BANGLADESH:
THE BOOSTER
ENGINE
IQBAL Z. QUADIR
Dans 1969, the whole world was mesmerized when three US astronauts made a
successful voyage to the moon and back. The booster engine that lifted the
rocket so it could break free of the earth’s atmosphere was jettisoned and left in
the Atlantic Ocean. The astronauts’ landing on the moon, their return to earth,
and many other associated events captured the world’s imagination, but the
booster vanished from the scene.
My purpose in this essay is to highlight
the historic role of Bangladesh—along
with the historical province of Bengal, le
eastern two-thirds of which constitutes
the nation of Bangladesh—as an econom-
ic “booster engine” that benefitted many
of today’s most powerful countries, par-
ticularly Great Britain. This image con-
trasts starkly with the longstanding, now
outdated, portrayal of Bangladesh as an
economic “basket case.” The nation’s past
role as an economic booster can shed
some light on how Bangladesh quietly
transformed itself from a basket case to a
showcase in the 50 years since its inde-
pendence.
I begin by going back 300 years to the
central role Bengal played during a piv-
otal period of history. In the 17th and 18th
centuries, Bengal was among the most
prosperous places on earth. The name
Bangladesh was used in Bengal for several
centuries before 1971, when the country
gained independence, but it entered the
world’s vocabulary only at that time,
which contributed to the new nation’s
dissociation from the rich history of
Bengal. Aujourd'hui, Bangladesh conjures up
images of famine and abject poverty,
which were a significant and tragic part of
its history. This difficult period began in
1757, but prior to that, the territory of
present-day Bangladesh was the core of
Bengal’s agricultural and manufacturing
success. The remaining one-third of
Bengal is now West Bengal, one of India’s
28 states.
In this essay, I briefly address the
apparent clash between the thesis that
Bengal boosted the West and the theory
that the Western nations got rich through
their superior institutions and innova-
tion. I then describe six ways that Bengal,
including the large area that is now
Bangladesh, contributed to the develop-
ment of the West. I conclude by briefly
highlighting a key reason Bangladesh is
ascending anew today.
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ON THE CONSENSUS VIEW
OF THE WEST’S PROGRESS
Among Western historians and econo-
mists, the consensus view is that the West
grew rich due to its distinct institutions of
property rights and its capacity for inno-
vation. Institutions of property rights
refers to the rule of law wherein an eco-
nomic producer can generally be assured
that the value he or she creates will not be
forcibly taken away. Par exemple, Nobel
laureate Douglass North (1990) famously
asserted in his seminal work, Institutions,
Institutional Change and Economic
Performance, que
the central puzzle of human histo-
ry is to account for the divergent
path of historical change. Comment
have societies diverged? . . . Le
answer hinges on the difference
between institutions and organiza-
tions and the interactions between
them that shape the direction of
le
changement.
Institutions, together with the
standard constraints of economic
théorie, determine the opportuni-
ties in a society. Organizations are
created to take advantage of those
opportunities, et, as the organi-
zations evolve, they alter institu-
tion. (6-7)
institutional
dans
More recently,
their widely
acclaimed book Why Nations Fail, Daron
Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012)
explained the success or failures of
nations based on inclusive or extractive
political institutions. They state that
“England was unique among nations . . .
[that established] institutions that would
have profound implications not only for
economic incentives and prosperity, mais
aussi [pour] who would reap the benefits of
continue:
prosperity”
“Countries become failed states . . .
because of the legacy of extractive institu-
tion, which concentrate power and
wealth in the hands of those controlling
the state, opening the way for unrest,
strife, and civil war” (376).
(102). Ils
I concur that the West, particularly
Holland and Great Britain, gradually
developed such institutions more effec-
tively than the rest of the world, begin-
ning roughly 800 years ago. Examples
first emerged in Great Britain around
1180, when Common Law was intro-
duced, followed by the Magna Carta in
1215, a document that played an impor-
tant role in curtailing arbitrary monarchi-
cal power. These gave rise to clearer prop-
erty rights, an ever-stronger Parliament,
and further curtailment of arbitrary
pouvoir. These political developments,
combined with commercial progress, led
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Iqbal Z. Quadir is a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He founded
Grameenphone Limited in Bangladesh in the 1990s, an enterprise that now serves 80 million
mobile phone subscribers. Dans 2007, he founded and directed the MIT Legatum Center for
Development and Entrepreneurship. As an MIT professor of practice, Quadir taught and mentored
à propos 200 MIT students to pursue entrepreneurial careers in low-income countries. Since 2001,
Quadir has taught at Harvard and MIT and has lectured at numerous other universities.
© 2021 Iqbal Z. Quadir
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
to more effective laws that allowed inno-
vations to flourish. Par conséquent, les gens
of Western countries enjoyed greater
freedom and generally lived better lives
than people elsewhere at the time, though
of course any ideal of absolute equity or
social perfection was not achieved. I will
refer to the various internal drivers of
such social progress as institutional devel-
opments.
From a global perspective, cependant,
this is only half the story. Let me explain
with an analogy. Imagine that a lioness
kills a deer outside her den and then
shares her kill with her cubs inside the
den; she maintains separate, simultane-
ous, and symbiotic codes of conduct that
are differentially applied “inside” and
“outside.”1. In short, the gentler inside
rules are buttressed by the resources taken
by force from outside. While Acemoglu
and Robinson (2012) may be correct in
saying that the presence of inclusive ver-
sus extractive institutions is critical to
societal outcomes in the long run, et
they may recognize that individuals raised
in inclusive environments may subse-
quently set up extractive arrangements,
they overlook the separate, simultaneous,
and symbiotic relationships existing
between inclusive “inside” and extractive
“outside” over a long period of time.
North also seems to overlook such sepa-
rate,
symbiotic
“inside” with “outside” (with very differ-
ent characters) that were the norm for
centuries, and which arguably still exist
today in more subtle forms.
simultaneous,
et
It is easy for those living inside not to
see the violence on which their way of life
depends. Had a cub who always lived
inside the den written about his mother,
he would, most likely, overlook his moth-
er’s predation. We can now move from
this animal to a human analogy. A man
who burgles houses outside his own
neighborhood and then uses the money
to renovate his own house may well be
seen by his neighbors as an upstanding
citizen. Unless a common watchman
steps in who is motivated and powerful
enough to bring both neighborhoods to
comparable conditions, this burglary can
continue. Alternativement, we could also
think of another scenario for sustained
burglary: imagine that a burglar, who is
empowered by the prosperity and the
consequent better technologies of his
“inside” neighborhood, somehow man-
ages to become the watchman of another
neighborhood (the “outside”). The bur-
glar can then extract from that “outside’
neighborhood on an ongoing basis, possi-
bly capitalizing on the institutional void
that exists there. Given that he is now the
watchman of the “outside,” he has the
power to introduce codes conduct on the
“outside” as he likes, possibly different
codes from those of his “inside” neighbor-
hood. This is how different codes of con-
duct can become embedded in laws and
institutions, legitimizing this separation.
In this manner, the very institutions that
benefit the inside can end up harming the
outside.
The distinction between inside and
outside can become so natural, especially
over time, that it becomes a part of our
mental space and culture. The Western
champion of liberty, John Stuart Mill,
worked for the East India Company (EIC)
pour 35 years and received multiple promo-
tion. Whatever his justifications for this
employment, he must have seen the
“inside” and “outside” differently and rec-
ognized that people in Great Britain
enjoyed far greater liberty than people in
India, including Bengal. Mill knew that
India was being ruled by a private compa-
ny that was making money for its share-
holders and employees, including him-
soi. In other words, even the most pro-
found Western thinkers can become so
engrossed in their theories on the West as
generally presented to Western audiences
that they treat the outside only as an after-
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
thought, even when that outside fuels the
economy of the inside.
Many serious economic thinkers
have the perspective that the accumula-
tion of capital in earlier eras was preda-
tion. These thinkers include Karl Marx
and Thorstein Veblen.2. Marx recognized
the “primitive accumulation” of capital
that had taken place through “conquest,
enslavement, robbery, briefly force” prior
to the modern-day capitalism. (Tucker,
éd.. 1972, 432) Veblen also has a similar
view as to how capital was originally gath-
ered (Veblen 1994). This coercive capital
accumulation could be an earlier-stage
phenomenon that was generally con-
tained through the institutional develop-
ments mentioned above. But the underly-
ing predation-oriented human instincts,
if their existence is accepted, could not
possibly be eliminated. Granted, là
would be some people who would have
their inner moral sense activated and they
would refrain from predation. But some
would behave otherwise and resort to pre-
dation. Donc, when people subject to
institutional developments (for example,
those from Britain) planted themselves
“outside” (for example, in Bengal), their
predatory instincts would kick in, at least
in some cases, especially if they managed
to rule over the “outside” and get to deter-
mine what kind of institutions, if any,
would be applicable there.
Contemporary
Sven
Beckert claims that coercion is what
allows two distinct worlds to exist simul-
taneously. Beckert (2014) calls this “war
capitalism” and claims that it gave rise to
modern-day global capitalism:
historian
War capitalism relied on the
capacity of rich and powerful
Europeans to divide the world into
an “inside” and an “outside.” The
“inside” encompassed the laws and
institutions, and customs of the
mother country, where the state
enforced order ruled. The “out-
side,” by contrast, was character-
ized by imperial domination, le
expropriation of vast territories,
decimation of indigenous people,
theft of their resources, enslave-
ment, and domination of vast
tracts of land by private capitalists
with little effective oversight by
distant European states. In these
imperial dependencies, the rules of
the inside did not apply. Là,
masters trumped states, violence
defied the laws, and bold physical
coercion by private actors remade
marchés. (38)
I believe this is an accurate description of
the rise of the West, including how Bengal
was forced to serve it. Institutional devel-
opments in Britain empowered its insid-
ers, who then used their power to usurp
and dominate the realms of outsiders who
may have remained weaker without com-
parable institutional developments. À
the same time, the insiders’ predatory
instincts as identified by Marx and Veblen
had not been extinguished by institution-
al developments. Beckert (2014) finds “a
peculiar relationship between . . . states
and capital owners.” (31). “Their commit-
ment to armed trade, industrial espi-
onage, prohibition, restrictive trade regu-
lations, domination of territories, captur-
ing of labor, removal of indigenous
inhabitants, and state-sponsored creation
of territories . . . [était] then left to the far-
reaching domination of capitalists who
had created a new economic order” (53).
Ce
à
Bangladesh (along with the larger histori-
cal Bengal), more closely than the simplis-
tic view that the West got rich through
better institutions and innovations.
captures what happened
European aggression abroad was rec-
ognized by Alexander Hamilton who, dans
1787, appealed to 13 North American
states to establish a stronger federal gov-
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
ernment in order to defend themselves
more effectively. Great Britain’s aggres-
sion was certainly one of the factors that
mobilized colonial leaders to write the US
Constitution. Hamilton wrote in The
Federalist Papers: Non. 11:
Europe, by her arms and by her
négociations, by force and by
fraud, a, in different degrees,
extended her dominion over them
tous. Africa, Asia, and America have
successively felt her domination.
The superiority she has long main-
tained has tempted her to plume
herself as the Mistress of the
Monde, and to consider the rest of
mankind as created for her benefit
. . . It belongs to us . . . to teach that
assuming brother, moderation.
Union will enable us to do it.
I believe the booster role played by Bengal
and Bangladesh can shed some revealing
light on this issue.
THE HISTORICAL SETTING
Bangladesh comprises about two-thirds
of the eastern part of ancient Bengal (62%
by land mass, 65% by population), lequel
was part of India until 1947. William
Dalrymple
le
region’s sources of wealth in the 17th cen-
tury:
summarizes
(2019)
dans
“[Bengal was] the finest and the
most
le
fruitful country
monde,” according to the French
traveler Francois Bernier. It was
one of “the richest most populous
and best cultivated countries,»
agreed the Scot Alexander Dow.
With a myriad of weavers—25,000
in Dhaka alone—and unrivalled
luxury textile production of silk
and woven muslin of fabulous del-
icacy, it was by the end of the sev-
enteenth century Europe’s single
most important supplier of goods
in Asia and much the wealthiest
region of the Mughal Empire, le
place fortunes could most easily be
made. (25-26)
Bengal had been a strong player in agri-
culture and fabric manufacturing since
ancient times, and these strengths attract-
ed the Dutch, French, Portuguese, et
English traders from at least the early 17th
century.3. Kolkata (formerly known as
Calcutta) became academically and cul-
turally prominent in the 1770s, overshad-
owing the eastern part of Bengal in those
respects. Cependant, the eastern part of
Bengal that makes up Bangladesh today
était, à l'époque, stronger in agriculture
and in the production of cotton fabrics.
This may have been attributable to the
region’s numerous rivers, particularly the
Padma (the Ganges in India), which flows
eastward as it goes south into the Bay of
Bengal. Since antiquity, the riverine char-
acter of Bengal had promoted a division
of labor—and thus a relatively more
sophisticated economy—by facilitating
internal trade, as Adam Smith recognized
(Sutherland 1993, 29-30). Because of the
importance of the eastern region of
Bengal, Dhaka (now the capital of
Bangladesh) was the political, commer-
cial, and manufacturing center. Dhaka
and the port city of Chittagong both have
a history that goes back at least a thou-
sand years.
For political reasons, the capital of
à
Bengal was moved westward
Murshidabad
dans 1702 and then to
Kolkata; both cities are in present day
West Bengal in India. After the conquest
of Bengal in 1757, the EIC made Kolkata
the capital of Bengal and of British India.
As the city that served the administrative,
academic, and cultural needs of British
India, Kolkata grew rapidly. Entre-temps,
Dhaka began to lose its luster in 1702
when it lost its status as the capital; its cot-
ton fabric production subsequently died
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
out under British rule. Cependant, Dhaka
became important again in 1905, quand
Bengal was divided into East and West
and Dhaka was made the capital of East
Bengal. The city experienced rapid growth
again after 1971, when it was made the
capital city of newly
independent
Bangladesh.
THE SIX BOOSTER ROLES
OF BANGLADESH
My definition of a booster is an actor that
plays a pivotal role in generating identifi-
able and substantial results at a meaning-
ful cost to itself. An object that simply
inspires is not a booster. Here I describe
six booster roles played by Bangladesh:
• Seeding a British Political Dynasty
• Constituting the Beginning the British
Empire beyond Its Émigré Countries
• Setting the Stage for the American
Revolution and Birth of the United
États
• Providing the Context for the British
Industrial Revolution
• Expanding and Defending the British
Empire
• Prompting the Development of
International Humanitarian Law
Seeding a British Political Dynasty
On December 31, 1599, Queen Elizabeth I
granted a royal charter to the EIC to trade
in Asia. This charter granted the company
exclusive rights within her realm but not
in Asia, where the EIC was competing
with Dutch, French, and other countries’
trading companies. En fait, when trade
with Bengal turned out to be extremely
lucrative, the EIC sometimes encountered
competition from its own enterprising
employees, who would desert the compa-
ny after arriving in Bengal and attempt to
trade on their own. At the time, Dhaka
was the capital of Bengal. Dans 1682, le
chief officer of the EIC in Bengal went to
the court of the Mughal governor in
Dhaka to seek both tax relief and help in
stopping these interlopers. The governor
was not persuaded, and the Mughal rulers
expressed their desire to be a “neutral
broker between different groups of its
subjects” (Wilson 2016, 29).
“In the 1680s, the most important of
ces
‘interlopers’ was Thomas Pitt”
(Wilson 2016, 28). He left Bengal “with
ships stuffed with goods to sell in
England. He reached England in February
1683 where the profits from his trade
enabled him to buy a manor in Wiltshire,
and then the parliamentary seat of
Salisbury” (43). The fine Pitt paid for
breaking the EIC’s monopoly was simply
a cost of doing business; although he had
subsequently gone to India to accumulate
more wealth, the profits from his enter-
prise in Bengal enabled Pitt to lay the
foundation for a political dynasty. His son
Robert (1680-1727) became a member of
parliament, and his grandson, William
Pitt the Elder (1708-1778), became prime
minister of Britain. Cependant, Pitt the
Elder did not like being reminded of the
origins of his family’s wealth (Dalrymple
2019, 223), an interesting example of how
boosters get forgotten. Incidentally, Pitt
the Elder was the prime minister of
Britain when the EIC took over Bengal in
1757, the year Pitt the Younger (Thomas
Pitt’s great grandson) was born; il
became prime minister of Britain in 1784.
His brother John fought for the British in
the American War of Independence and
served in several senior military and polit-
ical roles, including Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
Trade in Bengal, whether through the
EIC or as an interloper, enriched many
people, including Britain’s politically
powerful families. The EIC’s 2,000 share-
holders were largely among the British
power elite. At what cost was Bengal such
a key booster for the fortunes of out-
siders? The cost became apparent over the
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
long run, as the EIC, greatly enriched by
its trade with Bengal, strove to control
interlopers and push out other European
trading companies, and eventually ended
up with political control of Bengal.
Constituting the Beginning the
British Empire beyond Its Émigré
Countries
The EIC began doing business in Bengal
in the 1630s and enriching its sharehold-
ers in Britain. Although the Mughal
empire had been declining in the 17th and
18th centuries, the rulers of various
provinces, including the Nawab (gover-
nor) of Bengal, never suspected that a
trading company could ever become a
sovereign ruler. The lack of appreciation
of the threat the EIC posed helped it
become stronger. The company estab-
lished a military presence in Bengal as
early as 1696, when Mughal Emperor
Aurangzeb allowed it to build Fort
William in Kolkata.
To be sure, EIC officers were frustrat-
ed by not having complete control of the
lucrative goods being produced in Bengal.
The company had to pay taxes on what
was exported from Bengal to England and
had to compete with other European
companies, which led to small skirmishes
and an exchange of insults with the local
authorities. “The idea that East India
Company should conquer land in India
did not begin in England. It started
among officers in Bengal itself, frustrated
with fractious relationship with Mughal
authorities” (Wilson 2016, 44). In short,
the British company did not have formal
ambitions to take over Bengal, et le
Bengalis did not appear to consider that a
possibility—until it was too late.
The EIC attempted to build more
forts, which irked the Nawab, bien que
these forts were only good for defense,
not conquest. More importantly, it took
four to six months to travel by sea from
Britain to Bengal, which made it nearly
impossible for the EIC to bring an army
from Europe. The company also could not
recruit too many local mercenaries, as any
attempt to do so would have been noticed
and countered by the Nawab; his army
had close to 100,000 men. The EIC offi-
cers’ frustrations went on until 1756,
when Siraj-ud Dawla, the 24-year-old
grandson of Nawab Alivardi Khan (con-
sidered a wise ruler of Bengal from 1740-
1756), was crowned the new Nawab of
Bengal.
After an alleged exchange of insults
between EIC men and those of Siraj-ud
Dawla in late 1756, the impetuous young
Nawab wanted to teach the British a les-
son. He assembled a force of about 70,000
men and stormed Fort William. The EIC
à propos 250
force numbered only
(Dalrymple 2019, 100), and the young
Nawab succeeded in capturing the fort. UN
few months later, one Robert Clive, OMS
had distinguished himself within the
company for his bravery against the
French, made an attempt to take the fort
back. One early dawn in January 1757,
Clive ambushed the Nawab’s men and
managed to kill quite a few. This led the
Nawab to sign a ceasefire, as he apparent-
ly also was facing threats from the
Western provinces of India.
Jesse Norman (2013) provides a good
summary of what happened about six
months later:
[UN] natural troublemaker who had
been expelled by a succession of
English schools, Clive entered the
Company on the bottom rung in
the usual position of “writer” or
junior clerk . . . Dans 1757, [Clive
went on to defeat] the Nawab
directly at the battle of Plassey . . .
The battle of Plassey itself had been
less a military engagement than a
subtle process of dividing the
Nawab from his financial backers
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
and military commanders, in par-
ticular the army paymaster Mir
Jafar, who was bribed to defect at a
crucial moment. (106-07)
Wilson (2016) notes that the deal between
Clive and Mir Jafar “promised [to pay Mir
Jafar] more than twelve million rupees
[₤158 million in 2016 prices] in supposed
recompense” (106).
The money, of course, came from
Bengal’s treasury. Norman (2013) writes
that “Bengal alone had forty million peo-
ple at this time, or four times the entire
population of Great Britain; it was now
effectively controlled by few hundred
Company men . . . [who also took] control
of the entire tax revenue of Bengal,
amounting to some ₤33 million per year”
(107). Nawab Siraj-ud Dowla was killed,
and Mir Jafar became the puppet Nawab.
Bengal’s conquest by the EIC gave
rise to a new form of imperialism. Le
“empire” was not made up of British émi-
grés in overseas colonies but, rather,
involved dominion over far distant peo-
ples and cultures. En outre, at least
during the first 100 années (that is, jusqu'à
1858), this new kind of empire was being
ruled by a private company—the EIC. Le
EIC’s shareholders had a great hold on
the British government. Cependant, le
British government itself was not ruling
Bengal or other parts of India during that
temps. Smith called this bizarre merchant-
sovereign combination “a strange absurd-
ity” (Sutherland 1993, 368) and expound-
ed on its pernicious effects in The Wealth
of Nations. Frankopan (2015) explains:
The effective conquest of Bengal
marked a signal moment in so far
as it changed Britain from being a
country that supported colonies of
its own émigrés to becoming a
domain that ruled other peoples . .
. Britain found itself administrat-
ing peoples who had laws and cus-
toms of their own, and having to
work out what to borrow from new
communautés, what to lend—and
how to build a platform that was
workable and sustainable. Un
empire was being born. (279)
Setting the Stage for the American
Revolution and Birth of the United
États
The conquest of Bengal in 1757 was a
massive catastrophe for the province and
had far-reaching consequences interna-
tionally. “Over ₤2 million—tens of bil-
lions in today’s terms—had been distrib-
uted [from the Bengal treasury] as ‘pre-
sents’, almost all of it finding its way into
the pockets of EIC employees locally . . .
Par 1770, the price of grain had been driv-
en higher and higher, with catastrophic
results as famine kicked in. The death toll
was estimated in the millions; even the
governor-general declared that a third of
the population had died” (Frankopan
2015, 277).
Even if the famine killed only one-
tenth of the Bengal’s population (a far
more conservative estimate than the gov-
ernor-general’s one-third), it means that 4
million out of 40 million people perished
during that terrible calamity. Although
drought and crop failure had sparked the
famine, a contributing factor was the
administrative chaos resulting from a pri-
vate British company attempting to rule a
province with a population four times
larger than Great Britain’s. Another con-
tributing factor was the ₤2 million report-
ed above by Frankopan were taken by the
EIC officers—more accurately, stolen—
which resulted in the breakdown of the
company’s internal control. As a refer-
ence point, the British government’s
annual budget at that time was about ₤10
million.4.
The crisis was too big to be ignored in
Britain, as Lock (2006) explains: “In 1767
no one had expressed much concern
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
about the inhabitants of Bengal. Ce
indifference changed, as information
flowed into Britain about India itself, et
particularly about the British rule in
Bengal” (32). The year of reckoning was
1773, when the British Parliament adopt-
ed the Regulating Act to find ways to
bring the EIC under direct parliamentary
supervision.
The act, cependant, was not enough;
the EIC in fact needed to be rescued. Le
loss of population in Bengal due to the
famine sharply shrank the province’s
economy. Output declined at a greater
rate than demand, and prices rose
sharply. These economic dislocations
caused EIC shares to lose value and the
entreprise
bankrupt.
nearly went
Cependant, too many powerful people had
a stake in the company to let it fail. Le
EIC “had been capitalized by . . . presque
2,000 shareholders, heavily drawn from
the country’s [Britain’s] political and
commercial elite . . . These men used their
significant political influence to defend
the Company’s commercial monopoly
and to defeat various attempts at regula-
tion” (Norman 2013, 106). Given the
powerful interests who had invested in
the EIC, the British government decided
to save it. This required a great deal of
money, and the British looked to the
North American colonies as a source of
cash, as Frankopan (2015) explains:
“When Lord North’s government passed
the Tea Act in 1773, it thought it had
found an elegant solution to pay for the
EIC rescue, while also bringing at least
part of the tax regime of the American
colonies closer into line with Britain’s. Il
provoked fury among settlers across the
Atlantic” (278).5.
In the North American colonies, le
new tax “was a symbol of all that was
wrong with Britain itself, where the high-
est levels of society were in thrall to the
greedy, self-serving
interest groups
enriching themselves at the expense of the
common people” (Frankopan 2015, 278).
Resistance among the colonists culminat-
ed in the Boston Tea Party, a key event in
Colonial America, when local activists
dumped the tea cargo of three ships into
Boston Harbor. Frankopan (2015) briefly
explains how the American Revolution
stemmed in part from British efforts to
manage the situation in Bengal:
Seen from an American perspec-
tive, the chain of events that led to
the Declaration of Independence
of the United States had a very
American context. But from a
wider vantage point, the causes can
be traced back to the tentacles of
British power extending even fur-
ther . . . London was trying to bal-
ance competing demands on
opposite sides of the world, et
attempting to use revenues gener-
ated by taxes in one location to
fund expenditures in another,
leading to disillusionment, dissat-
isfaction—and revolt. The pursuit
of profits had been relentless,
which in turn had spurred a grow-
ing sense of self-confidence and
arrogance . . . As those in [le]
American colonies recognized,
there was ultimately little differ-
ence between being a subject in
one territory controlled
depuis
Britain rather than another. If
Bengalis could starve to death, why
not those living in the colonies,
whose rights seemed no better or
greater? It was time to go it alone.
(278-79)
From the British perspective, it was better
to cut their losses in North America and
attend to Bengal; the latter was a source of
revenue as opposed to a drain on
ressources. As Peter Thomas (1988) notes,
depuis 1763 à 1775, “the average cost of
keeping the British army in North
America was £389,752 per year . . . Ce
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
was a heavy burden for the British taxpay-
er, not far off 4 percent of the whole
national budget” (516).
The connection between the catastro-
phe in Bengal and Britain’s loss of the
American colonies in the 1770s was
acknowledged at the time. In a speech to
the House of Commons on July 30, 1784,
only three years after British forces sur-
rendered
to George Washington,
Edmund Burke commented, “We had
already lost one empire, peut-être, as a
punishment for the cruelties authorized
in another” (Kirk 1997, 106).
Providing the Context for the
British Industrial Revolution
The British Industrial Revolution, gener-
ally recognized to have taken place from
1760 à 1820, has many complex features.
The common man’s impression is that the
new era was caused by the move from
manual power to the steam engine and
other new technologies. Cependant, ce
notion is problematic, as it has been
found that “steam power started to have a
meaningful impact on aggregate growth
only in [le] 1830s” (Frey 2019, 136)—
que
est, after the British Industrial
Revolution had already taken place. Un
also could argue from a different angle
that Britain experienced the Industrial
Revolution first because it had the most
advanced institutional developments, comme
described above. Sorting out these differ-
ent explanations of the origins of the
Industrial Revolution is in itself a sub-
stantial topic.
For my purposes, I find it sufficient to
embrace noted British historian Eric
Hobsbawm’s (1999) perspective on this
topic. In his book Industry and Empire:
The Birth of the Industrial Revolution,
says
Hobsbawm writes,
Industrial Revolution says cotton . . . Le
British Industrial Revolution was by no
means only cotton, or Lancashire or even
“Whoever
textiles, and cotton lost its primacy within
it after a couple of generations. Yet cotton
was the pacemaker of industrial change,
and the basis of the first regions which
could not have existed but for industrial-
ization, and which expressed a new form
of society, industrial capitalism, based on
a new form of production, the ‘factory’”
(34).
Britain, of course, did not grow cot-
ton. When the EIC started going to
Bengal and other parts of Asia in the early
1600s, most Europeans did not even
know about cotton. They generally relied
on linen and wool. Historically, multiple
varieties of cotton were grown in loca-
tions around the world, India, Egypt, et
Mexico among them. This gave rise to
several centers of excellence in manufac-
turing cotton textiles. Bengal, particularly
Dhaka, was one such a center. The region
soon began to supply muslin, a sought-
after luxury since Roman times, à
Europe.
Making good use of Beckert’s (2015)
thorough research on the global history of
coton, I have identified six ways in which
Bengal boosted Britain’s cotton industry
et,
its
Industrial Revolution.
in effect, helped to spark
D'abord, Bengal exposed European
traders and merchants to muslin, one of
the highest quality cotton fabrics, lequel
created great demand for such fabrics in
Europe. For centuries, Dhaka “had been
the source of the world’s highest-quality
cottons. The East India company as early
comme 1621 imported an estimated fifty thou-
sand pieces of cotton goods into Britain.
plus tard, this number had
Forty years
increased a by a factor of five. Coton
cloths, in fact, became the company’s
most important trading good; par 1766
that cloth constituted more than 75 par-
cent of East India Company’s total
exports” from Asia to Europe (Beckert
2015, 33). As much larger quantities of
Indian cotton traveled to Europe, new
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
markets and fashions emerged. Beautiful
chintzes and muslins (a Dhaka specialty)
attracted the attention of the growing
class of Europeans who had the money to
purchase them and the desire to flaunt
their social status by wearing them. Comme
Indian cottons became ever more fash-
ionable in the eighteenth century, le
desire to replace these imports was a pow-
erful incentive to ramp up cotton produc-
tion in England and eventually to revolu-
tionize it (35).
Deuxième, the growing demand for cot-
ton in Europe expanded English industri-
alists’ desire to acquire the know-how
needed to establish facilities in England.
The EIC made every effort to extend its
control over the entire textile supply
chain, including manufacturing process-
es. In the late 17th century, the English
merchants had subcontracted to the local
traders 8-10 months before their desired
dates of fabric delivery; the local traders
then advanced money to weavers convey-
ing the specifications of the English mer-
chants. The finished cloth then “travelled
the same chain back to the English factory
in Dhaka where merchants graded and
prepared it for shipment.” (Beckert 2015,
34). Beckert (2015) explains:
The power of European merchants
in India was hence significant, mais
far from all-encompassing: Le
English complained that the sys-
tem was frequently disrupted by
“Arabians and Moguls who trade
in Dacca [Dhaka] . . .” as well as by
the “contest, trouble, and charge”
of the weavers and local banias . . .
The insertion of armed European
merchants into the Asian trade . . .
slowly marginalized these older
réseaux, as they muscled the once
dominant Indian and Arab traders
out of many intercontinental mar-
kets . . . By the 1730s, the Dhaka
factory . . . hosted a contingent of
military personnel and arms to
protect its interests. (34-35, 43)
Troisième, another key step in acquiring
the desired know-how about cotton pro-
duction was to learn about the specific
weaves and associated technologies, les deux
areas in which Bengal excelled. “By the
mid-eighteenth century, Bengal supplied
more than one-third of the cotton cloth
used in Europe, and was a key innovator
in manufacturing” (Novak 1993, 57).
“Manufacturers in Europe felt more and
more pressure to appropriate these
[Bengali] technologies in order to com-
pete both on price and on quality with
Indian producers. Europe’s movement
toward manufacturing cotton textiles was
based, in fact, on what might be consid-
ered one of history’s most dramatic
espionage”
instances of
(Beckert 2015, 49). Novak (1993) explains
that the Europeans made a conscious
effort to learn this process. A French trav-
eler “admired in 1807 the qualities of
Indian yarn and cloth (‘a degree of perfec-
tion far beyond what we are familiar with
in Europe’) and once again reported in
minute detail on Indian manufacturing
techniques, in the hopes of enabling
French artisans to copy them: ‘All the
weaving combs in France should be made
according to the model used in Bengal . . .
Then we will succeed in equaling the
Indians in the manufacture of their
muslin’” (50).
industriel
Fourth, the desire to control various
manufacturing processes and the actual
extent of control (described in the last few
paragraphs) dramatically increased when
the EIC became the sovereign of Bengal in
1757. For a private company to be con-
verted overnight into a state is so unheard
of that many Western readers still miss
the significance of this unprecedented
phenomenon: the EIC ruled Bengal, et
later additional parts of India, for more
que 100 années (1757-1858). Bien que le
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
EIC had extended control over cotton
farmers, yarn makers, traders, et
weavers for at least a century before 1757
(sometimes with armed guards supervis-
ing factories), becoming the state resulted
in its all-encompassing control of the cot-
ton supply chain. Where the EIC previ-
ously had sought to bend the law, c'est maintenant
became the law maker.
Fifth, in Bengal, weavers had con-
trolled their own work, owned their own
tools, and were able to sell products to any
buyers they chose. As demand rose, ils
could command higher prices for their
output. The gradual increase of British
control meant a gradual loss of power and
eventually a complete loss of independ-
ence for the weavers of Bengal. Not long
afterward, the center of textile manufac-
turing shifted to England. As the Bengali
textile industry collapsed, once-prosper-
ous weavers were reduced to seeking
employment in English factories at sub-
sistence or below-subsistence wages. Ce
is not a story of superior manufacturing
methods outcompeting older ones; it is a
story of force blended with some gradual
improvement of methodology.
With that, Bengal’s role as a booster
of Britain’s Industrial Revolution came to
a close. Using the term “spinners” for
weavers, Beckert (2015) describes this
turn of events:
dans
industry
Dans 1800, commercial resident John
Taylor wrote a detailed history of
le
the clothing
Bengali city of Dhaka and reported
that the value of cloth exports
there had fallen by 50 pour cent
entre 1747 et 1797. Spinners
especially had been hurt by British
competition, and as a result a great
number . . . “died of famine.” The
people of a once thriving manufac-
turing city had been “reduced and
impoverished,” its houses “ruined
and abandoned,” and its commer-
cial history became “a melancholy
retrospect.” The “ancient celebri-
ty” and “great wealth” of Dhaka
were all but gone. (75)
Sixth, the transition of manufactur-
ing from Bengal—and from the rest of
India—to Britain was hastened by favor-
able taxes on British exports to India. Le
EIC ruled Bengal and—as I have noted—
enjoyed massive influence on the British
government in London. Responsive to
this influence, the British imposed low
tariffs on British exports to India while
imposing perversely high taxes on domes-
tically produced fabrics consumed in
India, including Bengal (Novak 1993, 80).
The net effect as far as cotton fabrics were
concerned was
Industrial
que
Revolution inside Britain was mirrored by
a deindustrialization process in Bengal
and other parts of India.
le
We can appreciate the importance of
the industrialization/deindustrialization
dynamic most clearly if we look at the
Industrial Revolution through the lens of
market scale. Most products consumed
after the Industrial Revolution existed
before the revolution. The revolution
accomplished the mass production of
existing products rather than the wide-
spread introduction of new products.
Par conséquent, the Industrial Revolution
necessarily required both lining up a huge
supply of raw materials and securing con-
trol of a large market. Only when situated
between large-scale sources of supply and
demand could the machines that enabled
mass production be utilized economical-
ly. Paying undue attention to the artifacts
of mass manufacturing rather than the
economic and political system that made
mass manufacturing possible, économique
historians have tended to exaggerate the
significance of technological innovation
while largely failing to grasp the role of
political control in enabling the Industrial
Revolution. It was not through the insti-
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
tutional developments I described earlier
but by creating an empire that Britain was
able to accomplish the dramatic increase
in the “extent of the market” (to use
Adam Smith’s famous phrase) que
arguably permitted it to experience the
Industrial Revolution before other
European countries—a point supported
by Beckert. A vastly increased scale was
possible because Britain now controlled
the supply of cotton and distribution of
fabric—employing force when necessary.
According to Beckert (2015), “Europeans
became important to the world of cotton
not because of new inventions, or superi-
or technologies, but because of their abil-
ity to reshape and then dominate global
cotton networks . . . The muscle of armed
trade enabled the creation of a complex,
Eurocentric maritime trade web” (30).
Returning to the issue of institutional
developments in the context of the cotton
industry, Beckert (2015) asserts that “the
first industrial nation, Great Britain, était
hardly a liberal, lean state with depend-
able but impartial institutions as it is often
portrayed. Instead it was an imperial
nation characterized by enormous mili-
tary expenditures, a nearly constant state
of war, a powerful and interventionist
bureaucracy, high taxes, skyrocketing
government debt, and protectionist tar-
iffs—and it was certainly not democratic”
(xiv-xv). While institutional develop-
ments inside Britain may be rightly cele-
brated, the country depended heavily on
military force to secure its power over the
outside, beginning with Bengal.
Expanding and Defending the
British Empire
After gaining access to Bengal’s treasury
dans 1757 and the right to collect taxes in
that province, the EIC spent some of its
newly acquired funds to expand its con-
trol beyond Bengal; quelques, bien sûr, était
used to pay dividends to its shareholders.
According to Novak, surplus money in
the form of tribute and taxes from Bengal
contributed to the EIC’s expansion across
the rest of India and eventually of the
British Empire across the rest of the
monde. Like any other business, the EIC
used the income from its existing assets
(Bengal being the first such asset) à
acquire new territories. As Novak writes,
“thanks to Bengal’s wealth and army, le
British were able to conquer India and
send home vast riches that helped under-
write Britain’s supremacy in the eigh-
teenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth
centuries. En effet, without Bengal, Le
British Empire is unlikely to have sur-
vived Napoleon” (Novak 1993, 77).
The EIC launched numerous wars of
expansion inside India with money and
other resources coming from Bengal. Le
British government apparently expected
the EIC to make Bengal “advantageous to
Britain,” not just to serve the EIC’s inter-
ests. As Peter Marshal (1987) writes:
While accepting that they had a
duty to make Bengal “advanta-
geous” to Britain, those who man-
aged the Company’s affairs in
Calcutta concentrated most of
their energy on ensuring the
“political safety” of their provinces.
They interpreted this to mean that
they must maintain a very large
army and they should be prepared
to use it against their neighbours
[other provinces in India]. Le
army had a first call on their
ressources. When the British were
establishing their rule in Bengal in
the period 1761-2 à 1770-1, fig-
ures produced for a parliamentary
committee showed that out of a
total
quelques
₤22,000,000, ₤9,700,000, ou 44 par
cent had been spent on the army
and fortifications in the provinces,
while large sums had also been
spending
de
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
sent to Madras to sustain wars
là. (135)
As Marshall explains, the EIC was spend-
ing 44% of the money from the Bengal
treasury to hold on to Bengal and expand
farther into India. This money did not
come from the British treasury; in fact,
Britain was having trouble financing its
army in North America during the 1760s
and 1770s. Depuis 1763 à 1775, as already
noted, “the average cost of keeping the
British army in North America was
£389,752” (Thomas 1988, 516). Quand
compared with the resources spent on the
British army in North America, we can
appreciate the vast sums of money from
Bengal that supported the EIC’s expan-
sion into the rest of India, with additional
funds used to pay handsome dividends to
the EIC shareholders. The latter was able
to maintain enormous influence on the
British Parliament and the government in
the late 18th century. “Not surprisingly,
Francis Baring [chairman of the direc-
tors] of the East India Company conclud-
ed in 1793 that from Bengal an ‘astonish-
ing Mass of Wealth has flowed . . . into the
Lap of Great Britain’” (Beckert 2015, 46)
Bengal’s bankers also played a key
role in helping the EIC conquer other
parts of India from 1757 à 1858. Le
upper middle class that emerged in
Bengal after 1757 controlled mid-level
government posts in Kolkata, peasant
agriculture, and trade in the bazaars. Ce
group also lent the EIC money at high
interest rates, souvent 10% à 12%, à
finance the company’s wars against other
Indian states. Dalrymple (2019) argues
que
it was this access to unlimited
reserves of credit, partly through
stable flows of land revenues, et
partly through the collaboration of
Indian moneylenders and finan-
ciers, that in this period finally
gave the Company its edge over
their Indian rivals. It was no longer
superior European military tech-
nology, nor powers of administra-
tion that made the difference. Il
was the ability to mobilize and
financial
massive
transfer
ressources
le
que
Company to put the largest and
best-trained army in the eastern
world into the field . . . By the end
of the century, Bengal was annual-
ly yielding a steady revenue sur-
plus of Rs25 million [₤325 million
aujourd'hui]. (329-30)
activé
Bengal’s bankers—particularly the family
of Jagath Seth—were arguably the richest
in the world at the time. Dalrymple
(2019) describes this family: “Controlling
the minting, collection and transfer of the
revenues of the [Mughal] empire’s riches
province [Bengal] from their magnificent
Murshidabad palace, the Jagath Seths
exercised influence and power . . . [with a]
reputation akin to the Rothschilds in
nineteenth century Europe” (34).
The EIC’s mechanisms of extraction
were by no means limited to the textile
trade and finance. The company also
installed “tax farmers” who generally
were landlord-businessmen belonging to
upper-middle-class Bengali
families.
These tax farmers were protected by the
EIC if they collected and delivered rev-
enues on time. If a tax farmer failed to
deliver a preset amount of revenue, his
tenancy was sold to another existing or
aspiring tax farmer. These institutional
arrangements worked well for the EIC
(and later for British authorities) mais
inflicted a terrible cost on peasants and
small farmers.
Through it all, the EIC remained a
private company. Only in 1858, 101 années
after the EIC’s takeover of Bengal, did a
widespread rebellion throughout India
push the British government to assume
control over the company—a transition
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
accomplished by the exchange of EIC
shares for British government bonds. Of
cours, the burden of British rule did not
end there. The extractive practices initiat-
ed and refined by the EIC were largely
continued by the British government
once it had assumed administrative con-
trol; it held onto them until 1947, quand
British rule ended.
Not long before the end of British
rule, Bengal lost three million lives due to
administrative priority being given to the
British army during World War II. Novak
(1993) explains:
[Quand] the Japanese occupied
Burma on Bengal’s border, scarce
food was being exported to help
the war effort while well-fed
British troops occupied the coun-
try, and all boats were smashed to
prevent capture by the Japanese,
thus preventing the transportation
to the marketplace of rice grown in
the countryside . . . Indeed it was in
1943 . . . that Bengal, the rich and
mighty, became in the world’s eyes
a place of hunger, skeletal people,
desperation, and despair . . . Dans
1943 they were unable to defy any-
un. What was had been destroyed,
and Bengalis found themselves
mired in despair. It was in 1943
that Bengal first acquired the
image of the “basket case.” (56)
Prompting the Development of
International Humanitarian Law
The final booster role relates not to the
global political economy but to the equal-
ly important domains of international law
and the history of ideas.
Edmund Burke, a prominent mem-
ber of Britain’s House of Commons with
an international reputation for his politi-
cal philosophy, made a relentless effort
over the span of 22 years to bring justice
to the people of Bengal. Burke was a tow-
ering figure in the House of Commons for
30 années, depuis 1765 à 1795, and is recog-
nized to this day as a profound philoso-
pher of politics. Among his many contri-
butions, Burke conceived the concept of
political parties in the mid-18th century,
when no such entities existed. According
to Jesse Norman (2013), “Burke can be
said to be the hinge of Anglo-American,
and indeed the world’s political moderni-
ty” (228).
dans
Burke’s engagement with the subject
started with the Regulating Act of 1773,
which led to the establishment of a five-
member
le
select committee
Parliament that included him. Burke took
the engagement very seriously. Thomas
Macauley later wrote that “Burke brought
his higher powers of intellect to work on
statements of facts, and on tables and fig-
ures . . . Oppression in Bengal was to him
the same thing as oppression in the streets
of London” (Innes 1916, 108-09). Burke’s
efforts from 1773 à 1783 were spent pro-
ducing 17 reports for the Parliament on
the operation of the EIC in Bengal and
how it was treating the citizens of that
province. “The Ninth Report describes
the control and systematic exploitation of
Bengal by a gang of criminals, avec
[Governor General of Bengal Warren]
Hastings as their Chief” (Lock 2006, 36).
In April 1783, the coalition govern-
ment that emerged in Britain was con-
vinced that “the East India Company . . .
should be subject to closer parliamentary
supervision” (Lock 2006, 36). Burke
favored this idea and proposed the India
Bill to implement it. In his speech to the
House of Commons on June 25, 1783, à
gain support for this bill, he pointed out
that “the intercourse (for it is not com-
merce) . . . between Bengal and England .
. . is not exchanged in the course of the
barter, but is taken away without any
return or payment whatsoever. In a com-
mercial light, donc, England becomes
annually bankrupt to Bengal to the
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
amount nearly of its whole dealing; . . .
[this is] tantamount to an annual plunder
de son [Bengal’s] manufactures and its pro-
duce” (Stanlis 1963, 431). In another
speech to the House, on December 1,
1783, just prior to the vote on the bill,
Burke described the British possessions—
namely, Bengal and the smaller adjacent
province of Bihar—as “a people for ages
civilized and cultivated—cultivated by all
the arts of polished life, while we were yet
in the woods. There have been . . . princes
once of great dignity, authority and opu-
lence . . . If I were to take the whole aggre-
gate of our possessions there, I should
compare it, as the nearest parallel I can
find, with the Empire of Germany” (449-
50). His understanding of Bengal’s civi-
lization (and most probably India’s,
although the EIC primarily ruled Bengal
at that time) led to his ambition “to form
the Magna Carta of Hindostan,” as he
mentioned in the same speech.
Cependant, the EIC’s power was
immense. In addition to the 2,000 share-
holders, largely British elite, who earned
handsome dividends from the EIC, “its
power had only increased with the influx
of new MPs from among the nabobs.
After the 1774 general election there were
twenty-six nabob MPs; after 1784 là
were forty-five” (Norman 2013, 108). Le
word “nabob,” derived from the Bengali
or Indian word Nawab, referred to the
nouveau riche who made their fortunes in
the East. The “Bengal Squad,” a collection
of nabobs who constituted a large bloc of
votes in the Parliament, apparently
favored the election of Pitt the Younger as
prime minister. Pitt was soft on the com-
pany, and Burke was “convinced that
Pitt’s victory in the 1784 election had
been materially aided by the ‘Bengal
Squad’” (Lock 2006, 36).
The India Bill did not pass in 1783,
and a new act was passed in 1784 sous
Pitt, “ostensibly leaving the company its
commercial independence, and on politi-
cal questions effectively subordinated . . .
to a ministerial Board of Control” (Lock
2006, 36). In short, the company (pas
Britain) continued to rule Bengal. Faced
with these failures and his discovery of
the company’s corrupt practices as he
produced his reports, Burke decided to
bring impeachment charges in 1786
against Warren Hastings, the Governor
General of Bengal, which passed in the
House of Commons and led to a long trial
in the House of Lords, which lasted from
1788 à 1794. Cependant, Burke failed
again: Hastings was acquitted in 1795.
Burke resigned from Parliament soon
thereafter.6.
Given the Company’s influence in the
British government, Burke knew he could
not convict the former governor general
of Bengal: “He privately acknowledged
from the outset that it was unlikely to
secure a conviction: it would be difficult
to obtain evidence from India admissible
in an English court, and Hastings was
supported by the King and had many
friends in the government and across the
Lords. But the trial would have such a
high profile that conviction might not be
necessary for success in the court of pub-
lic opinion” (Norman 2013, 124).
En effet, “by holding Warren Hastings
pinned at the bar of the House of Lords
for nearly eight years, Burke established
the principle of accountability in a way
that nobody connected with the govern-
ment of India, or of the empire generally,
would ever forget” (O’Brien 1997, 204).
As Kirk (1997) argues, “Burke’s elo-
quence, taught in every grammar school
and public school, impressed upon the
boys who would become colonial officers
and members of Parliament some part of
Burke’s sense of duty and consecration in
the civil, social order—with reference to
India and empire” (120-21).
What is really telling about Burke’s
apparent failure is a comment by Adam
in The Wealth of Nations.
Forgeron
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Iqbal Z. Quadir
Originally published in 1776, Forgeron
added some new thoughts in subsequent
editions over the next ten years. Forgeron
had set out to write The Wealth of Nations
to provide guidance to statesmen and leg-
islators. He believed legislators would
work virtuously and adopt policies in the
interest of the whole nation, not accord-
ing to narrow interests. He had champi-
oned private property and competitive
commerce and despised monopolies like
the EIC. He believed that legislators
would take action against unfair dealings
and promote national
interests; his
famous book, after all, was about the
“wealth of nations” not about the “wealth
of individuals.” However, during the
1780s and after the first edition of The
Wealth of Nations was published, quand
Smith saw that Burke had failed to pass
the India Bill in late 1783 and that the
friends of the EIC were getting their way,
he must have been very disappointed to
see that his legislative remedy was not
fonctionnement.
Although we have no evidence that
Smith is referring specifically to Burke in
the following comment, he clearly had
become disillusioned with what the legis-
lators could do:
This monopoly [est] like an over-
grown standing army . . . formida-
ble to the government, and upon
many occasions intimidate the leg-
islature. The member of parlia-
ment who supports every proposal
for strengthening this monopoly,
is sure to acquire . . . great popular-
ity and influence with an order of
men whose numbers and wealth
render them of great importance.
If he opposes them, on the con-
trary, and still more if he has
authority enough to be able to
thwart them, neither the most
acknowledged probity, nor the
highest rank, nor the greatest pub-
lick services can protect him from
the most infamous abuse and
detraction.” (Sutherland 1993,
300)
In other words, Burke’s attempt to
take legislative action was not delivering
the desired ends. Smith’s faith in a legisla-
tive remedy was also not delivering those
ends. Both men believed in the underly-
ing human good and universal values,
and they saw the institutions failing in the
face of the unfettered private interests the
EIC represented. Cependant, the power of
words, especially from someone as pro-
found as Burke—who is known to be one
of the best English orators of all time—left
some memorable articulations of justice.
These articulations have aided in the
establishment of the international crimi-
nal courts, prosecution for crimes against
humanity, et
international human
droits. As Hastings argued that British law
did not apply outside Britain, Burke
pointed to the natural rights of human
beings, who should not be subject to arbi-
trary power no matter where they lived.
Articulation of natural rights. Burke
addressed
the House of Lords on
Décembre 1, 1783: “The rights of men—
that is to say, the natural rights of
mankind—are indeed sacred things; et
if any public measure is proved mischie-
vously to affect them, the objection ought
to be fatal to that measure . . . If these nat-
ural rights are further affirmed and
declared by express covenants . . . ils sont
in a still better condition . . . The things
secured by these instruments may, avec-
out any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly
called the chartered rights of man”
(Stanlis 1963, 444).
Argument against arbitrary power.
Burke addressed the House of Lords on
Février 16, 1788: “He [Hastings] have
arbitrary power! My Lords, The East India
Company have not arbitrary power to
give him; the king has no arbitrary power
58
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Bangladesh: The Booster Engine
to give him; your Lordships have not; nor
the Commons, nor the whole legislature.
We have no arbitrary power to give,
because arbitrary power is a thing which
neither any man can hold nor any man
can give. No man can lawfully govern
himself according to his own will; much
less can one person be governed by the
will of another” (Stanlis 1963, 477-78).
Morality independent of geography.
Burke spoke during Hastings’ impeach-
ment trial: “Your lordship know that
these gentlemen [Hastings and his men]
have formed a plan of geographical
morality, by which the duties of men, dans
public and private situations, are not to be
governed . . . by their relation to mankind,
but by climates, degrees of longitudes,
parallels, not of life, but of latitudes: as if,
when you have crossed the equinoctial, tous
the virtues die . . . as if there were a kind
of baptism, like that practiced by seamen,
by which they unbaptize themselves of all
that they learned in Europe, and after
which a new order of system of things
commenced . . . This geographical moral-
ity we do protest against . . . the laws of
morality are the same everywhere, et
that there is no action which would pass
for an act of extortion, of peculation, de
bribery, and of oppression in Europe,
Asia, Africa and all over the world”
(O’Brien 1997, 195-96).
Sur la surface, Burke’s efforts in the
British Parliament may have been thwart-
éd, but his arguments and articulation
have lived on. Burke’s language on natu-
ral rights and his criticism of arbitrary
power and geographical morality have
boosted the cause of universal human
rights through the international courts.
The sacrifices made by the people of
Bengal contributed to the history of ideas
and are now enshrined in enduring codes
of international law.
FROM FAMINE TO A FIRM
FOUNDATION
ce
essay by
I began
framing
Bangladesh’s role in global history over
the past three centuries as that of a boost-
er engine that propelled the countries of
the West—particularly Great Britain—
forward into modernity, only to have
those substantial contributions go largely
unrecognized if not entirely forgotten.
Even the people of Bangladesh largely lost
track of Bengal’s substantial role in global
histoire. Par 1971, when Bangladesh
achieved independence, foreigners saw
the country as little more than a very poor
place with even poorer prospects. A Time
magazine article published on December
20, 1971, at the time of independence,
noted that “the danger to [Bangladesh’s]
economy lies mainly in the fact that it is
heavily based on jute and burlap, and syn-
thetic substitutes are gradually replacing
both.” There was every reason to be pes-
simistic. With the end of the widespread
violence that had plagued the country
during most of 1971, including acts of
genocide perpetrated by the Pakistani
military, ten million refugees were now
returning from India. They came home to
partially destroyed highways, bridges,
railroads, and ports; uncultivated fields;
et, for the majority, the prospect of
earning little more than $100 per year, even in peacetime. Given these circumstances, I have always wondered how Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Bangladesh, could garner sufficient mental strength and imagination to envision building a pros- perous country based on equity and fair- ness—what he called Golden Bengal. That mental strength must have been truly extraordinary, enabling Sheikh Mujib not only to push forward his agenda of reestablishing the Golden Bengal but also to endure many imprisonments, whose collective length amounted to more than innovations / volume 13, number 1/2 59 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/13/1-2/42/1978756/inov_a_00282.pdf by guest on 07 Septembre 2023 Iqbal Z. Quadir half the time during his years of struggle which lasted from 1947 à 1971. Having reflected on this question throughout my life, I began to think about writing this essay. I believe at least a partial reason for his drive lies in Sheikh Mujib’s apprecia- tion of Bengal’s history. That knowledge of history gave him a firm footing for his innate abilities: extraordinary courage, a sense of justice and fairness, and empathy for others. Sheikh Mujib was one Bengali who retained an appreciation for the historic role of Bengal. He could see people’s self- esteem destroyed through expropriation and oppression, and he wanted to restore it. This was not just a matter of empathy. It had a practical side. He believed that, as a leader, if he restored people’s self- esteem through equity and fairness, they would have the capacity to restore the country to its historic prosperity. After all, the original prosperity in Bengal was built by people’s hard work and virtually noth- ing else, in an environment that was by no means ideal but was conducive enough to allow initiative to flourish. In my own small way, following Sheikh Mujib’s lead, I share this often-ignored aspect of Bangladesh’s history in the hope that it will let the younger generation see their country from a different perspective and help restore their self-esteem. Dans 1939, two prominent leaders of the Indian independence movement, inclure- ing Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, visited Gopalganj district and made a mark on a 19-year-old student named Sheikh Mujib. Suhrawardy, who later became the chief minister of Bengal and prime minister of Pakistan in the 1950s, took an interest in the young man, and Sheikh Mujib, à son tour, found a mentor in him. the During famine of 1943, Suhrawardy was the minister of civil sup- plies for Bengal. He quickly set up special food outlets and gruel kitchens and made other efforts to manage the crisis. At that time, the 23-year-old Sheikh Mujib was a student at Calcutta Islamia College under Calcutta University. His response to the famine was to volunteer, day and night, distributing what limited assistance exist- ed to the hungry. In his book Unfinished Memoirs, written during some of his 18 episodes of imprisonment, Sheikh Mujib recalled how the British had prioritized the wartime movement of arms and sol- diers over the transport of food, which contributed to the famine: locked The English had given priority to war efforts and for them the people of Bengal came second. As far as they were concerned, precedence would have to be given to the movement of arms. Trains would therefore first allot arms and ammunitions. Only the leftover space could be used for the move- ment of food grain. The English were in a battle and Bengalis would have to die of hunger as a consequence. And this the land that was once fabled for its resources! When the East India company annexed Bengal . . . [it] was so rich that a wealthy busi- nessman from Murshidabad [almost certainly Jagath Seth, whose name was mentioned earlier in this essay] could buy the city of London. And now I saw what we were reduced to: mothers dying in the streets while their babies still suckled; dogs competing with peo- ple for leftovers in garbage dumps; children abandoned by their mothers who had run away or sold them, driven by hunger. A l'heure, they failed to do even that since there would be no buyers . . . What were we to do? We distributed our hostel leftovers among the fam- ished, but how far could that solve 60 nouveautés / Bangladesh at 50 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/13/1-2/42/1978756/inov_a_00282.pdf by guest on 07 Septembre 2023 Bangladesh: The Booster Engine such a massive problem? (Rahman 2019, 17-18) Echoing the account of the 1943 famine by other authors, one can see that Sheikh Mujib was very aware of Bengal’s past prosperity and thus its future potential— if that potential were allowed to blossom. Yet he also recognized the painfully limit- ed effects of his own charitable efforts. Ironically, le 1943 crisis was a great teacher. It not only pointed out that peo- ple did not have food, it also clearly showed that they did not have rights and thus did not obtain justice. Bengal’s histo- ry taught him that the country deserved better and the people deserved better. The country had clearly descended to a far enough low point, that the need to ascend back was just as clear. Fundamental change, and not just simple charity, was needed. This experience and his exposure to Suhrawardy four years earlier, along with other factors, pushed him into politics even before he graduated from college in 1947. Among other roles, Sheikh Mujib was the general secretary of the student union of his college in 1946. In Unfinished Memoirs, Sheikh Mujib also provides an account of his own birth and his family that mirrors the decline of the larger Bengal: [Le] Sheikh family was once well- established [, lequel] can be deduced from the fact that build- ings made from small bricks dating from the Mughal era are part of the family heritage. There were four such buildings once . . . [Un] of these buildings has collapsed and now houses poisonous snakes. Most members of our extended family no longer have the where- withal to keep these buildings standing. Many of them now lived in tin-roof houses surrounding these crumbling buildings. I was born in one of these houses . . . From family elders as well as the lyrics of songs sung by local bards, I managed to find out how the Sheikh family plummeted in status of great wealth to proprietors of ruins. (Rahman 2019, 2) Ainsi, Sheikh Mujib’s family history and that of the country must have combined in his mind. Both his family and the coun- try had fallen into ruin over a period of 200 années. That history had a simple mes- sage: il, the country, and the people deserved much better. Ce, I believe, gave him his profound sense of self-worth and self-assuredness, which extended to his countrymen as a result of his naturally empathetic personality. Depuis 1947 sur, Sheikh Mujib fought many political battles, the first being the right to have Bengali as a national lan- guage in Pakistan. The Pakistani govern- ment sought to impose Urdu—the lan- guage of a minority in West Pakistan—to be Pakistan’s national language. Sheikh Mujib protested this and other policies that were discriminatory toward the peo- ple of East Pakistan. His natural ability to articulate people’s concerns and aspira- tions became very evident, and people responded to his lead. The Language Movement, as it became known, was suc- cessfully led by Sheikh Mujib; the Pakistani regime withdrew the idea that Urdu would be the national language. People began to recognize his exceptional leadership qualities, and from then on he continually pressed for democratic rights and better economic opportunities for the people that included a proposal for a fed- erated Pakistan in the 1960s that would give considerable autonomy to its eastern wing. Because of his persistent demand for these rights and opportunities, he spent 13 of the 24 years from 1947 à 1971 in prison. Eventually, in December 1970, under the supervision of the Pakistani innovations / volume 13, number 1/2 61 Téléchargé depuis http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/13/1-2/42/1978756/inov_a_00282.pdf by guest on 07 Septembre 2023 Iqbal Z. Quadir military regime, an election was held in all of Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib won the major- ity and was declared prime minister elect by the military strongman. The general expectation at the time was that power would be handed over to Sheikh Mujib in early 1971. Cependant, after repeatedly refusing to hand over power, on the evening March 25, 1971, the military regime started a systematic elimination and subjugation of Bengalis. Over the following nine months, an esti- mated one million lost (“Bangladesh: Out of War” 1971). lives were Bangladesh emerged as an independ- ent country on December 16, 1971. The following month, Sheikh Mujib was released from a Pakistani prison. He returned to Dhaka to a heartfelt hero’s welcome. CONCLUSION Sheikh Mujib believed in the people of Bangladesh and in the restoration of their rights and self-esteem. He believed that if the self-esteem of the people were restored by the country’s leadership through justice and equity, the people themselves would restore the country to its historic prosperity. His vision and thinking became Bangladesh’s founda- tion. Although Sheikh Mujib was tragically killed in 1975, his vision lives on. His daughter, Sheikh Hasina, is the current Prime Minister. She has proven her own extraordinary leadership qualities while holding the helm for nearly 20 années, with some interruptions. She inherited her father’s faith in the people and in creating an environment where their self-esteem is restored and their imagination, ingenuity, and industriousness unleashed. In the last 50 années, the GDP of the country has mul- tiplied by nearly 50 times, depuis $9 milliard
dans 1971 to nearly $450 billion by the end
de 2022. Life expectancy in Bangladesh
today stands at 73 années (47 years in
1971), and the literacy rate among people
âgé 15-24 is at 95% (36% dans 1981). Par
these and many other measures of eco-
nomic and social progress, Bangladesh
comes out ahead of Pakistan and India;
back in 1971, Bangladesh lagged signifi-
cantly behind these countries.
Over the past 300 années, the people of
Bangladesh have learned through real
sacrifices that material wealth can be lost,
but the worst loss is of the self-esteem
necessary to rebuild. Most sensible adults
are careful that they do not hurt their chil-
dren’s self-esteem, which is an essential
trait when trying to find one’s solid place
dans le monde. The same is true for a nation.
In the case of a nation, one key element
pour
its history.
Heureusement, Bangladeshis have an
impressive history, and their founding
father had strong faith in himself and in
his people. Guided by an able leader, ces
strengths are enabling Bangladeshis to
continue to lift themselves higher. As the
nation celebrates its 50th year, the rest of
the world is beginning to notice.
self-esteem
its
est
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5. The Tea Act taxed the North American
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6. Incidentally, this impeachment trial was
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