Abstract
I came to The Economic History of Colonialism in hopes of finding a clear summary of a tantalizingly controversial and complicated history. This was needed after sifting through dozens of others on the subject for a book chapter I am authoring on the history of capitalism. Unfortunately, it ended up being less than what I had hoped.
To be fair, the book does present a scholarly, organized synthesis on recent colonialism research, and provide potentially helpful frameworks of interpretation. On the origins of colonialism, for example, the authors look at the following four patterns: (1) political engineering and acquisitions ‘with no visible economic motivation to drive the process’ (p. 25); 1 (2) trade and commerce; (3) settler colonialism; and (4) island settler colonialism (oddly said to originate in the 1600s, not 1400–1500s). They also draw distinctions between direct and ‘indirect’ rule, and everything in between. Chapters cover the basic economic effects and contours of colonialism, debates on why and how certain colonies did well (or poorly) economically, the effects of institutions and environmental consequences, and the relationship between colonialism, business and empires. The authors emphasize the diversity of colonial modes or expressions and avoid oversimplifications (i.e. that Britain simply did what it wanted). The book also has a helpful glossary in the front matter.
To be accurate, however, The Economic History of Colonialism should rather be titled The Economic History of Recent British Colonialism Mostly From the Perspective of the Colonizer. While the book claims at various points to be offering a ‘non-eurocentric’ perspective, its focus on only the last two centuries of colonialism, on primarily Great Britain’s influence on India and Africa (the authors’ specialties), and a noticeably insensitive approach to a frequently bloody and violent history, betrays an unfortunately ordinary, limited and uncritical approach – that is to say, Eurocentric as usual. The selection of three maps in the front matter of the book – Asia in 1914, India in 1939 and Africa in 1914 – indicate this focus.
As such, virtually nothing is said about the colonization of the Americas. In fact, uninformed readers may easily walk away with the impression that the largest and most invasive colonial project of all – the conquering of North and South America from the 1400s to 1800s by the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and eventually British – has virtually nothing to do with ‘colonialism’. 2 These catastrophic events only appear in passing references as, for example, ‘land grabs’ (pp. 114–116).
The colonized of the Americas are therefore heard even less. The authors frequently lament how difficult it is to know how colonization affected specific Indigenous peoples and economies. The trouble with this view is that it often simply isn’t. There are endless volumes on Indigenous history – not to mention survivors who are still alive and bear eye-witness testimony. There are monuments, educational centres, institutes and organizations dedicated to informing the public about the devastating economic and social consequences of settler colonialism – whether from disease, or decimating Buffalo populations, forced labour, or from war. 3 The authors side-step all of this to focus more on whether colonialism worked for the British empire. (Chapter 5 is, in fact, entitled, ‘Debates About Costs and Benefits’.) The authors even contend that ‘there was no such thing as colonial capitalism’ (p. 150) at all – though they do, to be sure, believe in London’s ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ (pp. 152–153). Readers are left wondering: if ‘the impact of colonial interventions varied widely across space and time’ so that it is ‘difficult to sustain simplified narratives of resource extraction’ (p. 1), why is the book then so unclear – or outright exclusionary – where colonialism is resource extraction? If the authors bothered to include centuries of colonialism in the Americas, it would indeed, be much more difficult to relativize the nature, goals and effects of colonialism as a whole.
Furthermore, the book’s perspective is dramatically at odds with other scholars who directly connect the origins of capitalism to the colonial projects in the Caribbean and Americas (Crosson 2021; Beckert and Rockman 2016; Blaut 1992; Dunbar-Ortiz 2015; Horne 2018, 2020; for additional alternative perspectives, see Banaji 2020; Frank 1997; Gran 1998; Pomeranz 2000; Rodney 2018 [1972]). It also therefore ignores the fact that colonialism terminated in mass genocide of Indigenous peoples and what some call the ‘Great Dying’ (over 50 million deaths from 1492 to 1600). This economic history is hard to square with how the book frames colonialism, which is rather neoclassical (attempting to be ‘value-free’, and focusing on economic ‘growth’ instead of human flourishing). 4 So, for example, by page 7, the economic growth of colonialism (in terms of gross domestic product (GDP)) is front and centre – so much that the authors feel it necessary to say that ‘This does not, of course, mean that colonialism was not a violent and disruptive process’ (p. 8). They elsewhere remark that ‘it may be argued that the institutions of colonialism may have contributed to some types of inequality’ (p. 73).
These types of observations are obviously absurd and offensive in the face of the colonized – especially in the Americas. Canada has continued to locate mass graves of Indigenous children buried under boarding schools. Scholars do not need to speculate if ‘the institutions of colonialism may have contributed to some types of inequality’. I would be embarrassed as a professor of economics to even talk about ‘costs and benefits’ of colonialism with my Indigenous colleagues in or outside the classroom, where the ‘costs’ means annihilation and the ‘benefit’ means Black Hills gold, sacred land or sex slaves for Confederate Generals. Presumably, the authors are familiar with these economic histories of colonialism, but that only leaves readers asking why it apparently has no place in a book dedicated to that subject. 5
It is difficult seeing the volume being used as a textbook. Others, though they are not explicitly economic, do a better job of providing a coherent and more readable summary, such as Empires and Colonies in the Modern World. 6
The Economic History of Colonialism is a reminder of how even critical attempts at framing and summarizing this notorious subject remain challenging – and in desperate need of further clarification.