for large agricultural estates was imposed on the Kikuyu and the neighboring Luo people, who provided labor in lieu of taxes. The Kikuyu rebelled, but they were brutally suppressed by the Third Regiment of the King’s African Rifles, a unit established to protect the settlers. The white population reached 10,000 by 1918. In 1920, the name of British East Africa was officially changed to Kenya, a colony characterized by white rule and the increasing impoverishment of the African populations.
From the world-systems perspective
The Encyclopedia provides a useful documentation, although incomplete and at times Eurocentric, of the European conquests of the world during the period 1750 to 1914. It documents, above all, that the expanding participation of the major European powers in world commerce was driven by the application of force.
As I noted in my last commentary, the Encyclopedia largely ignores the economic dimension of the process of European colonial domination. As the works of Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank show, the colonizers transformed the economies of the colonized nations and societies, so that they would function as suppliers of forced laborers and cheap raw materials for the central powers of the world-system, and they would provide markets for the surplus manufactured goods produced in the core economies. In imposing such global economic structures, the colonial powers were creating the structural foundations for the development of underdevelopment in the conquered peripheral regions, with structures that would outlive colonialism itself.
Wallerstein focuses on the incorporation of the Ottoman Empire, the Indian subcontinent, the Russian Empire, and West Africa into the periphery of the world-economy during the period 1750 to 1850, which had four economic dimensions. Namely, the conversion of the regions into exporters of raw materials; the establishment of systems of coerced labor; the elimination or reduction of manufacturing; and the concentration of economic power. For his part, Andre Gunder Frank focuses on the expansion from 1815 to 1914 of the European powers in southeast Asia, creating underdevelopment in the region, and establish the world-system as a truly global system.
Thus, whereas the Encyclopedia documents the fact of conquest, Wallerstein and Frank explain the logic of conquest, that it so say, they explain that certain social actors have an economic interest in conquest. At the same time, as this story of conquest continues to unfold in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will see that world conditions have developed in a form that have rendered outdated the interest of some in conquest and superexploitation and have established a common human interest in an alternative logic of cooperation, as has been proclaimed by insightful leaders speaking in the name of the colonized.
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Paul K. Davis, Ed. Encyclopedia of Invasions and Conquests, 4th edition (Millerton, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2023).
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World System, Vol. I (New York: Academic Press, 1974); The Capitalist World Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); The Modern World System, Vol. II (New York: Academic Press. 1980); The Modern World System, Vol. III (New York: Academic Press, 1989).
Andre Gunder Frank, Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).