Practicing Imperialism
– 1011b
Your
team has been appointed to run her Majesty’s Royal Crown Colony Rumitland. You are
English officers in the English Department of Colonial Affairs. You are stationed in Rumitland
and control it. Your job is to write a
report back to the Foreign Office of Britain, to the Secretary for Colonial
Affairs, explaining your plans for running Rumitland. He would like to know how you will deal with
each of the issues listed in the situation below and how Rumitland
can be turned into a place that does not lose money for Britain.
The Rumit:
There are 200,000 Rumit
people living in a basically rectangular piece of coastal land about 120 miles
long and 70 miles from the coast to the mountain range inland. Most of the Rumit
live in small nomadic villages of 2,000 or fewer people, though about 60,000
live in the capitol city of Tsew Elttaes. Of the nomadic rural Rumit,
about 25,000 live south of the southern river, 25,000 live north of the
northern river, and 90,000 live in the area between the two rivers. None of the 4 main groups of Rumit, the southern; the central; the northern; or the
urban get along well.
One of the two main types of
Rumit people, the nomadic Rumit,
keep cattle and build three semi-permanent encampments per year. At each encampment they let their cattle
graze for a while before the village moves to a new spot, allowing the grasses to
recover in the last spot. The nomadic,
cattle-keeping Rumit require large amounts of open
space and clear pathways across which to move their herds. Moving herds of cattle across railroad tracks
would destroy the tracks and/or harm the cattle. The cattle-keeping Rumit
people have a tribal religion, speak only Rumit, and
are poor and primitive by British standards.
Tsew Elttaes
is coastal trading city. The people
there, the 60,000 city Rumit, are significantly
richer than the rural Rumit in the nomadic
villages. Some of the citizens of Tsew Elttaes are Muslim and a few
have converted to Christianity as a result of recent missionary activity. About 100 of the residents of Tsew Elttaes speak English and
1,000 more speak the regional trading language of Swahili. Almost all of the bilingual urban Rumit are relatively wealthy merchants. There are small tea garden plots in the area
around Tsew Elttaes. About 500 families (2,500 people) do tea
farming and are quite skilled at it. Tsew Elttaes used to serve as a
transshipment point for slaves before the slave trade was abolished, and it has
failed to recover economically from the end of the slave trade. The residents of Tsew
Elttaes are not seen as true Rumit
people by the cattle-keeping rural Rumit.
The chief of the Rumit
people is from the cattle-keeping Rumit and is named Netaeb. For six
years he opposed Britain in a bloody war, but he recently admitted defeat and
signed a peace and occupation treaty allowing Britain to take over, as long as
the Rumit retained the right to move their cattle as
they pleased. He signed over the hills
to the Queen of England, but all of the land between the hills and the coast is
supposed to be reserved for the rural Rumit. During the war, about forty British soldiers
and one hundred white settlers and missionaries died. Perhaps 20,000 Rumit
people died during the fighting, mostly from starvation and from destruction of
their herds. Netaeb's
son, Flaubert, was educated by Anglican missionaries, speaks both Rumit and English, and is an Anglican Christian. Flaubert is distrusted by the Rumit of all types.
He has refused to take the Rumit manhood
ceremony because he thinks Christ would not approve. He lives in Tsew Eltteas and his father doesn't talk to him.
A group of about 20 nomadic villages, containing
16,000 people, are situated close to the hills and have refused to abide by the
treaty signed by Netaeb. Approximately 600 poorly armed rebel soldiers
under the leadership of a young warrior named Efre
have continued to attack Europeans who enter their territory. The rebel Rumit carry nothing better than ancient weapons and
spears. Netaeb
has refused to use his soldiers against Efre, saying
that Efre and his people are the problem of the
British.
Rumit has large amounts of coal
and copper in its hills. The hills of Rumitland are about 70 miles from the ocean coast, beyond a
fairly barren savanna.[1] The land near the rivers and along the coast
of Rumitland, where the cattle usually spend the
summer, would make excellent cropland for tea and cotton. However, without access to riverside and
coastal grazing land the cattle of the Rumit would
die. The rivers of Rumitland
are navigable (can be sailed on) to about 35 miles from the coast (halfway to
the mountains).
Settlers and Mining
Companies
British settlers and Christian missionaries want
access to Rumitland, particularly the rich lands
along the coast and rivers. Coal and
copper mining companies have offered to build a railroad to the hills and start
mining, but they demand that the right-of-way of the railroad be protected from
the nomadic Rumit and from Efre. The mining companies have also asked for help
in recruiting Rumit people to work in the mines, but
none of the Rumit seem the
least bit interested in this sort of work at the level of wages the mining
companies have said they are willing to pay.
About 50 white settle families are clustered around Tsew Eltteas on small farms. Some of them lost family members in the
previous fighting. They are very racist
in their attitudes towards the Rumit. The White settlers want the right to take
over the entire south bank of the southern river for farming. You have no official orders about these
settlers, but they are viewed sympathetically back in England.
Missionaries:
There are two missions in Rumit. One is a small Anglican (the official
religion of England) mission with 7 missionaries. The Anglicans are very pro-settler and have
created a tiny group of English-educated Rumit who
are unpopular with the other Rumit. Flaubert lives at the Anglican mission. There is also a Catholic mission. The Catholics have put together a Rumit-language school and are far more popular with the Rumit. The Catholics
are hated by the white settlers because the Catholic Father and the 10 friars
and 22 nuns who work with him have defended Rumit
rights and treaties in court and through political pressure with the Catholic
minority back in England. The Catholic
Father is a close friend of Netaeb and helped to
negotiate the last treaty.
Your
resources:
The people of your team have 600 British soldiers
armed with 20 machine guns and 12 howitzers, 30 trained police officers, 2
judges, and 5 lawyers at your disposal to control the Rumitland
colony.
You also have a 300-man construction unit who could
build about 50 buildings per year or one bridge across one of the rivers. They could build other things as well.
Write your letter!
Try to address as many of the issues listed above as
you can in your report to the Secretary of Colonial Affairs about how you will
organize and rule Rumitland. You are welcome to submit a map containing
plans as well.
(Grammar and spelling count. Try to sound and be a realistic as
possible. If you write less than two
pages, you are probably too short. Make
a bullet-point outline and complete plan BEFORE you start writing.)
[1] Savanna = a tropical or subtropical grassland containing scattered trees and drought-resistant undergrowth