Subjugation, Assimilation, Liberation- The Ethnic Policies in the British Raj, The Imperial Russian and the Imperial Japanese Empire

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Subjugation, Assimilation, Liberation: the ethnic policies in the

British Raj, the Imperial Russian Empire and the Imperial Japanese

Empire.

Student Number: 7320911.

This thesis is 13,144 words long, excluding the bibliography.

This thesis is submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts in the Honours School of History at the University of

Manchester.



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Contents

1. Introduction: A Comparison of Empires pp.2-6.

2. The British Raj

2.1 The Subjugation of the Indian Subcontinent pp. 7-10.

2.2 Assimilation of the Indian Populace pp. 10-13.

2.3 Assimilation of the Indian Elite pp. 13-16.

2.4 The Liberation of India pp. 16-19.

3. The Imperial Russian Empire

3.1 Subjugation in the Russian Empire pp. 20-23.

3.2 Russification: the Assimilation of Russia‟s Subject Peoples pp. 23-27.

3.3 Assimilation of the Foreign Elite pp. 27-29.

3.4 The Liberation of the Russian Empire pp. 29-32.

4. The Imperial Japanese Empire

4.1 The Subjugation of Japan‟s Colonial Subjects pp. 33-37.

4.2 The Kōminka Movement: Japanese Assimilation of their Imperial pp. 37-39.

Subjects

4.3 Assimilation of the Empire‟s Elite pp. 39-42.4.4 The Liberation of the Japanese Empire pp. 42-45.

5. Conclusion: The Inevitability of Collapse pp. 46-49.

Bibliography pp. 50-55.



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1. Introduction: A Comparison of Empires

Empires have been created and expanded in the modern era for potential

economic, strategic and political gains. This was certainly the case in the three

empires discussed in this thesis. For instance, the British Raj was created in 1858 in

the wake of the Indian Mutiny; control of the subcontinent was transferred from the

British East India Company (EIC) to the crown in an effort to aid governance and

ensure there were no further rebellions. The Raj was still first and foremost a profit-

making entity, as India had been when ruled by the EIC . Coined the “jewel in the

British imperial crown”, the wealth made from the colony helped fund further

imperial projects. The territorial expansion of the Russian Empire, in contrast,

occurred because Russia itself lacked any natural borders and so established imperial

territories to increase security. These colonies would also provide raw materials and

help secure the desired status of a major European power. The Japanese Empire was

created initially as a response to European and American imperialism. To avoid

becoming colonised, Japan itself created colonies. Expansion during the Second

World War had the added benefit of strengthening defence and acquiring resources

that would aid the war effort.

The actions and attitudes of native populations in each empire were vastly

important as to whether or not the governing bodies could achieve their imperial

goals. In order to be successful, these populations had to be taken advantage of. This

thesis will discuss how the exploitative ethnic policies employed by each imperial

government were instrumental in the eventual collapse of their empires. They had no

choice but to implement these policies; the empires were not charities, and the



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colonies existed only for the centre‟s benefit. Because of these factors, I believe that

the very nature of an “empire”, being an entity that existed purely for the advantage of

the imperial centre in someway or another, ensured its ultimate failure.

It was vital to implement policies of ethnic management that would guarantee

stability within the colonies. Without this stability, the transfer of resources from the

empires‟ extremities to the centre, and if necessary, back again, became virtually

impossible. Active resistance movements were hugely disruptive to this circulation,

and also reduced the defensive capabilities of regions designed to increase security.

To establish and maintain peaceful colonies, the British, Russian and Japanese

governments had to, when necessary, both subjugate and assimilate the native

populations within their empires. The subjugating policies used were at times

horrifically violent and oppressive. They were, however, deemed imperative and

preferable to accommodative policies by the imperial centres; it was, for instance,

cheaper to force native labourers to work for free than to pay for their services.

Furthermore, brutal retributions for any uprisings that occurred deterred future

insurrections.

Assimilating policies also aided rule. The Russian and Japanese governments

at times attempted to incorporate native peoples directly into their own populations to

try and inculcate loyalty for the regime. The Indian people were too far removed from

the British public, both geographically and culturally, for assimilation to be a realistic

option. All three governments maintained dominance with the help of the native elite,

allowing the indigenous aristocracy to retain their positions of authority.



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The subjugating policies created strong opposition to the imperial powers, and

the assimilation of the local elite created classes with the expertise and desire to self-

govern. Therefore, the liberation of the colonies of each empire was thoroughly

assisted by the same policies that were essential in creating that empire and then

consolidating rule. The empires were destined to fail because of this.

When conducting research for this dissertation using secondary sources,

Andreas Kappeler‟s work was exceptionally useful for the Russian chapter. He

described how his „book represents the first attempt to provide a comprehensive study

of the history of the Russian multi-ethnic empire‟.1 He did not, however, examine the

aforementioned inevitability of collapse, brought about by the tsarist regime‟s policies

concerning the native peoples incorporated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Similarly, although work by Robert Stern and Stanley Wolpert on India both

described the effect that policies on ethnic populations had on their eventual liberation

from imperial yoke, neither explored whether or not this liberation was predestined.

The same can be said for secondary sources on Japan, for which I primarily read work

by Peter Duus, Ken‟ichi Gotō, Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie.

I believed these omissions created an opportunity to put forward an interesting

viewpoint on the causes behind the downfall of modern empires, and that comparing

the Russian Empire, the Japanese Empire and the British Raj would be the best way to

illustrate my argument. Between them, a huge portion of early-modern and modern

history is covered; the first to be established was the Russian Empire in 1721, and the

last to fall was the British Raj in 1947. Furthermore, an enormous amount of people

1Andres Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History, (London, 2001), p. 1.



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of vastly different cultures resided in the regions ruled by each regime. Different

modes of rule were also employed; in the British Raj, there were areas directly

administrated by the crown, as well as regions of indirect rule where native princes

retained their power, albeit with influential British advisors. Russian rule was

generally direct, with their Central Asian colonies being the exception. The Japanese

allowed certain nations in Southeast Asia a degree of autonomy, yet presided directly

over the colonies of Taiwan and Korea; puppet governments were established by the

Japanese in Manchukuo and occupied China.2 Although each empire is therefore of a

hugely different nature, there are numerous similarities between the policies

employed regarding the native populations. The issues surrounding these populations

are thus common throughout modern empires. This serves to strengthen my argument

that empires of this era in general are predetermined to fail because of the treatment of

their subject people.

Regarding primary sources, I have used accounts concerning both the ruled

and the rulers to produce a balanced investigation. Due to the case studies I have

chosen, only British sources are taken directly from memoirs, speeches and diaries

and so on. For Indian, Japanese and Russian primary sources, I have had to utilise

secondary sources and make use of translated accounts found in them.

I have structured my thesis into three main chapters. The empires will be

investigated in turn, each section being divided into four subheadings. The

subjugation, the assimilation of the subject peoples and the assimilation of the

2 According to Matthew Lange, direct rule „entails the construction of a complete system of colonial

domination in which local and central institutions are… governed by the same [central] authority‟.Indirect rule is „a system of collaborative rule that incorporates local institutions‟. See Matthew Lange,

Lineages of Despotism and Development: British Colonialism and State Power , (Chicago, 2009), p. 28.



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indigenous elite will be discussed in each chapter. The effects that these policies had

on the collapse of the empires and the liberation of the colonies will be examined in

the final subheadings. More weight will be given to the assimilating policies because

the individual governments in fact at times subjugated through assimilation. Finally, a

conclusion will be provided that explains how these empires were guaranteed to fail.



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2. The British Raj

2.1 The Subjugation of the Indian Subcontinent

The people of India were violently subjugated by their British overlords out of

necessity; the nature of British rule required oppression. The presence of the EIC as

the governing body in India before the Indian Mutiny of 1857, after which the crown

exerted control, created a framework for the later British Raj to use as a method of

maintaining dominance over India. The fact that the EIC, a commercial corporation,

could rule over large portions of the subcontinent suggests that the locals must have

been oppressed for the colonisers to have even the slightest chance of maintaining

dominion. This becomes more apparent when one considers that the Company‟s

„power base lay over 13,500 sea miles and six months' sailing time from India, [an

area which had] at least sixteen times the population of Britain and eighteen times its

geographical space‟.3 This set a precedent for British presence in the region and

indirect rule largely remained.

After the Indian Mutiny, the British monarchy took control from the EIC by

converting India into an imperium of the British government.4 Robert Stern described

why this transfer of power was necessary: „in the Mutiny‟s postmortems, an

underlying criticism of the company‟s policies were that they were politically

3 William A. Green and John P. Deasy, Jr., “Unifying Themes in the History of British India, 1757-

1857: An Historiographical Analysis in Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies,

Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 1985), p. 17.4The Mutiny of 1857 threatened to remove the British presence on the subcontinent. See Nicholas B.

Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Jersey, 2001), pp. 123-31.



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uninformed‟.5 The EIC‟s rule had been purely profit-driven and based on notions of

racial superiority, and its exploitation of the natives had in part caused the 1857

insurrection. The Mutiny had highlighted the dangers of a style of governance where

the ruled outnumbered the rulers. The Atlantic Monthly newspaper described in 1857

how, outside Delhi, the „number of [British] troops was too small to attempt an

assault against an army of thirty thousand [mutineers], each man of whom was a

trained soldier‟.6 The violent retribution for the mutiny was horrific and unparalleled

throughout British rule in India. The British forces believed it to be necessary to re-

assert control; the governor of the Punjab, John Lawrence, stated that the „object is to

make an example and terrify others‟ into submission.7 A British soldier reiterated this

necessity in an account of the aftermath of the capture of Kirwee in 1858:

The slaughter was tremendous. We took three hundred prisoners, and then

came that horrible butchery which Englishmen practised then… for the

mutiny had to be stamped out… We took them into an open space and

tied them together six at a time, placing them with their backs turned

towards half a dozen guns… every time the word was given to fire, thirty-

six of them were blown to pieces.8

The violent subjugation of the Indian people also verified the superiority of the

colonisers based on the colour of their skin and their “civilised” status, qualities that

legitimised their presence in India. Harald Fischer-Tiné explained how the notion of

the “civilising project” of the British Empire was growing in popularity at this time,

5Robert Stern, Democracy and Dictatorship in South Asia: Dominant Classes and Political Outcomes

in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, (Westport, 2000), p. 4.6 Charles C. Hazewell, “The Indian Revolt” in The Atlantic Monthly (Dec. 1857), p. 220. Found in

<http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/1857dec/revolt.htm>7

Cited in Edward Thompson and Mulk Raj Anand (ed.), Other Side of the Medal , (Oxford, 1989), p.

40.8Cited in E. Milton Small, Told From the Ranks: Recollections of Service by Privates and Non-

Commissioned Officers of the British Army 1843-1901, (London, 1897), p. 45.



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founded on the conviction that Indians were childlike and racially inferior. 9 A diary

entry by The Times correspondent William Russell confirmed this: „to the intelligent

Briton, [the natives] are as of beasts of the field. “By Jove! sir”, exclaims the major...

“Those niggers are such a confounded sensual lazy set… that you might as well think

to train pigs”‟.10 Events such as the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, although not

officially sanctioned, illustrated the extent to which the Indian people were

dehumanised by the British. General Dyer‟s command to his troops to fire on

unarmed civilians participating in a peaceful protest and kill four hundred people was,

according to Carey Watt, an exemplification of the British mindset towards their

Indian subjects. Dyer „did not express regret for his actions, which he saw as a

necessary form of colonial tutelage to impart an important moral lesson to disobedient

Indians‟.11

This episode shattered any illusion in India that the British were a civilising

presence. The ramifications became truly damaging for Britain when it was used by

the Indian nationalist cause to augment their campaign for independence. Nationalist

leader Gandhi, for instance, suggested in 1920 that Dyer‟s actions were consistent

with the ideology of the British government: „we do not want to punish Dyer. We

have no desire for revenge. We want to change the system that produced Dyer‟.12 The

episode is thus widely considered, by both contemporary observers and historians, to

9Harald Fischer-Tiné, “National Education, Pulp Fiction and the Contradictions of Colonialism:

Perceptions of an Educational Experiment in Early-Twentieth-Century India” in Harald Fischer -Tiné

and Michael Mann (eds.), Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India, (New

York, 2004), p. 229.10

William Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, (London, 1857), p. 8.11

Carey A. Watt, “The Relevance and Complexity of Civilizing Missions c. 1800-2010”, in Carey A.

Watt and Michael Mann, (eds.), Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From

Improvement to Development , (London, 2011), p. 18.12 Cited in Derek Sayer, “British Reaction to the Amritsar Massacre 1919-1920” in Past and Present,

No. 131 (Oxford, 1991), p. 133.



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be „the decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule‟.13 Winston

Churchill, the Secretary of State for War at the time, declared it „an episode… without

precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire‟.14 H. H. Asquith,

former Liberal Prime Minister, concurred: „it is one of the worst outrages in the whole

of our history‟.15 The failure of the British government to prevent incidents such as

this contributed hugely to the downfall of its rule in India.16

In order to subjugate the native population of India, the British were very

willing and able to use violence when necessary. For instance, the Mutiny, the civil

disobedience of the 1930s and the Quit India movement during World War Two were

all ruthlessly crushed. This brutality ensured the bulk of the people opposed the

British Raj; this was instrumental to the liberation of India.

2.2 Assimilation of the Indian Populace

Despite the fact that the British Raj, in comparison to its imperial

contemporaries, was relatively humane, it was not a charitable enterprise and existed

purely for the benefit of the British crown. The general assimilation of the common

Indian people was never seriously attempted because, in part, it was not the most

profitable policy; the British, unlike the Japanese in Taiwan and Korea, did not need

to assimilate in order to most effectively acquire resources. Because profit making in

India was still largely left to private individuals, there was no need for the British

13Helen Fein, Imperial Crime and Punishment: Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and British Judgement,

1919-20, (Honolulu, 1986), p. xii.14

Cited in Sayer, “Amritsar Massacre”, p. 131. 15

Cited in Sayer, “Amritsar Massacre”, p. 131. 16The Amritsar Massacre was not unique; the British not infrequently used brute force to put down

peaceful demonstrations, but not with a remotely comparable loss of life.



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government to mobilise their imperial subjects as the Japanese at times did. Instead,

as Stern described, the Raj „was a field for exploitation, a British national enter prise

sanctioned by parliament… meant to serve what its politicians understood to be

British “national interests”‟.17

Prior to the founding of the Raj, a liberal ideal had existed that advocated the

assimilation of the Indian society through the imposition of British ideals. Influential

politician Thomas Babington Macaulay, experienced in Indian affairs, stated his

desire in 1835 for the creation of a new class on the subcontinent, Indian „in blood

and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect‟.18 This

movement did not survive the Mutiny; Stanley Wolpert described how any social

bridge created between the British and India was destroyed by the conflict and its

aftermath with „terrible racial ferocity‟.19 Despite this break down in relations, Queen

Victoria similarly promoted equality by promising that Indians and Britons alike

within the Raj „should enjoy that advancement which can only be secured by internal

peace and good government‟.20 Robert Stern made clear such attempts would

inevitably fail: „the queen‟s promise would have to be broken by her loyal servants in

order to preserve the empire… [Moreover], Macaulay‟s class of Indians was a

fiction‟.21 This was because the nature of British rule in India necessitated the

conviction that their colonial subjects were racially inferior. A dedicated assimilating

policy would potentially shatter the belief that the Indians could not self-govern, a

17Stern, Democracy and Dictatorship, p. 5.

18 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute on Education”, in Henry Sharp (ed.), Selections from the

Educational Records, Bureau of Education, India, Vol. I, (Calcutta, 1920), p. 51.19

Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, 3rd

ed., (New York, 1989), p. 237.20

Cited in Robin J. Moore, “Imperial India, 1858-1914”, in Andrew Porter and Wm. Roger Louis

(eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century , Vol. III,(Oxford, 2001), p. 424.21

Moore, “Imperial India”, p. 5.



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principle that sanctioned the British presence in the region as a „Christian [authority],

at once morally and intellectually superior, and committed to a civilizing mission in

Asia‟.22

The Ilbert Bill controversy of 1883 illustrated the reluctance of the British to

relinquish any power. The Bill, backed by Viceroy Lord Rippon, would allow senior

native magistrates to preside over legal cases involving British subjects. The white

backlash to this proposition resulted in a compromise that favoured the colonisers.23

This dispute augmented existing antagonism between the two races, and the creation

of the Indian National Congress in 1885 was in part a reaction to this event that so

clearly demonstrated the inequality of the Raj. The superiority complex of the British

in India resulted in a „pattern of imperial subordination‟ that was maintained

throughout the British Raj‟s existence.24

The British did, however, assimilate Indians into their armed forces. The

damaging role played by native troops in the Mutiny ensured that the British rulers

never again trusted any Brahman, Kshatriya, Bengal or Oudh with weapons, and

conscripted solely from loyal “martial races”. The new crown regiments were thus

comprised of Punjabi Muslims, Sikhs, Ghurkhas and Rajputs who had not rebelled

during the conflict.25 All units were a combination of different races and castes from

different regions so there could not again be a unified religious insurrection, be that

Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. Indeed, „it was an army designed primarily to support internal

22Ibid., p. 6.

23For information on this compromise, see Satoshi Mizutani, The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and

the „Domiciled Community‟ in British India 1858-1930, (Oxford, 2012), p. 187.24C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, (Cambridge, 1990), p.200.

25Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 56.



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colonial order‟.26 The refusal to enlist any but those whose usefulness and loyalty

was assured encapsulated the attitude of the British regime in general concerning

assimilation. The contribution made by the native troops for the cause of the British

Empire was huge, not only in securing the subcontinent. For example, in excess of

one hundred thousand Indian soldiers died during World War One serving British

interests. Furthermore, Indian units fought for the Allies in World War Two across the

globe. The refusal to assimilate the common Indian population to any real extent

stemmed from the belief that they would not be useful to the British cause in a

comparable manner.27

2.3 Assimilation of the Indian Elite

In contrast with the early imperial Russian Empire, there was never a desire to

assimilate the Indian elite into the British ruling class during British rule on the south

Asian subcontinent. Instead, like the Japanese government, the British simply needed

the collaboration of the Indian aristocracy to most effectively acquire resources and

maintain secure rule. Ronald Robinson argued that securing the cooperation of certain

Indian rulers was the most lucrative option available to the British: Britain‟s „policy

was that if empire could not be had on the cheap, it was not worth having at all. The

financial sinew… was drawn through the mediation of indigenous elite from the

invaded countries „.28 Furthermore, the composition of the British Raj as a body that

relied heavily on the collaboration of the Indian elite was structured so for another

26Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global

Periphery, (Cambridge, 2004), p. 235.27

Mohinder Singh Pannu, Partners of British Rule: Liberators or Collaborators? , (Delhi, 2005), pp. 8-

13.28 Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism”, in Roger Owen and Bob

Sutcliffe (eds.), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, (London, 1976), p. 131.



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reason beside economical pragmatism: the Indians outnumbered the British by more

than ten to one.29

The role played by the Indian elite in the Mutiny did much to dictate how they

would be treated under the newly formed British Raj. Prior to 1857, the EIC had

established mutually benefiting settlements with Indian princes, landlords and other

prominent figures at a local level.30 The fact that British interests were naturally

always paramount, however, meant many members of the elite were also displaced.

Sir George Campbell maintained in 1857 that the Mutiny was a rebellion of

previously dominant classes „who have been rejected by us‟.31 A large enough

proportion of the elite classes stayed loyal, from a princely to village level, to

condemn the rebellion to failure. Generally, the areas that did not rise up were those

that had prospered under the EIC; it was therefore realised that the security of the

British Raj depended on whether or not a prince, „local chief or magnate considered

his interests lay with being pro- or anti-British‟.32

Whilst the British never considered assimilating the Indian elite into their own

to gain their support, certain repressive policies that had existed prior to the Mutiny

were reversed. Queen Victoria‟s proclamation in 1858 revealed Britain‟s intention to

recognise the princes‟ authority and tradition: „we shall respect the rights, dignity and

honour of native princes as our own, and desire that they… should enjoy

prosperity‟.33 In pursuit of this policy, Lord Charles Canning, the first Viceroy of

29Ibid., p. 133.

30Kohli, State-Directed Development , p. 232.

31Sir George Campbell, Memoirs of My Indian Career , Vol. II, (London, 1893), pp. 398-99.

32

Ian St. John, The Making of the Raj: India under the East India Company , (Westport, 2011), pp. 161-67.33

Cited in Moore, “Imperial India” p. 424.



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India, abolished the annexation of territory and the Doctrine of Lapse; Indian princes

under British suzerainty and with British advisors governed close to two-fifths of

India, with their right of succession secured.34 Cooperative leaders were rewarded

with titles, and local elites were patronised with their conventional rights respected.35

Furthermore, an effort was made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

by the British to co-opt mostly literate, upper-caste Hindus into their colonial

administration. Ironically, this attempt at assimilation created a new political class

that would eventually form the independence movement.36

The Muslim elite of India also prospered during this period. The involvement

of Muslim nobility in the Mutiny gave rise to the fear „that the Muslim hoi polloi,

almost a quarter of the subcontinent‟s population, would continue to be misled… to

Islamic fanaticism‟.37 Under the assumption that the Muslim landowners could

control the Muslim people, the British took steps such as passing the India Councils

Act of 1909, which politically favoured Muslims over the Hindus. For instance, the

number of seats on Municipal and District Boards allotted to Muslims was

proportionately far larger than their relative population. This was an example of the

British “divide and rule” policy that created a rift between the two religions in an

effort to further strengthen their own position on the subcontinent.38

34The Doctrine of Lapse was an annexation policy employed by the British Raj; if the ruler of a vassal

state died without heir, control of the region would automatically be transferred to the British. The

Doctrine was abolished in 1858.35

Timothy Parsons, The British Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A World History Perspective:

Imperialism from the Perspective of World History, (Maryland, 1999), p. 49.36

Rudra Sil, “India”, in Jeffrey Kopstein and Mark Lichbach (eds.), Comparative Politics: Interest,

Identities and Institutions in Changing Global Order , (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 315-16.37Stern, Democracy and Dictatorship, p. 7.

38Pannu, Partners of British Rule, pp. 171-74.



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The nature of rule in the British raj ensured that any autonomy allowed to the

Indian elite existed only to further secure Britain‟s power in the region. Rudra Sil

asserted that Indian political institutions, such as the national and regional assemblies

set up after World War One, „had very little say over the important policies and laws

issued by the British viceroy; [their] main function was to provide a semblance of

legitimacy for British colonial policies‟.39 The British still had the final say even in

areas of indirect rule; the embedded racist and self-serving perception of the Indian as

childlike and not ready for self-governance restricted autonomy amongst the Indian

elite and allowed the British to retain the real power.40

2.4 The Liberation of India

As was the case throughout the Empire, the British government‟s style of rule

in India led to its inevitable collapse; Britain‟s oppression of its subject people created

an ever-growing body that opposed the Raj. In addition, the regime transformed a

significant proportion of the educated Hindu elite into the cogs of the bureaucratic

machine that ran the empire in an effort to facilitate rule. They attended British

schools and universities, where western notions of nationalism, liberalism and

socialism influenced them.41 This class took Queen Victoria at her word when she

promised equality in the Raj, pledging for example in 1885 that „our subjects, of

whatever race or creed, by freely and impartially admitted to officers in our service,

the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability and integrity‟. 42

Events such as the aforementioned Ilbert Bill controversy revealed this to not be the

39 Sil, “India”, p. 314.

40

Kohli, State-Directed Development , p. 231.41 Sil, “India”, p. 316.

42Cited in Stern, Democracy and Dictatorship, p. 5.



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case. Stanley Wolpert expressed how the Indian National Congress (INC) was

founded soon after to counter „the system… [that] was fundamentally unresponsive to

many basic Indian needs, aspirations, and desires‟.43

The original objective of the INC was to simply improve the condition of this

Hindu elite within the framework of the Raj; Christine Keating stated that this group

of moderate reformists who were upper class and educated in the west were too far

removed from the Indian public to gain mass support.44 This institution provided a

basis for what became the independence movement when a different set took

prominence within the INC from the early twentieth century onwards. The new

leaders were lower middle class, traditionalist Hindus who could readily find support

amongst the common Indians. The INC revealed their ultimate intentions in 1906

against the backdrop of the partition of Bengal of 1905 and the ensuing swadeshi

movement, a boycott of British goods in exchange for domestic products.45 The

president of the INC, Dadabhai Naoroji, declared that the aim was to achieve „ swaraj

(self-rule) like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies‟.46 Therefore, the British

ethnic policy that advocated the assimilation of the educated Hindu elite to facilitate

colonial administration ironically provided the framework for the eventual

independence movement, a goal that was realised in 1947.

43Wolpert, A New History, p. 56.

44Christine Keating, Decolonizing Democracy: Transforming the Social Contract in India,

(Pennsylvania, 2011), p. 76.45

The partition of Bengal, in effect from 1905-1911, separated the Muslim and Hindu areas within the

region, and was considered by Indians to be part of a British divide-and-rule policy. It resulted in

founding of a rival institution to the INC; the All India Muslim League was created in 1906 to

safeguard Muslim interests. See Jayeete Sharma, Daniel J. Walkowitz and Barbara Weinstein,

Empire‟s Garden: Assam and the Making of India, (North Carolina, 2011), pp. 123-28.46Cited in Vi Kirusna Anant, India Since Independence: Making Sense of Indian Politics, (New Delhi,

2010), p. 10.



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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the driving force behind the nationalist

movement following his return to India in 1915, successfully related with the

common Indian people by living and dressing like most villagers did. Gandhi deemed

their support to be vital; he declared in 1916 that India would not be rescued by „the

lawyers, nor the doctors, nor the rich landlords… [but by] the farmer‟.47 The

incessant subjugation of the Indian people guaranteed their opposition to the British

and therefore their support for Gandhi. Aware of the power of the British war

machine, Gandhi believed the path to independence lay in nonviolent noncooperation,

denouncing acts of terror as „absolutely a foreign growth‟. 48 This policy aptly

demonstrated to the Indian people that their strength lay in numbers and unity,

gaining further widespread support.49 The use of boycotts, fasts and marches in the

face of increasing British violence secured a crucial ethical victory for Gandhi. A

British official based in Delhi expressed concern in the wake of the Salt March of

1930 that his „government may not be retaining the essential moral superiority, which

is perhaps the most important factor in this struggle‟. 50

There were, of course, other features that contributed to the end of the British

Raj. Alexander Motyl explained that for an empire to “work”, resources must flow

efficiently from the periphery to the core and back again. He maintained that the

Great Depression of the 1930s, caused by the Wall Street Crash of 1928, created

massive unemployment which radically reduced global trade. This in turn disrupted

the circulation of resources between London and India, thus weakening the empire.

47Cited in Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire, (New Delhi, 2006), p.

188.48

Cited in Gandhi, Gandhi: The Man, p. 182.49

Sil, “India”, pp. 316-17.50 Cited in Richard L. Johnson, “Return to India”, in Richard L. Johnson (ed.), Gandhi‟s Experiments

with Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi, (Oxford, 2006), p. 32.



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Furthermore, a growing number of Britons started to question the moral validity of

maintaining an empire with so much unemployment and hardship at home.51 The

dispute surrounding suffrage in Britain at this time also highlighted the distinct lack of

democracy in India in comparison to predominantly white nations in the Empire that

had long been granted the status of self-governing Dominions under British

sovereignty.52 These factors produced a body in Britain opposing rule in India.

Furthermore, the Second World War‟s impact on Britain‟s economy and

infrastructure naturally made maintaining an empire no longer a priority, and so India

was granted independence in 1947. Without the educated Hindu body created by the

British that established the INC, and without the oppressive policies towards the

common people, there would not have been such a large, politicised group opposing

British rule and proclaiming to be ready to self-govern. Although the transfer of

power was far from straightforward, the existence of such a group made the decision

to grant independence much easier.

51

Alexander J. Motyl, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse and Revival of Empires, (New York,2001), pp. 48-63.52

Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire , (London, 2007), p. 385.



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3. The Imperial Russian Empire

3.1 Subjugation in the Russian Empire

As in the British Raj and Japanese Empire, the ethnic peoples of the Russian

Empire were violently subjugated as a means to consolidate imperial rule. Because of

the extreme retribution used to quell rebellious populations, Andreas Kappeler

believed that this oppression was intended primarily to act as a deterrent. He

described how „the Russian authorities used brutal force to put down any kind of

insurrection. Security interests, the maintenance of Russian rule, and the loyalty of

Russia‟s new subjects had absolute priority‟.53 This „brutal force‟ at times verged on

ethnocide, as illustrated by an official order to the Russian military in 1742: „proceed

against the unruly Chukchi with armed force and extirpate them utterly‟.54 This

extreme reaction to uprisings was the customary response. For instance, several Polish

uprisings were put down with substantial military force; the Slaughter of Praga in

1794 was retribution for the Warsaw Uprising of that same year. Russian forces killed

an estimated twenty thousand Polish civilians. Tsarist General Aleksandr Suvorov,

the man responsible for the slaughter, wrote that „the whole of Praga was strewn with

dead bodies‟.55 Similarly, about three thousand people in the Baltic Region were put

to death because of the region‟s involvement in the 1905 insurrections. Such atrocities

occurred frequently throughout the imperial era.

53

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 154.54Cited in Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 154.

55Cited in Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great , (London, 2002), p. 446.



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The tsarist regime believed such violence would enforce peace in their

imperial territories, a condition vital to effectively establish trade routes and acquire

resources. Russian actions during its expansion through the Muslim region of the

Caucasus in the nineteenth century illustrated this point. The pacification of the

Caucasians was vital to Russian strategic and economic interests, because the road to

Transcaucasia (and so to Asia itself) went through Caucasia. 56 Furthermore, raids by

different ethnic groups of the Caucasus frequently devastated parts of Russian-

controlled Georgia. The original attempt to subdue the region and crush resistance

was carried out through the destruction of villages, fields and livestock, but these

were largely ineffective. The loss of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, as well as a

sixth of the state‟s income, forced the government to adopt policies of severe

brutality.57 Nicholas I instructed General Paskevich to bring about „the final

pacification of the mountain people or the extirpation of the rebels‟.58 As a result,

fewer than fifty thousand Circassians of western Caucasus remained in the Russian

Empire by 1897. The rest of the original population of four million had either been

wiped out by Russian forces, or fled to the Ottoman Empire.59

Russian rule throughout the empire was generally direct; their presence in

Central Asia was unique in that it was the only territory where indirect rule was

exercised.60 Subsequently the Russian settlers and officials in the region faced a

similar problem to the British in India in that the subject people heavily outnumbered

56A primary cause of Russian expansion was pursuit of the fur trade in the East. It was therefore vital

that this route to Asia was secure. See Yuri Slezking, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of

the North, (New York, 1994), pp. 11-13.57

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 183.58

Cited in Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 183.59

Kemal H. Kerpat, “The Status of the Muslim under European rule: the eviction and settlement of the

Cerkes” in Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, (Moscow, 1979), p. 11.60Foreign policy considerations, especially deference to Britain, made indirect rule here necessary. See

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 197.



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them. The Cholera Riot of 1892 in Tashkent exemplified the issue; a leading

administrator in the region, G. P. Fedorov, described how the uprising aptly illustrated

„that a 200,000-strong fanaticized population could at any time slaughter us all like

chickens‟.61 Reprisals for insurrections such as these were therefore carried out to

illustrate to the people of Central Asia that their superior numbers were no match for

the Russian war machine.

The Jews of the Russian Empire were mercilessly oppressed. The Russian

government, wary of any public disorder, strove to prevent local acts of brutality

against Jews, and instead subjugated them, officially at least, in a non-violent manner.

Like most non-Russians, they were assigned to the legal ethnic bracket of inorodtsy

(alien). They were denied the advantages of this status however; they were not, for

instance, allowed to self-govern nor were they exempt from military service. No

attempts at Russification were made with the Jewish populations; as Kappeler pointed

out, the regime even placed a „ban on Russian tuition in the Jewish religious

schools‟.62 Discriminatory laws such as these were common. Mary Antin, for

instance, wrote in 1890 how „a poor [Jewish] locksmith owed the czar three hundred

rubles, because his brother had escaped from Russia before serving his time in the

army. There was no such fine for Gentiles‟.63 Government policies, as well as

pogroms, or local acts of extreme violence against Jews, caused mass migrations from

Russia: two million left between 1881 and 1914, mostly for North America.

61 Cited in Jeff Sahadeo, “Ethnicity, Class and “Civilisation” in the 1892 Tashkent Cholera Riot” in

Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Spring 2005), p. 136.62

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 269-71.63Mary Antin, A Little Jewish Girl in the Russian Pale, (1890). Found in

<http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1890antin.asp>



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Such oppression ensured opposition to the tsarist regime, which in turn gave

rise to nationalist movements that played an active role in the collapse of the Russian

Empire in 1917. From the point of view of the ethnic populations, Russian rule was a

savage foreign authority. Because of this, the government ultimately failed to generate

loyalty amongst the non-Russian peoples in its empire. With no real allegiance to the

regime, the periphery states took advantage of the chaos of 1917 and declared

secession.

3.2 Russification: The Assimilation of Russia‟s Subject Peoples

Anatoly Khazanov alleged that when forming policies concerning the non-

Russian subjects of the imperial empire, only two options were considered by the

tsarist regime: „either their assimilation into the Russian people, or their subjugated

minority status‟.64 The potential to assimilate alien populations into the Russian state

differed to that in the British Raj, which was separated from Britain by thousands of

miles of ocean. In contrast, any territory annexed by tsarist forces instantly bordered

Russia by land, making the empire and Russia itself at once “single and indivisible”.65

Indeed, author Fyodor Dostoevsky insisted that „every place in Asia where an Uras

has settled immediately becomes Russian land‟, thus geographically enabling direct

assimilation.66

Prior to circa 1825, the Russian assimilation of ethnic peoples within its

imperial territories was mainly restricted to the incorporation of foreign nobility.

64 Anatoly M. Khazanov, “A State without a Nation? Russia after Empire”, in T. V. Paul, G. John

Ikenberry and John A. Hall (eds.), The Nation-State in Question, (New Jersey, 2003), p. 93.65Ibid., p. 93.

66 Cited in Khazanov, “A State without a Nation?”, p. 93.



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Assimilation of native populations was not fully viable until new ideas of nation that

appeared in Russia in the early nineteenth century produced novel methods of

conceptualising difference. These notions of “us” and “them” enabled the regime to

define which groups could be assimilated, and into what. For instance, the 1822

Statute of Inorodtsy (Alien) Administration confirmed the separate status of Siberian

indigenous groups.67 The definition of inorodtsy evolved throughout the nineteenth

century to encompass an increasing number of ethnic minorities. John Slocum

described how the term‟s meaning broadened from its earliest meaning, which simply

estranged the native Siberians, to include the peoples of Central Asia, the Jews and so

on until eventually it signified virtually all the empire‟s non-Russian subjects.68 The

classification of these vastly different ethnic groups into a single racial bracket was

the product of the rising national consciousness both within Russia and in its non-

Russian territories. It created „an insurmountable wall that effectively prevented those

labelled inorodtsy from achieving legal or cultural status of the Orthodox Russians‟,

and severely hindered attempts to assimilate.69

There were various efforts throughout the nineteenth century to incorporate

non-Russians, however, primarily through education. It was assumed that the

“backwards” peoples on the Empire‟s periphery would, once educated in the Russian

language and culture, recognise superiority and the desirability of civilisation.70 This

policy of “Russification” was advocated particularly in the 1860s and 1870s after

67 Andrei A. Znamenski, “The “ethnic of empire” on the Siberian borderland: the peculiar case of the

“rock people”, 1791-1878”, in Nicholas Breyfogle, Abby Schrader and Willard Sunderland (eds.),

Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History, (London, 2007), pp.

115-16.68

John Slocum, “Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of “Aliens” in

Imperial Russia”, in Russian Review, Vol. 57, No. 2, (Oxford, 1998), pp. 189-90.69

Virginia Martin, Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horse and RussianColonialism in the Nineteenth Century, (London, 2001), p. 38.70

Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire , (Oxford, 2002), p. 18.



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disillusionment with Tsar Alexander II‟s reforms necessitated an alter native approach

concerning alien populations. Assimilation of inorodtsy was deemed very important at

this time; the curator of the Kazan educational district declared in 1869 that „the final

goal of the education of all inorodtsy… should unquestionably be Russification and

fusion with the Russian people‟.71

Russification was an attractive policy during this period for two reasons:

creating a unified nation-state was considered vital for the Empire‟s survival, and

because liberal ideologies of empire were present at that time in Russia. As Geoffrey

Hosking pointed out, defeat in the Crimean War, as well as the unification of

European states around this time, meant that „the Russian government had no

alternative but to pursue some kind of Russification policy… when national solidarity

was established as a paramount factor in international relations and military

strength‟.72 This concept of imperial citizenship would ensure an increased efficiency

in mobilising resources and would facilitate military conscription, from which

inorodtsy were legally exempt. Secondly, liberal concepts on empire proposed that the

Russian imperial project was in fact a civilising mission. This ideology challenged the

conventional method of rule, in which people in conquered territories were subjugated

by an authoritarian and military administration in the district. Instead, it was assumed

the indigenous peoples would embrace the opportunity to become Russian subjects,

abandoning their customs in the face of Russian enlightenment. General von

Kaufman, the first Turkestan governor-general, stated in 1862 that even traditional

71 Cited in Paul Werth, “Changing Conceptions of Difference, Assimilation, and Faith in the Volga-

Kama Region”, in Jane Burbank and Mark Von Hagen (eds.), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power,1700-1930, (Indiana, 2007), p. 175.72

Geoffrey Hosking, Russia; People and Empire, 1552-1917I , (Massachusetts, 1997), p. 397.



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religion would be renounced in exchange for “civilisation”: Russification would

ensure that „Islam… will not be in a condition to survive‟.73

Assimilation in the imperial Russian Empire was largely ineffectual. Minister

of Education, Dmitrii Tolstoi, warned in 1878 that the assimilation and

„enlightenment of inorodtsy… constitutes a task of the very greatest political

significance in the future‟, and was vital to the unity, and therefore the survival, of the

Empire.74 Despite this, the growing nationalist sentiment in Russia overwhelmed any

support for Russification as well as the desire for assimilation that stemmed from the

liberal movement. Kappeler described how, by the first decade of the twentieth

century, „the concept [of inorodtsy] lost its originally neutral significance… having

fallen prey to nationalism, to arrogantly mark off those foreigners who were related to

another… foreign race‟.75

Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 exacerbated the situation by

reactivating a racist fear of the huge Asian population within the Empire; western

inorodtsy similarly became the object of hate due to the widespread participation of

non-Russians Europeans in the 1905 Revolution.76 This greatly diminished any

inclination to assimilate. Indeed, Russification implementations were at times even

reversed: two hundred thousand Belorussians who had been forced to join the

Orthodox Church were returned to their former religion in 1905.77 Additionally,

strong resistance from native peoples, who did not necessarily want to relinquish their

customs, further hindered any real success in effective incorporation. This reaction to

73Cited in Brower, Turkestan, p. 14.

74 Cited in Werth, “Changing Conceptions”, p. 175.

75

Andreas Kappeler and Guy Imart (trans.), La Russie: Empire Multiethnique, (Paris, 1994), p. 150.76 Slocum, “the Inorodtsy”, p. 186.

77Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 334.



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attempts at enforced Russian citizenship was a major factor in the eventual collapse of

the Russian Empire.

3.3 Assimilation of the Foreign Elite

Like Japan, imperial Russia‟s policy regarding the assimilation of the foreign

elite transformed over time, however in the opposite direction. Whilst the Japanese

government was more willing to incorporate as their Empire developed, Russia

became less inclined to do so. Co-option did not stop entirely. Jane Burbank

maintained that throughout the tsarist era, despite a growing suspicion of non-

Russians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Russian Empire

necessitated the assimilation of high standing and influential local elites. Incorporated

into a class that was simultaneously servile to the tsar and assertive over the native

populations, these families slowly became hereditary “Russian” aristocracy.78

The early imperial Empire, founded in 1721 by Peter the Great, required the

collaboration and incorporation of native nobility for two reasons. Primarily, Russia

did not have adequate personnel to rule and manage newly acquired regions that were

under-administered by European standards. Non-Russian elite were therefore

sanctioned to retain important functions in their areas to facilitate tsarist rule. In

addition, there were too few Russian elite sufficiently educated to undertake the

colossal task of modernisation that Peter I had set the nation.79 The establishment of

the Table of Ranks in 1722 illustrated Peter I‟s desire to assimilate; careers in state

service and so entry into Russia‟s noble set was open to any native ruler with

78

Jane Burbank, “The Rights of Difference: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire”, in Ann L.Stoler, Carole McGranaham and Peter C. Perdue (eds.), Imperial Formations, (Santa Fe, 2007), p. 83.79

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 129.



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sufficient qualifications. Ethnic origins were no longer a barrier, and as a result the

Empire‟s most talented elite were incorporated into Russia‟s polyethnic aristocracy. 80

Consequently, a quarter of the military and political elite were of non-Russian origin

by the 1730s.81

Peter I‟s reforms, as well as his victory over Sweden in 1721, opened Russia

to Europe and western concepts of imperialism. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, the Russian centre reshaped its borderland control using the practices of

empire building and treatment of colonial people that were of western origin.

Expansion in the nineteenth century in particular occurred in the context of rule over

“uncivilised” peoples being consider ed the hallmark of civilisation. For that reason,

the establishment of Russian rule in Central Asia in the latter half of the nineteenth

century involved no attempt to co-opt existing elite into the Russian nobility. 82 A

governor-general answerable only to the tsar ruled the region instead. The position of

the two khanates of Bukhara and Khiva, who existed as protectorates, was new to the

Empire and pointed to western colonial techniques; „the direct models for the

protectorates were the princely states of [British] India‟.83

There were other reasons for this change in policy: the expansion of the

educational system and Russian social mobilisation meant that foreign politicians and

advisors were no longer as necessary. Additionally, the rise of nationalism in Russia

80 David R. Jones, “Muscovite-Nomad Relations on the Steppe Frontier before 1800 and the

Development of Russia‟s “Inclusive” Imperialism”, in Wayne E. Lee (ed.), Empires and Indigenes:

Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion and Warfare in the Early Modern World, (New York,

2011), p. 131.81

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 151.82

Abeeb Khalid, “The Soviet Union as an Imperial Formation: A View from Central Asia”, in Imperial Formations, p. 116.83

Ibid., p. 116.



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generated a suspicion for non-Russians. Russian Lieutenant General Rzhevsky‟s

observation regarding the multi-ethnic nature of the Russian military epitomised the

general feeling towards the foreign elite at this time: „why do we need so many

foreign officers?‟.84 The Russians considered them an obstacle, impeding progress

and mobility.

3.4 The Liberation of the Russian Empire

It is generally accepted that World War One was the primary cause of the

collapse of the Russian Empire, affecting the liberation of its territories for a short

while at least. Motyl, for example, described how Russia had enjoyed a protected

status on the geographical margins of Europe. This ensured that, unlike most

European states, Russia had not been fighting on all fronts since the Middle Ages and

was therefore military backwards. The war exposed Russia to superior forces; its

economy fell apart under the pressure of mass mobilisation and near total-war, which

resulted in the foreign occupation of imperial provinces and destroyed the state‟s

capacity to retain control of its peripheries.85 Furthermore, the social unrest and

growing political opposition existing in Russia in the early twentieth century was

inevitably magnified by the conflict. Tsarist politician Petr Durnovo warned in

February 1914 that because of the upcoming conflict, „Russia will be flung into

anarchy… War with Germany would create exceptionally favourable conditions for

agitation‟.86 The collapse of the Russian economy resulted in widespread hunger as

grain failed to reach the cities. The February Revolution of 1917, caused by strikes in

84Cited in Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 131.

85

Motyl, Imperial Ends, pp. 81-82.86Cited in Peter Gatrell, Russia‟s First World War: A Social and Economic History, (Harlow, 2005),

pp. 11-12.



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Petrograd and mutinies within the army, brought about Tsar Nicholas II‟s abdication

and the establishment of the Provisional Government and then the Bolshevik regime.

This chaos culminated in a further break down in the centre‟s ability to sustain the

Empire. Most non-Russian elites, considering the Bolshevik coup to be the final stage

in the collapse of the Russian Empire, declared independence by the middle of 1918.87

Richard Pipes encapsulated the effect of the First World War on imperial Russia: „the

largest state in the world fell apart into innumerable overlapping entities. In a few

months Russia reverted politically to the Middle Ages‟.88

The effects of the First World War also did much to influence whether or not

the newly independent nation states could maintain their autonomy, and for how long.

Belarus and Ukraine, for example, did not quickly enough recover from the

immensely destructive trench warfare that took place within their borders. This played

a vital role in their inability to evade reoccupation between 1919 and 1921, as a

multiethnic Russian Empire was once again consolidated by the recently instated

Bolshevik dictatorship.89

The First World War thus provided the occasion for the collapse of the

Russian Empire. The ascension of nationalism in both Russia and in its imperial

domains in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was also instrumental in

bringing about independence from tsarist rule. Indeed, Eric Lohr maintained that

„nationalism played a more important role in the last years of the Russian Empire than

87

Motyl, Imperial Ends, pp. 81-82.88Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924, (London, 1994), pp. 24-25.

89Kappeler, The Russian Empire, pp. 370-71.



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most scholarship has granted‟.90 Centuries of oppressive policies affecting the native

peoples in the Russian Empire culminated in a desire for independence; the war

caused „the exacerbation of [this] ethnic conflict throughout the empire‟.91 This

subjugation of ethnic populations came to a head in 1905, with strikes and

demonstrations leading to widespread insurrections in both Russian and non-Russian

areas. Although Andreas Kappeler disagreed with Vladimir Lenin‟s assertion that the

1905 revolution was a „dress rehearsal‟ for 1917, he believed it to be an important

precursor and of huge importance to the later wartime independence movements.92

This was because the nature of the protests promoted nationalist sentimentalities; in

Poland, for instance, there was a national boycott of Russian-language state secondary

schools in an effort to combat the centre‟s drive to eradicate the Polish dialect.

German academic Otto Hoetzsch realised the potential threat of these pro-national

activities to the tsarist government, stating in 1905 that „nationalism of this kind…

threatened to tear apart the whole state‟.93

This mass movement of individual ethnic groups, as well as concessions made

by the Russian government through the October Manifesto, which guaranteed civil

rights and freedoms as well as permitting national organisations, communication and

agitation, „created the preconditions for the growth of the national movements‟.94

Furthermore, Russian policies certainly did not have the effect of generating loyalty

for the tsarist regime amongst non-Russian subjects. This naturally severely hindered

the war effort; the worst uprising between 1915 and 1917 occurred in Central Asia in

90Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World

War I , (Massachusetts, 2003), p. 8.91

Ibid., p. 8.92

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 330.93Cited in Kappeler, The Russian Empire, p. 333.




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1916, and was a reaction to three hundred and ninety thousand inorodtsy being called

up to the army, contradicting their privileged position of being exempt from military

service. The insurgence developed into a “Holy War” against the Russian infidels,

thus providing a very unwelcome distraction for the Russian authorities endeavouring

to defeat the Central Powers.95

Russia‟s oppression of its non-Russian subjects therefore directly created a

nationalist reaction throughout the Empire that formed the basis for independence

movements that would declare secession by 1918. Russian demographer, Professor

Anatoly Vishnevsky, explained the problem caused by the centre in Ukraine: Russia‟s

„harsh unitarist position, which permitted no deviation, constantly encouraged equally

harsh demands from Ukrainian nationalists. Ukrainian nationalism objectively was

incited by a sense of subordinate position on the imperial economic and political

stage‟.96 This was the case throughout the Empire, and Yegor Gaidar affiliated this

desire for equality with the ensuing push for independence. By subjugating its alien

subjects, Russia was inevitably unsuccessful in appeasing the different nationalities

that made up the Empire in the build up to the First World War ; this „increased the

probability of the [its] collapse‟.97 Furthermore, the strategy of using foreign elite to

retain power in the periphery ensured the existence of a ruling class ready to declare

their autonomous status, thus facilitating the transfer of power.98

95Ibid., p. 352.

96Cited in Yegor Gaidar and Antonina W. Bouis (trans.), Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern

Russia, (Washington, 2008), p. 16.97Gaidar et al, Collapse of an Empire, pp. 16-18.

98Motyl, Imperial Ends, pp. 81.



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4. The Imperial Japanese Empire

4.1 The Subjugation of Japan‟s Colonial Subjects

Japanese expansion, in particular during the Second World War, was primarily

undertaken to acquire resources to aid the war effort. John Benson and Takao

Matsumara explained the problem that the Japanese government was faced with

during the conflict: „her rising population, growing industrialisation and entrenched

militarisation made her increasingly dependent on overseas sources of supply, and

overseas markets for her products‟.99 In order to achieve victory over the Allies, the

Japanese Empire required self-sufficiency. It was therefore necessary for the Japanese

to procure colonies under the pretext of creating the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity

Sphere to combat western imperialism and bring about the „the emancipation of East

Asia‟.100

Japan expanded into Southeast Asia fundamentally to obtain resources,

human and natural, and incorporated populations were ruthlessly exploited in pursuit

of this aim. Peter Duus described how „in Southeast Asia and Korea, hundreds of

thousands of men were either lured or dragooned into labor service battalions as

r ōmusha (essentially forced laborers) to build roads, construct airstrips, or lay railway

lines needed for the war effort‟.101 These men were subjected to horrific working

conditions; some estimates placed the death toll amongst Burmese and Malay Indian

labourers on the Burma-Siam “Railway of Death” at one hundred thousand due to the

brutal supervision of the Japanese guards, inadequate food supplies and a deficit of

99John Benson and Takao Matsumura, Japan 1868-1945: From Isolation to Occupation, (London,

2001), p. 70.100

Cited in W.M. Theodore de Bary, Sources of East Asian Tradition: Volume 2, (New York, 2008), p.

625.101Peter Duus, “Japan‟s Wartime Empire: Problems and Issues” in Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers and

Mark R. Peattie, (eds.), The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931-1945, (New Jersey, 1996), p. xxxvii.



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medical care.102 Australian Captain R. T. Wait (Allied prisoners of war were also

forced to work on the railway) described the situation for the Asian labourers: „if our

conditions were bad those of the Tamil and other native coolies were infinitely worse.

Men, women and children lived herded in filthy hovels, riddled with disease and with

no medical aid‟.103

The Japanese military also coerced tens of thousands, if not hundreds of

thousands, of women from Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines to serve as ianfu, or

“comfort women”. Again, this was intended to contribute to the war effort. The ianfu

were forced to work as prostitutes in military prisons to increase the troops‟ spirits; a

Japanese War Ministry directive decreed that „the psychological influence received

from sexual comfort stations is most direct and profound‟, affecting „the raising of

morale‟.104 George Hicks described the horrendous treatment of these women. For

instance, seventy comfort women were massacred in Micronesia on the eve of the

final American assault; there were also accounts of starving Japanese soldiers

resorting to cannibalism after months of hardship when cut off from supplies, killing

the ianfu for sustenance.105

The subjugation of the ethnic peoples in the Japanese Empire did not

exclusively occur during World War Two, as part of the endeavour to defeat the

Allies. Japanese expansion into China in the 1930s entailed the violent oppression of

102Ibid., p. xxxvii.

103Cited in Paul H. Kratoska, The Thailand-Burma Railway, 1942-1946: Voluntary accounts, (New

York, 2006), pp. 10-11.104 Cited in George Hicks, “The “Comfort Women””, in The Japanese Wartime Empire, p. 310.

105 Hicks, “Comfort Women”, p. 320.



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the Chinese populace for strategic purposes.106 In a bid to strike a blow to Chinese

morale and thus compel them to sue for peace during the Second Sino-Japanese War,

in the winter of 1937-38 Japanese soldiers carried out the “Rape of Nanking”. The

Imperial Japanese Army‟s (the IJA) chief priority dur ing the 1930s was to ready itself

for a likely war with Communist Russia; the conflict in China had to be resolved as

quickly as possible. The Chinese defence of Shanghai in mid 1937 surprised the

Japanese government and population who had been led to believe by the Japanese

military that Shanghai would fall in under a week and all China within three

months.107 This did not transpire; General Matsui of the IJA declared Nanking to be

the „main target‟ and „where to best deliver the knock -out blow‟ to Chinese

resoluteness.108 His view encapsulated the general belief amongst the Japanese

leadership that one horrific event would shock the Chinese into submission.

Under the direction of their superiors, Japanese troops killed approximately

thirty thousand Chinese prisoners of war following the city‟s capitulation to the

Japanese army. More than two hundred and sixty thousand Chinese noncombatants

were also put to death, and in the region of sixty thousand women were raped by

Japanese soldiers.109 David Chapman explained how the Japanese soldiers could

commit such an abomination: „notions of superiority and ethnic purity perpetrated by

Emperor system ideology‟ created a fundamental hatred for other races amongst the

Japanese.110 From the corroboration of the diaries of Japanese soldiers, however, it

would be unreasonable to propose that the IJA in Nanking were acting simply because

106 Cited in Fujiwara Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview” in B. T. Wakabayashi

(ed.), The Nanking Atrocity 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, (Oxford, 2007), p. 30.107

Peng Xunhong, China in the Anti Fascist War , (Beijing, 2005), p. 63.108

Cited in Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity”, p. 32. 109

Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II , (London, 1998), pp. 4-6.110

David Chapman, Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity, (London, 2009), p. 99.



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of an animosity for the Chinese; they were instead carrying out orders methodically

and from above. For instance, Lieutenant Sawada Masahisa recorded that after taking

the Hsien-ho Gate in December 1937, that „command headquarters ordered us to

shoot to death on sight‟ about ten thousand Chinese prisoners of war.111 Fujiwara

Akira attested that „Sawada means SEA [Shanghai Expeditionary Army] command

headquarters; its commander, Imperial Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, would be

complicit‟.112 Such evidence gives credence to the argument that the massacre was

part of an official policy.

Incidents such as this that involved the merciless subjugation of Chinese

populations occurred not infrequently in the Japanese wartime Empire. Paul Kratoska

described how the Chinese in Southeast Asia faced Japanese soldiers and civilians

eager for revenge for the support Chinese communities in the region had given to

mainland China in their ongoing conflict with Japan. In Malaya and Singapore,

Chinese populations were exterminated en masse by the Japanese. For instance, an

estimated one hundred thousand ethnic Chinese were liquidated by Japanese troops

during the Sook Ching massacre of 1942 in Malaya.113

The Rape of Nanking did not have the desired ramifications on the Chinese

population; the Japanese Ministry of Education verified this in 1946, publishing

textbooks that confirmed that „atrocities in Nanking, committed by our military when

it occupied the city in December, served to stiffen the resistance of the Chinese

111

Cited in Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity”, p. 42. 112 Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity”, p. 42.

113Paul Kratoska, Southeast Asian Minorities in the Wartime Japanese Empire, (London, 2002), p. 4.



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people.114 Japanese policies of subjugation such as this served as rallying banners for

nationalist movements throughout the Empire that contributed hugely to the eventual

liberation from Japanese rule in 1945.

4.2 The Kōminka Movement: Japanese Assimilation of their Imperial Subjects

For the Japanese imperial government, the forced incorporation of its colonial

peoples was vital to meet the wartime needs of the Home Islands.115 The expensive

military campaigns and geographical expansion being undertaken by the Japanese

highlighted in 1941 that „total war included not just military strength, but political,

economic, cultural, and ideological elements‟.116 Japanese imperial activities thus

necessitated the mobilisation of resources and manpower within its Empire. To

maximise the efficiency of such a mobilisation, the Japanese regime required their

subjects‟ wholehearted loyalty; the aggressive inculcation of Japanese patriotism

throughout its colonies using incorporative policies was deemed to be the best way to

secure this adherence.117

Consistent with the British Raj and Russian Empire, the Japanese Empire too

experienced a liberal reaction to its assimilation policies. Scholar Yanaihara Tadao

warned throughout the 1920s and much of the 1930s that the government‟s policy of

using forceful incorporation as a response to political restlessness would inevitably

fail. Using policies concerning the colony of Korea to substantiate his argument,

114Cited in Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan,

China, and the United States, (Oxford, 2006), p. 48.115

Mark Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Towards Colonialism, 1895-1945”, in Ramon H. Myers and Mark

R. Peattie (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, (New Jersey, 1987), p. 120.116

Cited in Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes”, p. 123. 117Wan-yao Chou, “The Kōminka Movement in Taiwan and Korea: Comparisons and Interpretations”,

in The Japanese Wartime Empire, pp. 40-42.



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Yanaihara argued that the lasting integration of two races was possible only through

centuries of “accommodative assimilation”, in other words policies that were

designed to be mutually beneficial for the coloniser and colonised.118 The rushed,

mechanical enforcement strategy currently employed by the Japanese could therefore

never have the desired effect of generating loyalty; Yanaihara insisted that

„assimilation by fiat is impossible. Korea cannot form a single society with Japan‟. 119

In addition, Yanaihara pointed out in 1938 that the advancement of Korean

society and production that came from belonging to the Japanese Empire would lead

inexorably to increased „political aspirations and demands… regardless of how

popular the Japanese language may become‟.120 Yanaihara maintained that, in

accordance with the current official programme, this political awakening would have

to be subdued. Peattie explained how such oppression would entail a costly military

presence on the peninsula, guaranteeing that Korea, rather then being potentially

instrumental to „the economic prosperity of the empire, could only become a serious

financial drain‟.121 Instead, Yanaihara suggested allowing the Koreans to self-govern

after an extended period of guidance from the Japanese centre. Korea might then

assume a stable and useful position in the Japanese Empire like that of Canada within

the British Commonwealth.

Yanaihara‟s concerns were based on pragmatism as well as on moral grounds,

yet his recommendations were utterly rejected by the Japanese government.

Yanaihara‟s liberal ideal was overwhelmed by aggressive nationalism and military

118 Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes”, pp. 115-16.

119

Cited in Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes”, p. 117. 120 Cited in Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes”, p. 117.

121 Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes”, p. 117.



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expansion that necessitated a forceful assimilationist policy, culminating in the

instatement of the kōminka movement in 1937. Literally meaning, “to transform [from

colonial peoples] into imperial subjects”, the policy aimed to eliminate cultural and

linguistic differences within the Empire, thus creating an imperial citizenship

dedicated to the Japanese war effort.122 It was to be done through the forced

imposition of Japanese religion, language and surnames, as well as through military

recruitment and later conscription.123 This “Japanization” was geared primarily

towards promoting loyalty for the regime, thus facilitating the deployment of the

Empire‟s assets. For instance, Korean adults were required to declare at all public

gatherings: „we are the subjects of the imperial nation; we will repay His Majesty as

well as the country with loyalty and sincerity‟.124 Military recruitment was

particularly successful: two hundred thousand Koreans joined the Japanese army, and

another twenty thousand their navy. Although Korea, and to a lesser extent Taiwan,

were most affected by the more oppressive measures of the kōminka movement, it

eventually reached the outer reaches of the Empire: the government tried to force

aggressive industriousness and patriotism onto the Micronesians in 1941.125

4.3 Assimilation of the Empire‟s Elite

The elite of Southeast Asia were invariably associated with nationalist

movements; Japanese policy concerning this class was therefore at first largely

improvised and pragmatic. The military officers on the ground often ignored the

122Wan-yao Chou, “Between Heimat and Nation: Japanese Colonial Education and the Origins of

“Taiwanese Consciousness””, in Sechin Chien and John Fitzgerald (eds.), The Dignity of Nations:

Equality, Competition, and Honor in East Asian Nationalism, (Hong Kong, 2006), p. 129.123

For an in-depth analysis of the four programs of the movement in Taiwan and Korea, and their

varied degrees of success, see Wan-yao Chou, “ Kōminka”, pp. 45-67.124Cited in Wan-yao Chou, “ Kōminka”, p. 43.

125 Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes”, p. 122.



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uncompromising official strategy because of a more informed notion of how to treat

the native peoples. For example, in 1942 General Imamura Hitoshi promoted

cooperation with the nationalist leaders in Java. He believed the strict suppression

policy advocated originally by the Japanese government would lead only to „another

insoluble “China Incident”‟.126 Appeasing the native elect made economic sense too;

although Japan claimed to be „liberating the Asian peoples from the yoke of Western

rule‟, the impetus for its expansion was in fact to acquire resources. 127 Peacefully and

effectively doing so, whilst fighting the Allies in the Second World War, necessitated

the cooperation of a region that was thirteen times the area of Japan with three times

the population. Saito Shizuo encapsulated Japan‟s prevailing policy towards the elite

in this territory: „our major objective in the war was to acquire the natural resources of

the land, and this was impossible without the cooperation of the natives… we felt we

could get them to cooperate with us by encouraging their national consciousness‟.128

By assimilating those members of the local elite associated with national

movements, Japan‟s rule was more secure. This was achieved by inviting the instated

leaders of particular territories within the Japanese Empire, such as those of

Manchukuo and Burma, to the Greater East Asia Conference of 1943. Although it was

little more than an occasion for formal rhetoric, it suggested to the summoned elite

that they were allies with Japan, and not colonial subjects.129 Premier Tōjō indicated

that a unified front against western imperial powers, headed by Japan, would „ensure

126Cited in Joyce Lebra, Japanese-trained Armies in Southeast Asia, (Singapore, 2001), p. 81.

127 Ken‟ichi Gotō, “Cooperation, Submission, and Resistance of Indigenous Elites of Southeast Asia in

Wartime Empire”, in Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931-1945 (New Jersey, 1996), p. 276.128

Cited in Gotō, “Indigenous Elites”, pp. 279-80.129R. B. Smith, Changing Visions of East Asia, 1943-94: Transformations and Continuities, (London,

2006), p. 20.



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forever their existence in their greater East Asian home‟.130 The message the

Japanese were conveying through this Conference enjoyed success; the head of the

Burmese State, Ba Maw, was convinced that „the stronger Asia becomes, the stronger

are we Burmese‟.131

The flexibility and practicality of the Japanese policy regarding cooperation

with the ruling elite in South East Asia was here illustrated. A year prior to the

Conference and during the Japanese expansion into these territories, the official

position was one of suppression and subjugation. The defeats to the US army on

Guadalcanal and Nazi Germany‟s failures in North Africa and at Stalingrad however

exposed the military shortcomings of the Axis Powers, and Japan therefore adopted

policies that favoured defence. Ralph Smith explained the situation facing the

Japanese thus: „it became necessary to establish a longer term of political and

institutional collaboration in the Southern Region: one which would provide a more

effective basis, than direct colonial domination, for mobilising the resources of the

region behind Japanese war effort‟.132 Furthermore, it would serve to strengthen

Japan‟s position in negotiating a peace settlement should military action be eventually

discontinued.

In the older colonies of Korea and Taiwan, there was no effort to assimilate

the local elite. In contrast to the regions controlled by Japan in Southeast Asia,

colonial dominion was the norm; governors and other officials were dispatched from

Japan to rule. In Manchukuo and occupied China, puppet governments were

130 Cited in Peter Duus, “Empire and War”, in W.M. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck, Arthur E.

Tiedemann, (eds.), Sources of Japanese Tradition 1600-2000, Vol. 2, Part 2: 1868-2000, (New York,

2006), p. 316.131 Cited in Gotō, “Indigenous Elites”, p. 294.

132Smith, Changing Visions of East Asia, p. 20.



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established. Indigenous leaders were placed in positions of authority, although their

Japanese advisors had the real power, forcing the native governors to implement

policies devised in Tokyo.133

4.4 The Liberation of the Japanese Empire

Just as the First World War brought about the collapse of the Russian Empire

and so the liberation of its colonies, the Second World War resulted in the end of

Japanese imperialism in East Asia. A lack of preparation was instrumental to Japan‟s

defeat. Andrew Gordon claimed that the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, an event

that initiated American involvement in the Pacific War, was based on the assumption

that although the superior „American industrial power made a prolonged war with the

United States unwinnable… the Americans lacked the will to pursue such a war in

distant lands‟.134 The attack was a preventive action, designed to eliminate potential

US interference during the Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia. Japanese General

Isoroku Yamamoto declared in 1941 that the objective was „to decide the fate of the

war on the very first day‟.135

This deplorable miscalculation caused the US intervention in Asia, which in

turn directly led to Japanese defeats in decisive battles. The American capture of

Saipan in July 1944, for instance, allowed the establishment of US airfields on the

island. The Japanese Home Islands were now within reach of American bombers and

133Duus, “Japan‟s Wartime Empire”, p. xxxvi.

134Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present , (New York,

2003), p. 209.135Cited in Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United

States, (Maryland, 2006), p. 179.



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„the war was essentially lost at this point, a full year before the Japanese surrender‟. 136

The Battle of Midway in 1942, during which the core of the Japanese fleet was sunk,

paved the way for the destruction of its merchant fleet. Resources from Japan‟s

colonies could therefore not reach the Home Islands, dooming its Empire to collapse.

This failure to effectively mobilise resources was augmented by the fact that Japan

had overextended in its expansion into Southeast Asia, meaning it did not have full

control over the regions that needed exploiting. As William Beasley illustrated,

exports from the Empire fell hugely between 1942 and 1945, with hugely detrimental

effects. Indeed, „given the nature of the war that was being fought in the Pacific… one

in which industrial resources and technology were decisive - it is arguable that the

failure of the Co-prosperity Sphere to fulfil the economic role assigned to it

guaranteed Japanese defeat‟.137 As the war went on, it became more and more

obvious that the Japanese economy was far inferior to those of its enemies. Its arms

industry underperformed and provisions for the general population were insufficient.

The Empire therefore fell apart. Thus, Japanese overextension, combined with the

United State‟s finer military and economy, as well as America‟s larger pool of

resources, resulted in the liberation of, for instance, Burma, the Philippines and

Manchukuo by Allied troops in 1945.138 The Russian invasion of Manchukuo in

1945, in the wake of the US atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also hugely

contributed to the Japanese capitulation. The Japanese were fully aware of the

atrocities committed by Russian troops in Eastern Germany, and desired to surrender

to the more humane Americans before the Soviet forces reached the Home Islands.

136

Gordon, A Modern History, p. 212.137William G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945, (Oxford, 1987), p. 249.

138Duus, “Japan‟s Wartime Empire”, pp. xxvii-xxxvii.



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For those nations within the Japanese Empire that had previously been

colonised by western powers, the preliminary success enjoyed by the Japanese against

the Allies made it considerably harder for western imperialism to once again engulf

the region after the Japanese defeat. Alan Cassels described how „Japan‟s rout of the

European colonial powers in Southeast Asia in 1942 destroyed any lingering myth of

white imperial invulnerability‟, thus illustrating that Asians were capable of

controlling the region.139 Furthermore, the so-called “independence” granted by the

Japanese to the Philippines and Burma in 1943, and to Indonesia in 1944, presented a

large portion of Southeast Asia with the chance to participate in something close to

self-government. Anything less than full liberation after the war was therefore

unacceptable.140 The Allied victory in 1945 signified a victory for the colonial

powers that had controlled Southeast Asia before the war. Nationalist movements and

indigenous political structures had however been developed to the point where

sovereignty could not simply be transferred back to, for example, the Dutch, who

were determined to reassert their sovereignty over Indonesia. Leading Indonesian

nationalist, Mohammad Hatta, explained the resolve of those formerly colonised by

the west. He stated that „Indonesia was liberated by Japan from the yoke of Dutch

imperialism. We never want to be ruled by a foreign power again… The Indonesian

people would rather be buried at the bottom of the ocean that to live under foreign

colonial rule‟.141 In pursuit of this national sentiment, Indonesia violently contested

the Dutch return in 1945; after further conflict, the Netherlands relinquished any

authority over their former colony in 1949.

139Alan Cassels, Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World , (London, 1996), p. 227.

140

Lloyd E. Lee, World War 2 in Asia and the Pacific and the War‟s Aftermath, with General Themes,(Connecticut, 1998), p. 133.141

Cited in Gotō, “Indigenous Elites”, p. 285.



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As in the British Raj and the Russian Empire, Japanese policies concerning the

ethnic peoples in their Empire generated opposition that contributed massively to its

eventual collapse. Whilst Japanese police and gendarmerie generally contained

dissent in Korea and Taiwan, resistance movements appeared in Manchukuo,

occupied China and Southeast Asia in response to the ruthless manner in which the

Japanese authorities exploited the local populations.142 Guerrilla attacks on the

transport of resources to the Empire‟s centre further exacerbated the aforementioned

issue of insufficient supplies reaching the Home Islands. Hostility to the Japanese

occupation forces at times produced armed revolts. For instance, insurrections in

North China, the southern Philippines and North Borneo had to be forcibly dealt with;

this tied down Japanese military personnel that would undoubtedly have been

employed elsewhere to fight the invading Allied forces.143 Furthermore, the Allied

victories during the campaigns of 1943-1945 were achieved with considerable

assistance from various anti-Japanese resistance groups, such as the Hukbalahaps in

the Philippines. The Hukbalahaps, and other guerrilla movements such as the

Vietminh in Indochina and the Malayan People‟s Anti-Japanese Army in Malaya,

were created as a direct counter to violent Japanese policies of exploitative

subjugation. Their importance cannot be underestimated; Peter Duus maintained that

even if „the Japanese had succeeded in holding off the Allied counteroffensive… the

Empire eventually would have been eroded from within under the assault by their

indigenous resistance movements‟.144

142

Duus, “Japan‟s Wartime Empire”, pp. xxvii-xxxvii.143Kratoska, Southeast Asian Minorities, p. 3.

144Duus, “Japan‟s Wartime Empire”, p. xxxvii.



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5. Conclusion: The Inevitability of Collapse

This thesis has illustrated the necessity of subjugating and assimilating various

native populations in the British Raj, the Russian Empire and the Japanese Empire. If

an empire ceased to benefit its sovereign state in an economical, strategic or political

manner, then that empire would cease to exist. This self-serving motive retained

prominence even during the nineteenth century, when liberal ideals emerged that

advocated using imperial expansion as a vehicle to bring enlightenment and

civilisation to “inferior peoples”. For instance, Fyodor Dostoevsky described why he

believed Russia was expanding into Central Asia in the 1960s: „in Europe we are

spongers and slaves, but we will arrive in Asia as masters… Our mission as civilizers

in Asia will entice our spirit and take us there‟.145 Kappeler, however, explained the

true economic motive behind the Empire‟s growth in this period: „at the beginning of

the 1860s the American Civil War led to a situation where the Russian textile industry

was no longer being supplied with sufficient quantities of cotton… it had interest in

controlling the Middle Asian trade routes‟.146 The centre must therefore stand to

potentially gain from acquiring any new region and then consolidating power to do

so.

The policies used to manage the ethnic populations within each empire

reflected this. The British Raj existed primarily to profit the British crown, and the

Indian people were subjected to ruthless exploitation to ensure this profit was realised.

Furthermore, as Ronald Robinson put forward, utilising the existing elite to rule large

parts of the Raj was very cost effective, and therefore the colonisers were

145Cited in Gaidar et al, Collapse of an Empire, p. 17.




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outnumbered by the colonised; the retribution for the Mutiny ensured that this

imbalance never again led to violent, mass insurrection to the same extent. To

facilitate rule, the British educated members of the Hindu elite so that they could run

India‟s administration. These policies condoned British presence in the region in that

all benefited the British crown. They were all of absolute necessity for the same

reason. These same policies, however, also gave rise to the independence movement

that was instrumental in forcing the British to quit India in 1947. By promoting the

boycott of British goods for example, Gandhi made sure that the British Raj was no

longer the profit-making entity it once had been, and the colony was therefore

liberated.

Although Russia‟s territorial acquisitions instantly became single and

indivisible to Russia itself, which made direct assimilation viable, each attempt to

forcibly “Russify” indigenous populations failed. Therefore, loyalty was never

generated to any great extent amongst the incorporated peoples of the empire and

most retained nationalist sentiments. Indeed, Russification even intensified patriotic

attitudes, with Poland, for instance, boycotting Russian-language schools in 1905.

This, according to Otto Hoetzsch, „threatened to tear apart the whole state‟. The

Russian Empire, however, had no choice but to assimilate to not be left behind, with

other European states such as Germany and Italy unifying in the nineteenth century

and as a consequence growing more powerful. In addition, frequent uprisings were

ruthlessly subdued by the Russian military; Kappeler stated that at times these

responses to rebellion were „ethnocide‟ in all but name.147 Such brutality was deemed

necessary by the tsarist regime to, for example, stabilise important trade routes that




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were the reason for the Russian presence in the first place. It served only to increase

opposition to the centre, however, as well as gain support for national movements that

demanded independence. Unlike Britain, the break-up of the Russian Empire was

forced upon it by defeat in war; Russian ethnic management, however, ensured the

existence of little or no support for the war effort amongst its non-Russian

populations. This further contributed to the centre‟s inability to maintain its peri phery

territories. Again, Russia had no alternative but to manage its subject people in this

manner if it was to gain from possessing an Empire; the liberation of its provinces

was heavily influenced by its ethnic policies.

According to Peter Duus, Japanese treatment of its colonial inhabitants

affected a situation in which the Empire would have been „eroded from within under

the assault by their indigenous resistance movements‟, even without Allied

intervention in the Second World War. Its atrocious subjugating policies throughout

occupied China and Southeast Asia, intended to „eliminate those people most likely to

resist them and to intimidate the rest of the population‟ into submission, created

resistance movements that seriously disrupted the flow of resources from the colonies

to the Home Islands.148 This severely weakened the Japanese wartime economy.

Furthermore, it diverted Japanese soldiers from the frontline defences against the

advancing Allies. Both these factors were key to Japan‟s capitulation in 1945. The

Japanese policies regarding the indigenous elites of certain Southeast Asian nations

such as Indonesia and Burma, in which the nationalist leaders were given positions of

authority, enabled the creation of political institutions and a desire for full

independence that was instrumental in combating the return of western imperialism in

148Kratoska, Southeast Asian Minorities, p. 4.



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the aftermath of the Second World War. Because the Japanese needed to exploit its

imperial subjects to most effectively acquire the necessary resources to defeat the

advancing Allied armies, policies of an exceedingly harsh nature were implemented.

As in the British Raj and the Russian Empire, these same policies directly contributed

to the Empire‟s downfall.

Colonies were acquired and secured not to benefit the subject peoples, but to

provide the imperial governments with some form of gain. In pursuit of this aim, the

natives were by necessity exploited, be that through subjugation or assimilation.

Policies implemented ultimately created opposition to the colonisers and led to the

collapse of empires. Imperial empires in the modern era were therefore doomed to

failure because it was impossible to profit from possessing an empire without

affecting the deterioration of the indigenous populations‟ state of living.



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Documents

Subjugation, Assimilation, Liberation- The Ethnic Policies in the British Raj, The Imperial Russian and the Imperial Japanese Empire