2 Cheers for Piracy? Why D’Souza’s Defence of Colonialism is Wrong

After the recent death of the British queen, Elizabeth II, Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing Indian American political commentator, reminded his audience of his 2002 article: “Two cheers for colonialism.” It is a commentary written in defense of the European colonial systems of past centuries and what the author believes to be their achievements. Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few references to the British colonial rule that once extended to the country of D’Souza’s origin: India. 

The article is old, but the points it raises still float around. This provides a good opportunity to counter the author’s statements, which while two decades old, remain pervasive in some circles.

“You forgot about the Mongols”

This first point is not an aspect I will devote much space to, as, I assume, it is an easy one to counter. D’Souza wrote:

There is nothing uniquely Western about colonialism. My native country of India, for example, was ruled by the British for more than two centuries, and many of my fellow Indians are still smarting about that. What they often forget, however, is that before the British came, the Indians were invaded and conquered by the Persians, by the Mongols, by the Turks, by Alexander the Great, by the Afghans and by the Arabs.

Many wrongs simply do not make a right. Yes, states and tribes were invading and exploiting each other over the millennia. But most invasions have been criticized and described in harsh words – historians are not singling out European colonial rule in this regard. 

I could also add that D’Souza’s fellow Indians do not forget earlier wars and invasions, as he claims they do. Far from it; those events of yore are a subject of heated historical debates in India to this day, just as it is the case with British rule. 

“My life is good, so British rule must have been good”

A whole set of points that the author raises at the end of the text verges on bizarre, and so I am addressing it in this second section, as, once again, it does not take many words to counter. This line of argument rests on the assumption that colonialism was bad for the people living under its yoke, but good for the descendants of those people. D’Souza’s claim is, in a way, just one more avatar of the most common way of defending colonialism: the notorious “Oh, but the British built railways in India” argument:

How is this possible? Virtually everything that I am, what I do, and my deepest beliefs, all are the product of a world view that was brought to India by colonialism. I am a writer, and I write in English. My ability to do this, and to reach a broad market, is entirely thanks to the British. […] This brings me to the greatest benefit that the British provided to the Indians: They taught them the language of freedom.

At the risk of stating the obvious, an India-born author who writes in English and lives in the United States is hardly representative of the Indian masses. That D’Souza believes that his entire worldview is a product of colonialism is something both his critics and his supporters probably could agree on. But it is also a statement that most Indians, including the U.S.-based, would not sign below when writing about themselves. 

In some ways, D’Souza indeed represents a chunk of India’s elites, who often do reap the career benefits of knowing English and who enjoy better access to the Western world. But this is not the same as claiming that the colonial legacy informs each and every aspect of their identity (it can be reasonably argued that it informs a part of their identity).

The same ignorance forms the basis of D’Souza’s statement that the British taught Indians the “language of freedom.” Even a cursory reading of the history of the Indian independence movement reveals that the protesting masses were inspired by their own history and culture, while the elites were inspired by both Western and Indian thought, to various degrees, and in various, mixed ways.

At the same time, historical data confirm that British rule did lead to India’s impoverishment, the British having sucked out immense sums from the country. Thus, while the U.S.-based D’Souza can claim that echoes of colonialism ring in his life, the same can be said of many Indian families who could have been much wealthier today had colonial rule not occurred. And this brings us to the author’s main point.

“Stealing does not make you rich”

D’Souza writes:

The West did not become rich and powerful through colonial oppression. It makes no sense to claim that the West grew rich and strong by conquering other countries and taking their stuff.

This calls for a slightly longer discussion, and potentially a more complex and interesting one. To support this claim, D’Souza goes on:

Moreover, the West could not have reached its current stage of wealth and influence by stealing from other cultures for the simple reason that there wasn't very much to take. ‘Oh yes there was,’ the retort often comes. ‘The Europeans stole the raw material to build their civilization. They took rubber from Malaya and cocoa from West Africa and tea from India.’ But as economic historian P.T. Bauer points out, before British rule, there were no rubber trees in Malaya, nor cocoa trees in West Africa, nor tea in India. The British brought the rubber tree to Malaya from South America. They brought tea to India from China. And they taught the Africans to grow cocoa, a crop the native people had previously never heard of.

The instances given here are historically not wrong, but they are selective to the point of being highly misleading. Yes, colonialism resulted in great ecological upheaval – an introduction of plants from subdued regions to other ones. But these examples are all taken from the later phase of European dominance – chiefly from the 19th century. In the case of Asia and Africa, that was the period of “proper” colonialism: a full and direct subjugation of many countries and regions. In the early modern period, from the 16th to 18tn century, European presence on these two continents was mostly of a different character.

First, the historical roots of colonialism lie in European attempts to find new trade routes into Asia, in a bid to acquire pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and mace (not tea, cocoa, and rubber). These were exactly the produce of plants that Asia had and rich European customers yearned for. Pepper was being brought from the Malabar coast (South India), while cloves, nutmeg, and mace came from the Banda Islands (in today’s Indonesia). Notably, D’Souza does not mention any of these, and they all wreck his “there wasn't very much to take” conclusion. Europeans made mammoth efforts to reach South Asia and Southeast Asia precisely because they considered these region’s commodities so valuable. 

Second, not only was the colonial project all about taking what others had, but the taking was exactly what made those powers extremely rich. The colonial system had its foundations in states and companies seeking ways to raise profits from the luxurious spice trade. Members of the English India Company often ended up making fortunes and sometimes becoming influential politicians back in the United Kingdom. Expeditions were undertaken to build new trade avenues; long trade routes necessitated the establishment of ports and magazines; the violent way of enforcing this trade network led to clashes with local rulers; and gradually European powers began to penetrate into the Asian hinterland, defeating whole kingdoms. The main source of income was eventually shifted from trade to conquest, but the reason remained the same: greed.

Only when European powers began to hold larger swaths of land across different continents did they acquire the capacity to establish plantations and to shift some species of plants from one ecosystem to another. The English East India Company, for instance, was established in 1600 but began to conquer larger regions of India only in the second half of the 18th century. This “replanting of plants” was thus not part of the original trade, but rather a new activity undertaken after learning more about the flora of each area, and its value. 

At first chained by trade routes to places of endemic origin, Europeans concluded that plants like the nutmeg tree, earlier growing only in the Banda Islands, could be grown elsewhere too. Then exposure to various regions, their produce, their markets and needs taught the Europeans that they did not have to limit themselves to the above-mentioned spices. Hence, in time, they would begin to trade across various regions, depending on the opportunities of a given time (as in the case of the British trade of opium from India to China). Once again, the reason to do this was to earn more and pay the rising costs of further conquests and rule. The Europeans did not introduce tea to India or cocoa to Africa for charity purposes.

Finally, even in that early modern period, the European trading powers were barely nobler in their behavior than, say, pirates. The exchange of those commodities was far from equal. Let us remember that their main and final force was brutal: power based on sturdy ships and deadly cannons. When a local ruler would refuse to sell produce at a price that the Europeans demanded, or when he declined them land for their trading stations, Europeans would often coerce him by waging a war. In their time of early, unchallenged dominance, the Portuguese even went as for as to issue their own “documents of passage” for any ships wishing to cross the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese reserved for themselves a right to sink any ship that did not possess the papers only they provided. This was akin to pirates issuing visas for naval travel, and probably this comparison comes closer to representing the true nature of colonialism than D’Souza’s skewed understanding.