The Future Results of British Rule in India

Writings by Marx on the Indian question. Written on July 22, 1853, originally published in New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3840, August 8, 1853. The Chinese translation was first included in the On the Weak and Small Nations, published by Shanghai Beishe in 1940.

In June 1853, the House of Commons of the British Parliament debated the issue of India for several consecutive days, and in order to comprehensively discuss on British colonial rule in India, Marx wrote a series of articles, and this critical article is a summary of his series of articles on India.

In The Future Results of British Rule in India, Marx comprehensively and systematically analyzed the reasons for the colonization of India by Britain and its impact on Indian society, and further analyzed and studied the British colonial rule in India and its possibilities of development. Regarding the causes of India’s colonization, Marx held that the innate antagonism within Indian society and the repulsion and segregation of its members were the important internal causes of India’s colonization by Britain, while Britain’s advanced industrial civilization was the external factor of British colonial rule in India. With regard to the significance of British colonial rule in India, he held that the negative consequence of British colonial rule in India was that the colonial rule of the British bourgeoisie in India could not bring freedom to the people of India, let alone improve their social conditions.

However, while Britain conquered India by force and industrial civilization, it also accomplished the annihilation of old Asiatic society, facilitated India’s intercourse with the world, and brought advanced productive forces to India, thus objectively promoting social development in India. Regarding the conditions for the liberation of India from British colonial rule, Marx held that only the appropriation of the productive forces by the people themselves and their emergence as the master of the country, the proletarian revolution in Britain or the liberation struggle of the people of India against colonial rule could bury the cruel colonial rule and achieve the victory of the struggle for national liberation. “The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.”

The Future Results of British Rule in India expounded on the reasons, impact and future development of India falling under British colonialism in a summarizing manner, which furnished the proletarian party with the theoretical foundation and a model for creatively developing the theory of the colonial question and formulating its anti-colonial policies.