The British Rule in India

An article by Marx on the question of British colonial rule in India. Written on June 10, 1853, and originally published in New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3804, on June 25, 1853.

In June 1853, the House of Commons of the British Parliament debated the question concerning India for several days, but in the end came to nothing. In order to comprehensively and powerfully expose and review the British aggression and colonialist rule in economically backward India, Marx wrote this article.

Marx first described the real situation in India, pointing out that the British colonial rule in India achieved formal unity by force, but in terms of political structure, the “independent and conflicting” situation between different tribes and different castes still left India in dismemberment. The British colonial rule in India, which was a combination of European and Asiatic despotism, not only brought a deep and devastating disaster of a melancholic kind to the people of India but has also fundamentally “broken down the entire framework of Indian society”. This “bandit-like” British plunder and oppression of the people of India, its exorbitant financial system and “British steam and science uprooted, over the whole surface of India, the union between agriculture and manufacturing industry.” While exposing that British colonial rule was “actuated only by the vilest interests”, Marx also pointed out that it would objectively promote the factors of “social revolution” in India, thus acted as “the unconscious tool of history”. This analysis of Marx dialectically pointed out its progressive significance in promoting the intercourse between India and the world and the development of the productive forces of Indian society.

The British Rule in India comprehensively expounded the reasons and the essence of British colonial rule over India, which is a classic example of Marx’s objective analysis of the colonial question by using historical materialism.