On Imperialism, Genocide, and the British Empire
There's a meme floating around claiming in excess of 1 billion deaths in India alone due to the British Empire. This is posted as a response to a popular anti-Communist argument that Communism has killed tens of millions of people, something that cannot be said of capitalism.
That last clause is of course, false. Capitalism has killed many millions. Among instances:
- The Irish Potato Famine (1841--1851), in which 1 million died (of a population of 8 million), and a total poplation decline of 25% occurred (much through emigration) from which Ireland has not yet recovered.
- The transatlantic / American slave trade, in which 100 million lives were lost, directly from capitalist commerce in which human lives were treated as a commodity.
- The genocide of the Americas, in which another 100 million lives are estimated to have been lost (upper bound).
- Numerous other actions, including violent and deadly opposition to labour, immigrant, and civil rights movements worldwide.
I've noted instances of these in discussions elsewhere. It seems there's little interest in rebutting such claims as here and here.
The case of India is notable as the subcontinent was run as a business operation by the British East India Company, a publicly-held corporation. As with the slave trade, mortality is directly attributable to commercial, capitalist, activity.
There was undoubtedly a British genocide in India. Its toll was likely in the tens of milliinos. Estimates of 1.8 billion are upper bounds based on theoretical rather than actual deaths. There may be some justification, but it's a difficult case.
The meme was shared on Diaspora* here: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/71de40001a25013a862128a1592b385a
I can't find record of either the tweet or the profile from this meme:
- User search: https://nitter.eu/search?f=users&q=birth_marxist
- Text search: https://nitter.eu/search?f=tweets&q=british+colonialists+killed+1.8+billion+indians&since=&until=&near=
The claim itself appears here:
"INDIAN HOLOCAUST under British Raj: 1.8 BILLION excess deaths (350 million Muslim), IGNORED by Anglo media"
The “avoidable deaths” (from violence, deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease) in British India totalled 1.5 billion (or 1.8 billion if you include the so-called Native States). About 20% of the victims (about 350 million) were Muslims.
For a recent account see that reproduced below by DrDr H Gideon Polya, “Racist White Australian ABC media giant ignores Indian Holocaust, Bengali Holocausts & Climate Genocide", Sulekha, 15 April 2009: http://gideon.sulekha.com/blog/post/2009/04/racist-white-australian-abc-media-giant-ignores-indian.htm .
Dr Gideon Polya (2009): "I am a 4-decade career research scientist (and still giving theory and laboratory courses to second year university science students at a leading Australian university). I have addressed this British carnage in India in a quantitative fashion, using the parameter of “avoidable death” (excess death, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, untimely death, deaths that should not have happened) which is defined as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a pweaceful, decently run country with the same demographics (see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ). ...
https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/indian-holocaust
The upper-bound total is rather predictably disputed. E.g., https://archive.md/WADjg It appears based on total "avoidable deaths".
The same author makes a similar (though slightly clearer) argument here:
Imposed poverty kills. Poverty-derived avoidable mortality (avoidable death, excess mortality, excess death, premature death, untimely death, death that should not have happened) can be estimated as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with same demographics (birth rate and percentage of children). Below are listed in rough chronological order some shocking salient features of the deadly impact of rapacious British imperialism over 2 centuries in British India, Britain’s Auschwitz.
https://mronline.org/2019/01/15/britain-robbed-india-of-45-trillion-thence-1-8-billion-indians-died-from-deprivation/
More typically deaths are states as between about 10--40 millions. This is roughly equivalent to Fascist and Communist genocides frequently cited, and are based on a global population of 1/2 to 1/3 that of those genocides.
RT (Russia Today), a Kremlin propaganda instrument, has several articles on this quesiton, but seems to cite the lower range of "tens of millions" of victims. Both articles are from 2019, that is, recent:
From the 18th to the 20th century, various parts of India endured over a dozen devastating famines, which killed tens of millions of people, most of the events exacerbated, if not outright caused, by the colonial administration. ...
https://www.rt.com/news/456421-british-colonial-rule-india-atrocities/
Some Western historians fall over themselves condemning the USSR for the millions who died under the dictatorship of Stalin, with a significant proportion of these victims perishing during famines. The people of the former Soviet Union need to come to terms with their history, just like any other country. In the meantime, Western historians should shine a spotlight closer to home. Engineered famines across the Indian subcontinent reportedly killed up to 29 million in the late 19th century and a further 3 million in 1943. ...
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/475113-british-empire-colonial-stalin-deaths/
From the Guardian in 2007:
"India's secret history: 'A holocaust, one where millions disappeared...'"
In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world's superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.
Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/24/india.randeepramesh
The Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 2.1--3 million:
The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India (now Bangladesh and eastern India) during World War II. An estimated 2.1–3 million,[A] out of a population of 60.3 million, died of starvation, malaria, and other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions and lack of health care. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and catastrophically disrupted the social fabric. Eventually, families disintegrated; men sold their small farms and left home to look for work or to join the British Indian Army, and women and children became homeless migrants, often travelling to Calcutta or other large cities in search of organised relief.[8] Historians usually characterise the famine as anthropogenic (man-made),[9] asserting that wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis. A minority view holds, however, that the famine was the result of natural causes.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
A catalogue of British imperial atrocities in the Independent includes 12--29 million deaths from starvation in India, with further deaths up to 4 million from the Bengal famine:
Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India.
In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal. ...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html
Johann Hari in an undated (?) essay gives an upper bound of 29 million:
We are still a nation locked in denial. If you point out basic facts about the British Empire - that the British deliberately adopted policies that caused as many as 29 million Indians to starve to death in the late 19th century, say - you smack into a wall of incomprehension and rage. ...
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-truth-our-empire-killed-millions-404631.html
#genocide #india #BritishEmpire #BritishGenocide #capitalism #BritishEastIndiaCompany #SlaveTrade #communism #CapitalismVsCommunism
