extracting agricultural resources for export. This process was so thorough that
average grain consumption in India was lower in 1950 than it had been in 1900.
The absent colonial state
Direct rule occurs when colonial officials run all but the very lowest levels of
the administration. Indirect rule occurs when governance is entrusted to
members of the local elite under the supervision of imperial governors. It often
incorporates indigenous institutions and not simply individuals into the system
of colonial rule.
If the Congo exemplified an extractive colonial state and India a complex
mix, the state in Nigeria and Kashmir could be best described as ‘absent’.
Nigeria was created from highly diverse pre-existing political entities. These
comprised in the North the Sokoto caliphate, in the South-west the Lagos
consulate and dozens of small-scale Yoruba kingdoms and in the South-east
small-scale tribal communities. The caliphate in northern Nigeria had some
organization, a common religion and a written language. In the rest of Nigeria
political structures were highly fragmented and based around a widely
dispersed subsistence peasantry. The British did not set up ‘extractive’ or
‘settler’ type institutions, but rather reinforced weak centralization and indirect
personal rule (Kohli,2004).
In Nigeria there was no attempt to develop a tax system. Of the 2–3 per cent
of GDP raised from taxation, most arose from foreign trade, especially alco-
hol. There was minimal economic growth (about 0.5 per cent per annum) in
per capita terms between 1900 and 1930, based mainly on the export of cash
crops (palm oil, groundnuts, cotton and cocoa). By the late 1930s only 12 per
cent of children were receiving any education, literacy was only 2 per cent in
the north and by the early 1950s Nigeria had only 1,000, mainly Yoruba univer-
sity graduates (Kohli, 2004). The British had only a minimal physical presence
in Nigeria including 3,000 soldiers,4,000 police (and 80 officers) and one civil
servant (over 400 in total) for every 100,000 Africans. World War II drew off
personnel from the British colonial state, and the further devolution of admin-
istration from the minimal centre to the three regions was formalized by the
1954 constitution. At independence in 1960 the nationalist movement was, not
surprisingly, divided along the personalistic, tribal, ethnic and regional basis
of colonial rule (Kohli 2004). In the 1959 elections in the run-up to independ-
ence, three ethnic parties, none of whom had a national majority, each won
majorities in their home region, which proved ‘wildly destabilising and a
perfect recipe for ethnic conflict’ (Kwarteng, 2011:303).
Kashmir is another example of indirect colonial rule and ‘a classic case of
extending the empire by franchise, a way of allowing local rulers the freedom
to do what they wanted so long as everything was quiet externally and trade
routes remained safe and secure’(Kwarteng, 2011:96). After the Indian
Mutiny of 1857, the valley of Kashmir was sold to the family of Gulab Singh,
who became the hereditary Maharaja. The promotion of a Hindu Maharaja in
190 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth