Redistributive Colonialism: The Long Term Legacy of International Conflict in India*

• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329217705358
• Author: Alexander Lee
• Subject Matter: Special Issue Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217705358

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(2) 173 –224

© 2017 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329217705358

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Special Issue Article

Redistributive Colonialism:

The Long Term Legacy

of International Conflict

in India*

Alexander Lee

University of Rochester

Abstract

The growth of European colonial empires occurred during a period of intense

international conflict. This article examines how the international position of

colonial states altered the distribution of wealth within indigenous societies. Colonial

administrators favored precolonial elites only if they were militarily and financially

secure, a pattern that stems from balancing the advantages of working with these

groups against their higher probability of revolt. This theory is tested using data

on the wealth of Indian caste groups. In areas annexed at times of European war,

precolonial elites are poorer than other groups, whereas they remain richer in areas

annexed at other times and in indirectly ruled areas. These results appear not to

stem from preexisting differences between regions. The results highlight the variable

impact of colonialism within societies, and the importance of the international system

in shaping colonial and postcolonial outcomes.

Keywords

colonialism, historical persistence, conflict

Corresponding Author:

Alexander Lee, University of Rochester, Harkness Hall, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.

Email: alexander.mark.lee@rochester.edu

*This special issue of Politics & Society titled “The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies”

features an introduction and four papers that were presented as part of a workshop held at The Ohio

State University, April 2016, organized by Marcus Kurtz and Jan Henryk Pierskalla.

705358PASXXX10.1177/0032329217705358Politics & SocietyLee

research-article2017

174 Politics & Society 45(2)

Numerous studies have shown that variation in colonial institutions can explain varia-

tion in contemporary economic and social outcomes.1 However, in their focus on the

effect of long-term institutional differences, these accounts have neglected the inter-

state rivalries and calculations into which colonial conquest was embedded. We have

little understanding of whether and how European political events and decisions, such

as the persistent wars that plagued early modern Europe, altered colonial policy.

Moreover, the existing literature on colonialism has focused on the aggregate

effects of policies such as indirect rule.2 However, as some of these authors recognize,

even within regions and nations, some social groups may benefit from colonial poli-

cies, such as taxation and government hiring, while others will be hurt by them, and

these differences may persist long after the official favoritism or distrust that gave rise

to them faded away. Such changes in internal social positioning may produce social

“reversals of fortune” just as dramatic as those we observe cross-nationally.3 This is

not to say that these distributional effects are unstudied: Case studies provide strong

evidence of colonial favoritism toward specific groups: The Belgians favored Tutsis

over Hutus in Rwanda, the British favored Tamils over Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, the

Spanish favored Tlaxcalans over Mexica in Mexico. Such favoritism is often thought

of as significant as a cause of later ethnic conflicts or social inequalities.4 However,

such single-country accounts leave open many questions, including three potentially

important ones: (1) why the process of colonialism systematically favored some

groups over others, (2) whether or not such favoritism actually altered existing pat-

terns of stratification, and (3) whether these effects have persisted to the present day.

This article suggests that relations between colonial administrators and Indian elites

varied with the diplomatic situation in Europe and the level of military pressure faced

by the colonial power. Somewhat counterintuitively, European conflict is associated

with disruption in local social patterns. In European wartime, colonial administrators

felt insecure militarily, and tended to view the precolonial elite (the most obvious lead-

ers of a revolt) with suspicion. Similarly, in wartime the fiscal pressure on the colonial

state was much greater, increasing its incentive to disfavor existing elites through

methods such as heavy taxation and biased hiring policies. In European peacetime, the

military and fiscal pressure on the colonial state was less intense, and the colonial state

found it more convenient to leave existing elites in place, borrowing their personnel

and (in indirectly ruled areas) their institutions. Incorporation into colonial institutions

in turn allowed these elite groups to maintain high levels of socioeconomic status.

These temporary patterns persisted over time because they created a self-sustain-

ing equilibrium. Annexation represented a critical juncture when colonial officials

were forced to make choices about local institutions: If precolonial officials, net-

works and institutional arrangements were eliminated during the annexation pro-

cess, they were impossible to reconstitute later. Moreover, any institutional

innovation created influential constituencies that made change more difficult at later

periods. British expropriation of local landholders, for instance, not only dissolved

the local networks of these landholders but created a new class of landholders eager

to cement their position. While many other political changes have occurred in India

since that time—land reform, democracy, and so on—wealthy and powerful groups

Lee 175

can retain these advantages despite political changes, either by accumulating diffi-

cult-to-expropriate human capital or manipulating institutional changes to their own

advantage.5 There is considerable evidence that Indian elites adapted both these tac-

tics after independence.6

In estimating the effect of European war at the time of annexation, an obvious

potential concern is that wartime annexation may be influenced by some attribute of

the units themselves, with colonial powers varying the type of territory they annex

based on geopolitical factors. There are theoretical reasons for thinking that biased

assignment is not a major problem in the Indian case: the dates of European wars were

decided in Europe rather than in India and annexation decisions tended to be highly

responsive to local political events. This is supported by the available data, since both

annexation and military conflict in India are uncorrelated with European conflict.

There is also strong support for the contention that areas annexed in European wartime

and European peacetime were similar in their social characteristics, since areas

annexed at times of European war appear very similar on geographical and social

observables to areas annexed at other times.

India, where there was considerable indigenous social stratification, and where the

colonial conquest was contemporaneous with a long series of on-and-off wars between

Britain and France, is an obvious place to test this theory. The question of cross-group

redistribution is particularly urgent in contemporary India, where intergroup economic

inequalities are very marked (today, 44 percent of modern variation in wealth can be

explained by caste).7 In particular, there is substantial variation in the economic posi-

tion of precolonial landed groups. The fact that landed castes do better economically

than other Indians is not particularly surprising, given the sizable head start that they

had over most other social groups. What is surprising is that there is sizable variation

in this economic advantage. For example, while precolonial landed groups have an

average household wealth .64 standard deviations higher than non-landed groups in

Bihar, they are slightly poorer than non-landed groups in the neighboring state of West

Bengal, which had similar formal colonial institutions and land tenure systems. This

variance has direct relevance for the lives of millions of Indians, who find themselves

richer or poorer than their neighbors. It has an even greater indirect relevance for the

politics and political economy of India, since many students of Indian politics, notably

Srinivas, and the contributors to Frankel and Rao,8 have traced variation in the politi-

cal performance of Indian states to the social position of landed caste groups.

The quantitative results show that while colonial-era wars have little impact on the

wealth of non-landed groups, they dramatically affect the wealth of landed ones. In

areas where there was no European war at the time of annexation, landholding groups

perform better economically than non-landholding groups. In areas annexed in war-

time, this advantage is reversed, with non-landed groups being relatively wealthier than

non-landed ones. While wars in India during annexation have similar effects on landed

elites to war in Europe, international conflict is an important predictor of local distribu-

tional patterns independent of local conflicts, whose intensity they tended to enhance.

An empirical strategy based on the time of annexation cannot be directly applied to the

large areas of India that were indirectly ruled. As the theory would expect, in these areas