Hegemony

From Hobson's Choice

This article is under construction

Hegemony is usually understood to mean the one-sided ability to influence others. In contrast to an empire, which actually has formal political control over the affected territory, the hegemonic power merely has the power to influence events. It requires a local partner to do so, and is checked by the need to either cultivate one, or find one.

Contents 1 Context of European Imperialism 2 Neocolonial Hegemony 3 Quasi-Colonial Hegemony 4 Notes 5 See Also 6 External Links

Context of European Imperialism

The Holy Roman Empire, c. 1786 Click for larger image (medium)

Colonial Expansion, 1600-1700 Click for larger image (medium)

Colonial Expansion, 1700-1763 Click for larger image (medium)

In the structure of European polities, the Holy Roman Emperor did not rule over France, Spain, Poland, or England^[1], but the elites of those countries were usually anxious to avoid confronting the Empire alone. As a hegemon within Europe, the HRE suffered from the extreme difficulties of maintaining control within its boundaries; and during those periods when it was strongest, its power to influence events in England, Denmark, France, or Italy was not necessarily decisive. Bold and determined leaders could and often did form powerful leagues against it.

Imperialism outside of Europe likewise often began with hegemony. The initial contacts of European "explorers" with Native Americans, Africans, and Asians was usually on a footing of military equality or inferiority. The early Portuguese and Netherlander forays outside of Europe were characterized by mere piracy^[2] or subtle diplomacy^[3]. Likewise, European conquests in the Americas required allies; ignorance of the geography and lack of survival skills in the wilderness more than offset the European firearms and horses. Initially, therefore, the Europeans were initially not even a hegemon, since they competed with other with such violence as they used in the endless gore of the Renaissance. It was only in cases such as the interior of Bengal or Africa, where rival European freebooters were unlikely to turn up, that this happened.

The Napoleonic Wars put an end to that with the total polarization of Western Europe. French possessions overseas largely fell into British hands^[4]; with Napoleon's occupation of the Netherlands and Spain, their conquest likewise fell to the UK or to the new American states.^[5] At the Congress of Vienna, virtually all Continental European possessions were assigned by treaty. At this time, armed conflicts specifically over high-revenue colonies ended, and would not recur until 1914. Instead of armed companies waging wars with their own private armies, colonialism was under the sovereignty of the state, which (in turn) acknowledge the "rights" of its neighbors. Additionally, there was no longer a clash of monarchies which had characterized the previous millennium of European history; the monarchies were now mascots of their nation's haut bourgeois, unable to govern except by incurring untenable amounts of debt, and the great conflicts that would rock Europe hereafter were between rival classes. Hence, while courts might affect fashionable vapors about the English—whose polity was now skewed to social ranks than other than those on the Continent—they also aped their every mannerism.

European interventions in the Americas were accompanied by such massive death that hegemonic expansion is not really relevant. In the case of Africa and Asia, however, the impact of European diseases was both muted, and offset by local diseases that killed Europeans. The terrain was mostly less favorable for the movement of European armies. Finally, the Europeans did not have the opportunities to establish secure beachheads in Asia and wait until they were ready to assault the next civilization. They had to have reliable allies or fortified islands to which they might repair. Moreover, the Europeans were new to the region. As outsiders, they could not be hegemons in the sense "firsts among equals"; they were aliens, and either serviceable to the local despot, or they were likely to be driven out. As time passed and those despots were eased into comfortable sinecures,^[6] while the European power advanced into a hegemonic position.

The situation changed after 1815. The French and the Netherlands had received many of their most lucrative colonies back; the restoration of French authority was a major preoccupation, while the Netherlands had to deal with the political reorganization of their East India Colony.^[7] The British greatly enlarged their possessions in India with the 3rd Anglo-Maratha "War" (1817-1818), then entered a war with Lower Burma (1823-1826) during which they captured another large tranche of territory. The British also had several wars with the Asante in the Gold Coast (Ghana). These were mostly "blowback" wars that resulted from the precipitous expansions of the 18th century, opportunities spotted by local despots, and a prolonged period of wartime neglect.

As time passed and the huge bureaucratic task of harmonizing the multifarious European interests neared completion, there was a tendency for imperialism to be almost wholly concerned with public opinion in the metropole. It was no longer difficult to conquer; but the voters were wary of another zone of occupation. More significantly, however, was the diplomatic dilemma created by imperialism. Nominally independent Latin American or Muslim nations (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) entered the 1930's still worried about the prospect of de facto conquest by the great powers, and were mindful of the need to challenge the legality of further Trans-European (TEP) expansion in any sense of the term. Yet TEP member states without empires, such as Canada, enjoyed the advantages of market access without the disadvantages of colonial recriminations. Governments in Canada could therefore harvest the rents of imperialist monopoly power, simply by their membership in the family of rich nations. Canadian citizens themselves might never dream that their prosperity was materially enhanced by the political control of (say) Belgium over the Congo. But Canadian industry had access to cheap copper from the Katanga.

In the years following World War I, a protracted struggle ensued during which each of the major colonial powers sought to restore the status quo ante. The League of Nations Mandates were restored almost intact; indeed, significant territories were added to them.

Neocolonial Hegemony

Since the decline of conventional imperialism, hegemony has been revived as the organizing principle of international relations. Political control over foreign countries gradually became a diplomatic nightmare for the great powers. As with the Napoleonic Wars, in which the United Kingdom would become the trustee of continental European empires, so after World War II the Western Allies (Britain, the Commonwealth, and the USA) effectively were in a position to dispose of the imperial territories of the Continental Powers. In cases where the European Empire was oldest, such as India and Peninsular Malaysia, the old elites had been entirely, or almost entirely, integrated into the grand edifice of imperial hierarchy.^[8] In areas where colonial rule was newer, such as Africa, the Europeans tended to create what amounted to new princely grandees. For example, the Kingdom of Buganda had existed before the arrival of anyone from Europe, but it did so with far less territory and far less power in the hands of the monarchy. Likewise, Fulani notables in the far north of Nigeria had recently won control over Hausa microstates, even as European explorers were first beginning to venture inland from coastal factories; under British rule, the Fulani power over Hausa statelets was transformed into absolute control over the whole of Nigeria.^[9] While there is some intense debate over the degree of autonomy of African notables under European colonial domination, much of this tends to equate subaltern pleas for understanding with actual autonomy: White domination of Africa, after all, tended to face African collaborators with cruel dilemmas, and many responded to them by either footdragging or insisting on strong personal retinues.^[10] In short, Africa was under European rule, whether indirect (as under subaltern, collaborating dynasties) or direct (employing native Blacks only as porters and policemen).

The liquidation of the European colonial empires (1946-1975) was meant to end a barbaric system in violation of national self-determination; as a moral act, it was instigated by the colonized, but as an administrative act it was instigated by the beneficiaries of imperialism: militaries that had come to rely on colonial wars to validate their growing bureaucratic power, corporate bureaucracies, and diplomatic corps who clung to empire to accord themselves importance. The armed forces of colonial powers had usually been able to maintain control with small commitments (as a share of their total strength), but the jingoism of colonial empires had an undeniable stimulus of militarism in the metropoles. A shift in military technology briefly favored insurgents (from around the 1950's to the 1980's); during that period, everything was reversed: military commitments to colonies sharply increased, while the prestige associated with them sharply diminished.

• Militaries lost their moral authority in countries fighting such insurgencies, and became associated with torture, corruption, and temporizing with the rebels.
• Corporate interests in the colonies were usually resource extraction and markets for finished goods; for them, the political pressure to lower resource costs (as well as postwar problems of supply to domestic markets, let alone overseas ones) caused them to regard colonies as unsatisfactory payoffs.
• Diplomatic corps of the TEP had erst relied on their nation's colonial empires in order to secure respect for themselves ("iron law of institutions"). Now the empires were making their respective governments look sloppy, ruthless, and bumbling.

It's difficult to establish what the motives of post-colonial planners was, but it's undeniable that they enjoyed immensely greater control over the political outcomes of the liberated countries. The first success story is undoubtedly that of the United States in the Philippines. While the US government had earlier agreed to Philippine independence, Congress passed two measures tying war reconstruction assistance to special privileges for US nationals.^[11] Treaties based on the bills were then extorted from the RP Congress, which had a lasting effect on the development of the nation.^{[12] [13]}

The largest colonial possessions, India and Pakistan, were in an unusual position with respect to the UK: they each had populations far exceeding those of the UK, and they held net reserves of British pounds exceeded only by those of the USA.^[14] Moreover, the UK was under an anti-imperialist Labour government, with immense internal strains. As a consequence, there was little opportunity to extort a neocolonial power structure from India and Pakistan, except through the delicate matter of arming the two rivals. Possibly because the British authorities had long cultivated sympathetic elites, there was not a strong push to nationalize industry.^[15] British hegemony in India/Pakistan was sharply restrained by the strategic demands: Whitehall had no desire to alienate the two vast nations when it was exhausted, financially strapped, and inwardly-focused.

In other South Asian nations, such as Burma (Myanmar),^[16] and Indochina, colonial power evaporated "on the ground" and the opportunity to establish hegemonic control was lost. In nations such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, colonial power structures lived long after the end of colonial rule: either dependency, or subservient elites, or hopeless reactionaries with no hope of long-run domestic support, kept colonialism alive. In Africa, dependency is so severe that there is no shortage of methods by which a neocolonial system can flourish.

Quasi-Colonial Hegemony

"Quasi-colonies" include countries that were reduced to a dependent position with respect to the TEP, but did not become possessions, or did so for short periods only. Morocco, Libya, and Egypt in North Africa were under legally ambiguous or brief occupation; China was divided into "spheres of influence," but remained an empire of the Jurchen (Qing), not the TEP. Likewise, Iran and Southwest Asia were parts of non-TEP empires until they became Mandates (for up to 27 years). Latin American nations mostly became independent by 1819 (with Mexico shaking off Spanish rule), but remained under considerable influence from the TEP.

Notes

1. ↑ At sundry times, the actual Holy Roman Emperor, such as Charles V, was also ruler over territories outside the HRE; likewise, rulers within the HRE possessed lands outside it as well. In 1194, HRE Henry VI extorted title to England from Richard I ("Richard I", Catholic Encyclopedia), although it is not clear that anyone took this seriously. The Holy See did the same thing to King John in 1213.
2. ↑ E.g., Afonso de Albuquerque's attack on the Omani coast; see Library of Congress, "Portugal: Empire in Asia"; for the activities of the Netherlanders in the Moluccas, see "Indonesia: the United East India Company":

   Although its directors, the Heeren Zeventien (Seventeen Gentlemen), were motivated solely by profit, the VOC was not simply a trading company in the modern sense of the word. It had authority to build fortresses, wage war, conclude treaties with indigenous rulers, and administer justice to subject populations.... Coen was determined to go to almost any lengths to establish and reserve a VOC monopoly of the spice trade. He accomplished his goal by both controlling output and keeping non-VOC traders out of the islands. Ambon had been seized from the Portuguese in 1605, and anti-Iberian alliances were made with several local rulers. However, the English East India Company, established in 1600, proved to be a tenacious competitor. When the people of the small Banda archipelago south of the Malukus continued to sell nutmeg and mace to English merchants, the Dutch killed or deported virtually the entire population and repopulated the islands with VOC indentured servants and slaves who worked in the nutmeg groves. Similar policies were used by Coen's successors against the inhabitants of the clove-rich Hoamoal Peninsula on the island of Ceram in 1656.

   Needless to say, not only was this typical of all the European and European American imperialists, often the "gentlemen" involved were interchangeable, like the membership of national football teams today.
3. ↑ See, for example, Library of Congress, "Ghana: Early European Contact and the Slave Trade"; see also "India: The Coming of the Europeans":

   English company agents became familiar with Indian customs and languages, including Persian, the unifying official language under the Mughals. In many ways, the English agents of that period lived like Indians, intermarried willingly, and a large number of them never returned to their home country... The French commercial interest—Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company, founded in 1664)—came late, but the French also established themselves in India, emulating the precedents set by their competitors as they founded their enclave at Pondicherry... The British company employed sepoys—European-trained and European-led Indian soldiers—to protect its trade, but local rulers sought their services to settle scores in regional power struggles. South India witnessed the first open confrontation between the British and the French, whose forces were led by Robert Clive and François Dupleix, respectively. Both companies desired to place their own candidate as the nawab, or ruler, of Arcot, the area around Madras.

   In those days they were as subtle as snakes, if not quite as gentle as doves.
4. ↑ Specifically, Guadeloupe , Martinique , Mauritius, Reunion , Seychelles ; also, the British captured French possessions in India (Pondicherry, Chandranagore, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam).
5. ↑ The French expropriated Spanish claims in North America and soon after sold them to the United States (1804); the French were defeated in Haiti in 1804, and in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), 1805; Spanish possessions in Mexico and Latin America revolted and eventually defeated the forces of the Spanish crown. Ceylon (1797) and the Dutch East Indies (1811) was captured by the British, as were Netherlander bases in Peninsular Malaysia .
6. ↑ For an example, there is the Nawab of Awadh [Oudh]; see Wikipedia . His case is depicted brilliantly in the Satyajit Ray film, The Chess Players.
7. ↑ The French and British had both reformed the Dutch East Indies government during the Napoleonic occupation of the Netherlands. When Batavia (Jakarta) was restored, the colonial regime was faced with a desperate shortage of revenue arising from these reforms, plus anger over the British partition of Yogyakarta. This led to the Java War, 1825-1830. Library of Congress, "Indonesia: The Java War and Cultivation System."

   The immediate cause of Diponegoro's revolt in 1825 was the Dutch decision to build a road across a piece of his property that contained a sacred tomb. Thereupon ensued the Java War, a bitter guerrilla conflict in which as many as 200,000 Javanese died in fighting or from indirect causes (the population of Java at the end of the eighteenth century was only 3 million). Although the revolt was led by Diponegoro and other aristocrats, its considerable popular appeal, based on Islam and Javanese mysticism, created a scenario similar to twentieth-century wars in Southeast Asia. Insurgency was suppressed only after the Dutch adopted the "fortress system": the posting of small units of mobile troops in forts scattered through the contested territory. Diponegoro was arrested in 1830 and exiled for a short time to Manado in northern Sulawesi and then to Makassar where he died. The territories of Yogyakarta and Surakarta were substantially reduced, although the sultans were paid compensation.
   
   The Java War was not a modern anticolonial movement. Diponegoro and his followers probably did not want to restore an idealized, precolonial past. Nor did they envision an independent, modern nation. Rather they sought a Javanese heartland free of Dutch rule. Because of his anti-Dutch role, Diponegoro is one of modern Indonesia's national heroes.

   Dutch at British wrangling over the postwar status of the Indies is a fascinating story, far too complex to explain here. For a short, short, short summary, see "Sejarah Indonesia: Chaos and Resistance"
8. ↑ For India, see David Ludden, India and South Asia: A Short History One World Publishers (online edition, 2002; link goes to chapter 4). For Malaysia, see A. J. Stockwell, Malaysia, The Stationery Office, UK, (2004) with its outstanding introduction (xxxv-lxxvi).
9. ↑ Charles Jarmon, Nigeria: Reorganization and Development Since the Mid-twentieth Century, BRILL, 1988; esp. "Regional Differences in Education between North and South," p.108; for a detailed look, see also Sean Stilwell, "'Aman' and 'Asiri': Royal Slave Culture and the Colonial Regime in Kano, 1903-1926," p.167; anthologized in Suzanne Miers & Martin A. Klein, editors Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa Routledge (1999). The Fulani are originally a nomadic people of the Sahel Region who launched a campaign in 1807 to conquer the Hausa, who were a settled people of the North. Having succeeded, the Fulani mostly adopted the Hausa language and intermarried into the Hausa. Some (but not all) reference books therefore regard the Fulani-Hausa as a single ethno-linguistic group. The Sokoto Caliphate was a political entity created during the Fulani conquest which survived until 1903; although the High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria, Frederick Lugard, led a military expedition that destroyed the Sokoto and Kano states, he proceeded to build up the power of the emirates who recognized his authority.
10. ↑ In Africa, the subalterns might include Black NCOs in the British Army, bureaucrats in Dakar, or emirs in the hinterland. Referring to Sean Stilwell's (1999) essay, he writes:

    While colonial officials in Kano generally […] condemned the institution of royal slavery, they were forced to work alongside and sometimes through royal slaves until 1926, when the institution was finally abolished by Sarkin Kano Abdullahi Bayero as a condition of his accession to the throne. The survival of the royal slave system demonstrates just how difficult it was for the British to impose their version of order and good governance on a dynamic elite slave system
    Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, p.168

    I am not so convinced of this. The British authorities could have liquidated the entire institution of emirates, not to mention royal slavery, by 1903 at the absolute latest (as the French did in Côte d'Ivoire). Some individual bureaucrats might have liked to do so, but it would have been more expensive than leaving it intact. The dynamic elite slave system was the one best suited to colonial rule, cost per benefit. The strong personal retinues were usually the sticking point in subaltern-imperialist relations.
11. ↑ The measures were the Bell Trade Act and the Tydings Rehabilitation Act, sometimes referred to as Bell-Tydings. See "Economic Relations with the United States after Independence," Ronald E. Dolan, editor, Philippines: a Country Study 4th edition, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress (1993). In print, see Richard J. Jensen, Jon Thares Davidann, & Yoneyuki Sugita, Trans-Pacific Relations: America, Europe, and Asia in the Twentieth Century, Greenwood Publishing Group (2003), p.127ff. By special privileges, we mean that US nationals (only) were accorded rights of access comparable to Filipinos in development. This, in effect, negated the ability of the RP to choose its own developmental policy. Another treatment (which I actually prefer) is William J. Pomeroy, The Philippines: Colonialism, Collaboration, and Resistance, International Publishers Co, 1992, p.156
12. ↑ For a contemporary and popular introduction to the topic of neoliberalism and underdevelopment, see Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, Bloomsbury Press (Dec 2007). Readers are advised that Chang's critics, unable to refute his contentions, instead impute imaginary opinions to him (viz., that he's an enthusiast of state socialism). Ironically, Chang's offense consists of describing how Western nations such as the UK, USA, Germany, and France industrialized, with some detailed looks at fast-growing Asian economies. Chang mostly refers to the IMF & World Bank as perpetrators, but bilateral trade relations are also influential.
13. ↑ With respect to underdevelopment in the Philippines specifically, see Charles W. Lindsay. "Foreign Investment in the Philippines," in Daniel B. Schirmer & Stephen Rosskamm Shalom (editors), The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance, South End Press (1987). Describing the situation is difficult, since the immediate effect of independence was a dramatic rise in per capita income growth. This is exactly what one would expect: under an unregulated development regime, there is a short run payoff as the most lucrative enterprises absorb all capital investment. The whole purpose of having a developmental regime is to redirect some investment to longer-run payoffs: higher value-added enterprise employing a broader range of inputs, skilled labor, and producing diverse outputs.
14. ↑ Of course this refers to conditions c.1947. See A. Martin Wainwright, Inheritance of Empire: Britain, India, and the Balance of Power in Asia, 1938-55, Published by Greenwood Publishing Group (1994), p.83ff. The referenced chapter deals with the arms race in the Subcontinent that arose following independence in July 1947. For the financial situation of India at independence, see B. R. Tomlinson, "Indo-British Relations in the Post-Colonial Era," in A. N. Porter & Robert F. Holland (editors) Money, Finance, and Empire Routledge (1985), p.142ff.
15. ↑ One of the most helpful books on this subject is Robert W. Stern, Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent, Cambridge University Press (2003). I am referring to Part II: "Change from Above." Also extremely helpful is B. R. Tomlinson, "Foreign Investment in India and Indonesia," in Leonard Blussé, India and Indonesia from the 1920s to the 1950s: The Origins of Planning, Brill Archive (1987). Contrary to widespread mythology, India's economic policies since independence have been quite conservative; there was a brief phase of nationalizations, but these were mostly rescues of parlous sectors, not public sector asset grabs.
16. ↑ Clive J. Christie, Ideology and Revolution in Southeast Asia, 1900-1980, Routledge, 2001; Chapter 7, p.99ff; & Chapter 10, p.138ff.

See Also

Imperialism
Trans-European Project

External Links

• Richard Effland, "Feudal Chaos of the Warring States Period" (during this period, a major struggle among the Chinese states for hegemony over the empire); Maricopa Community College
• James R. MacLean, "Imperialism & Industrial Organization," Prometheus6 (Sep 2006)
• Washington State: World Civilizations: Archaic and Classical Greece (includes discussion of Athenian, Spartan, and Theban hegemony)

Opposing P.O.V.: Nick Cullather, Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960, Stanford University Press (1994). Prof. Cullather's book argues that US influence was sharply limited by the lack of compelling instruments to exert power, and by conflicting aims.