Professor Dr. Georg Wegener, India Today. The Basis and Problems of British Rule in India. (Colonial Studies, No. 61-63. 1.20 marks), Berlin, 1912 (52 pp.).
A very good, clear, brief outline.
India—4,575,000 sq. km.
| 315 million (1911) | (1901—297) |
| (1801—100) |
Danger of war on the part of Russia: the British are now armed “to the teeth” here.
There is no one nation, no one language.
“Bengalis”=70 million. The British partitioned Bengal (in order to weaken the national movement) in 1905, and in 1911 (at the coronation in Delhi) promised to annul this measure.
The caste system.
The British rule by means of “divide et impera”....
Extreme diversity of geographical conditions.
Isolation from the rest of the world.
Medievalism (religion—the external world is nothing)—agriculture—vassalage.
Two-thirds of the country are directly under British rule, one-third consists of vassal states.
Complete dependence (of agriculture) on the summer rains (the summer monsoon=trade wind). Otherwise there is famine.
| The army | —75,000 British |
| —150,000 natives (of different ethnic groups). |
The British especially exploit the enmity between the Moslems (about 60 million) and the Hindus.
The chief danger of the Sepoy rising (1857) lay in the native army going over to the insurgents. The British were saved by dissension between different ethnic groups and the somnolence of the masses.
| Deaths from plague were: | 1905—1,069,140 |
| 1907—1,315,892, and so on. |
British administration is purely “dictatorial” (31), an “autocracy” (31).
The Indian Civil Service consists of about 1,000 persons, a staff of excellently paid excellent officials.
Britain, he says, has given India very much (pax Britannica, railways, postal service, administration of justice, etc., etc.).
Causes of ferment:
1) Coercion of the people by foreigners....
2) Rapid growth of population. (Famines.)
3) “Increasing agrarianisation of India”: Britain stifles industrialisation.
Swadeshi movement (=for home-produced goods) (boycott of British products).
4) Taxes. Land taxes levied on the peasants
5) Emergence of an intelligentsia. Education has created “an intellectual proletariat of the worst, and politically most difficult, kind” (43)—the author is a reactionary scoundrel.
6) Formation of an Indian nation. (The “National Congress”.)
7) Religious movement against the British, for Asians, for their own cause, for everything Asian ... (terrorism, etc.).
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The British entrust artillery and arsenals only to white troops, p. 48. In general, the British are extremely cautious. |
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