Anti-Colonial Struggle

Also known as “national liberation struggle” and “national independence movement”. It refers to the just struggle of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples against the colonial rule since the 15th century, to smash the colonial yoke imposed on them by foreign forces, and to fight for national independence and national liberation, including anti-slave trade, anti-colonial aggression, etc.

The outbreak of the anti-colonial struggle had a historical necessity. Only when the colonial peoples overthrew the colonial rule of the suzerain countries and broke free from the control of the foreign invaders could the oppressed nations become the master of their own destiny, thus resolve the principal social contradictions in their own country and promote their own economic and cultural development and social progress. The outbreak of the anti-colonial struggle was due to the intensification of the contradictions between the aggressive colonial powers and the colonial and semi-colonial peoples. After the Opening-up of New Routes, the bourgeoisie in Western Europe began to carry out colonial plundering and carried out bloody plunder and aggression against the colonies, which provoked the early anti-colonial struggles of the peoples of Africa, the Americas and Asia. Marx and Engels once angrily condemned Britain’s sale of opium to China in the 19th century as a “most savage” and “piratical” invasion, and the reason why the Chinese people rose up against the British invaders was entirely due to the British colonial policy. “The piratical policy of the British Government has caused this universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners and marked it as a war of extermination.” The great national uprising that broke out in India in 1857 was likewise the result of cruel oppression and plunder by the British colonialists. It was nothing but a concentrated reflection of what Britain had done in India during the establishment of its Eastern Empire and during the recent decades of its long rule. The deep root and class essence of modern Western colonialism was the national oppression and exploitation by the bourgeoisie, the fundamental root of which is bourgeois property, as Marx put it: “The colonial system proclaimed surplus-value making money as the sole end and aim of humanity.” The monopoly bourgeoisie of the imperialist period strengthened and expanded the plunder and enslavement of colonies and semi-colonies through capital export, political control and other modes. They set up factories, built railroads and established banks to control the economic lifelines of these countries, and colluded with local reactionary forces to exploit and oppress the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, brutally suppress their resistance and struggles, further intensifying the contradictions between the oppressed nations and imperialism, and rendering national democratic revolutions in the colonies and semi-colonies inevitable.

Marx and Engels resolutely supported the anti-colonial struggle of the colonial peoples, called on the oppressed nations to resolutely fight against the colonialist robbers, and demanded that the resolution of national contradictions and the struggle for national independence be the primary and most urgent strategic task of the colonies and semi-colonies of the East. They figuratively compared national independence to the soil, air, light and space of national development, and that colonial rule would inevitably deplete and destroyed these conditions.

The anti-colonial struggle has undergone a long and arduous journey spanning more than 500 years. The anti-colonial struggles in different periods and regions have their own characteristics, nature and development process. The early anti-colonial struggles either overthrew colonial rule and won their independence through armed struggle, or they forced the colonialists to give way under the pressure of an increasingly powerful mass movement. In several wars against the colonizers, the African people annihilated the invaders and expelled them from the country many times. The Indians in the Americas frequently launched large-scale uprisings, and the blacks also held many armed uprisings against colonial rule. In the second half of the 18th century, after more than 30 years of anti-colonial struggle, the Latin American people got rid of the colonial rule of Spain, Portugal and other countries, established 18 independent countries, and laid the foundation for a new political pattern in Latin America. In the 1850s, the peoples of Asia set off a revolutionary storm against foreign colonial aggression and their own reactionary rule, especially the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising in China and the Indian Insurrection, which showed the great power of the oppressed nations in the East and aroused the great concern of Marx and Engels, who wrote more than 50 commentaries and correspondences to summarize the experience of the oppressed nations against colonialism and to reveal the world significance of the revolutions in the East. The early anti-colonial struggle was mainly about anti-colonial aggression and maintaining national independence. Although the struggles were constantly defeated due to the economic and political divisions within the countries, the lack of organization, the isolation, small-scale and scatteredness of local struggles, and the disparity in military equipment compared to the colonialists, they fully demonstrated the heroic and tenacious fighting spirit of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Americas in their defense of independence, dealt a heavy blow to the arrogance of the colonial invaders, and opened the prelude to the history of the national liberation struggle.

The anti-colonial struggle led by the proletariat is part of the proletarian world revolution and is an ally of the proletarian revolution in capitalist countries. An important content of Marx’s theory of Oriental society is his theory of anti-colonial revolutionary struggles and national liberation movements in the modern countries of the East. This theory reflects the founder of Marxism’s concern for the fate of the enslaved colonial and semi-colonial peoples in the East and his scientific exploration of the future of the countries and nations of the East. Marx put forth the theory that the anti-colonial struggle influenced the proletarian revolution, that the struggle of the peoples of Asia against aggression was a powerful blow against the Western bourgeoisie, debunked the myth of the invincibility of their “strong ships and powerful cannons”, and inspired and promoted the revolutionary struggle of the peoples of Europe. The Indian Insurrection, which directly opposed the British colonial rule, tied up a large number of British armed forces and continuously depleted its human, material and financial resources, and was called “our best ally” by Marx. Lenin also held that the liberation movement of the peoples of the East can only develop smoothly in direct association with the socialist revolutionary movement, and that the international proletariat is the only ally of all the hundreds of millions of people in the East. The international communist movement and the anti-colonial struggle of the peoples of the Third World complement each other.