"On the Salt March: The Historiography of Mahatma Gandhi's March to Dandi" by Thomas Weber is very well written, detailed account on both the salt tax and the logistics of the march itself. I read it 4 years ago at a library in Lakshadweep. I still find it hard to imagine, that we lived under these extremely stupid laws made just to maximize British profit and create monopolies by destroying free markets. And, I find it so sad that the first independent government chose to double down on the control on the economy rather than just open it all up.
> And, I find it so sad that the first independent government chose to double down on the control on the economy rather than just open it all up.
This is not accurate. The Indian economy was pretty open; the overwhelming bureucratic red-tape started after Indira Gandhi's nationalization program (and other such policies). India under Nehru wasn't laissez faire by any means, but neither was it Communist.
You also have to see the context under which the politicians operated then. Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism and the World Wars and led to much oppression for workers worldwide; the Indian leaders were trying to avoid that kind of wealth aggregation and income equality.
I agree that the red tape hell started with Indira. But I can't agree with the bit about context. It's plain to see that inequality is considerably worse now. Only a small Elite were in any position to benefit from the liberalization and the rest have never been able to catch up. Overall, left leaning economic policies and communist influence have done enormous harm to this country.
The context is a historical fact. I think you mean the motivation. And that is a historical fact as well, actually.
The unfortunate fact is that the policies which India's leaders thought at the time would lead to better wealth distribution and economic growth didn't work as expected and economic growth was significantly impeded. India wasn't alone in this failure, China also suffered under the same problem, due to similar problems with a top-down command economy dominated by public sector.
> It's plain to see that inequality is considerably worse now.
Again, that's not an issue with the context, but with execution. And the inequality you see now is more because after the liberalization of 1990, while certain sectors and people working in them grew tremendously, others were left behind. And the tax system in India was broken, so wealth redistribution through taxation also did not happen as expected.
The whole point I was trying to make was, rather than learn from our own history and experience, the leaders chose to keep doing the same things the British did.
I look at Pre Independence India as a bunch of decentralised organizations/kingdoms/markets which were producing goods and maybe services that were sought after all over the globe. This is what made mercantilism and later colonialism attractive in the first place.
Then the British established controls which promptly destroyed Indian advantages in favor of their own.
These are the lessons which the post Independence governments should have carried forward. Gandhi understood these at a very deep level, and hence the satyagrahas. And the village economy model, which though unworkable, emphasized the central principle of decentralization. This understanding makes him stand out.
Whereas though Nehru has to be applauded for his efforts as prime minister, time has shown that he and his family never had the deep understanding about economics and history that Gandhi did.
Most sources state that colonialism and the associated economic policy of mercantilism pre-date the widespread adoption of capitalism, which didn't occur until after the industrial revolution.
I'd argue that the rise of nationalism was more directly the cause of both colonialism and the World Wars.
Only if you ascribe to the notion that any system that isn't socialism is capitalist could you argue that capitalism led somehow to colonialism.
On a two-dimensional scale from socialism to capitalism, any move away from one is a move to another.
We've yet to see what "pure" capitalism even really looks like; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations argues that competition is required for his "invisible hand" and that monopolies are bad because they reduce efficiency and choice, and impede progress, but our current strategy to prevent or break up a monopoly looks a whole lot like government regulation which is supposed to stifle innovation, not promote it!
A two dimensional scale is a false dichotomy. There were many economic systems in the past. Subsistence, Barter, Feudalism, Mercintalism. None of these were capitalist or socialist.
Eh, colonialism is because of imperialism. And imperialism is a result of unbridled capitalism.[0] Some people might not have called it capitalism back then, but that's what it was.
Colonialism predates the Marxist notion of imperialism by 400 years.
When the colonial powers started to conquer the world there was next to no capital.
Not only did no one call it capitalism back then (the word had yet to be coined), but no serious scholar of economics, politics or history would call any pre-industrial economic system predominantly capitalist.
And by arguing that “people didn’t call it capitalism back then”, you’re just proving my point. You’re just redefining capitalism to be the antonym of socialism.
> Colonialism predates the Marxist notion of imperialism by 400 years.
I don't disagree with that.
> When the colonial powers started to conquer the world there was next to no capital.
The whole point is the pursuit/accumulation of capital. Even if you start with next to no capital.
> no serious scholar of economics, politics or history would call any pre-industrial economic system predominantly capitalist.
In my own opinion I'd say it started around 1600 with the formation of the British and Dutch East India companies. It seems this is debated by many and largely depends on your definition of capitalism. [0]
Not sure why you're being down-voted. Colonialism isn't capitalist, it's like the opposite of capitalism.
Nations going to war and invading each other for "economic reasons" is almost always a symptom of a mercentalism. War isnt a form of economic competition, it's a mechanism to enforce protectionism.
Unless we're using the humanities defintion of capitalism by which we mean "anything bad the west has done, up to and including the death of Socrates".
You also have to see the context under which the politicians operated then. Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism and the World Wars ...
Well you might call that "context", but it looks more like socialist make-believe. I'll grant though that it does provide the narrative context (whether true or false) in which politicans were working at the time. And this can't be blamed on Indira.
> Well you might call that "context", but it looks more like socialist make-believe
You can call any narrative as make-believe... what's your point?
> I'll grant though that it does provide the narrative context (whether true or false) in which politicans were working at the time.
Again, not sure what you're disputing here. That World Wars weren't caused by unbridled capitalism?
> And this can't be blamed on Indira.
What can't be blamed on Indira? She nationalized most banks, airlines etc. basically snuffing out the nascent private sector and heavily regulating the scraps that were left.
What's "make-believe" is the idea that a nation which was brutalized by 300 years of unfettered crony capitalism would choose to align itself after Independence with the very forces that destroyed it and set 1/5th of humanity back by 200 years.
It tries to put the square peg of imperialism into the round-hole of 20th century left-right debates. The East India company and the later British rulers did bad things because they were conquerors, and that's what conquerors do.
You are right that the East India company was crony captilast* But it is no small thing that you changed the goalposts to go from the parent's "Unbridled capitalism" to "unfettered crony captialism". It was precisely the fetters that made it cronyist, since it was a state granted, privately owned monopoly.
After independence, India's did not break from those forces, embraced them (in less bad form) by granting new monopolies. They were only (partially) rolled back when the '90s reforms came (partially) embraced free market principles.
Unless there is no such thing as a state "Unbridled capitalism" and "unfettered crony capitalism" are in-distinguishable.
Capitalism as we use the term was defined/coined in the age of the East India Company and general European Colonialism. The European decimation of India/Asia, Africa, The Americas: these are the true realizations of capitalism.
While neither defending or attacking capitalism... Corporation is a polite term for sovereign granted monopolies like East India. Less polite are privateers, aka pirates.
There is a theory I have heard that, British cannot have held rule over India, without the implicit consent of Indian populace.British rule was not a military occupation. British military presence was miniscule compared to the vastness of the geography and population of the country. So the British were able to do rule India, because Indians implicitly allowed them to. Sections of of the Indian population, were complicit in the establishment and continuation of British rule.
India was a collection of many many smaller kingdoms when the British came to the scene. There was a whole bunch of infighting and backstabbing going on which the British happily encouraged and exploited.
It is definitely amazing that they could do what they did, considering the sheer size of the country.
Spot on. And also to mention, in that struggle they created and brokered alliances and established themselves as the supreme power. That was their biggest contribution to the whole of India.
This is not the first time it has happened. During the medieval period, and battle of fiefdoms, decentralized powers grew into one consolidated power. India was going through the same phase at the time and British, having a leg up on power consolidation, brought what they knew and profited from it.
> "In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company.
The article isn't super clear to me. Was Indian salt that was sold in India taxed?
Yes, the British imposed taxes on Indian salt produced and sold in India in order to force people to buy imported (British) salt. Millions of people died because they literally couldn't afford salt any more.
This eventually led to Gandhi marching to Dandi to deliberately violate the salt laws and was one of the key moments in the struggle for Indian Independence.
It really breaks my heart that the British killed tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of Indians for no reason at all and they've gotten away with it both in terms of any actual consequences as well as in the realm of public opinion. And to make matters worse, we still have so-called British intellectuals who like to argue that colonization was somehow a good thing for India.
Citing such a list shows a fairly comprehensive void of understanding British culture. Guy Fawkes is pretty high on that list for a home-grown, treasonous terrorist, wouldn't you say? Just below Bowie.
Yes it was, from my reading of the article it was taxed for both profit and to make British-produced salt (ctrl+F Cheshire salt) more price competitive with local salt. There's a quote from 1881 in there:
Then again there is a still more wretched creature, who bears the name of labourer, whose income may be fixed at thirty-five rupees per annum. If he, with his wife and three children, consumes twenty-four seers [49 lb] of salt, he must pay a salt duty of two rupees and seven annas, or in other words 7 ½ per cent income tax.
I don't know a lot about the particulars of this situation, but I do know a bit of history. If things are how I expect them to be, yes, they were using it for preserving food.
India has a warm and humid climate and it's hard to preserve food for more than a few hours/days. And here we're talking about a world before fridges or freezers.
It depends on the type of food, but for example for meat, in a world before refrigeration, you could:
* smoke the meat (kind of hard to do for a poor Indian, especially since large parts of India don't have abundant firewood)
* drying, etc. (probably not as effective)
* curing aka salting (probably the most popular solution)
They probably also needed salt for iodine, otherwise you run into nasty issues:
> Iodine deficiency affects about two billion people and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual disabilities.
The 7.5% is not income tax - it's just salt-duty! If we were to add a 7.5% duty for salt alone to your current 50% tax burden, I'm sure you'd be marching too.
Suspect the average early twentieth century Indian farmer would kill for the OP's state subsidised education, healthcare, unemployment benefits and pension too, never mind his disposable income after tax...
No, I mean that my income, capital-gains, sales & property taxes, along with fees like those for my car registration, equal roughly half my total income.
I wouldn't say that sales tax is a large burden, but 8½% adds up over time.
No, I spend less than I earn, and save quite a bit. Some of that savings is tax-advantaged, but overall I pay a huge amount of my income in taxes & fees. I don't mind that taxes exist, really; I don't mind paying for a social safety net. But I think something's wrong when half of my productive labour & investment income is taken from me every year.
Maybe, but your 50% left cover your expenses for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc. I doubt that the 93% the average Indian laborer or farmer had covered his basic necessities. And as another posted said, this was just the salt tax.
Except, if you read that entry closely you’ll see that the Tea Act combatted smuggling. While the Wikipedia talks about the grievance of colonists, what I learned in high school in Boston (different from what my kid learned in California) was consistent with this: it was the smugglers who destroyed the tea.
New England remained a hotbed of smuggling. Consider the origin of the Kennedy fortune or the current heroin and people smuggling channels through New Bedford and Rhode Island.
Also note the opposition to pot legalization in some of the rural counties of California appears to mostly be lead by illegal pot growers afraid of their (de facto, though not de jure) government price support going away.
Smuggling is just transporting stuff against the law. The salt marchers smuggled salt once they took it. I'm not sure what's "except" about your description. Both protests were about unreasonable restrictions on trade meant to enrich the British at the expense of their colonies. The main difference is that you don't need tea to live, so the Tea Act was somewhat less oppressive.
Where “smuggling” is defined as tea that was imported without paying duties to the crown; duties that colonists didn’t have any say in imposing. To make the comparison with alcohol in the 1920s work, it’d be like the government banning the purchase of alcohol from everyone except the government’s anointed “company”, and the voters having no say in the matter.
In fact that sort of smuggling goes on all the time with cigarettes and alcohol es with government monopolies, and as various ways of arbitraging different tax regimes.
My point is simply that, if you read contemporary documents, you’ll see that the smugglers, and others, exploited the situation to promote their respective positions. And the whole story is exploited today with the details filed off.
Propaganda is an important part of nation building.
You're overindulging in cynicism. It's fair to say that, smugglers or not, Boston as a whole wasn't too found of Crown rule: tea party, Boston Massacre, Powder Alarm, Intolerable Acts (inc. abolishing home rule), etc. The closing end of the Battle of Lexington and Concord were citizens[+] showing up just to take potshots at the retreating redcoats. The war basically started with British troops under siege in Boston.
I don't know if this is true (can't trust anything to not be propaganda anymore) but iirc we learned in school that less than a third of Americans supported Independence with more than a third being indifferent and about a third strictly loyal to to British government. If there was a referendum, we can assume that pro Independence would have likely lost.
I believe this is the case (it's been decades since I read the original docs but that is my recollection). It's pretty typical for revolutionary movements, successful or not, to be well in the minority.
Famously, in revolutionary pre-USSR Russia The "Bolsheviks" ("majority") were not in the majority but named themselves so in order to gain credibility and marginalize the majority opposition.
I don't know where that's famous (I've never heard it before) but I think the name Bolshevik simply derives from an internal party vote which Lenin's faction won (against what became known as the Mensheviks (minority)).
Across all 13 colonies, sure but Massachusetts might have tilted more heavily towards independence. Googling around quickly (because this is just a petty comment thread after all), there's a NYtimes OpEd that said it was more like 40+/20-/40abstain but then other sources indicate Massachusetts was far higher. Again, having the lion's share of rebellious acts, notable incidents, and the focus/ire of Parliament.
There is no historical evidence linking Joseph Kennedy to bootlegging other than the totally unverified claims of a dying monster 50 years after prohibition ended. It’s a political smear.
What are you talking about, the rumors of the Kennedys being bootleggers/smugglers have existed since the end of prohibition due to the rather immediate appearance of their liquor importation and distribution business once prohibition was repealed. Plus there's the fact that they sold the family alcohol business to a known mobster who was a bootlegger. While the truth is probably much less exciting, such myths are definitely not due to some political smear in the 80s by a "dying monster" (no idea who you're referencing).
If you're interested in that sort of thing there's an old movie that covers it in some detail. The name escapes me, but I think it has that dude from Iron Man 3 in it.
"First you must find... another shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle."
Sure, but let's not forget that these weren't just beautiful, historic structures sitting on display. They were used daily to inflict countless horrors on the citizens of Benin or really anyone who was unlucky enough to be captured by someone operating in Benin
> But the way Benin treated its slaves and the public display of large quantities of human remains hardened British attitudes towards Benin's rulers. Since 1863, the British had been trying to force the King to stop selling slaves to the Arab traders who had replaced the Portuguese after 1836 and to stop the practice of human sacrificial crucifixion.
A very good point. I didn't even stop to consider what the kingdom of Benin were up to. And it is true that many western african kingdoms were involved in the slave trade.
Kinda off topic but the empire of Mali for example were claimed to have traded with people in south america before columbus set sail. Some documents claim that the king of spain instructed columbus on his second or 3rd voyage to find land south of where he originally landed, based on documents from the empire of Mali.
And sure enough he found south america.
But I'm sure the Malinese were also heavily involved in the slave trade.
This is an ignoratio elenchi - the parent discussion was regarding the destruction of the Walls of Benin; other matters of British occupation of Benin as a whole are irrelevant unless related.
I can't think of anything more quintessentially British* than building a massive shrubbery through a country they were colonizing solely because it helped them tax the poor colonists better.
* Well, British at least through some point of the 1900s when they backed off a bit.
So, the most quintessential British things are two things taken from China and India, things that serve as remnants of the colonial period? That does make a sort of sense.
If you like this bit of history, you might be interested in the story of how Morocco gradually built a series of huge and immensely long sand walls to progressively shut out the indigenous Saharawi people from increasing portions of Western Sahara after Morocco seized the territory in the wake of Spain’s pullout from this former colony. [1]
Crossing the berm to visit relatives on either side is considered a crime by the Moroccan authorities – the Moroccans consider even crossing via Mauritania or Algeria to be illegal. So, overall the wall was definitely designed to limit movement of the Saharawis and make sure that those pushed out of Moroccan Western Sahara stay out.
