I just read a short but very thought provoking article by Will Dalrymple in the Spectator website (https://spectator.us/algeria-current-colonization/). Some people may find the article a bit off-character from Dalrymple because here he provides a critique of all sort of colonialism and imperialism in history, including Muslim. Anyway, there are several interesting points in the article but I found a particular point very fascinating because although the implication seems huge in history of the Sub-continent, I haven’t much thought about it before. Without further ado,
“In the bloody 1954-62 War of Independence which ended French rule in Algeria, perhaps as many as 25,000 French and one million Algerians lost their lives in Franco-Algerian fighting, a terrible tale brilliantly told in Alistair Horneβs classic study A Savage War of Peace. In contrast, despite horrific death tolls in Hindu-Muslim violence at Partition and the creation of Muslim-only Pakistan, only seven Brits lost their lives in 1947 during the British decolonization of South Asia. The man to thank for this, more than anyone, is probably Lord Cornwallis, the British general who received such an unfair caricature in the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot. Having surrendered British forces in America to Washington at Yorktown in 1781, Cornwallis was recruited by the East India Company to make sure the same never happened in British India. He achieved this by enacting one simple law which made it illegal, except in very exceptional cases such as indigo plantations or hill stations, for British individuals ever to own land in India. This meant no settler class developed, as in the 13 American Colonies or French Algeria. As a result, in 1947, the last British officials were able to board their ships in Bombay harbor with little more than a backward glance, a regretful shrug and a rush to buy leafy bungalows in Tunbridge Wells.”