Abstract
This chapter is divided into three main parts dealing with the characters of European colonization—the major processes of European colonization that significantly reshaped the economic structure and institutions of the colonies to impact human development in Muslim majority countries (MMCs). The chapter suggests that the effects of the colonial invasion depend on the character of the colonial master and its approach. The MMCs with no colonial invasion were also subjected to some outside intervention to face economic, political, and social transformations. The chapter concludes that the MMCs need to focus on introducing economic, social, and political structure and institutions to have a sustained human development, and not only to blame the past or present ‘external forces’ for lower human development.
Keywords
- Berlin Conference
- Colonization
- Crop
- Drain theory
- Land
- Ottoman Sultan
- Sykes-Picot Agreement
- Trade
- Tribe
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Notes
- 1.
In the eleventh century CE Chinese factories were producing 125,000 tons of iron every year—a figure Europe would not match for 700 years (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2005, p. 15).
- 2.
In 1700 CE the population of India was 20 times that of the UK; India’s share of total world output at that time is estimated to be 24%, Britain’s share was just 3% (Ferguson 2008, p. 27). In terms of proportion to the number of population it was not much, but it terms of volume it was.
- 3.
For example, (in 1960 CE US$) Asian GNP was $ 165 billion in 1860 CE and $ 120 billion in 1750 CE, while the entire ‘West’ (Europe and the Americas as well as Russia and Japan), during the two corresponding periods had a GNP of $ 115 and $ 35 billion. The figures are recalculated by A. G. Frank in a lecture (‘Asian-based world economy 1400–1800: A horizontally integrative macro-history’) at the University of Amsterdam, 12 November 1995, available at: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/50/089.html. Also see (Abu-Lughod 1989; Chaudhuri 1986, 1991) for interesting discussions of the phenomenon.
- 4.
Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng He (along his colleagues) is claimed to have reached the Cape of Good Hope (60 years before Dias), Strait of Magellan (98 years before Magellan), Australia (three centuries before Captain Cook), Antarctica and the Arctic (four centuries before the Europeans), and America (70 years before Columbus) between 1421 and 1423 CE (Menzies 2003, p. 456).
- 5.
For an enlightening discussion on the voyages, and their ends as well as about the splendid boats they used to build, see Menzies (2003).
- 6.
England’s outward vessels included silver as well as lead, tin, mercury, corals, ivory, armor, swords, satins, and broadcloth (some of which were obtained from Africa) to be traded in India for cotton textiles, that were to be traded in the ‘Spice Lands’ for pepper, cloves, and nutmeg. In the return journey spices were to be traded in India for tea for Europe (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2005, p. 31).
- 7.
By 1700 CE it was possible to reach Boston from England in 6/7 weeks (two weeks less in the return trip), and Barbados in about nine weeks (but by the mid-1830s steamship reduced the journey time to only two weeks, cutting further to about ten days by the 1880s; Ferguson 2008, p. 25).
- 8.
For example, Goa in India remained a Portuguese enclave for a long time and lost its ‘Indianness.’ Luckily for Mumbai (the then Bombay) it was received by Charles II of England as a dowry when he married Princess Catherine of Portugal in 1661 CE (see Ferguson 2008, p. 24).
- 9.
This paragraph is based on O’Sullivan (2008, pp. 73–75).
- 10.
Germans had to work hard to secure Turkey as an ally. For example, since 1888 CE the Deutsche bank had played a leading role in the financing of the Berlin–Baghdad Railway. The bank had to agree, under an order from the Kaiser in 1899 CE, to the extension of the existing line to Baghdad from Istanbul across Anatolia via Ankara, but finally planned to make it profitable by extending line to Basra. In fact, the British also had played a role in this project because “a deal had been struck on the eve of the war giving the Germans the right to extend the line to Basra in return for letting the British lead the exploration of the Mesopotamian oilfields” (Ferguson 2008, p. 302).
- 11.
Since about a half of the world Muslims at that time were under British, French, or Russian rule, “this could have been a masterstroke of German strategy,” and as the Germans had hoped, the British responded to the Turkish threat by diverting men and materials away from the Western Front to Mesopotamia (Iraq) and the Dardanelles (Ferguson 2008, pp. 302, 303).
- 12.
The British military advance from Egypt to Palestine and Syria in 1917–1918 CE was greatly assisted by the guerrilla operations against the Turks mounted by Arab contingents in contact with British officers such as T. E. Lawrence (Keylor 2006, p. 54).
- 13.
It was mediated by Harry Philby—a Muslim convert and an ex-British government official.
- 14.
That became more influential creating Chevron with the acquisition of Gulf oil in 1984 (see Chevron’s history in its Homepage).
- 15.
- 16.
This paragraph is based on Marston et al. (2005, pp. 458–461). Some facts and assertions are clarified from the Wikipedia.
- 17.
But an Anglo-Dutch (company) merger “meant that the British could operate far more freely in the East.” The deal “effectively gave Indonesia and the spice trade to the Dutch” (Ferguson 2008, p. 23).
- 18.
There was no freehold title of land in South Asia; common properties, being the only resource, used to motivate collective productive efforts resulting in the creation and sharing of public good (Hasan 2008).
- 19.
The Dutch started planting coffee in Java and the surrounding islands in the seventeenth century CE acquiring the plant seeds from the Arabia (O’Sullivan 2008, p. 67).
- 20.
Fueled with the increased demand of rubber tires because of the “explosion of automobile ownership in Europe and North America,” the land area under rubber plantation skyrocketed to 2.1 million acres in 1920 from only 2,000 acres in 1898. This paragraph is based on Marston et al. (2005, pp. 458–461). Some facts and assertions are clarified from the Wikipedia.
- 21.
In the mid-nineteenth century CE, while looking for ways for exploiting newly colonized lands, the British arranged for the introduction of 12,000 tea plants, related tools and workforce from China. Receiving lands from the British government, the planters, blessed by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (that boosted profit margins cutting the transportation cost to England) increased the tea plantation area in Bengal six-fold (Marston et al. 2005, p. 506), primarily with slave labors.
- 22.
Restrictive ‘taxes’ were imposed on items not approved by the colonial administrator (see Marston et al. 2005, pp. 458, 459). Tariffs on imported foreign manufacturing were significantly raised, while tariffs on raw materials used for manufacturing were lowered (or even dropped), or export subsidies were introduced to encourage manufacturing exports (Chang 2008).
- 23.
British Prime Minister Walpole, in 1721, introduced tariffs on imported foreign manufacturing, reduced (or even dropped) tariffs on raw materials used for manufacturing, and introduced export subsidies to encourage manufacturing exports. The law also banned cotton textile imports from India, and the export of woollen clothes from the colonies to other countries (Chang 2008, p. 44).
- 24.
The total value of the industrialized countries’ agriculture subsidies (about $ 370 billion a year) is higher than the GDP of whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The European subsidy for each of its cow’s is about $ 900/year, Japan’s is about $ 2,700 (Meredith 2006, p. 684), while about two billion of the world’s population survive on $ 730/year ($ 2/day).
- 25.
The $ 4 billion subsidy to 25,000 cotton farmers amounts to “more than the value of entire crop” (Meredith 2006, p. 684).
- 26.
It is possible because the agriculture sector in the USA is “exempt from anti-trust” legislation and is largely controlled by “legal monopolies” (Reinert 2008, p. 160).
- 27.
For example, in support of this contention Menzies (2003) cites one instance that “Francisco Pizzaro gained Peru from the Incas by massacring five thousand Indians in cold blood. Today he would be considered a war criminal.” The readers may like to read this fascinating account (with evidence) of Chinese discovery of the world that has remained unknown to the world for long.
- 28.
In all four countries, sociocultural and religious characters of the people are completely different from the neighboring countries. Also, one Portuguese enclave (Goa) and a French enclave (Pondicherry) in India and their people, culture, social structure and relationships, and religion (being completely different from other parts of India, except for the mountainous Eastern regions) are also vivid examples of this phenomenon.
- 29.
While installing the British government’s authority (replacing the East India Company’s ‘rule’ of about 100 years) in reaction to an armed rebellion (known as Sepoy, soldier, mutiny; or the first step toward independence of the region) following the Company’s actions in insulting Hinduism and Islam.
- 30.
Indonesia with a 300 years colonial history under Dutch has about 8% Christians; the next door, the Philippines, being occupied by Spain, for a similar time period, followed by the Americans for a short period, has about 88% Christian now.
- 31.
The British had “a paternalistic indirect rule for most of their (African) colonies, making preexisting power structures and leaders responsible to the British Crown.” The local leaders were required to collect all newly imposed taxes to indirectly transform the economy by forcing the use of land for commodity production because, in order to pay the taxes, people had to produce crops to sell to the Europeans (Meredith 2006).
- 32.
By 1946, there were about 20 Africans, elected from West Africa, in the French parliament (Marston et al. 2005, p. 254).
- 33.
By 1910, about 16,000 European missionaries were stationed throughout sub-Saharan Africa (Meredith 2006, p. 7).
- 34.
In some places it was a private union of the three. For example, in 1908 the private empire of King Leopold, the Congo, came under “the control of a small management group in Brussels representing an alliance between the government, the Catholic church, and the giant mining and business corporations whose activities were virtually exempt from outside scrutiny” (Meredith 2006, p. 96).
- 35.
Because of a consumer boycott in the 1790s of the ‘blood-stained’ sugar from the West Indies, the East India Company was “eventually forced to get its sugar from slave less sugar producers in Bengal” (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2005, p. 37).
- 36.
Asia did not have slave trade any way. The British colonial government officially opened up the slave trade, in 1750 CE, leaving it under the control of a club, the “Company of Merchants Trading to Africa” (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2005, p. 46).
- 37.
About £270 million or about 20% of its entire investment overseas by the 1880s; the figure had reached £400 million by 1914 (about 11% of British investment of £3,800 million; Ferguson 2008, p. 244).
- 38.
A coal industry was established in India from scratch to produce 16 million tons a year.
- 39.
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the USA (Ferguson 2008, p. 234).
- 40.
The total number of independent states increased to 54 at the end of the decolonization process that saw the creation of Eritrea in 1993 (see Collier 2010, p. 179).
- 41.
The conference was to acknowledge the right to ‘pursue’ “legal ownership of land, free from interference by any other” as the Act had mentioned (see the related entry in the Wikipedia).
- 42.
- 43.
The term ‘tribe,’ refers to a form of social identity of a (kinship, language, or resource based) group who shares a common set of ideas about collective loyalty and political action, and often has negative connotations, is thus often replaced by the term ‘ethnic groups’ that refers to lesser exclusivity (Marston et al. 2005, p. 254).
- 44.
Entirely new ethnic groups emerged for example, Abaluyia or Kalenjin in Kenya. Tribal identities were used to by the colonial masters to divide the subjects (e.g., British in Sudan and French in Morocco). New powerful linguistic groups (like Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Shona, and so forth) were formed to reinforce language-based solidarity. The newly ‘appointed’ chiefs were regarded as the symbol of ethnicity, and the colonial agents (Meredith 2006, p. 155).
- 45.
Comprehending the worse impacts of tribalism on ‘nationhood,’ the state in Iran, in the early twentieth century CE ruthlessly and systematically attempted to eliminate tribal affiliations (Marston et al. 2005, pp. 203, 204).
- 46.
A ‘secret’ agreement between the UK and France (assented by Russia) defining their respective ‘spheres of influence’ in Ottoman land after the latter’s expected downfall during the World War I (see the entry in Wikipedia).
- 47.
Yet, Muslims have accepted these divisions as enshrined in the Organization for Islamic Conference charter (Article 11; Moten 2005, Endnote 14).
- 48.
The figures are from the online CIA Fact Book available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.
- 49.
The Christians, even after having been dwindled to about one third of the five million population now, are still guaranteed 50% of the parliamentary seats, the presidency, and the position of the army chief (Gulf News, 9.10.10, p. 11) because all groups fear a return to the ‘conflicts’ of the 1980s, if the statuesque is threatened.
- 50.
The Declaration contained “a hopeless contradiction: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….” (Ferguson 2008, p. 357).
- 51.
- 52.
An enclave of desert surrounding the port of Djibouti became French Somaliland to function as a coaling station. The British acquired northern Somaliland to ensure the supply of meat to the “British garrison at Aden.” The Italians carved a portion for themselves with Mogadishu as its capital. Southern Somaliland was incorporated “within the boundaries of British colony of Kenya.” Finally, in the late nineteenth century CE the western part of Somaliland came under Ethiopia (Meredith 2006, p. 465).
- 53.
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
- 54.
The Somali government due to the subclan infighting is so weak that it did not (or could not) do anything at the declaration of independence by Somaliland, an Italian colony federated with Somalia in 1960. Somaliland, unlike Eritrea, did not get international support (Keylor 2006, p. 455) but has been able to survive as a sovereign entity since 1991 because of its internal harmony and external apathy (i.e., no claims from Somalia).
- 55.
For excellent discussions of related matters, see Chap. 26 (‘Black Hawk Down’) in Meredith (2006, pp. 464–484).
- 56.
This paragraph is based mainly on Meredith (2006, pp. 35, 36). These two parts were re-separated in July 2011.
- 57.
At independence only 57 of the 1,000 students at the University College in Ibadan were from the North (Meredith 2006).
- 58.
The government positions were filled by highly qualified Igbo (and about 1% of Nigerian higher executive posts were held by the Northerners) because at independence, the North, with 54% of the population, had only 10 and 5% of the primary and secondary school enrollments, respectively.
- 59.
For example, Chief Masood Abiola, a Yoruba and a future president, made huge fortunes with his connections with the military. In the eight years’ of Babangida’s regime alone, Abiola’s companies (dealing with agriculture, aviation, banking, communications, oil exploration, publishing, shipping, and so forth) “were estimated to have gained government contracts worth some $ 845 million” (Meredith 2006, p. 395).
- 60.
Apart from remaining a part of the Ottoman Empire, for a short period Egypt (between 1882 and 1922) was under British protection, and Libya was under Italian rule (1911–1943). None was a ‘colony.’ Thus, Egypt and Libya are grouped as British protectorates.
- 61.
The far-reaching influence of the characters of the European colonial powers on the economy and society in Asian countries are demonstrated by the facts that the East Asian tigers (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand) were never colonies. On the other hand, the Asian tragedies like Cambodia and Laos were under French, and Timore Leste was a Portuguese colony (Easterly 2006). The situation in the MMCs seems not to be different.
- 62.
Since Ibn Khaldun suggested that, if 0–63° Latitude is divided equally into seven zones (with 9° Latitude each) it seems the (old) world civilizations were most developed in Zone 4 (28° and 36° N; expanding to zones 3 and 5; Lacoste 1984). The ‘zones’ in this chapter correspond to this classification (for more see Chap. 1).
- 63.
Bangladesh (East Pakistan) became a part of the decolonized Pakistan to become an independent state in 1971.
- 64.
The discovery of petroleum in the region that started a competition between the UK and USA to secure (better) deals from the local Sheikhs allowed the external powers influence the Arab economies.
- 65.
For example, cotton severely lowers soil fertility; areas of West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa (Sudan), South Asia that experienced the introduction of cotton plantation during the colonial era are “now unable to switch to more profitable crops or even to produce food because of the depleted soil” (based on a Wikipedia entry on Economy of West Africa).
- 66.
The government itself finally had to take charge of the production and sale of opium in the country (Marston et al. 2005, p. 224). Similar stories are evident in Afghanistan in the recent past.
- 67.
For example, the British signed the General Treaty of Peace in 1820 CE and the Perpetual Maritime Truce in 1853 CE with the then rulers—the forefathers of different rulers in the Gulf (based on O’Sullivan 2008, pp. 73–75).
- 68.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were not colonies but suffered annexation of its territory during the decolonization of their neighbors.
- 69.
That was created as a buffer state to protect British India from the Tsarist invasion.
- 70.
The worst incident resulting from a border demarcation for economic reason is the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (to stop oil drilling in Ramallah oil field by Kuwait and recapture the strategic Bubian Island) at the Iraqi border.
- 71.
China has been rebuilding and widening the Karakoram Highway (with a proposal for railways), and financing, and building a deep-water port at Gwadar in Pakistan exclusively for shipping its goods through Karakoram (Emmott 2009, p. 53) avoiding the above water bodies.
- 72.
Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), being parts of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO, created in 1996 as ‘Shanghai Five’ and reorganized and renamed in 2001 also includes China and Russia) are likely to influence the future geopolitics of the region.
- 73.
This chapter is based on Emmott (2009, pp. 146–154); some information has been updated from related Wikipedia entries.
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Hasan, S. (2012). European Colonization and the Muslim Majority Countries: Antecedents, Approaches, and Impacts. In: Hasan, S. (eds) The Muslim World in the 21st Century. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2633-8_7
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