Labour Monthly, March 1943
Source: Labour Monthly, March 1943, pp. 95-96, “History in Blinkers,” book review by Bill Bradley;
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.
The author of this book has presented a quarter of a century’s research in the history of the British Empire. With 31 maps and the 850 pages he has gathered an enormous amount of factual material on every aspect of this important subject. Important because, at this moment of crisis when the menace of Fascism threatens the world, we are still unable to win full confidence of the colonial peoples and the full participation of these peoples in the fight against this menace.
Paul Knaplund has managed to write an apology for British Imperialism. It is difficult to understand how a history of the British Empire can be written without reference to the monopoly control of raw materials and export of capital to the colonies and India, and the effect of this on those countries. On the question of the British Empire, the effect of big combines and trusts, such as Unilever Ltd., Imperial Chemical Industries, The Standard and Royal Dutch Shell in the oil industry, is decisive. Investments in the colonies bring profits to the capitalists out of the exploitation of colonial workers and peasants. To safeguard the capitalist interests control must be maintained over the machinery of state of the colonial country. Any reference to this deciding factor is missing from Paul Knaplund’s history.
The question of how industrial development has been retarded in the interests of finance capital and the effect on the colonies and India is not dealt with. Further, no picture is given of the results of this policy of exploitation which has impoverished the colonial countries.
The book is a compilation of events and presented showing the British Empire in the best possible light to show progress made since the slave-owning days. Even so, the appalling conditions have to be brought out. In respect of the West Indies a Government Commission was sent out in 1939. The Government refused to publish the report of this Commission, which it made on its return to this country. Major-General Sir John Orde Browne, who went to the West Indies to investigate labour conditions in 1938-9, reported that he found “that Trade Unions in the modern sense were practically unknown and that only a few of these colonies had regulations concerning the employment of women and children, hours and conditions of labour, minimum wage, and workmen’s compensation.” (p.657.)
In dealing with India (p.735): “For the five years 1931-1935 the Indian birth rate averaged 34.5 and the death rate 23.5 per thousand. While these are not much higher than similar rates in eastern European countries, the corresponding figures for New Zealand are 19.7 and 8.6. It has been computed, however, that since 1900 life expectancy in India has risen from 23 to 261/2 years.” So expectancy of life has risen to 261/2 years. In this country it is about 60 years.
On the question of education, we are told by Paul Knaplund that the number of Indian Universities has increased from four in 1914 to eighteen in 1938. While we are given figures in respect of student enrolments, we are not told that the census taken in 1911 showed 94 per cent. of the population as totally illiterate, or that in 1931 total illiteracy was 92 per cent. and in 1941 was 89 per cent. Progress in removing illiteracy over the past thirty years has been almost negligible. Contrast this with the Soviet Union, where in 1917, when the Soviets came to power, there was from 80 to 90 per cent. illiteracy (“there was 72 to 80 per cent. illiteracy in European Russia, rising to 99.7 per cent. in some of the Asiatic Provinces” – Beatrice King, Education in the Soviet Union) and where it is now practically abolished.
The stages of Indian history since 1815, as represented in this book, might easily have been written by an India Office official. To read here about the Government of India Act 1935, one would get the impression that with the operation of the Federal Government, India would have independence.
Some of the book’s worst features are shown when the National Liberation Movements are touched upon. The following quotation is an example: “Still, the Anglo-German conflict of 1939 supplied the National Party (National Congress) with opportunities to demand fresh concessions.” This is a complete distortion of the facts. The Indian National Congress did not demand further concessions – it simply reiterated its demands, made on many occasions for a number of years past. Mr. Paul Knaplund’s twenty-five years of research into the history of the British Empire between 1815 and 1939 have been largely wasted because of his inability to understand the question in its fundamentals and secondly because of his attempt to apologise for the operation and effect of imperialism in the colonial countries.
BEN BRADLEY.