Marx saw British colonial destruction as enabling Asia’s social revolution

Evidence

Karl Marx identified the notion of an Asiatic economic system in his 1853 analyses of British rule in India, and then put beside that immediately the human depredation introduced into this system by English colonial interference, rapacity, and outright cruelty. In article after article he returned with increasing conviction to the idea that even in destroying Asia, Britain was making possible there a real social revolution. Marx’s style pushes us right up against the difficulty of reconciling our natural repugnance as fellow creatures to the sufferings of Orientals while their society is being violently transformed with the historical necessity of these transformations. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 390

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘Asiatic economic system’ notion and Marx’s complication of the Orientalist frame, valuable as a counter-example building block for the toolkit.
• XREF: Relates to the reader’s module on colonial psychology: Marx exemplifies the Western intellectual who must reconcile sympathy for the colonized with a ‘historical necessity’ justification.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does this Marx passage prefigure later arguments that critique colonial violence while accepting its civilizational telos?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 390