Southeast Asian and South Asian history resources - how to write a history essay 2

Southeast Asian and South Asian history resources - how to write a history essay 2

Here, to recap, is the esssay title and essay question. This is currently a South Asia and Southeast Asian history resource and essay, for English Language Resources Online.

Term Paper/ Essay Question: As the various East India companies fell by the wayside, crown or governmental authorities began to exert and cement their influence within their Asian dominions through political, social, economic and cultural means. Using the example of TWO countries covered in this course, elaborate how this process was carried out and critically analyse the impact of colonial rule on these countries.

For South Asian and Southeast Asian history resources, here is the body of the essay. By now, we have covered how to write a response paper, a short essay, a biblical essay (bible essay), a term paper, a literature paper, a history paper and much more. Do remember to ask yourself questions about the essay, apart from how do I answer this history question and how do I write this essay. Ask deeper, probing questions.

Body of the term paper/ body of the history essay

The British exerted political control on India through collaboration and the imposition of bureaucracy. After the Mutiny of 1857, the East India Company was abolished and its political power given to the Crown (Marriott 1932:216-217). Main political control was through the creation of classes allied to the British, the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and the military. The ICS was “indianised” so that Indian bureaucrats were loyal to the British and executed their orders; the landlord system, to collect taxes and impose control over villages, created “new classes and vested interests who were tied up with [British] rule and whose privileges depended on its continuance”; Princes of India, the Police and Indians in the Indian Army were coopted into the British system (Nehru, quoted in Lewis 1962:18-19).

British political control had short-term and long-term effects. One important consequence was “the integration of vast territories” into one unified India, “both by the machinery of government which [British administration] created and by the forces of resistance to which it gave rise” (Panikkar, quoted in Lewis 1962:109). Thus, the unification of a divided India provided the basis for nationalism. Also, short-term resentment developed into nationalism. “As late as 1913 over 80% of the highest … posts in the Civil Service as a whole were still in British hands” (Coupland, quoted in Lewis 1962:29). The British held controlling posts in the Army, Police and Government; hence there was resentment against the foreign monopoly of top positions, and anti-colonial nationalism was the long-term result. However, the British introduced constitutional reforms in 1909, 1919 and 1935 that increased “Indian participation in legislative and executive authority”, to counter “the rising tide of Indian nationalism” (Lewis 1962:xiii). This shows that the British did not disregard Indian nationalism, but tried to control it. Lastly, British rule brought about a “Pax Britannica” of relative stability and peace (Marriott 1932:225).

The British also exerted economic controls in the macro-economy and export-economy. According to Romesh Dutt, the primary economic motivations of the British was the exploitation of India for raw materials, the provision of markets for British goods, and the suppression of a potential economic rival (quoted in Lewis 1962:2-3). The British thus imposed tariffs on Indian goods and simultaneously flooded India with British goods, especially textiles – clearly economic domination.

The impact was disastrous, creating poverty, famines and ruralisation. According to Jawaharlal Nehru “those parts of India which have been longest under British rule are the poorest today” (quoted in Lewis 1962:15). Nehru argued that the real cause of poverty in India was that the British stopped Indian manufactures from being exported and only allowed the export of raw materials, and did not “apply the new (industrial) techniques to India”, thus causing massive unemployment for the artisan and textiles-producing classes. These classes then put pressure on the countryside when they turned to agriculture and caused “ruralisation” with a “crisis in agriculture” (quoted in Lewis 1962:16-17). In summary, the British imposed economic control over India’s export economy, only allowing her to export raw materials and agricultural products, and the impact was, in the short-term, famine and unemployment, and in the long-term, poverty.

However, the British did introduce “a better system of communications”, steamship services, railways, telegraphs and “cheap and uniform postal service” (Coupland, quoted in Lewis 1962:31). Yet, the fact remains that Britain developed India’s agriculture without any concomitant industrial improvement (1962:32-33), and one cannot avoid the conclusion that the economic effects of Britain’s policies damaged India, with the exception of communications and transportation.

The British imposed socio-cultural influence via education and law. The education system was for training administrators and clerks rather than educating and enlightening them. Yet the impact was more than just the short-term provision of ICS members; English became a lingua franca, and Indian nationalism had its roots in education via the common language of nationalists, political philosophies, and Western ideas (Marriott 1932:224). In law, the Sadr Adalat (local court) was abolished, and the Indian High Courts Act (1861) established a judiciary under the Crown (Marriott 1932:219). This new system kept law and order. On the one hand, Thomas Macaulay established equality before the law, and revolutionised the inconsistent old Hindu system (Panikkar, quoted in Lewis 1962:107-108). On the other hand, while the British insistence on using Hindu case precedents gave consistency and certainty, it was inflexible and ancient Hindu law was perpetuated without improvement (Nehru, quoted in Lewis 1962:24). Overall, British education and law were beneficial.

We now examine the Dutch East Indies. Politically, like the British in India, the Dutch ruled mainly using collaboration and indirect rule (rule by utilisation of indigenous collaborators), with some direct rule (Dutch political control). The Dutch, with limited resources from a small country, could not dominate the entire archipelago without local collaboration (Tarling 2001:53). Yet, “actual occupation … [was] necessary to ensure that other powers respected a colonial possession”; the Dutch called their system “protection”, establishing ‘protection’ over ‘client states’ (2001:54-55).

Certainly the collaborators benefited, even though they lost their independence in all but name and their “position had deteriorated” (Tarling 2001:52). The common people did not benefit, because the Dutch became overlords and exacted economic demands. More importantly: Indonesia was unified because the Dutch combined separate areas, creating a “new political entity” (2001:55). In the short-term this created a centralised, unified colony under the Dutch and in the long-term created conditions for eventual Indonesian independence, because there was a state for nationalists to focus on (2001:55).

The Dutch imposed economic controls, a major example being the Cultivation System in Java. The process and impact of economic controls by the Dutch monopoly, contract labour, and other policies have been debated, but due to limitations only the Cultivation System will be examined. It was introduced in 1830 with “the primary goal of stimulating the production and export of agricultural commodities saleable on the world markets”, for instance, sugar, coffee and indigo (Van Niel 1992:208-209). The Dutch imposed the Culture System to profit from East Indies crop exports.

It is commonly argued that the Cultivation System was disastrous. Firstly, the system was disastrous in terms of human costs. The immediate impact was “a tax in labour”, as the peasantry worked harder than ever before, with “maladministration” and deaths (Van Niel 1992:214). Secondly, the economic system benefited indigenous elites and the Dutch, but not other Javanese. These elite “came to be closely linked through family ties in the capital and political needs for this agricultural expansion” (1992:209). They became rich together at the majority’s expense. The corollary was elite politico-economic ascendancy. The Dutch needed them to maintain the system through socio-cultural control. There was a “close alliance among government contractors, private planters, import-export houses, and government civil servants”, a “special privilege” for the elite group (1992:210). Perhaps, the only possible positive effect was the opening up of the East Indies for entry into the global marketplace.

The Dutch also imposed socio-cultural control by depending on “prestige”. They depended upon the collaboration of prestigious elites in Indonesian society to control labour, and controlled the elite using the “prestige” of the white man (Christie 2001:15). Furthermore, the Ethical Policy gave “access to Western education and expertise to the children of [the] hereditary indigenous elite” (2001:13). The colonial government wanted to enhance the status of collaborators in Javanese society, but despite thinking that education “would bind the elite to the colonial project without disturbing the existing structure of native society”, this inadvertently led to the rise of Indonesian nationalism (Kartini, quoted in Christie 2001:13-16). Education ‘bred’ nascent nationalism. It can thus be argued that “anti-colonialism” stemmed from the socio-cultural system of “prestige” (Christie 2001:2).

Remember to ask yourself critical thinking questions about this essay body, and more than just "how", but why and what as well. Learn from this essay both the

style/ manner of writing
and
history/ resource content.