How the British Empire Used Divide and Conquer to Rule the World - Divide and conquer has been one of the primary tactics imperial powers have used to maintain and expand their power down through history. Divide and conquer is a strategy where one power, or a group of powers, creates divisions in a target group, so as to weaken that group, making them easier to conquer or rule. Although this may sound simple, it is one of the most effective tactics that powerful interests have used, and continue to use, to control and conquer others.
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The British Empire employed divide and conquer, also known as divide and rule, extensively in British-controlled India. A notable example of how Britain used divide and conquer in India was when British officials were reorganizing the Indian army after the rebellion, or mutiny, of 1857. The rebellion began in the summer of 1857 when Indian troops in Meerut turned on British officials and opened fire on them. Various factors sparked this uprising, but broadly speaking, these troops felt that British officials had insulted their culture and unjustly punished their comrades. This rebellion in Meerut quickly spread to other parts of India, and morphed into a larger movement against British rule. Britain did not manage to supress the rebellion until late 1958, after much bloodshed had been spilt by both sides.
In the wake of the rebellion, Britain completely reorganized their control over India. The British Crown took direct control over India, as previously India had been controlled on behalf of the establishment by the British East India Company. The Indian army was also reorganized, as Britain wanted to avoid any further mutinies in the ranks. At the time, the Indian army was made up of three branches, the Bengal, Madras and Bombay armies, which later formally merged in 1895 into the British Indian Army.
In their reorganization of the army after the rebellion had been suppressed, British officials implemented the tactic of divide and rule in an attempt to prevent any future mutinies (Morrock 1973: 130). Firstly, they increased the number of European troops that made up the army, which decreased the level of Indian unity found in the older Indian army (Stewart 1951: 50). Furthermore, British officials worked to emphasise the differences in the Indian army, in an attempt to prevent a unification of Indians against British rule along the lines of race, nationality, religion, or caste (Stewart 1951: 49).
As Lord Ellenborough, a British politician who served as Governor-General of British India from 1842-1844 stated: “The fewer elements of combination there are in the native army the better, and therefore the more nationalities and castes and religions, the more secure we shall be. Discipline alone should bind the army” (Stewart 1951: 53). As another British official, Lord Elphinstone, wrote: “Divide et Impera was the old Roman motto, and it should be ours” (Stewart 1951: 54).
In 1861, unit commanders in the Indian army were ordered to send an annual report on the religious and caste composition of each regiment to Calcutta. Furthermore, British officials introduced laws over the following years to keep the army divided along caste and religious lines, which led to the Indian army being largely obedient to their British rulers up until India gained independence in the late 1940s (Stewart 1951: 57).
Sources:
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Definition of divide et impera - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divide%20et%20impera
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Indian Mutiny https://www.britannica.com/event/Indian-Mutiny
Stewart, N. (1951). Divide and Rule: British Policy in Indian History. Science & Society, 15(1), 49-57.
Morrock, R. (1973). Heritage of Strife: The Effects of Colonialist "Divide and Rule" Strategy upon the Colonized Peoples. Science & Society, 37(2), 129-151.
Tharoor, S. (10 Aug. 2017) The Partition: The British game of ‘divide and rule,’ Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/8/10/the-partition-the-british-game-of-divide-and-rule/
