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Niall Ferguson's ignorant defence of British rule in India

Oddly for a historian, Ferguson doesn't appear to have taken much notice of history.

By Paul Cotterill Published 16 August 2012 12:38

Niall Ferguson with his wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Photograph: Getty Images.

Historian Niall Ferguson with his wife, the Dutch writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Photograph: Getty Images.

There were extensive power cuts across India in late July and early August. This created the opportunity for celebrity historian and recent Reith lecturer Professor Niall Ferguson to go on the attack. Ferguson opens his article in Newsweek with a reminder of how India used to be:

The British—slightly less than a thousand of them—used to govern India. Without air-conditioning....There was a reason the British moved their capital to the cool Himalayan hill station of Simla every summer. Maybe today’s Indian government should consider following their example.

He quotes Kipling approvingly, before going on to argue that it's all socialism's fault anyway:

India’s electricity grid has missed every capacity addition target since 1951. The system is so dilapidated that 27 percent of the power it carries is lost as a result of leakage and theft. Even today, 300 million people—a quarter of the population—don’t have access to the grid. That’s one reason the blackout didn’t spark more public ire.

The root of the problem is one of many leftovers of India’s post-independence experiment with socialism. Half of India’s power stations are coal-fired. Indian coal is produced by a state monopoly (Coal India). The price is controlled by the state, as is the price of electricity itself. The private firms running power stations are trapped between a lump of coal and a hard place. They cannot even trust the regional distributors to order the right amount of power.

Ah yes, if only Britain were still in charge, everyone in India would have aircon and iced tea on tap....

Oddly for a historian, though, Ferguson doesn't appear to have taken much notice of history. Britain governed India for 50 years beyond the first electricity supplies in the 1890s. In that 50 years to independence in 1947, a total of 1,500 of India's 640,000 villages were connected to the grid. During that time, pretty well all of Britain was electrified, along with the rest of Europe and America. After independence, this is what happened:

In other words, under the seven five year plans from 1947 to 1991, the Indian government brought electricity to roughly 320 times as many villages as British colonialism managed in a similar time span.

This is not to say that India does not face major challenges in ensuring secure power supplies in face of its burgeoning demand from its cities, and the ongoing need of the rural areas not yet reached. But for Ferguson to insinuate that Indians are in some way less capable than their colonial masters betrays a startling ignorance of what colonialism did to India in the first place.

Put simply, the British colonial powers had no interest in the Indian people. India was what Acemoglu and Robinson refer to in Why Nations Fail as an "extractive colony". As a result, the formation of the Indian state and its institutions was so severly stunted that, even today, India can no longer be seen as anything like a 'complete state' of the type that developed organically, over several centuries, in Europe and then America (see here for a fuller analysis of the case of India, based on Charles Tilly's groundbreaking work).

For Ferguson simply to set the long term consequences of colonialism to one side, in favour of a simplistic view of why India is where it is now - a paradox not of its own making - confirms his fall from decent historian to celebrity charlatan, interested more in soundbite opportunity than in real economics and history.

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Tags: India Niall Ferguson

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31 comments

Wed, 2012-08-22 05:31 — awryly

Does anyone, apart from Harvard University, take Ferguson seriously these days?

As someone once said, long ago, he was a "decent historian".

Which presumably meant that he then managed to keep his pants on.

Wed, 2012-08-22 05:30 — awryly

Does anyone, apart from Harvard University, take Ferguson seriously these days?

As someone once said, long ago, he was a "decent historian".

Which presumably meant that he then managed to keep his pants on.

Mon, 2012-08-20 16:18 — Sane (not verified)

Funny stuff!

Criticizing Niall, the man who rules criticism of the British Empire and has a reputation for thorough research and support for his claims, for not being critical enough or not being thorough in his research.

Let us all complain about Usain Bolt not being fast enough.

Sun, 2012-08-19 03:23 — Rick Mc Callister (not verified)

Fergie's mind has been hijacked by the US Tea-Partiers. He used to be the kind of conservative you read to sharpen your mind by seeing things skillfully presented from another perspective. Now, he's as batty as Sarah Palin. Maybe that's an object lesson for foreigners who come here to the US --sell your soul to the Devil and your brain will surely follow.

Sat, 2012-08-18 17:25 — Shobhan Saxena (not verified)

Forget history, this phoney historian doesn't even have his basic facts right. Ferguson says less than 1000 British used to rule India. The fact is that in 1947, when India got independence, there were more than 50,000 British -- many of them armed to the teeth armymen -- in India. And the British never moved the capital to the cool mountains. New Delhi, which is hot and dusty for most time of the year, was capital of British India; Simla, a hill-town in the Himalayas was just a summer retreat of the empire's top officers. I don't want know what does Ferguson read. I would like to know what's he smoking these days!

Sat, 2012-08-18 12:26 — Pavlova

"Ah yes, if only Britain were still in charge, everyone in India would have aircon and iced tea on tap...."

You are attacking a straw man. That is not remotely what he said.

He said:

"The root of the problem is one of many leftovers of India’s post-independence experiment with *socialism*. "

And

"Half of India’s power stations are coal-fired. Indian coal is produced by a *state monopoly* (Coal India). "

His argument is with socialist inefficiency not independence.

Fri, 2012-08-17 23:26 — Gideon Polya

Excellent article by Paul Cotterill. Professor Niall Ferguson has joined a long list of British historians with an "aren't we nice" view of perfidious Albion, notably in relation to the 2 century Indian Holocaust in which an estimated 1.8 billion Indians died from imposed deprivation under greedy and racist British rule.

A dozen years after the Battle of Plassey (1757) the Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 took 10 million lives and was followed by 2 centuries of massive famines, concluding with the WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which 6-7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons by the British with Australian complicity (see Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, now available for free perusal on the Web; Madhusree Mukerjee, “Churchill’s Secret War”; and Gideon Polya, “Bengal Famine. How Australia & UK killed 6-7 million Indians in WW2”, MWC News, 27 September 2011).

Back in 1947 the avoidable Indian death rate under the British was an horrendous 3.3% per year (similar to that of UK industrial workers in the mid-19th century) but that fell dramatically after Independence to 0.35% (2003) (see my book "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950", now available for free perusal on the Web). Professor Ferguson is evidently the darling of the ABC (Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC in more ways than just being a blatant national propaganda tool; see "Censorship by the ABC" and "Censorship by the BBC") and c/- the ABC we have also been fed Professor Ferguson's remarkable hypothesis that the Chinese economic miracle was due to Chinese Protestantism.

Fri, 2012-08-17 21:13 — Briain (not verified)

I think Ferguson has repeatedly made it very clear for a number of years that he is solely in the business of pandering to neo-c0nservatives and neo-liberals and has no interest in history. This is not a recent development. The methodology he displays in his popular books is about what you'd expect from a particularly sloppy undergraduate and he himself has referred to his own popular work as "edutainment at best". He actually makes the institutions he's associated with look bad. This is not about ideology but the basic skills a historians should possess such as properly referencing sources.

Fri, 2012-08-17 17:27 — hugh markey (not verified)

Excluding the USA and Russia, the self-sacrifice displayed by European nations possessing an empire was amazing.
Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Belgium were all weighed down by having to govern and rule far-off people in far-0ff lands.
No matter how far-flung these territorial possessions, these very same inperial nations never wavered in carrying out their bounden duty to their fellow-man and woman living within empires run by European kings, queens, or emperors or empresses - no matter how one spells it
Not worth a candle? One-way traffic? White Man's Burden?
The Kaiser's Germany and Hitler's Greater Reich did not think so. The Germans fought two world wars to get a piece of the cake and the European empires were equally determined to hold on to their 'fair' share of the spoils. The Empire of Nippon also had a go but it antagonized everyone and this put paid to dreams of empire.
None of these colonial masters is short of a bean or two and one can only surmise that having an empire was a nice little earner.
And neocolonialism is not a bad deal either - even the Chinese are learning.

Punkawallah

Fri, 2012-08-17 18:44 — Herbert (not verified)

Excellent piece of satire there. Just going far enough not to fall into complete absurdity.

Fri, 2012-08-17 15:15 — KumarA (not verified)

Paul,
Nice observation but you can't blame Ferguson. He is another phony historian, still nostalgic about gin and tonic. He represents a stream of stupid scholars who have now turned to polemics, in their search for British rule's relevance in India. In addition, his small country mentality is another obstacle hindering his global perspective.Indians are least bothered about these kind of people and their opinion.

You see, Selig Harrison, another buffoon predicted that Indian state would disintegrate by the end of 1960s. Similarly, Paul Ehrlich wrote India off and predicted that all Indians would die of starvation by 1980s...I can give you countless examples. Unfortunately for this stream of doomsayers, India not only survived 1960s/70s and 80s but has achieved phenomenal growth and development over the years. So much so that even after electricity, corruption and other problems, Indian economy clocked a growth rate of over 7 percent in 2011, compared to British Island's economy which did not even reach 1 percent. Moreover, Ferguson can't give the size of his economy as an argument because GDP of British Islands is now smaller than Indian one on PPP terms. Even in nominal terms, both GDPs are quite close.

So it's a matter of one more decade. By 2030s , people from island will be better aware of their size and significance in world politics.

Fri, 2012-08-17 11:36 — Hikaru22

I like Kipling. Yes, he probably wrote some silly things and some bad things, too. Show me the writer who hasn't. But 'Kim', 'The Jungle Books' and 'Plain Tales from The Hills' are all fabulous books. Kipling also mastered a form that many writers of prose fiction never do - that of poetry.

He ought not to be dismissed, nor underestimated, as a literary artist.

Thu, 2012-08-16 22:30 — MatthewWHall372 (not verified)

This is all a matter of scale. You can look at history at any magnification you want. Ferguson is looking at this on a longer scale than the author of this article. Ferguson is arguing that if British rule hadn't had the effect of unifying India, a unified India wouldn't exist. Yes, British rule had other demonstrably negative effects, but to argue that British rule hurt India is like arguing that a parent's particular approaching to raising a child hurt that child while ignoring the fact that the child wouldn't have existed in the first place if the parent hadn't had the child to begin with. British India is now three separate nations. Without british colonial rule that same area would be 20 different nations today, each much less influential and economically connected than those areas are within the large Indian nation we have today.

Thu, 2012-08-16 22:29 — MatthewWHall372 (not verified)

Thu, 2012-08-16 22:28 — MatthewWHall372 (not verified)

Thu, 2012-08-16 22:27 — MatthewWHall (not verified)

Fri, 2012-08-17 15:59 — Malachai (not verified)

Actually India was united by the Mughals and the Mauryan dynasty before the British united the Indian sub-continent (though to a lesser extent).

While the British did succeed in uniting most of India into one political unit, it would be naive and simplistic to believe that this political "unification" did anything to bring Indians closer together. In fact, the British did everything in their power to divide Indians employing the infamous "divide and rule" maxim to great effect. The results of this tactic are still evident today in the "divided" Bengal (between Hindus and Muslims), divisions based on caste (which the British exploited to prevent any kind of united front forming amongst the Indians) in the British Indian military, civil services etc. In fact it is their attempts at dividing the Indian population that eventually led Mohammad Ali Jinnah to demand a separate nation for Muslims in British India.

So, while the British did unite the landmass into one colony, the Indian people were much more divided under the British than before.

Sat, 2012-08-18 12:29 — Pavlova

I think that's a rather optimistic reading of the history of the Muslim imperial conquest of India. Thousands were slaughtered, the Hindu's holy shrines commandeered, mass emigrations, the foundations of centuries of bloodshed in The Hindu Kush.

Thu, 2012-08-16 20:23 — Kabir Gandhi Khan (not verified)

What a shameless use of a single graph to manipulate the reader. The graph shows the "number of villages" electrified till 2004 + The problem for the last 10 years across India is not of Electricity reaching villages because nearly all villages except those with negligibly low populations have some form of Electricity reaching them. The problem is of the number of hours of Electricity that they get.

Remember villagers are totally averse to paying anything more than a negligible amount for it. As far as capacity addition goes. More power has been added in the last 10 years or so than all the previous put together. Nearly.

What I am amused is that no one seems to have paid any attention to what Niall slyly put in his article. Only 1000 British could rule India for so long... This information is completely banned in India. 5-10 million people died in India's "non violent" freedom struggle trying to oust 1000 British. This includes 3-5 million people Gandhi murdered in the Bengal famine. Why then is Gandhi a great man? No one wants to know ?

Fri, 2012-08-17 15:37 — Malachai (not verified)

It's incredible how somebody can criticize others for being ignorant while exhibiting staggering amounts of ignorance themselves!

There is a reason you don't find the 1000 British ruled India because that figure is completely wrong! Besides, every Indian child who has gone to school knows why Gandhi was a great man, as does every Indian politician who has tried to build consensus on any issue in India today! The answer is obvious.

The correct figure, as quoted by even Gandhi was 100,000 British ruling 300 million Indians (as was the case in the 1940's).

Further, 100,000 British nationals ruled with the help of 1 odd million Indian troops which they divided into religion, racial and ethnic regiments so that they can use one group of people against another without revolt from their military!

Regarding the Bengal famine, it is quite profane to blame these deaths on Gandhi when it was Winston Churchill, British hero of WW2, who ignored Indian government requests for aid and diverted necessary grain supply from the civilian population to Europe in the war effort causing millions to die from starvation! Your attempt to put the blame on Gandhi is despicable to say the least.

Thu, 2012-08-16 19:57 — hugh markey (not verified)

Massive blackout hits California, Arizona and Mexico and we thought Enron was bad.
Incidentally, was the Enron era the start of the 'junk energy' grid? Price tag was everything irrespective of product or service. And Niall firmly believes 'free-enterprise' India will beat Red China economically in the race to be Asia's top dog. Sure is confusing.
Not certain sure, but can't bring to mind any mention of India's caste system in Niall's musings. As the Lemon Drop Kid would have it 'that's a lot of weight to carry!'.

Pukka Sahib

Thu, 2012-08-16 19:57 — hugh markey (not verified)

Pukka Sahib

Thu, 2012-08-16 19:09 — Benjamin Rae (not verified)

You wonder if he really believes this biased garbage or if he's just writing it to get academic funding/ approval from wealthy and powerful

Thu, 2012-08-16 18:35 — Steve AM (not verified)

Dosen’t parts of the USA have black outs due to old antiquated infrastructure?

Thu, 2012-08-16 18:22 — P.H.R.Virendra (not verified)

A historian like Ferguson would do well to appreciate the importance of being balanced and factually correct in expressing opinions.

If India is that bad a place how come International capital and world powers want a slice of this market. The fact is that if it is not for countries like India and china western world would have collapsed for want of consumers and low cost producers.

This is the result of having a post modern mindset oblivious to the sensitivities of worlds which are different from self.

Thu, 2012-08-16 14:55 — Amy Cross (not verified)

Very good article Paul Cotterill.....Keep it up

Thu, 2012-08-16 13:44 — plain john smith (not verified)

The population of the sub continent qunitupled under British rule. I can't see India having a space programme without the history of the Raj. If the colonial authorities had so little interest in the natives, why did they bother outlawing wife burning, child brides thuggery, banditry and getting themselves killed keeping out Afghan marauders? British rule was far superior to the Mughal or earlier Islamic rule which preceded it.

Fri, 2012-08-17 15:49 — Malachai (not verified)

While the British did impose many laws that they saw as "civilizing the natives", their campaign in Afghanistan was certainly not one of them!

The primary reason the British ventured into the Afghan frontier was to check the Russian Empire which they saw as having designs on their "Indian" colony. Afghanistan was wilderness ruled by tribes with no agriculture, no industry and no minerals to exploit and considering the wealth and resources India provided, the empire's move toward Afghanistan was purely strategic in nature.

The Islamic rule that preceded the British imposed Persian ideals and Islamic values on the Indian population for nearly 1700 years. The British overturned this and imposed Western education and British values on the Indian population for 200 years. To say that British rule was superior is somewhat defensible but only because Islamic rule and values were inferior to British values and the skills they brought Indians. Indeed without access to British universities and Western ideals of liberty and freedom that the Indian elites and educated middle class were taught to respect, India would not be the secular democracy it is today. In that respect, British rule was indeed "superior" but unlike the previous generations of Islamic rule that made India their home and sought to reshape it to suit their sensibilities and desires, the British were content to take all they could and turn India into as profitable a colony as possible in their global trading empire to the detriment of the locals.

Sat, 2012-08-18 12:41 — Pavlova

All international empires function to the detriment of the locals. Don't you think that the golden age of the Muslims owed something to them comandeering all the wealth and knowledge of their colonies?

And it doesn't just work at the international level, the British workers and soldiers were exploited every bit as much as Indian workers and soldiers to sustain that relationship. All the millions who slaved in mines and factories and lived in slums, and all the millions in taxes.

And let's not forget that the ruling classes of Britain were not even British, but the descendants of Norman conquerors from previous empires who still to this day have not intermarried with the locals. Why do you think all the upper classes have dark hair and all the poor have fair and red hair?

Britain was just one of their colonies, and the British people have been royally screwed because of it. They've now become home to sll the people the aristos dished out passports to, and have invested far more in India than they ever received from it.