An American assessment of the British Raj, 1906

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) is probably most remembered today by people like me for his attacks on Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and more specifically, the Scopes Trial in 1925.

Wiki tells us that Bryan

was a leading American politician from the 1890s until his death. He was a dominant force in the populist wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States (1896, 1900 and 1908). He served in Congress briefly as a Representative from Nebraska and was the 41st United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson (1913–1915), taking a pacifist position on the World War. Bryan was a devout Christian, a supporter of popular democracy, and an enemy of the gold standard as well as banks and railroads. He was a leader of the silverite movement in the 1890s, a peace advocate, a prohibitionist, and an opponent of Darwinism on religious and humanitarian grounds. With his deep, commanding voice and wide travels, he was one of the best known orators and lecturers of the era. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, he was called "The Great Commoner."

In 1906, Bryan wrote a pamphlet "British Rule in India", after a visit to India.  It is available online.
This pamphlet is contemporaneous with Romesh Chunder Dutt's Economic History of India, which contains some praise for British accomplishments that fools the unwary. I expect Bryan's clear-eyed condemnation of British rule in India will be dismissed because he was also an anti-Darwinist.

As per "Indian Proscribed Tracts, 1907-1947", from Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, William Jennings Bryan's pamphlet was banned in India by the British government.



In the conclusion of the essay, Bryan wrote: "He {the British} has conferred some benefits upon India, but he has extorted a tremendous price for them", but in the body, he picked these apart these alleged benefits.  The Pax Britannica led millions of Indians to the grave; the railroads served to add to the weight of famine, not ameliorate it, and  and to enhance inequality; education was on a minuscule and wholly inadequate scale (and not because of lack of resources).  If the British did some good for India, surely Bryan would not have been so stingy in praise.  After all, he did write: "...I do not mean to bring an indictment against the English people or to assert they are guilty of international wrongdoing. Neither do I mean to question the motives of those in authority."  He also in his pamphlet contradicts the many Americans who had "spoken admirably of England's colonial system".  Had there been the least thing that was praiseworthy, Bryan would no doubt have mentioned it.

Bryan indicts the system itself - "She[England] administers India with an eye to England's interests, not India, and she passes judgment upon every question as a judge would were he permitted to decide his own case."   This is very much like Mahatma Gandhi, who also did not blame the English people, but rather the system of colonialism that brutalized the colonized; but also had its negative impacts on the colonizer; a system that could not but corrupt everything it touched.

Anyway here are some excerpts:

So many Americans have, however, during the last few years, spoken admirably of England's colonial system that I have looked forward to the visit to India with increasing interest because of the opportunity it would give me to study at close range a question of vital importance to our country.

I have met with some of the leading English officials, as well as a number in subordinate positions; have talked with educated Indians—Hindus, Mahometans, and Parsis; have seen the people, rich and poor, in the cities and in the country, and have examined statistics and read speeches, reports, petitions, and other literature that does not find its way to the United States; and British rule in India is far worse, far more burdensome to the people, and far more unjust—if I understand the meaning of the word—than I had supposed.

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The Government of India is as arbitrary and despotic as the Government of Russia ever was, and in two respects it is worse.  First, it is administered by an alien people, whereas the officials of Russia are Russian.  Secondly, it drains a large part of the taxes out of the country, whereas the Russian Government spends at home the money which it collects from the people.
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About $100,000,000 goes out of India to England every year; more than $15,000,000 is paid to European officials in the civil employ  What nation could stand such a drain without impoverishment?

Taxation is nearly twice as heavy in India as in England in proportion to the income of the people.  Cmpared with the people of other countries, the Indian's income is on the average one-twentieth of the average English income,....
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{Bryan notes that the Indian poor people's hold their savings in the form of silver.}  It will be remembered that the late Senator Wolcott, a member of t he Monetary Commission appointed by President McKinley in 1897, on his return from Europe declared that the suspension of coinage of silver in India had reduced the value of the savings of the people to the amount of $500,000,000.  The suspension was carried out for the benefit of European interests regardless of the welfare of the masses.
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I have more than once, within the last month, heard the plague referred to as a providential remedy for over population.  Think of it!  British rule justified because "it keeps the people from killing each other", and the plague praised because it removes those whom the Government has saved from slaughter!

The railroads, with all their advantages, have been charged with adding to the weight of famine by carrying  away the surplus grain in good years, leaving no residue for the years of drought.   While grain can be carried back more easily in times of scarcity, the people are too poor to buy it with two freights added.
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Of the total amount raised from taxation each year about 40 per cent. is raised from land, and the rate is so heavy that the people cannot save enough when the crops are good to feed themselves when the crops are bad.
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The published statement for 1904-5 shows that the general Government appropriated but $6,500,000 for education, while more than $90,000,000 were appropriated for "army services", and the revised estimate for next year shows an increase of a little more than $500,000 for education, while the army received an increase of more than $12,000,000.
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It is not scarcity of money that delays the spread of education in India, but the deliberate misappropriation of taxes collected, and the system which permits this disregard of the welfare of the subjects and the subordination of their industries to the supposed advancement of another nation's trade is as indefensible upon political and economic grounds as upon moral grounds.
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{conclusion, emphasis added}

INDIA AND COLONIALISM

Let no one cite India as an argument in defense of colonialism.  On the Ganges and the Indus the Briton, in spite of his many noble qualities and his large contributions to the world's advancement, has demonstrated, as many have before, man's inability to exercise with wisdom and justice, irresponsible power over helpless people.  He has conferred some benefits upon India, but he has extorted  a tremendous price for them.

While he has boasted of bring peace to the living he has led millions to the peace of the grave;  while he has dwelt upon order established between warring troops he has impoverished the country by legalized pillage.   Pillage is a strong word, but no refinement of language can purge the present system of its iniquity.

How long will it be before the quickened conscience of England's Christian people will heed the petition that swells up from fettered India and apply to Briton's greatest Colony the doctrines of human brotherhood that have given to the Anglo-Saxon race the prestige that it enjoys?

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PS: do you think Romesh Chunder Dutt could have published his work if he wrote that the British system was a system of legalized pillage? Sometimes it takes a Bryan to say what a Dutt cannot and  we have already seen what happened to Bryan's pamphlet.

PPS: to understand scale, the US national defense budget in 1906 was supposedly $345 million. At $5 to £1 (the conversion rate Bryan used), the British defense budget was around the same ($320 million).

PPPS: it is good to know that American skepticism about the British, so evident in 1776, persisted into the early twentieth century.  In current times, some Americans seem more imperialist and royalist than the Queen (I mean Victoria, not Elizabeth II).

PS: "some" was missing in the last sentence, added later.