The anti-imperialist vegetable

If you think about a struggle against imperialism, you usually think of uprisings. You probably don’t think of foods like corn, but you should. While there were armed struggles against empires, they weren’t very common in the modern period. New imperial powers had greater technologies and deadlier weapons. Colonized peoples couldn’t fight them with weapons. There were more subtle ways to resist empire, however. These included corn and cassava.¹

Colonial states generated income by forcing native people to work on large farms. This doesn’t work when the local populations move around to evade oppression. After all, they weren’t getting any of the profits and only needed enough food for themselves. Crops like corn and cassava grow in a way that allowed growers to move around. Cassava, in particular, made this easier because it required little labor for a pretty big return. Mobile groups could plant cassava and pretty much just walk away. A couple of years later, a community could come back and dig it up (it’s kind of like a potato). They could also eat the leaves in the meantime. Cassava gave indigenous people a cheap, easy way to feed themselves while resisting forced labor. Colonizers tried to brand cassava and corn as “lazy” crops for native people who wanted to avoid work. But these crops helped them resist the empire—like activists.

These crops helped them resist the empire. It was not aggressive and bloody, but it was effective and more common. Let’s examine the many different ways people responded to imperialism.

Anti-imperialism before decolonization

In the late nineteenth century, most of Southeast Asia came under European control. Colonizers disrupted local societies and controlled the lives of the native people. So, people had to be careful about how they engaged with imperial power. But the people of the colonies—the “colonial subjects”—had some ability to shape their own lives. They did not just want individual survival. They also wanted to maintain their dignity and culture. The case studies in this article will show how some communities in Southeast Asia responded to the new, industrial imperialism that began in the late nineteenth century.

French Indochina

French Indochina covered modern-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The French invaded these areas in the late nineteenth century.

The local royal families technically accepted colonial rule. However, the French were met with constant peasant uprisings, which are easily recognizable as resistance. Others—and that was most people—just tried to survive and thrive within a difficult system.

For instance, many Laotian villagers pretended to collaborate with the French while resisting at the same time. The French believed they were using local leaders to control villages, a key strategy in colonial empire-building. But the villages often put fake notables forward, who had no real power. Meanwhile, the real leaders secretly ran villages according to Laotian interests, rather than what the empire wanted. The French had no clue.

Another example comes from the city of Hanoi in Vietnam. French construction projects brought in large numbers of rats. The French offered to pay the locals for killing rats. They demanded to see a rat’s tail as proof. The locals began to just clip the tails off of live rats and release them back into the sewers to breed. The French paid large sums of money to the locals and ended up with an even worse rat problem!

Not everybody resisted French rule. Some minority groups, like the small Christian population, saw French rule as a way to get ahead. Others escaped colonial oppression by fleeing into the hills, where the French had trouble reaching. As with the cassava example earlier, deep local knowledge of the environment was an advantage the French didn’t have.

The French also educated their colonial subjects so that they would adopt French values and customs. But this education policy backfired somewhat. Educated subjects could form networks and shared new ideas about revolution and resistance.

Dutch East Indies

Dutch colonialism in modern-day Indonesia began with the commercial activity of the Dutch East India company. Both the company and the Dutch government struggled to control this very diverse region.

Some aristocrats on the island of Java² agreed to serve the Dutch in exchange for keeping some wealth. Those of lower social status also found ways to gain political rights. Many converted to Christianity or adopted Dutch customs. These are examples of accommodation, where people adapt to colonial rule. They can benefit from it without entirely giving up their own culture or values.

But some Javanese aristocrats didn’t love this. Javanese aristocrat Raden Mas Adipati Brotodiningrat protested by stealing a curtain from a Dutch colonizer. The curtain was a symbol of the separation between the colonizer and the colonized. Brotodiningrat’s act of disobedience signaled that the Dutch held no real authority over him. It inspired aristocrats to question colonialism and its morality.

The Southeast Asian Highlands

The Southeast Asian highlands in Burma, Malaya, and Borneo are perhaps the strongest example of resistance to colonial rule. The British and other colonial powers had a lot of trouble controlling the people who lived here. These communities were incredibly mobile. They were also dispersed across a highland region roughly the size of Europe!

Many native peoples here moved around to avoid taxation and forced labor. They resisted being included in colonial censuses³ and other record-keeping. In some cases, they even burned down offices of official records.

Compared to their Southeast Asian neighbors, these communities were more loosely organized. Colonizers found it hard to find local leaders who would work for them. The British tried to throw elaborate feasts to make connections the local peoples. The locals resisted by simply not showing up.

Creative resistance

Colonized people also found ways to voice their attitudes without being seen. English writer George Orwell described how local peoples in Burma reacted to British colonizers. They would cause accidents by tripping colonizers. They would also insult them from far away. Colonized people often had special language codes or inside jokes to share their feelings with each other.

People were creative in how they resisted imperial power. Large rebellions are easily recorded in history, but these subtler forms of resistance are difficult for historians to learn. Colonized people often expressed themselves in ways that weren’t easily understood by colonial powers. They are still largely misunderstood by scholars today.

1 Tapioca pearls, (the fun part of boba tea) come from cassava. Cassava can also be used to make bread flour and several other foods.
2 Java is an island that is part of today’s Indonesia.
3 A census is an official count of the population, along with other demographic information.