Imperialism And Colonialism, 1870-1914

How did European powers justify the negative consequences of colonialism?

There's an essential contradiction in the story of European imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. The two biggest imperial powers—France and Britain—were also the two nations that were—in principle—the most committed to forms of representative government and the rule of law, and yet somehow they found it quite right that they should through conquest control a vast portion of the earth. This could only be done through violence, and this was real violence. Just to give one example, historians estimate that 850,000 people died in the French conquest of Algeria—a process that took decades. How could they justify this? There were various versions of the ideology that was used to justify this. Rudyard Kipling most famously called it the white man's burden; that it was the responsibility of the enlightened nations of Europe to bring the fruits of their superior culture and superior knowledge to other parts of the world. In France, they didn't use a racial term to describe it, they called it the civilized nation; it was their responsibility and their duty to bring the benefits of French culture and French civilization to other parts of the world. In principle this was something they stood for. People in other parts of the world subjected to colonial rule would eventually be assimilated into the French empire and become French. Of course this was always postponed; it was never quite realized. And in fact, there were strong forces militating against a real assimilation. To take something simple, such as economic development: it was very hard for the ministry of colonies to advocate industrial development in the colonies because it was destabilizing for all sorts of reasons. First of all domestic industries didn't want the competition—they wanted to see the colonies as sources of raw materials. And there was also great fear that industrial development in the colonies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would lead to the production of a more radical work force that would be open to all sorts of propaganda, from the communists and so forth. So there were strong interests militating against the actual economic developments of the colonies. Ultimately, of course, the civilizing mission and the white man's burden failed in its promise and the end result was the reassertion of movements of national independence in the aftermath of the Second World War.