By Alysha Lawson-Frost [Edited by Teddy Wryley-Birch and Sonia Hussain]
How have academic and popular histories of anti-colonial resistance been shaped by political and ideological considerations?
European imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries impacted the world so profoundly that histories of its opposition have inevitably taken on decidedly political and ideological shapes. The political or ideological considerations of histories creates a lens constructed from who is writing, when they are writing, and what the dominant ideological or political positions are, through which anti-colonial actions are viewed. The potency of anti-colonial histories to be shaped by this lens is enhanced by the elusiveness of the archives, increasing the possibility of manufacturing motivations convenient to the beholder. First, the way political debates at the imperial centre impacted historical memory will be examined, analysing how political contests prompted by anti-colonial resistance at home also contained a struggle for the historical narrative. Then, the way political and ideological conceptions of empire led to a historical amnesia over anti-colonial actions will be analysed. Moving onto histories perpetuated less by the colonisers and more by the colonised, the historical shaping power of Marxism and nationalism will be considered, examining how they are used by the post-colonised to regain self-identity and dignity when faced with their historical erasure by former-imperial powers. It will ultimately be argued that these lenses can never be withdrawn from histories of anti-colonialism due to the vast effects of imperialism coupled with the political distortions of archival materials. Nonetheless, by broadening the field to those formerly excluded from the histories and critically examining the materials available, histories may be able to form increasingly valuable perspectives on anti-colonial resistance.
Occasionally, anti-colonial resistance can trigger political and ideological contests at the imperial centre. In attempting to draw on the resistance in a way favourable to their respective positions, these political contests often have considerable influence over how history will consider both the meaning of empire and the meaning of resistance. Two different case studies can show varying ways that the outcomes of these disputes shape historical narratives, with those ‘winning’ their desired policy or ideological dominance usually gaining a monopoly over the historical narrative.
For the first case, regarding the United States’ debates over imperial policy, the political and ideological winners of disputes over the Bud Dajo Massacre informed the historical framing of anti-colonial resistance in a way which rationalised empire. Those supporting imperialism justified events such as the Bud Dajo Massacre in attempts to pre-emptively control the historical narrative. How American supporters of imperialism could dismiss anti-colonial actions was complicated by the fact that the United States had itself rejected its colonial status in resistance and propagated the belief that popular sovereignty and self-rule were the only legitimate forms of government. Hawkins discusses how pro-imperial histories got around this through the “systematic contextualization [of anti-colonial resistance] within overarching narratives of civilization, savagery, and the unique colonial project in the Philippines’s Muslim south”.[i] These histories viewed anti-colonial resistance strictly within narratives about civilising the masculine subjects towards self-rule, using gendered ideology to differentiate themselves from emasculating European imperialism[ii]. It therefore becomes possible for colonialist histories to frame suppression of anti-colonial actions through a lens consistent with popular sovereignty and self-determination.
There was some pushback to this historical narrative. Mark Twain and anti-colonists attempted to gain the historical narrative themselves. His description of the massacre was clearly designed to affirm his anti-imperial standpoint that America “was betraying its own principles by forcibly annexing the Philippines”, portraying the Moro’s resistance as a justifiable reaction to domination and the loss of their liberties, condemning their repression as “butchering those helpless people”[i]. Ideas such as these played an indispensable role in forming an anti-colonial lens for future histories. The pro-colonialist policy positions, however, generally held strong, shaping dominant political ideologies and imperial policy decisions. This lens therefore dominated for a significantly long time over Twain and anti-colonialists, still perpetuated heavily by popular histories which believe Americans pursued “the cause of humanitarianism and good government in the Philippines” and even many academic histories which do not acknowledge America’s own imperial history.[ii] Those that won the ideological and political competition at the imperial centre had unremitting power to define what their empire meant and frame the anti-colonialist resistance in a way which agreed with that.
An opposite case study in slave resistance also came to be heavily viewed and shaped by political and ideological decisions made regarding slavery, yet this time it was the anti-slavery position which gained a heavier hand over the historical narrative. Henry Bleby’s history of the Baptist War represents history directly through two particularly important lenses: firstly, being anti-slavery and viewing slavery as an institution of “manifold atrocities and abominations”, and secondly, through the knowledge that abolition would in fact happen shortly after the revolt.[i] Through this lens, he shows heavy condemnation towards colonial actions[ii] but only minimal condemnation towards the rebels and high compliments for slaves who did not revolt, even if not quite stretching to praise for the resistance itself.[iii] What distinguishes Bleby from Twain, however, was the power of foresight, allowing him to take on a lens which was more self-assured, proud and vindicated than Twain’s bitterness and resentment towards his home policy. Bleby was able to directly write and shape the history of anti-colonial resistance himself and knew the result while doing so, causing his history to be heavily coloured by abolitionist sentiments and a sense of inevitability. Similarly, to the debate over the Bud Dajo Massacre, it was the winner of the debate over policy at the imperial centre who had the power to dominate the historical lens thereafter.
The significant issue which arises from allowing imperial politics to define the histories of anti-colonial resistance is that, even when the outcome is ultimately more favourable to anti-colonial resistance, it is very reassuring about the general policy decisions and ideologies of their imperial powers. Bleby’s history was not dissimilar to Mark Twain in suggesting, as described by Harriet Smith, a love for their colonising country.[i] Only supporting anti-colonial actions that are consistent to their national identity and safety, Twain defended anti-colonial resistance largely because he believed it was a true reflection of his country’s principles, and Bleby’s critique of slavery, like much abolitionism of the time hardly extended to a broader criticism of his country’s imperial policy – and quite opposite – often sought to justify it.[ii] Although, these issues are significantly compounded when pro-colonial forces succeed in dictating policy and dominant ideologies instead, disregarding and irrationalising resistance and justifying their suppression.
Debates such as these at the imperial centre and their potency to shape historical perspectives, however, may not be the most common imperial lens that anti-colonial resistance is seen through. If anti-colonial resistance doesn’t become integral to debates regarding the management of colonialism, as is more often the case, the political and ideological motivations of the colonising power lead to historical amnesia, creating a lens through which anti-colonial resistance is only selectively seen if at all. Kim Wagner mentions the concept of ‘Pax Imperia’, which was “a convenient myth that either legitimised or glossed over the violent suppression and domination of other societies and cultures.”[i] Acknowledging anti-colonial resistance and their brutal suppression would be counter to this concept, and therefore to prevent a major blow to dominant imperial myths and national ideologies, it became necessary to deny the existence of aspects of history. Forgetting is as important as remembering in colonial histories. Therefore, through this ‘Pax Imperia’ lens, it is impossible to create a history which fully comprehends the causes of anti-colonial actions, the motivations of those involved, or the brutal repression it provoked – factors often erased in the archives for political purposes.
One way that this lens can be seen in the re-occurring use of ‘fanaticism’ to describe anti-colonial resistance in popular and academic histories. To understand why language such as this is used, it must be directly viewed through the lens of Euro-centric ideologies and politics. Mark Condos’s article on fanaticism in the North-West of British India explores how the use of fanaticism and mental illness was utilised to justify colonialism and British policy in India, appearing consistently in colonial archives.[i] Through this, archives reinforce an amnesia essential to ‘Pax Imperia’, causing anti-colonialism to seem entirely internally motivated and never a reaction to imperial policy or economic problems[ii]. Resistance was archived through this selectively blind viewpoint, which meant that many realities behind resistance has been irrevocably lost, causing all histories of anti-colonial resistance to be incomplete in essential ways.
In the modern world, post-colonial and post-imperial countries have still not recovered from this historical amnesia and the ‘Pax Imperia’ lens. The Philippines under American imperialism, despite the attempts by anti-colonialists to reframe it, is a potent example. Popular histories of colonised Muslims in the Philippines has all but erased the ability for meaningful popular consideration of their resistance to imperialism. Instead, it is historicised in popular memory through the modern-day struggle to combat terrorism, framed as Americans suppressing the fanatical and violent Muslims and perpetuating the long-lasting problem highlighted by Condos.[i]
While the political disputes formerly mentioned posed a problem of writing histories objectively during impassioned debates, this self-imposed amnesia poses a far larger problem. If the necessary archival information does not exist because the truth was actively suppressed and forgotten, historical colonial bias can never entirely be meaningfully solved. If the colonial lens cannot be eradicated through the archives, the next solution may be to require a counter-lens of sorts, privileging the lenses of the colonised – and some potent examples of these new lenses were formed in the postcolonial world. It is therefore now worth observing how modern diverse political and ideological considerations shape the way that the histories have evolved. Unlike before, when the histories came overwhelmingly from a colonising perspective – even when displaying an anti-imperial ideology – histories created in the modern postcolonial world tend to resemble a larger range of ideological and political considerations and backgrounds, coming from both the colonisers and the colonised.
Histories of anti-colonial resistance has often been taken by previously colonised countries with the purpose of creating a nationalist narrative. This nationalist lens is a “political endeavour” to deal with the modern political problems of being post-colonial countries, stressing a proto-national and united nature within the resistance.[i] This has occurred particularly within the context of Indian histories of anti-colonial resistance, which have been heavily relied on by modern Indian nationalism. Rajeev Bhargava’s article reveals how nationalist sentiments affected the way histories were written. He gives three primary reasons for nationalist driven histories of India: modernity creating a need for new identity, restoring dignity to the colonised and correcting the record set by British historians.[ii] Savakar’s book ‘The War of Independence of 1857’ is an example of this, framing India’s 1857 revolt in heavily nationalist terms.[iii] Savakar sets out his nationalist agenda, writing that a country with “no consciousness of its past has no Future” and making it clear that his intention was to make Indians “master and not the slave of its own history”[iv]. By admitting that his history was in essence focused on the current and future situation of Indians rather than the past, he `affirms Bhargava’s theory and illustrates his own political and ideological aims of reframing a revolt which in reality long preceded nationalism in nationalistic terms.
Of course, not all nationalist histories will be questionable for emphasising the nationalist characters of their revolts. For example, the Algerian War of Independence can be more clearly understood to be a specifically nationalist anti-colonial movement. But the motivation for this lens, even if far more fitting, still largely consists with Bhargava’s emphasis on dignity, identity and correction, and it is still representative of a desire to solve Algeria’s own modern problems rather than accurately reflect the past. The popular historical nationalist lens was so powerful that Mohamed Harbi, “a respected nationalist historian” was compelled to write a history critiquing the nationalist myths, pointing to “the internal life of the Algerian national movement, marked by ideological splits, purges and brutal score-settling."[i] The nationalist lens, therefore, isn’t only worth critiquing when the nationalist framework doesn’t apply to specific anti-colonial actions. Even when a post-colonial country is remembering a truly nationalist anti-colonial event, it is likely coloured by the need to find a solid identity and a political direction.
Occurring in both post-colonised and colonising countries, anti-colonial resistance is also often viewed with sympathy through the lens of Marxism. With the emergence and growth of socialism and communism in the late nineteenth century, much of the framing has been made to resemble the formula set by Karl Marx. Marxist ideas made its way into historical studies, emphasising the value of “history from below”, which critiqued the importance shown towards “grand narratives”[i]. When drawn into imperialism and colonialism, it thus stresses the experience of the colonised and brought to light new histories with new sympathies. Significantly, its arguments rooted in class also contradicted the myth of the fanatic. Mukherjee’s history of the Indian Revolt of 1857 presents the history through the Marxist lens, closely resembling Socialist theory as it details a “general uprising” in which any other marks of distinction, whether religion or uniform, were given up as Indians “reclaimed their peasant character.”[ii] Marxist theory should be approached with some suspicion, as it necessarily involves projecting the writer’s own political ideology onto the people who were revolting without acknowledging unique circumstances which Marxism may neither consider or understand. While claiming to grant autonomy and agency to the colonised, the histories therefore deprives the colonised their own stories, narratives and purposes.
Fanon also presented histories of anti-colonial resistance with a Marxist narrative, envisioning a revolution where the oppressed supplant the oppressors.[i] He, however, diverges from Mukherjee in that instead of purely applying Marxism to a colonial context, he adapts Marxism to fit the specific anti-colonial project. Recognising that Marxist’s Capitalist revolution cannot be drawn blindly across to colonialism, he writes that “Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colonial issue.”[ii] This makes his Marxist lens far less all-encompassing then Mukherjee, meaning he is comparatively more capable of trying to deduce the motivations of anti-colonial resistance as it existed. He, however, is not free from the considerations which swayed Mukherjee’s work, still pushing grand theories and assumed motivations on his historical subjects.
The flaws of nationalist and Marxist histories do not, however, entirely mitigate the importance of these readings of history. Facing difficulties on accessing the voices of the colonised when archives and colonial histories so heavily favours the colonisers and their dominant ideologies, it is an essential step to offer a more multi-faceted and less homogenous view of what the historical meanings of anti-colonial actions are. Without these new lenses for viewing anti-colonial history, drawing a history from the colonised perspective would have been an even more arduous task in the face of vast colonial historiography and neglect. This value may be properly seen when Barbara English responds to the Marxist Mukherjee, in many ways centring the colonial perspective and displaying the long-term historical amnesia by minimising the violence inflicted by the English and suggesting Indians following the revolt returned “to quiescence under British rule”[i]. From her response, it becomes clear why Mukherjee may have felt inclined to tackle anti-colonial history through the Marxist lens in the first place. Considering the perspective of people such as English dominated historiography for a long time, it becomes more understandable where the value in ‘history from below’ scholarship is located, challenging the hegemonic control over the historical narrative.
In conclusion, political and ideological considerations of the colonisers and the colonised has shaped the way different groups at different times, frame and describe the histories of anti-colonial resistance. Debates over imperial policy formed different colonial frameworks which worked as lenses to view anti-colonial resistance, with the side most dominant on policy also having the dominant historical shaping power. These debates in turn are often heavily impacted by a constant erasure of not only histories but the archives, moulding histories to protect the colonisers usually to the detriment of those pursuing anti-colonial agendas. The post-colonial world saw an attempt by the formerly colonised to reverse the damage of the pro-colonial dominance in histories and amnesia. Unable to immediately solve centuries of historical and archival erasure, the colonised resorted to other political and ideological lenses to view their histories. Trying to restore a sense of dignity and culture, anti-colonial histories began to be framed through nationalist and Marxist lenses, more motivated by current political aims then historical truth. Eradicating these various lenses will never be achieved, with the political implications of anti-colonial resistance too wide-reaching and the archives too corrupted to be seen entirely independently. The best solution available to popular and academic histories is to consider the many co-existing political and ideological considerations and who they belong to, and to examine each critically to create a more complete picture.
Notes
[i] Barbara English, ‘Debate: The Kanpur Massacres in India in The Revolt of 1857’, Past & Present, 142 (1994), p. 171; p. 178. [i] Frantz Fanon, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ (New York: Grove Press, 2004).
[ii] Fanon, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ p. 5. [i] Wagner, ‘Rebellion, Resistance and the Subaltern’, p. 2; p. 3. [ii] Rudrangshu Mukherjee, ‘”Satan Let Loose Upon Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in The Revolt of 1857’, Past & Present, 128 (1990), p. 99. [i] Adam Shatz (22 February 2003), ‘An Arab Gadfly With a Memorable Bite’, New York Times, <https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/22/books/an-arab-gadfly-with-a-memorable-bite.html> [Accessed 12 December 2019]. [i] Adam Shatz (22 February 2003), ‘An Arab Gadfly With a Memorable Bite’, New York Times, <https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/22/books/an-arab-gadfly-with-a-memorable-bite.html> [Accessed 12 December 2019]. [i] Wagner, ‘Rebellion, Resistance and the Subaltern’, p. 1. [ii] Rajjev Bhargava, ‘History, Nation and Community: Reflections on Nationalist Historiography of India and Pakistan’, Economic and Political Weekly, 35/4 (2000), p. 196. [iii] Bhargava, ‘History, Nation and Community’, p. 196. [iv] Vinayak Damodar Savakar, ‘The Indian War of Independence of 1857’ (1909), p. vii. [i] Paul Kramer, ‘An Enemy You Can Depend On: Trump, Pershing’s Bullets, and the Folklore of the War on Terror’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 20/4 (2017). [i] Mark Condos, ‘“Fanaticism” and the Politics of Resistance along the North-West Frontier of British India’, Comparative Study of Society and History, 58/3 (2016), p. 719. [ii] Condos, “Fanaticism”, p. 725. [i] Kim Wagner, ‘Rebellion, Resistance and the Subaltern’, in Peter Fibiger Bang and Walter Scheidel (eds.), ‘The Oxford World History of Empire’ (Oxford: Oxford University Publisher), 2019, p. 1. [i] Susan K Harris, ‘God's Arbiters’, 2011, p. 7. [ii] Christopher Brown, ‘Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism’ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 310-312. [i] Henry Bleby, ‘In a British Colony, During the Two Years Immediately Preceding Negro Emancipation’, (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co), 1853, p. 1; Bleby, ‘In a British Colony, p. 1.
[i] Susan Harris, ‘God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902’, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2011, p. 7; Mark Twain and Harriet Elinor Smith, (eds.), ‘Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition’, (California: University of California Press), 2012, p. 218.
[ii] Robert Kaplan (April 2014), ‘In Defence of Empire’, The Atlantic, <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/in-defense-of-empire/358645/> [Accessed 12 December 2019].
[i] Michael C Hawkins, ‘Managing a Massacre: Savagery, Civility and Gender in Moro Province in the Wake of Bud Dajo’, Philippines Studies, 59/1 (2011), p. 101.
[ii] Hawkins, ‘Managing a Massacre. p. 91.
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