Colonialism as Blowback
What has become apparent from my initial research on colonialism is that all sources (Western, Marxist, and Islamic) mark the origins of colonialism with the decline of Muslim power in Andalusia. In many ways, the colonialist movements were extensions of Europe’s response to their defeat in the Crusades. The access to Middle Eastern, North African, and Ottoman trade whetted Europe’s appettite for certain goods, especially spice and tea. Had Muslim states retained their power in Iberia, colonialism may have never occurred as the principle sea-exploration movements emanated largely from Spain and Portugal. Italy had no need to find an alternative route to access distant trade as it had a monopoly in Europe. Neither France, Holland, England, or Germany expressed any desire in such trade or in fighting Muslims on the scale that Portugal and Spain had. Thus, the primary factor that enabled colonialism to become possible was the Muslim defeat in Iberia. This is probably the greatest blowback in history. The extermination of the native americans through disease and murder by Europeans and the terrible enslavement of Africans created a global system of trade that would eventually give rise to the monopolization of capital, military, and finally, political power by Europe.
However, it wasn’t until the industrial revolution that Europe really rocketed forward and attained domination and exploitation of the world as a whole. It cannot be emphasized enough that the industrial revolution simply would not have been possible without colonialism and colonialism could not have happened without the defeat of Andalusia.
“In sum, and in conclusion, the six main ways in which foreign trade can be said to have helped to precipitate the first industrial revolution are listed below: (1) First of all it created a demand for the products of British industry … Specialization, as Adam Smith recognized in the 1770’s, depends on the extent of the market; without specialization it is not possible to obtain the economies of scale and experience which can lower costs and prices sufficiently to bring a product within the reach of the mass of the population. This is the vicious circle of a closed economy … It was access to a world market that broke this vicious circle for Britain. (2) International trade gave access to raw materials which both widened the range and cheapened the products of British industry. Without access to raw cotton Britain could not have shifted from dependence on an industry with a relatively inelastic demand (wool) to a technologically similar industry with a relatively elsatic demand (cotton). Unless they had been able to import Swedish bar-iron, Sheffield cutlers could never have built up the trade in quality steel which survived into the period when British bar-iron become good enough to serve their purose. (3) International trade provided poor, undeverdeveloped countries with the purchasing power to buy British goods. … (4) It provided an economic surplus which helped finance industrial expansion and agricultural improvement. The profits of trade overflowed into agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Without them the innovators would have found it difficult to convert the new ideas and rotations and machines into productive enterprise. … (5) It also helped to create an institutional structure and a business ethic which was to prove almost as effective in promoting the home-trade as it had been for the foreign trade. The elaborate network of commercial institutions in the city. … The systems of orderly marketing, insurance, quality-control and standardization of product which grew up out of the needs of foreign trade were important aids to improving productivity at home. … (6) Finally, it is worth noting that the expansion of international trade in the eighteenth century was a prime cause of the growth of large towns and industrial centers … the spectacular expansion of Liverpool and Glasgow was almost entirely a function of foreign trade. (p 227 of “World Accumulation: 1492 - 1789″ by Frank
While the talk of democratization, respect for human rights, and free trade has been repeated over and over to account for the underdevelopment of the “third world”, the reality is that Europe did not become powerful by respecting human rights or free trade. No part of the world has engaged in the deaths of more human beings in the modern era than Europe itself.
While the talk of the decline of the Ummah has largely been focused on not obeying the Shari’ah or the absence of Khilafah, the fact of the matter was that Muslim states had both the Shari’ah and Khilafah, but neither could prevent the rise of Western domination. Unsurprisingly, no Muslim intellectual has been able to come up with an adequate explanation for the decline of the Muslim world and the ascendancy of the West. Perhaps this is due to the lack of study of colonialism.
Sphere: Related ContentPublished June 18, 2007 . Filed under: Capitalism
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“the reality is that Europe did not become powerful by respecting human rights or free trade.”
Aye, there’s the rub…
The British bourgeoisie amassed wealth through slave trade across the Atlantic. Prime Minister Gladstone’s father accumulated wealth through slave trade like many others during the 18th century.
The enslavement of Sub-Saharan Africans provided Americans with a source of free labor which they exploited to the fullest extent to establish and run cotton plantations.
There you have the two most important components of the industrial revolution: cotton and capital…
Then there’s the quintessential symbol of the industrial revolution: Watt’s steam engine.
And how did cotton and the Watt’s steam engine end up in British cotton factories: the answer lies in the Slave traders’ blood-soaked monies…
June 19, 2007 @ 9:26 am
BTW, did you know the British were sympathetic to the Confederate cause because their industrial economy depended on a continued supply of cotton from the South. Britain came very close to recognizing the Confederacy and had a vested interest in preserving the slavery in the South to supply cheap cotton…
June 19, 2007 @ 9:32 am
Yeah, there’s this awesome book called “Slavery and Capitalism”. I was going to post excerpts on it, but I wanted the focus of the essay to be on the concept of capital accumulation throughout the world which actually came from these exploitative atrocities.
If one compares colonialism to the twentieth century mass murders, I’d say that Hitlers attempt at the extermination of the Jews/Gypsies was less successful than European extermination of the Native Americans and Stalin’s attempts at forced labor lead to far fewer deaths than those who died in the international slave trade.
But it is absolutely clear that the industrial revolution simply could not have happened without colonialism, and a large component of that was the extermination of the Native Americans and the transatlantic slave trade.
I also think its important that Muslims understand that it was somewhat their fault that colonialism as a historical process occurred because of their neglect of the community in Iberia and internal bickering.
Anyhow, if you’ve got any more sources on this subject, I’d love to read up on it. Right now, I’m reading up on the spice trade.
June 19, 2007 @ 10:11 am
Another point: colonization could not have happened without forced labour (African slaves in America, or convicts in Australia), because its backers needed a way of gaining a return on their investment. (Religious exiles like the Pilgrim Fathers may have been an exception
America (for example) was a huge continent populated only by easily-exterminated Red Indians, which meant that colonists effectively had free land for the taking. Given this opportunity it was not surprising that they preferred to work for themselves, rather than for the paymasters of the whole enterprise of colonization. Hence the paymasters needed forced labourers to work their plantations, in order to produce a profitable product.
June 19, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
Excellent points.
The next question, obviously, is: how much of today’s financial networks are still profiting from those atrocities?
After all, capitalism is an interest based system where wealth isn’t tied down directly to hard currency, but to money that is derived from money. If the global financial network has its origins in colonialism, even though its only been a hundred or so years and the original capital has probably recycled itself, nonetheless, the interest derived from that capital is still today. Thus, the current financial model has its origins in the bloodshed and atrocities that occurred through colonialism.
Anyone have any further reading on this subject? I’d like to see how non-Marxists have responded to these allegations.
June 19, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
I’m not sure how the destruction of Baghdad would explain why the West rose to power … most of the active conflict between Islamdom and Christendom occurred in their respective peripheries such as in Iberia, the coastal areas, etc. Moreover, even if Baghdad hadn’t been destroyed, it probably would’ve been consumed by the Ottoman Empire at some point.
I’m not seeing the connection, would you mind elaborating?
June 20, 2007 @ 1:49 am
I was talking about the reasons responsible for the decline of the Muslim world. The Mongol invasion dates back to around 1230. And Taimur again invaded Bagdad, key Central Asian states, and Northern India around 1400. If I’m not mistaken, the Ottomans entered the picture much later. And I don’t know if the service rendered by the Tartar hordes equals the works of the Imperlialists or the Turks.
There are many easily available books and articles on the topic.
See, e.g. “genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World”. It’s a simple but interesting book. The author talks about Mongol phenomenon and its implications for the world at large.
In other words, maybe it is possible that the link between colonialism and Iberia is weakened if we consider the Mongol/Tartar aspect. The Crusades might have had some influence on fostering (or executing) a predatory atttiude in the West (if it did not /does not exist biologically), but you might agree with the view that Muslims were psychologically unprepared at that time to meet the challenges of a changing world. This is far ahead in time, but we can consider the example of Turks vs. Allies late 19th century, and also the Indian situation post Aurangzeb Alamgir. No one can deny that Muslims were lagging behind in all temporal sectors. I think that’s why scholars or writers tend to focus more on the internal weakness or incapacity than the external colonial factor.
June 20, 2007 @ 9:08 am
I don’t think either the Crusades or the Mongol invasion was devastating to the Muslim world as a whole. The Muslim world is not merely the territory that Arabs live in, it also encompasses Africa, India, Europe, Southeast Asia, etc. The Mongols had a path of destruction where they want, but they were also a force of unification and order. Most of the territories they affected in the Muslim world were actually petty emirates. After the Mongol invasion, the response from the Muslims was a unified state. Also, the destruction of Baghdad was negative since a lot of knowledge was lost, but it also created a dispersal of knowledge as well to other areas of the Muslim world, especially the science of hadeeth, such as in Egypt and India. When the Ottoman and Mughal states created safe trade routes, the scholars of hadeeth re-located back into Makkah and Madinah which served as a catalyst for the revivalist movements of the colonial era such as those lead by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn AbdulWahhab, Shah Waliullah, Shaykh Uthman Dan Fodio, et al. The primary reason why Makkah/Madinah had developed into a center of hadeeth was because of the annual Hajj. Had Baghdad never been destroyed and that knowledge not dispersed, the revivalist movements may have become very diminished.
Thus, in some ways, it could be argued that the destruction of Baghdad was a good thing in some ways.
More importantly, as I stated above, the Muslim world is simply not the Arab world. While the destruction of Baghdad was a major setback, many parts of the Muslim world were not affected by the Mongol invasions.
Furthermore, the Mongol invasion thoroughly weakened Eastern Europe which also assisted in the rise of the Ottoman Empire since the primary source of their elite fighting force, the Janissaries, came from that area.
So its a catch 22. Their are benefits and also burdens.
I’ll definitely take a look into the book, but the Mongol connection seems to me too tenuous of a connection to account for the rise of colonialism. It might have to do with the rise of the Ottomans and the Mughals and the revivalist movements in the colonial era, but it doesn’t explain why Western Europe was able to ascend in the world.
June 20, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
One factor is that the Spanish in Peru discovered the potato - a crop which was far more suited to cool climates than the grain crops which had previously.
This allowed northern countries like England, Holland and Prussia to gain more population, powering ahead of Mediterranean lands like the Ottoman Empire, Venice and Spain.
June 29, 2007 @ 7:18 am
One factor is that the Spanish in Peru discovered the potato - a crop which was far more suited to cool climates than the grain crops which had previously been the staple crops of Europe.
This allowed northern countries like England, Holland and Prussia to gain more population, powering ahead of Mediterranean lands like the Ottoman Empire, Venice and Spain.
June 29, 2007 @ 7:19 am