WHEN BRITAIN conquered India, annexed territories in Africa and got a foothold in China it was alleged to be done for the benefit of the inhabitants - raising India from poverty, civilising the poor black man and converting the "heathen" Chinese to the benefits of Christianity. But what were the facts behind the illusions? The facts were the economic interests of the British trader and manufacturer pursued with a ruthless disregard of the interests of those whom they were exploiting.

In the twenties when there was agitation about the position of India, Britain's largest colonial possession, Sir William Joynson-Hicks (later Lord Brentford) a leading Conservative protested against the canting attitudes of some of his associates. He was reported in the Daily News (17.10.1925) as follows: "We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians. I know it is said at missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We conquered India as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword and by the sword we should hold it . . . "
"I am stating facts. . . .We hold it as the finest outlet for British goods in general, and for Lancashire cotton goods in particular."

On the raping of India, Brooks Adams, in his "The Law of Civilization and Decay", has this to say: "Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human brings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness." (p. 255)
"Possibly since the world began, no investment has ever yielded the profit reaped from the Indian plunder, because for nearly fifty years. Great Britain stood without a competitor." (p. 263).

Digby, in his "Prosperous British India" estimated that there were 70 million continually hungry people in British India at the beginning of the present century. Some of our "old nobility" owed their rise to the oceans of treasure that flowed to them from India. And the representatives of the spiritual reflex of these plunderers took balm to the Indians to assuage their sorrows but not to remove the cause of them.

The present troubles in Rhodesia bring to mind the raping of Africa by Western traders and settlers. In earlier days the slave traders ruined the prosperous native regions in the East; collecting hundreds of thousands of its highly educated and accomplished people and transporting them, like cattle, in overcrowded ships under shocking conditions to work as chattel slaves in the Southern states of America. In later times the colonising of Africa by Portuguese, Belgian, German and British companies brought nothing but misery to the black inhabitants, and untold wealth to their exploiters. That is the real monument to Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia.

Writing of the discovery of gold in South Africa, Justin McCarthy, in his "Short History of Our Own Times" said this: "The discovery of the gold mines had brought into South Africa a rush of adventurous immigrants from various parts of the world, especially from England and from British territories, whose principal object was to make themselves the absolute rulers of all that vast tract of country which was teeming with limitless sources of wealth. The established republics were not strong enough to secure themselves against the internal disturbances to be expected from such an invasion." (p. 538)

The plundering for gold and diamonds brought on the war against the Boers in defence of the plunderers. In the South African House of Assembly on May 8th, 1913 the minister for mines stated that "No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every year - men in the prime of health."

In connection with the concession to the chartered company, founded by Cecil Rhodes, the "News and Leader" (31.3.1914) summarised the attitude of the natives to the Hut tax and various other burdens imposed on the natives to force them into working in the mines:
"The prevalent land-owning custom in Europe is private ownership. In Africa it is communal ownership. Therefore, if we hand over great tracts of the territory to private owners and those private owners proceed to exact rents or grazing dues, the African native does not regard that as normal economic development. He regards it as an act of aggression, of conquest -an arbitrary charge wrung from him in bitterness, and leaving behind a deep sense of injury. That resentment has been the cause of most of the African wars and rebellions since the first presence of the white man in Africa."

What a strange creature the African native is! His land is stolen from him; he is charged rent for living on it and grazing his cattle and he feels resentful and bitter. How extraordinary! Then, to add insult to injury, the Church sent out missionaries to teach him to be humble and subservient and to turn the cheek to the smiter!

In the 18th and 19th centuries the East India company gradually insinuated itself into China. The principal article the East India company dealt in was opium; which grew in India and was sold in China. In 1834 this company's exclusive privileges, ceased and private traders took over the sale of opium, which they bought from the company.

Laws were passed by the Chinese government prohibiting the traffic in opium but the British government officials protected the smuggling of opium. Justin McCarthy tells how matters proceeded in 1842: "When the Chinese authorities actually proceeded to insist on the forfeiture of an immense amount of opium in the hands of British traders, and took other harsh but certainly not unnatural measures to extinguish the traffic. Captain Elliot, the Chief Superintendent, sent to the Governor of India a 'request for as many ships of war as could be spared for the protection of life and property of Englishmen in China. Before long British ships arrived and the two countries were at war." (p. 27)

The Chinese were worsted in the Opium war and had to cede the island of Hong Kong in perpetuity; five ports. Canton, Amoy, Foo-Chow, Ningpo and Shanghai were thrown open to British trade and consuls were established there. The final indignity - China had to pay one and a half million pounds in indemnity for smuggled opium that had been destroyed. Try and smuggle a wristwatch into England nowadays and you will not only have to pay heavily but will suffer moral opprobrium - and maybe prison. How economic circumstances change moral attitudes.

The present furore about dope taking shows how the chickens have come home to roost with a vengeance.

However, de Gibbins in his "Industrial History of England" finds a silver lining to the cloud: "The Chinese wars of 1842 and 1857, regrettable as they were, established our commercial relations with the East generally upon a firm footing, and since then our trade with Eastern nations has largely developed." (p.219) Lately, withdrawal from the East, owing to economic and political developments in that area, has knocked the silver out of the cloud.

Turning to the American Civil war during the eighteen-sixties, although it is alleged to have been a war over slavery, it was in fact not a question of whether or not the slaves should be emancipated but whether the North should continue to be ruled by a land-hungry South.

Whilst slave production was profitable to all the slates, North and South, there was no opposition to it on any large scale. The opposition from the North only came when it threatened to interfere with the expansion of the Northern manufacturing and commercial interests. When this happened the moral objections to slavery suddenly became popular in the North as a reflection of these threatened economic interests.

The South only produced raw material which it exported - cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice - it depended for nearly everything else upon import from outside.

These raw materials were only profitable when produced by large gangs of slaves on a large scale, and demanded constantly increasing territory. The land hunger of the South extended right across the continent and was spreading North where it came into conflict with the freeholding farmers. The South obtained manufactured goods from the North which satisfied Northern manufacturers until their railway, banking and other proposals for expansion were obstructed by Southern restrictions in the Senate and Supreme Court, which were dominated by the slave-owning element.

The Southerners dominated politics through their control of the Democratic party, which was pro-slavery. The situation commenced to boil up when the Southerners tried to get control of territory in Kansas by expelling freeholders to make way for plantations. This split the Democratic party, the Northern section favouring a limit to slave territorial expansion. A Republican party was then formed in 1856 in the Great Lake region, which extended its influence and put forward a platform limiting the further extension of slavery and confining it to the slave states that existed at the time. To this party belonged some genuine abolitionists like Horace Greeley, Dana, Brisbane and Longfellow.

As the Northern commercial and manufacturing interests began to move over to the support of the Republican party they were enabled, through the split in the Democratic party, to secure the election of President Lincoln in 1860. He was the nominee of the Great Lake region which had nothing to gain from Southern supremacy.

In 1860 not more than ten thousand out of the nine million Southern whites were the economic, social and political rulers of the South. The clergy and professional elements supported them. The mass was made up largely of poor whites. At the time the civil war broke out the South owed huge debts to the North, which they promptly repudiated. Thus the North was bound by the interests of its commercial rulers to fight against the secession policy of the South.

Incidentally the Northern manufacturers not only supplied defective guns to their own army but they also supplied the South with ammunition etc. Like the English merchants who sold cloth to clothe Napoleon's troops during the war with France. Where economic interests are involved patriotism and morality go by the board.

There is a popular belief that Lincoln was the champion of the movement to abolish slavery. This is not true. His declared aim was "to save the union" with or without slavery. In a debate with Steven A. Douglas he gave his views on the position concerning negroes: "I am not in favour of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office . . . I am not in favour of negro citizenship." (p.30) The Civil War by Henry Hansen, published by Mentor.

He was ready to see the fugitive slave law enforced. Under this law any slave who escaped from a plantation to free territory had to be sent back to the plantation. On November 30th 1860 he wrote to Alexander H. Stevens, a Georgia politician: "Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their slaves or with them about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you . . . that there is no cause for such fears." (Hansen p.30)

Referring to Lincoln's Inaugural Address when he took office on the 4th March 1861, Hansen makes the following comments: "Lincoln spoke calmly and without rancour. He repeated his declaration that he had no purpose. to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed. He would execute the laws in all the - States, since he considered the Union unbroken." (p.47)

The North was successful in the war because of its manufacturing superiority, and not because of any moral purpose. After the war the era of the great trusts began which produced millionaires such as Jay Gould, Marshall Field, Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Pierpont Morgan

Finally all modern wars have been capitalist wars. The motives that have inspired them have been economic. This was true of the first and second world wars, the Korean war and the war in Vietnam as well as of the clash between India and Pakistan and the numerous wars that have not received as much publicity.