Since when were British and French colonial empires no longer viable?
- Thread starter Gwachiko
- Start date
Wimble Toot
Banned
After World War I, 90% percent of the British Empire was surplus to requirements
All it needed was Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Suez Canal Zone, Aden, Mesopotamia Burma and Malaya
All it needed was Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Suez Canal Zone, Aden, Mesopotamia Burma and Malaya
Well, it is a really broad question. For example, there were many places in the British empire that were never profitable. You think Saint Helena made them money? But they were valuable as strategic spots on the route to India, which WAS a money maker.
The British empire existed more for facilitating British citizens and companies to do business in an area than it was about direct taxation. For the government breaking even was probably a success but the economic impact of expanding British business interests was where the real money was. That's something that would probably be extremely difficult to calculate.
Edit: Overall though I would think that WWI was really the point that the Empire became unsustainable. Too much economic clout was lost fighting the war to justify maintaining a world-spanning empire for businesses that now belonged to the Americans.
Edit: Overall though I would think that WWI was really the point that the Empire became unsustainable. Too much economic clout was lost fighting the war to justify maintaining a world-spanning empire for businesses that now belonged to the Americans.
India is generally regarded to have reached the point where costs outstripped benefits in 1934.
Profitable? So far as I know the French empire was never profitable (I'm not even sure if they had any profitable parts to their empire - maybe New Caledonia?)
The British empire however was profitable right to the end, though most of the profit was being made in Malaysia, India, Egypt, (I think) Nigeria, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The lions share of that coming from India and Egypt. Most of the rest of Africa and Asia wasn't profitable, some smaller colonies like the Falklands were profitable, but were of course small, I'm not sure if the British Caribbean was profitable.
However, the viability of India and Egypt as imperial possessions ended with WW1 just because the local population wanted free more than Britain wanted to/was able to hold them. Britain could have maybe gotten some sort of imperial federation to keep the white dominions aligned with them, but failed her interwar diplomacy. And the rest wasn't viable after British prestige was mauled after WW2.
For France, the ideology of the French revolution meant there was a narrow window to political viability in most of the empire, but WW2 trashed both the French economy and their political legitimacy, making the empire pretty much a lost cause. (Though Algeria was on the road to disaster even before the 20th Century and Indochina probably passed the point of no-return during the interwar period.)
So political viability and economic viability are almost directly opposite.
fasquardon
Pre Suez its going to be on the way east as well is it not?
What do you include in profits? Direct Tax, captive markets or even the ability to raise troops and get materials?
Funny way to go to Brazil
https://www.google.com/maps/place/S...804f0450199fa6!8m2!3d-15.9650104!4d-5.7089241
Just to expand on this point on this a bit, I think a big reason for this is because of the way the colonies were made economically viable.
Egypt was profitable because of an utterly brutal system of exploiting the peasants. Malaysia was profitable because of a system of rubber plantations that was just as brutal. The Belgian Congo was made economically viable through policies so vile they make Nazi governance look good.
Better economic policies may have produced more colonies that were both pro-empire and economically viable.
fasquardon
The "unprofitable" areas were generally occupied to stop others getting them and so threatening the "profitable" areas or in the the hope they would become "profitable" later on (think of Italy and Libya, If Italy had retained its empire for long enough then it would have become financially profitable.
In any case, the idea of "profitability" is problematic. It's likely that India had ceased being directly financially profitable in the 1930s at the latest, but the general view was that as long as Britain had India it was a truly great power and so by occupying India Britain was more likely to get its way on the world stage with incalculable (literally) benefits. Plus it was arguably quite useful in world war 2.
As long as India could be held without too much local opposition the Empire probably made some sort of sense, without India it made very little, although individual provinces might be held as long as there wasn't too much opposition/threat. So Britain left India around the right time (and arguably should have left somewhat earlier) but hung onto the rest of the empire for too long.
There's also the possibility that by trying to hang on too long the successor regimes would be less favourably disposed to the British, in which case the British might want to leave sooner rather than later
In any case, the idea of "profitability" is problematic. It's likely that India had ceased being directly financially profitable in the 1930s at the latest, but the general view was that as long as Britain had India it was a truly great power and so by occupying India Britain was more likely to get its way on the world stage with incalculable (literally) benefits. Plus it was arguably quite useful in world war 2.
As long as India could be held without too much local opposition the Empire probably made some sort of sense, without India it made very little, although individual provinces might be held as long as there wasn't too much opposition/threat. So Britain left India around the right time (and arguably should have left somewhat earlier) but hung onto the rest of the empire for too long.
There's also the possibility that by trying to hang on too long the successor regimes would be less favourably disposed to the British, in which case the British might want to leave sooner rather than later
Toraach
Banned
I am interesting in how India was profitable for the British Empire. I have been waiting to ask this question for the long time, and you seem to know something about that.
I can understand that India was profitable for the Brits in 18th and early 19th centuries, but in the first half of 20th century, that was just a impowerished big country, with a small industry, and a bulk of population were poor preasants which couldn't buy much industrial products, because they struggled even with food. Well India started a real economic growth in 90s after abadoning Nehru/Indira's economic policies.
The British had a monopoly on woven cotton which subsidized the UK textile industry (though IMO that was bad for the UK textile industry and bad for India in the long run), a monopoly on salt production (necessary for human life) and taxed the poor peasants which though they were poor were extremely numerous.
It worked out to alot of money. But yes, in the 20th Century these practices had to change, not just to respect Indian sentiment, but also to continue developing the country. It's one of the reasons why the British were sanguine about losing India.
fasquardon
It was a free market maritime trading organisation. Economic downturn, protectionism and outright autarky undermined it. There are side benefits such as being the worlds reserve currency, communications network owner, biggest creditor etc. in 1913 the Empires GDP exceeded the US and it’s military spending was about 2% - doing it quite easy thanks.
As many other posters have said in this thread, it is difficult to fully quantify the financial profitability of colonies. Bear in mind that “formal” colonisation (i.e. painting the map pink) only really began in the late 19th century and can be seen as a sign of weakness rather than imperial strength. For the first half of the 19th century the British didn’t need a huge formal empire, as that would have led to ruinous costs of administration and defence. They had an informal empire (control of markets, leading investor etc.) in Latin America during that period; taking advantage of the newly-won independence of South American states to invest and build railways, and virtually controlling the economies there. One by-product of British investment and their strong presence there was the spread of football.
Formal colonisation only began as a reaction to the growing power of continental Europeans. Part of the reason why Myanmar was annexed was to pre-empt the French, whether the threat was real or imagined didn't matter. It is for the same reason that vast swathes of territory in Africa was brought under formal control after the Berlin Conference. Britain took this course of action as they were no longer confident in their ability to dominate markets purely through competitive advantage. Their businessmen actually required protectionist legislation after 1870.
For the French, their colonial rationale was always political. While their first colonial empire was marked by economic concerns (they gave up Canada in the Seven Years War to keep their highly lucrative sugar colonies in the Caribbean), their second empire was very much a product of the Fashoda Syndrome. Basically, they just wanted to claim areas so that the British couldn’t get them. This is also seen in their 20th century post-colonial policies. To some extent, the British were willing to give up their formal empire as they were confident that their economic clout would still allow them to dominate markets. The French and (even more so) the Portuguese, were far less confident of keeping out foreign competition and thus opted to fight tooth and nail for their colonies.
Politically, it was impossible for the Europeans to continue the colonial project after WW2. The 2 new superpowers were both anti-colonialist for their own reasons and as such, norms and values had changed to the point where state policy had to follow suit. Possible POD’s for this could be a surviving France in 1940, a separate Italian-led fascist bloc that survives post-war etc.
Maybe not for the governments, but I am oretpr sure they wetw profitable for the corporations that exploited the colonies. I mean even today, corporations are still exploiting those nations that were once colonies.
In addition to comments made by fasquardon about British exports and taxes, India was important for the degree of investments and salaries that it generated. There were various sectors where British companies were guaranteed a certain rate of return, such as in railroads. British investors invested in them and received a fixed return (and a profitable return) from the Raj, so it was quite impossible for them to actually lose money. Furthermore, the industrial products to build those railroads came principally from Britain, since it wasn't until several decades into the 20th century that British India started to produce its own steel and steel products internally. British bureaucrats and employees in India were paid by the Raj, and then they often remitted this money back home. From my recollection too the Raj or earlier the East India Company could also loan the UK money. The commonality is that this revenue came from the British Indian government, so in effect it was being channeled from the Indian taxpayer to the British. While I don't know how direct financial and investment schemes like that worked elsewhere, models like that to me raise suspicion about how effectively one can define colonies as profitable or unprofitable: if (theoretically) the Indian government had a budget deficit, but this was because of it paying out vast sums to British investors and civil servants, is that really unprofitable for the United Kingdom? The same can be said about the French Empire: French West Africa took large amounts of French railroad industry exports, up to 25% of domestic production in the early 20th century from what I can roughly remember, with the investors being repaid by the colonial government, so even if those governments ran into financial difficulties, it wouldn't be a loss per se. I have no doubt that there were financially unproductive colonies and ones which actively made a loss, but simply looking at the budget of the colonies can make it hard to tell, and that most of the costs could be offshored onto the local people must haveh elped things.
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