Low, Donald Anthony;
Britain and Indian Nationalism: The Imprint of Amibiguity 1929-1942
Cambridge University Press, 1997, 374 pages
ISBN 0521550173 9780521550178
topics: | history | british-india
compares the british in india against three other colonial traditions - the americans in the philippines (most liberal), the dutch in indonesia, and the french in indochina (most ironhanded). the british, the claim is, were in the middle, and oscillated, and faced ambiguities, which allowed gandhi and his mass movement. but the point does not quite come across. the comparisons were very interesting to me, since i am quite ignorant of the grand view of indonesian or vietnamese history (as of most non-western nations). what i found interesting about the narratives were the class-based analyses - for example, the blue-collar katipunan insurrection failed in the phillippines against spain, it's leader bonifacio killed by the elite subgroup leader emilio aguinaldo, who went on to become president of the first philippine republic. but in terms of the differences with the british, it is clear that the americans did not have the stomach for imperial adventure; about two decades before the others, they declared that they did not want to hold on to philippines. also, there was at no point much US involvement, in terms of its citizens, in the administration of, or in the commerce with, the philippines. even the president's council had only one american. on the other hand, there were 8x as many dutchmen in indonesia, and 3x as many french in the administration of indonesia and vietnam than there were britishers in india (these population was 2x and 10x smaller respectively). many of these officials held government posts, going down pretty low in the ladder, but many also held lucrative monopolies in various trade items. thus, the degree of ingrainedness of the people, and the financial stakes were much higher. also owing to the long history of empire (america had been in the colonial business only since 1898) - there was a longer and much more entrenched philosophy of colonialism - manifest destiny or mission civilatrice - which was completely believed by the colonial system - and also a large percentage of its subjects. the american did not have the indoctrination as much in place, and there was a groundswell of voices against the empire.
however, low's attempts to distinguish the british rule from the dutch or the french do not appear to be very convincing. yes, the french killed several hundred rebellious members of the VNQDD in 1930; the dutch too were brutal. but low does not mention the jalianwala bagh killings and the heroic reception of dyer in england, around the same time. as low makes clear, britain, along with the french and the dutch, were not of a mindset to relinquish india. while he talks of the ideological imperatives to empre for the french, he is markedly silent about british commitment to the civilizing mission as its role in empire. the main aspect that emerges, in which britain differs from these other powers is in its experience with other empires that it had lost - most recently ireland, which was granted dominion status in 1921 after a violently repressive putdown of a rebellion, and which later declared complete independence under de valera in 1932. these experiences led to a nuancing of britains terms of engagement with india. 1. as pointed out by low, there was at least talk of allowing india into dominion status, as was the case with s. africa, australia, etc. 2. a second point [that strikes me, not mentioned by Low] is that by the 1930s, when there was no form of democraticization in indonesia or vietnam, there was a degree of provincial autonomy (and elections) in India. This was opposed vigorously in parliament by Churchill, but held up as necessary for continuing empire, not discontinuing it. But to me, these remain a matter of degree. for example, at the Brazzaville conference of 1944, (which Low mentions, but only tangentially), france offered a high degree of autonomy (along with full citizenship) status to its colonies. thus, these differences were really a matter of degree. it is part of the myth, carefully nurtured by british historian, that the empire was more benign, less tooth and claw, than others. as a child growing up reading whatever history i could, i used to believe this. so do most other indians i know. even now, i think there is some substance to it, but the differences are very little, compared to the level of atrocity that was perpetrated by every empire. what was not told to me in the books i read is the everyday atrocities committed - how much and how deeply ingrained were the violence inflicted, changing entire ways of life by assigning impossible rents, converting land into a disposable property, taking on women, and violent forms of punishment from flogging on failure to pay up, to being blown off from a cannon's mouth. and the many other forms of colonial violence that is common to all three colonial cultures considered here. against that baseline, the slight differences claimed by low are rather marginal, and seems like a last gasp at perpetuating the old myth of a benevolent colonial regime. it took a rudrangshu mukherjee to highlight (for me) the other side of the colonial face. e.g. in the british violence after the sepoy mutiny, where village after village was ruthlessly strung up on trees, nearly twenty million indians may have died in awadh alone as a result of daring to oppose the empire. what i also know today is how deeply it was believed that the benevolence of the colonial would be welcomed, the myth of colonialism and how deeply it had penetrated the culture, though in the end it was based on the "whip and club", as the Dutch de Jongi says at one point in the book (see below) no wonder the british felt nonplussed by the mutiny... one other point that strikes me about low's narrative is how the histories are presented from the perspective of colonial policy - almost as if the subject people and their actions had no effect on colonial attitudes - these were formed independent of the colonies, which were like passive objects being manipulated on a large board. Thus, Gandhi had little to do with unsettling the British empire, but it was the inherent ambiguity in the British approach. E.H. Carr has called history writing "a dialogue between the past and the present"; this text, unfortunately is still stuck in a historiographic past. --- D. A. Low or Anthony Low is Emeritus Smuts Professor of the History of the British Commonwealth in the University of Cambridge. He has written a number of history texts including: Lion rampant: essays in the study of British imperialism. London: Cass, 1973.
Low starts by comparing the Indian freedom movement - which was mass-based - against other freedom movements in Asia.
[Philippine was a part of the Spanish East Indies from 1521, though there were periods of Dutch attacks (1600-1647), and British occupation (1762-1764). In 1896, the Katipunan revolt broke out among a group of blue-collar workers, but an elite Magdalo sub-group eventually headed by Emilio Aguinaldo refused to join them, contributing partially to a funds crunch that led to their defeat. The Aguinaldo faction were better organized and went on to form the Phippine Republic, and eventually allied with the US navy, which was fighting Spain over Cuba in another theater in the Spanish-American war. Initially the US forces actively sought the help of the Philipino nationalists, but after the final capture of Manila, the US broke its liaison with the Philippines. Admiral George Dewey established an US territory in the Phillippines which was to last nearly half a century. ] [Subsequently] the Americans refused to recognise the new Republic and between 1898 and 1902 conducted a bloody conquest of the Philippines, they soon established a close alliance with leading figures in the Filipino elite, who, fearful of popular insurgency against them, soon threw in their lot with the new rulers. Thereafter non-elite movements and non-elite nationalism was often vigorously suppressed. (the Philippine insurrection of 1899-1902). The Americans nonetheless pursued a policy of what they called 'benevolent assimiliation'. By 1913 70 per cent of government posts were held by western-educated Filipinos; by the late 1920s nearly all of them. During the course of the first decade of American rule, municipal, provincial, and legislative assembly elections were all held, and as early as 1907 a Nacionalistas party under the Philippines' longest-running elite nationalist leaders, Osmena and Quezon, secured 72 per cent of the seats in the American-created legislature, with Osmena becoming its Speaker. From the very beginning there were, moreover, Filipino members of the American colonial executive; while by 1925 the only American in the American Governor-General's Cabinet was the Secretary of Public Instruction. At the outset there had been a good deal of American opposition to the annexation of the Philippines, and many Americans remained opposed to any involvement in a directly imperial role. Formal empire was never central to the American self-image. In many respects it deeply offended against it. Nor was it important for their economy. The number of Americans employed in the government of the Philippines was never at all large. They were generally well content to allow the Filipino elite a much larger role in the governance of the islands than was ever enjoyed by corresponding colonial elites elsewhere. Before the outbreak of the First World War the Democratic Party in the United States had begun to support independence for the Philippines. In 1916 they secured the passage through the Congress of the Jones Act which promised the Philippines its independence 'as soon as stable government can be established'. In the years that followed a succession of Philippines' Independence missions thereupon visited Washington so as to secure this. During the 1920s they ran into a number of difficulties with the American Republican Administrations... Since, however, there were clear economic advantages for the Filipino elite in the American connection, and important political ones as well - non-elite movements continued to be suppressed - they were cautious about mobilising mass support against the Americans even whilst regularly proclaiming their nationalist commitments. With the onset of the depression in the early 1930s and the return of the Democrats to power following the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932... under pressure from the American farming organisations and the American Federation of Labor (which objected to the harm being done to their members' interests by too much Philippines' competition), the passage was eventually attained [with Filipino inputs] of the Tydings-Macduffie Act of 1934 [which ensured] that power would be transferred to a right-wing landed regime, which would remain tied to the United States by fiscal, trade and defence connections. This was what the Filipino elite wanted too, and thereupon the Philippines finally secured full internal self-government in 1935 with a promise of full independence ten years later.
The Dutch East Indies Company had first established in Sarabaya in the
seventeenth century. Direct governmental rule was declared at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, and the Dutch secured extensive
control over Java by 1830, completing their conquest of the
Indonesian archipelago by first decades of the twentieth century.
Soon, a significant number of Dutch people moved to the Netherlands Indies -
eight times as many of them as Britishers in India; the ratio of European
officials to the local population became nearly fifteen times that in India.
There were, moreover, almost as many high-ranking Dutch civil service
positions in the Indies as in the Netherlands itself.
The first shoots of what was to develop, however, into Indonesia's
nationalist movement appeared in the founding of Budi Utomo ('the
beautiful endeavour') in 1908. During the course of the First World War
this was extensively overtaken by Sarekat Islam, a much larger movement
of Indonesia's majority Muslim community, which by 1919 claimed to
have two million followers. But because of Communist infiltration, it then
began to fall apart, and in 1926-7 there was a spate of Communist-led
revolts in Java and Sumatra which the Dutch resolutely repressed.
[In 1914 exiled Dutch socialist Henk Sneevliet founded the Indies Social
Democratic Association. Initially a small forum of Dutch socialists, it would
later evolve into the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in 1924.]
In 1918 the Dutch had begun to establish a Volksraad (People's
Council) in the Netherlands Indies - though upon extremely restricted
lines.
Meanwhie the leadership of the Indonesian nationalist movement fell into the hands of secular nationalists, amongst whom the leading figures were Mohammed Hatta, who headed Perhimpunan Indonesia, the organisation of Indonesian students studying in Holland, and the consummate orator and locally educated engineer, Sukarno, who not only succeeded in establishing in 1927 what soon became the Partai Nasional Indonesia, but during 1928 managed to unite a number of other Indonesian movements under an umbrella organisation, the PPPKI. In 1929, the dutch arrested Sukarno for his increasingly vociferous activities and in 1930, he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. As a parting gesture the somewhat liberal-minded Dutch Governor-General, de Graeff, decided to release him in 1931. But subsequently, the unity of the Indonesian national movement was endangered, especially when Hatta returned to Indonesia in August 1932, since there soon developed a sharp difference of opinion between them over precisely what anti-colonial policy it would now be best to pursue. Hatta inclined to the view that a class-based cadre-led party would be essential to moving the Dutch, whilst Sukarno instinctively favoured a less structured mass-based multi-class nationalist movement. Before long Hatta gained control of PNI Baru (the new PNI, originally Sukarno's own creation), while Sukarno moved into the leadership of its rival, Partindo. Both then made considerable progress in winning support, particularly in the towns. So much so indeed that de Graeff's much more conservative successor, de Jonge, finally decided in August 1933 to arrest Sukarno and his associates, and then early in 1934 Hatta and his, and to exile them to some distant islands for life. 'If the political independence of the Netherlands-Indies is preached', de Jonge proclaimed in October 1933,'... then His Excellency will indeed silence these expressions of the National Movement'. [FN: It was only with the Japanese conquest of the Netherlands East Indies in 1942 that they were eventually released.] Thereafter the only Indonesian political parties which were allowed to operate at all openly were those prepared to collaborate with the Dutch; and even they received short shrift when in the Soetardjo Petition of 1936 they sought to secure discussions with the Dutch on some modest constitutional reforms. They were not even accorded the benefit of a reply till over two years had passed. Throughout these years the Dutch remained implacably committed to maintaining their empire in the Indies. It was almost all they had left of their three centuries of overseas endeavour. They remained wedded, moreover, to 'Ruste en Orde' (tranquillity and order) and from the 1930s onwards to 'Rijkseenheid' (imperial unity) as well. Apart from a brief flowering of the more liberal De Stuw group in 1930-3 (backed by the Oriental Faculty at Leiden University), most Dutch residents in the Indies were thoroughly conservative, represented from 1929 onwards in the Vaderlandsche Club (and buttressed by the new Indology Faculty at Utrecht University). Major Dutch commercial companies were heavily involved in Indies affairs. Directors of Royal Dutch Shell were both Colonial Ministers and Governor-Generals in a way that was scarcely conceivable elsewhere. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards there was, moreover, a strong belief amongst the Dutch that possession of the Indies was absolutely vital to the economic health of their homeland (perched as it was uncertainly upon the edge of the North Sea). Income remitted to the Netherlands from Indonesia represented an 8 per cent addition to its domestic product, and comprised most of its foreign earnings. The Indies (so the cliches ran) were the 'cork' on which the Netherlands floated; the horse pulling its economy along; Indies Gone, Prosperity Done (as a 1914 pamphlet title put it). Should the Indies be lost, not only would the Netherlands be reduced to penury was it believed., but 'to the ranks of a country such as Denmark'. Amid a plethora of political parties in the Netherlands itself there was in any event little faith by the 1930s in the democratic process so that its introduction in the Indies was altogether inconceivable, especially since, so one Dutch Colonial Minister argued, Indonesia's nationalists were no more than a 'superficial layer of the population, as thin as the silver skin of a grain of rice'. All of which was reinforced by what the Dutch saw as their firm commitment from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards to their 'Ethical Policy'. That in their view provided a complete justification for their continued rule in the Indies. Dismembering 'the Realm' would therefore constitute not only rank treachery to their tiny homeland, but a grave dereliction of their self-imposed duty.
NOTE: This long diversion is not part of the mainline story in the book;
these are my notes on Indonesian history while reading this book; to
continue with excerpts from Low's, go to France in Vietnam.
[The support received from Japan during their three and a half year
occupation of Indonesia was a crucial factor in the subsequent Revolution.
Under German occupation itself, the Netherlands had little ability to defend
its colony, and the Dutch East Indies was overrun within only three months
after the initial attacks. The Japanese spread and encouraged nationalist
sentiment, which created new Indonesian institutions (including local
neighbourhood organisations) and elevated political leaders like
Sukarno. Just as significantly for the subsequent Revolution, the Japanese
destroyed and replaced much of the Dutch-created economic, administrative,
and political infrastructure.
With the Japanese on the brink of losing the war, the Dutch requested the Japanese army
to "preserve law and order" in Indonesia. However, in
September 1944, with the war going badly for the Japanese, Prime Minister
Koiso promised eventual independence for Indonesia, which was seen as
vindication of Sukarno's collaboration with the Japanese. The Japanese also
trained volunteer armies such as the PETA (Giyugun).
Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese Emperor’s surrender in the Pacific. The following day, the Central Indonesian National Committee (KINP) elected Sukarno as President, and Hatta as Vice President. By the time the news reached the provinces, the Allied forces were re-entering Indonesia... The PETA and other militant groups were disbanded by the Japanese but a large youth force (pemuda) was formed with meager arms taken from Japanese and other sources. Within a month, the pemuda had taken over much of the cities while the Japanese looked the other way. But they became increasily violent against other ethnic groups- eurasian, chinese, and ambonese as well as dutch prisoners. Sukarno and Hatta urged calm. [the population of Ambon, an island in Maluku group (Moluccas) far to the east, were largely Christian and suspicious of the mainstream Java/Sumatra population and the communist PKI, and was the scene of large scale riots that killed thousands in 1999-2002. Similar centrifugal forces exist in Aceh, the Westernmost region of Sumatra. ]
Meanwhile, a Dutch force, was reassembling, with the USA giving them a 10mn $ loan to finance the recapture of Dutch East Indies. Australian and British troops re-established Allied command across many of the islands, with the Japanese aiding them under the terms of the surrender, and Dutch administrators returned shortly thereafter. However, permuda resistance in Java resulted in initial struggle against the Japanese, and then the allies. In the second largest city of Surabaya, a largely Indian force was able to conquer the city after many casualties. Eventually the Dutch returned and were able to establish themselves in the main cities, but the republic continued in the rural areas. Meanwhile a treaty brokered by the British recognized the de facto authority of the Republic over Java and Sumatra. In 1947, the Dutch launched a major offensive (operatie Product) claiming some clauses in the Linggajati agreement had been violated. But Dutch action was opposed in the new UN by India and Australia, among others. The UNSC Renville agreement recognized a ceasefire along the van Mook line in Java. In 1948, negotiations with the Republic broke down again and the Dutch launched the Operatie Kraai and captured the republican capital city of Yogyakarta. However forces led by Suharto, Nasution and other officers continued to operate guerilla fashion from the rural areas. In 1949, after UN outrage, the USA threatened to cut off Marshall Aid (to the tune of US$ 1bn in total) essential to rebuilding of the Netherlands. Eventually in August 1949 the Dutch agreed to Indonesian control of the main archipelago, with the Dutch to retain control over New Guinea.
In 1956, Hatta, who was seen as a voice of non-Javanese ethnicity in the administration, resigned, resulting in several riots, with the PRRI (1958) being aided by the US. In 1957, Sukarno dissolved parliament and formulated "guided democracy", based on nas-a-kom - a balance between divisive forces of nationalism (Nas), religion (agama), and marxism (kommunisme). This was intended to appease the three main factions in Indonesian politics — the army, Islamic groups, and the communists, but in practice it led to greater consolidation of power. [Earlier, in 1947, the idealistic prime minister Sutan Sjahrir had resigned, and formed a party opposing PKI. His party was banned in 1960, and Sjahrir was arrested in 1962. He died of a heart attack in prison 1966]. Hatta crtiqued Sukarno's increasingly authoritarian ways. The state also turned away from the federal structure of 15 states inherited from the Dutch, and Sukarno soon disbanded the states and established a centralized power structure. Hegemonistic ambitions also came to the fore during Malaysian independence, when Indonesia launched a war to take over east Borneo (now Sabah/Sarawak).
On 30 september 1965, a coup attempt with unclear origins killed six of the most senior generals, but was suppressed by forces led by Suharto, who eventually took over power. The PKI was blamed for the coup attempt, and more than a half million people (estimates upto two million, see The Darker Nations p.165) were killed in an anti-communist purge, which also had strong communal overtones. At the time PKI had a membership of about 4.5million and was the largest in the non-communist world and a contender for power. It was not a secret organization, and members were easy to find. The US embassy in Jakarta suppplied the Indonesian military with a list of 5K names of PKI members. The paramilitary group, Para Komando Angkatan Darat killed many entire villages in Bali - including beach villages such as Kesiman, now a major tourist resort; it would be well for tourists to consider this as they walk the sands of Bali. [see gbook page from Southeast Asia: a historical encyclopedia, v.3 edited by Keat Gin Ooi, aricle on Gestapu Affair (1965) by Robert Cribb. ] Sukarno was castigated for his flirtation with the evil-PKI, and was stripped of presidency after a few months. He was put under house arrest, and being already in ill health, died in 1970. By then, the new regime had lost confidence amid charges of widespread corruption. Suharto became increasingly authoritative. It annexed the Dutch Borneo after negotiations, calling it Irian Jaya. In 1975-1999 the Indonesian government was involved in large scale atrocities in earstwhile Portuguese East Timor.
According to official figures, between 600,000 and 750,000 people passed through detention camps for at least short periods after 1965; some estimates go up to 1.5 million. These detentions were partly adjunct to the killings – victims were detained prior to execution or were held for years as an alternative to execution – but the detainees were also used as a cheap source of labour for local military authorities. Sexual abuse of female detainees was common, as was the extortion of financial contributions from detainees and their families. Detainees with clear links to the PKI were dispatched to the island of Buru in eastern Indonesia, where they were used to construct new agricultural settlements. Most detainees were released by 1978 following international pressure. [Among those interned at Buru were Pamoedya Ananta Toer, who was released in 1979, but kept in house arrest till 1992. His Buru Quartet was composed orally as a story told in prison gatherings, and traces the development of the Indonesian nationalism through the eyes of Minke, a member of the Javanese nobility. ] Even after 1978, the regime continued to discriminate against former detainees and their families. Former detainees commonly had to report to the authorities at fixed intervals (providing opportunities for extortion). A certificate of non-involvement in the 1965 coup was required for government employment or employment in education, entertainment or strategic industries. From the early 1990s employees in these categories were required to be ‘environmentally clean’, meaning that even family members of detainees born after 1965 were excluded from many jobs while their children faced harassment in school. A ban on such people being elected to the legislature was lifted only in 2004. A ban on the teaching of Marxism-Leninism remains in place.
The French in the 1930s were even more determined to hold fast to
their empire in Indochina, acquired from the late 1850s to the 1890s.
...
Since the days of their pre-Revolutionary monarchy, the administration of
France itself had been characterised by centralised control. This approach
came to be given full expression in the very centralised and highly
autocratic system of direct rule first established in Indochina by
Governor-General Doumer (1897-1902). As a consequence
there came to be three times as many French officials in
Indochina as there were British officials in India (where the population
was ten times as large), while all the way down close to the very bottom
the colonial administration was staffed by French officials.
Ideologically France's colonial [premise was based on] the
mission civilatrice and to its doctrine of la mise en valeur
(development) - an extension of the process by which ... steps were taken to
draw the populations of France's provinces into the culture of its
metropolis. ... one of the principal aims of French policy in Vietnam was
always to build up a Vietnamese elite that would be at once French in its
loyalties even while encouraging their commitment to Confucian values.
1905: Vietnamese nationalist movement in early twentieth century was
symbolised by Phan Boi Chou, a remarkable man who in 1905 formed the
Association for the Modernisation of Vietnam. Eventually in 1925 the
French kidnapped him, and after sentencing him to hard labour for life
confined him to his house instead.
during the interwar years, empire came to be seen as of critical importance
in securing France's proper standing in the world. That was reinforced by the
major monopolistic interests many Frenchmen enjoyed in Indochina in mining,
rubber, and the export of rice; by the preeminent role they held in the tea,
coffee, timber, and textile industries; and by the immense profits procured
by the French-based Banque d'Indochine.
early 1920s: Vietnamese Constitutionalist Party - - ineffectual.
1927: VNQDD (Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang) - elite secular nationalist party.
in February 1930 launched a mutiny at several places in the French
colonial army. The French reacted with the 'White Terror'. Eighty VNQDD
leaders were swiftly executed. Hundreds were sent to a penal colony.
1930-1 : series of peasant revolts, particularly in Nghe An and Ha Tinh
provinces and in the Mekong delta, fomented by the Indochinese Communist
Party - newly formed.
'White Terror' was immeasurably extended. Thousands of Vietnamese peasants
were killed.
Upwards of 700 people were executed without trial in 1930 alone. Hundreds
were sent to the guillotine; while tens of thousands were incarcerated.
1936: left-of-centre Popular Front government in France in 1936 - temporary
let-up in this repression
1939-40: further severities on Vietnamese Communists and their allies.
Underlying all of this lay the widespread view of a great many Frenchmen that
the universalist superiority of their own culture and civilisation made any
serious nationalist opposition to their colonial rule essentially malign.
For the French Right that called for police surveillance, stern repression,
and a ready use of penal colonies.
For the Left it necessitated not independence but a far greater concern for
the colonies' development.
France's fundamental attitude towards its empire throughout these years was
most clearly expressed at the Brazzaville Conference which de Gaulle called
in 1944 which roundly declared that:
The aims of France's civilizing mission preclude any thought of autonomy
or any possibility of development outside the French empire.
Self-government must be rejected - even in the more distant future. [p.16]
While one must be careful abt classifying these, some distinctions are
clear... Whereas by the mid 1930s the Americans had clearly determined to
relinquish formal control over their Asian colony, both the Dutch and the
French were absolutely determined to stay.
They were adamant that this would be vital to maintaining their proper status
in the world. They were completely convinced of the abundant moral
justifications in their colonial subjects' own interests for doing so; and
they displayed few qualms about the ironhanded measures they took to check
the nationalist forces arrayed against them.
These clear-cut distinctions can, moreover, be quite pithily epitomised.
On his appointment as Governor-General of the Philippine Islands by
President Roosevelt in 1932 the later Supreme Court Judge, Frank
Murphy, declared:
I have one ambition. I'm going to set these people free.
By contrast, at around the same time, Governor-General de Jonge
in the Netherlands Indies announced that
we have ruled here for 300 years with whip and club and we shall
still be doing it in another 300 years.
While following upon the issuing of orders to French Foreign Legionnaires in
Vietnam in 1931 to kill nine out of ten prisoners whom they took in armed
encounters with rebellious peasants, a scion of a notable French colonial
family, Pierre Lyautey, pronounced in a widely quoted book that
French expansion is an enduring and permanent phenomenon.
Low then highlights how the British position in India, was different from both the American position on the one hand and the Dutch and the French position on the other. Like the Dutch / French, the British had no intention of relinquishing India, and with often steely resolve gave their minds to maintaining it. Before 1942 no British government ever contemplated any move towards India's independence. Prior to 1938 no British political party ever committed itself to it in the way that the Democratic Party in the United States had done two decades earlier for the Philippines. Paradoxically, this hardline position was never more precisely displayed than in the response of the principal Conservative Party leaders to Winston Churchill's thunderous denunciations of the reforms they were introducing in India in the early 1930s as presaging the end both of the British Empire and of Britain's leading place in the world. On their side they persistently countered that far from endangering Britain's dominion over India, constitutional reforms were the one way to 'hold India to the empire', which they were as anxious to ensure as he was. Whilst totally excluding any early move towards full independence for India, the British never ruled out, as both of those countries did, the prospect of self-government altogether. ... unlike the Dutch the British never banished India's nationalist leaders for life, let alone like the French put hundreds of them to death. By comparison with the Dutch they remained staunch in their support for the principles of parliamentary government (and were much less prone to argue their inappropriateness for India than before), while by contrast with the French they never believed that the superiority of their own culture and civilisation justified the suppression of those who challenged their authority. [AM: What is interesting in Low's discourse is thee utter passivity of the Philippines, the Indonesians, the Vietnamese, and the Indians. They are there, occasionally raising a voice here and there, but things are being done to them by the colonial powers, they are merely objects being moved around a grand board. ] In the center of the british imperial structure stood the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - whose Royal and Merchant Navies bestrode the seas; whose Imperial General Staff masterminded its imperial military strategy; whose capital constituted the world's principal commercial centre; and whose currency dominated the world's financial systems. 20 Follows the changes in British opinion - the Irish rebellion of 1916 and how it's brutal suppression was not acceptable to British elite opinion, Eventually, Dominion status granted in 1921. In 1932, de Valera threw out the emblems of "dominion" and declared an independente Eire. There was a bitter trade war, but in the end Britain admitted defeat, and also handed over several southern Irish ports which they had retained earlier. These events were the basis for ideas such as 'Responsible Government', 'Federation', 'Dominion Status', etc. as was in the vocabulary of the Cripps mission. Underneath all of this there ran a protracted consideration in a good many intellectual and political circles in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s over how precisely to reconcile the conflicting demands of imperium and libertas. 25 [Note: W.K. Hancock's magisterial Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, vol. I, Problems of Nationality 1918-1936, Oxford 1937] these were some of the sources of british ambiguity when it came to dealing with indians. 560 princely states in India, who in 1909 had been promised a loosening in British oversight over their internal affairs in return for their reinvigorated loyalty. - remained staunch in their support to the British, even during the 1942 Quit India movement.