Over a period of time changes in relations of production gradually took
place under the influence of colonialism. This generated another controversy
about the economic and political consequences of imperialism, and about
whether colonialism encouraged or obstructed capitalist industrialization
(Sutcliffe, 1972). One interpretation is that imperialism did not provide a basis
for industrialization because wealth was remitted to metropolitan centres and
natural resources were exploited using an artificially created and controlled
proletariat. The terms of trade were adversely affected by dependence on a lim-
ited number of export crops and restricted markets. European investment in the
infrastructure of railways, ports, roads, and the telegraph aimed solely to
extract primary products for export (Barratt Brown, 1963, pp. 160–3).
Others, notably the Marxist economist Bill Warren, have argued that
imperialism and colonialism did encourage the development of capitalism,
acting as a ‘powerful engine of progressive social change’. The significance
of this controversy, which will be returned to when the concept of neo-
colonialism is analysed in Chapter 4, for present purposes lies not so much
in its implications for understanding the economic development of depend-
ent societies as in its significance for understanding social development and
therefore the emergence of political forces.
Colonialism changed colonial society in ways that eventually led to the
emergence of new social groupings and political forces. The spread of
urbanization, the gradual opening up of the professions and the bureaucracy
to local people, the development of an indigenous commercial middle
class, and the acquisition of Western education by a privileged local élite,
all provided a social basis for nationalist movements, demands for self-
government, and the emergence of political parties and other organizations
to represent the interests of sections of indigenous society (Barratt Brown,
1963, p. 180).
Colonialism also enabled imperialism to employ coercion to enforce the
introduction of commodity production and wage labour. The colonial
authorities exercised direct control over labour, deployed arbitrary political
authority, adapted indigenous forms of social order such as caste, enforced
laws restricting the free movement of workers including bonded labour, and
interfered with the labour market to reduce its cost. Taxation, forced labour,
the creation of official markets or trading centres, and compulsory crop pro-
duction were widely used to ensure a supply of labour and export com-
modities: ‘In sum, the recruitment of labour and the regulation of relations
of production were increasingly assumed by colonial states, rather than
being left to unpredictable “market” forces or the direct confrontation of
labour and capital’ (Berman, 1984, p. 170).
Theories of Imperialism and Colonialism 41