What methods did Europeans use to colonize and maintain power and authority in South Asia

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Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers.

There was no one process of decolonization. In some areas, it was peaceful, and orderly. In many others, independence was achieved only after a protracted revolution. A few newly independent countries acquired stable governments almost immediately; others were ruled by dictators or military juntas for decades, or endured long civil wars. Some European governments welcomed a new relationship with their former colonies; others contested decolonization militarily. The process of decolonization coincided with the new Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and with the early development of the new United Nations. Decolonization was often affected by superpower competition, and had a definite impact on the evolution of that competition. It also significantly changed the pattern of international relations in a more general sense.

The creation of so many new countries, some of which occupied strategic locations, others of which possessed significant natural resources, and most of which were desperately poor, altered the composition of the United Nations and political complexity of every region of the globe. In the mid to late 19th century, the European powers colonized much of Africa and Southeast Asia. During the decades of imperialism, the industrializing powers of Europe viewed the African and Asian continents as reservoirs of raw materials, labor, and territory for future settlement. In most cases, however, significant development and European settlement in these colonies was sporadic. However, the colonies were exploited, sometimes brutally, for natural and labor resources, and sometimes even for military conscripts. In addition, the introduction of colonial rule drew arbitrary natural boundaries where none had existed before, dividing ethnic and linguistic groups and natural features, and laying the foundation for the creation of numerous states lacking geographic, linguistic, ethnic, or political affinity.

During World War II Japan, itself a significant imperial power, drove the European powers out of Asia. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, local nationalist movements in the former Asian colonies campaigned for independence rather than a return to European colonial rule. In many cases, as in Indonesia and French Indochina, these nationalists had been guerrillas fighting the Japanese after European surrenders, or were former members of colonial military establishments. These independence movements often appealed to the United States Government for support.

While the United States generally supported the concept of national self-determination, it also had strong ties to its European allies, who had imperial claims on their former colonies. The Cold War only served to complicate the U.S. position, as U.S. support for decolonization was offset by American concern over communist expansion and Soviet strategic ambitions in Europe. Several of the NATO allies asserted that their colonial possessions provided them with economic and military strength that would otherwise be lost to the alliance. Nearly all of the United States’ European allies believed that after their recovery from World War II their colonies would finally provide the combination of raw materials and protected markets for finished goods that would cement the colonies to Europe. Whether or not this was the case, the alternative of allowing the colonies to slip away, perhaps into the United States’ economic sphere or that of another power, was unappealing to every European government interested in postwar stability. Although the U.S. Government did not force the issue, it encouraged the European imperial powers to negotiate an early withdrawal from their overseas colonies. The United States granted independence to the Philippines in 1946.

However, as the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union came to dominate U.S. foreign policy concerns in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations grew increasingly concerned that as the European powers lost their colonies or granted them independence, Soviet-supported communist parties might achieve power in the new states. This might serve to shift the international balance of power in favor of the Soviet Union and remove access to economic resources from U.S. allies. Events such as the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Netherlands (1945–50), the Vietnamese war against France (1945–54), and the nationalist and professed socialist takeovers of Egypt (1952) and Iran (1951) served to reinforce such fears, even if new governments did not directly link themselves to the Soviet Union. Thus, the United States used aid packages, technical assistance and sometimes even military intervention to encourage newly independent nations in the Third World to adopt governments that aligned with the West. The Soviet Union deployed similar tactics in an effort to encourage new nations to join the communist bloc, and attempted to convince newly decolonized countries that communism was an intrinsically non-imperialist economic and political ideology. Many of the new nations resisted the pressure to be drawn into the Cold War, joined in the “nonaligned movement,” which formed after the Bandung conference of 1955, and focused on internal development.

The newly independent nations that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s became an important factor in changing the balance of power within the United Nations. In 1946, there were 35 member states in the United Nations; as the newly independent nations of the “third world” joined the organization, by 1970 membership had swelled to 127. These new member states had a few characteristics in common; they were non-white, with developing economies, facing internal problems that were the result of their colonial past, which sometimes put them at odds with European countries and made them suspicious of European-style governmental structures, political ideas, and economic institutions. These countries also became vocal advocates of continuing decolonization, with the result that the UN Assembly was often ahead of the Security Council on issues of self-governance and decolonization. The new nations pushed the UN toward accepting resolutions for independence for colonial states and creating a special committee on colonialism, demonstrating that even though some nations continued to struggle for independence, in the eyes of the international community, the colonial era was ending.

In our tech-obsessed world, many tend to believe that military superiority is largely the product of superior military technology: The more advanced a country’s missile force, the more likely it is to prevail in a military confrontation in the 21st century. While this is certainly correct up to a point, we often tend to neglect a more mundane and less exciting component of guaranteeing a military force’s superiority over an adversary: military drills.

Today, we take intense close-order and extended-order (combat) drills in militaries across the world for granted. However, military drilling has been a relatively modern invention. First introduced by the ancient Romans in training their legionnaires, it was largely forgotten until the 16th century when it was rediscovered by Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1567-1625) who laid the foundations for modern routines of army drills.

Trying to beat the Spanish Empire in the Low Countries, Maurice introduced systematic drills on the basis of Roman precedents, endlessly forcing his soldiers to load and fire their matchlock muskets (42 separate, successive moves) in unison. Maurice also regularized marching, enabling his soldiers to maintain close-order formation even on the move. By keeping in step, his soldiers were able to advance simultaneously with every man ready to fire at the same time.

In addition, Maurice divided his army up into smaller tactical units based on the maniples of Roman legions. By doing so he created battalions of 550 men subdivided into companies and platoons, with each unit capable of executing orders in unison based on a single command. Furthermore, by perfecting the countermarch, he enhanced his infantry’s firepower with the introduction of volley fire.

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While the Japanese Shogun Oda Nobunaga had used volley fire at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575 already and Ottoman Janissaries had fired in volleys in 1605 and conducted close-order drills, as the historian Cathan J. Nolan points out in his book The Allure of Battle, it was the superior close-order training of European soldiers based on Maurice’s model, rather than firepower alone, that ultimately made European armies such a deadly opponent once they were sent overseas to conquer territories for kings and queens.

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During the 17th, 18th, and for the first six decades of the 19th century it was the determined charge of well-disciplined European-trained soldiers with bayonets fixed on their muskets in massed formation, often preceded by volley fire at close range, that was perhaps the single most important tactical factor in deciding the outcome of battles in Asia. The bayonet charge in particular, dependent on its mass impact and shock, could only succeed with superbly drilled troops.

“It is fair to say that a triangular-bladed socket knife rather than British guns and superior British military technology conquered the British Raj,” I noted in a piece for The Diplomat Magazine last year. Only with the introduction of the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket in 1856 did military technology, based on the disciplined delivery of volley fire, became more important than the blade in the conquest of India. As I explained:

During many decisive engagements in the 18th and first half of the 19th century, Indian armies were able to deploy superior firepower. For example, during the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British East India Company fielded eight cannons, whereas the Mughal Empire went into the fight with 53 artillery pieces, the majority of superior caliber to the British guns. When the city of Seringapatam fell in 1799, during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, more than 900 canons were captured by the British East India Company while the British forces and their allies had less than a hundred.

The most formidable enemy that the British encountered during the 19th century was the Sikh Empire. It was their artillery in particular that made the Sikhs such a dangerous enemy. By the time the first Anglo-Sikh War broke out in 1845, the Sikhs were able to field 250 modern artillery pieces. “Sikh artillery was formidable, its accurate and unremitting fire a grim feature of both Sikh Wars,” according to [the historian] Richard Holmes. Indeed, the Battle of Chillianwala during the Second Anglo-Sikh War was the bloodiest battle fought in the history of the British East India Company. Most British casualties occurred during a head-on assault of British infantry against Sikh guns. The well-trained Sikh gunners fired grapeshot at the attackers and held their position. The British infantry had to halt its attack and retreat.

Ultimately, the British, however, prevailed. “Good soldiers don’t think, they just obey,” as the former British soldier-turned-mercenary Daniel Dravot said in the movie adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s novella The Man Who Would Be King. While this certainly no longer holds true for the modern battlefield, the example of Maurice of Nassau and European armies in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries should serve as an important reminder that military technology alone will seldom lead to success on the battlefield and that our modern-day obsessions with weapons systems when discussing defense issues is perhaps too one-sided.