White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

The Numbers That Changed History

November 13, 2007 by White House Chronicle


In the 19th century, numbers really did not matter. In the 20th century, they began to matter. And in this century, they matter a lot. I am talking not about mathematical abstractions but populations.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, European powers, led by Britain, captured vast swathes of the globe without regard to the territory size and population density. Hence Britain’s annexation of India, which included what is now Bangladesh and Pakistan. Numeric superiority just did not matter.What did matter was the control of the technology of war. And the colonial powers held their armaments close. So Britain was able to dominate several hundred million people worldwide with a mixture of superior armaments, moral certainty, and enlightened systems of justice. All three were required, but the control of firearms was essential.
Very few dissidents with firearms can change the balance very fast. The American Revolution would have failed if the colonists had not been well armed. In that early struggle, the British and other colonial powers realized if they were to hold territories in Asia, Africa and Latin America, small arms had to be controlled.

Where weapons were largely controlled–most of Africa, a lot of Asia, including Indochina, Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and Ceylon–liberation had to wait for the upheaval of World War II. When the colonial power was slow off the mark, the Soviet Union supplied the arms that fed the uprising, as in Algeria, Angola, Indochina, Mozambique and, eventually, Rhodesia.

America’s National Rifle Association has long held that wide gun ownership is a bulwark against oppression. In the sense that an armed populace can, in theory, rise up against an oppressor, it is right. Whether this works against a domestic usurpation of power is questionable.

The second challenge to colonial hegemony was democracy and the supremacy of population numbers. Imperialists and their strategic planners had to start counting people, which they never had to do when the Maxim machine gun could adjust for a lot.

The the opponents of colonialism embraced democracy for others, even when they themselves did not. The Soviet Union and many liberation movements used democracy as a means to an end: totalitarian control after independence. In Africa, this fake embrace of democracy affected every country north of South Africa and south of the Sahara. It also affected more sophisticated emerging countries like Burma, Indonesia, Malaya, and the Philippines.

So numbers count for nothing in assuring democracy. Big India has made it, as has little Finland; but not big China or little Belarus.

More important is how few rebels are able to create chaos if they have plenty of small arms: the story in Algeria and Northern Ireland. The Algerian uprising, which eventually drove out 1.5 million French settlers, was initiated by a few hundred rebels, who picked up numbers as the French tried to meet brutality with brutality. In Northern Ireland, the British Army has been pinned down for nearly 40 years by around 300 active IRA gunmen.

None of this suggests anything good about either “winning” in Iraq or extending the military option in the region–too many weapons and too many recruits to use them. These are the numbers that subvert high purpose.

The military option is no longer the one that existed for thousands of years: conquer and rule. Great powers like the United States can hit another country, largely with air power, but there is a limit to the extent we can influence circumstance on the group.

I watched the last throes of colonialism in my homeland, Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. Liberal thought the world over championed democracy—that is to say, majority rule–and the Soviet Union and its surrogates, like Cuba, provided the arms and trained the guerrillas. Nobody won, but the numbers spoke.

 

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Filed Under: King's Commentaries

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Will AI Stimulate Shadow Government?

Will AI Stimulate Shadow Government?

Llewellyn King

“This Time It’s Different” is the title of a book by Omar Hatamleh on the impact of artificial intelligence on everything. Hatamleh, who is NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s chief artificial intelligence officer, means that we shouldn’t look to previous technological revolutions to understand the scope and the totality of the AI revolution. It is, […]

Sorry, Europe Is Full, Tourists Are Told

Sorry, Europe Is Full, Tourists Are Told

Llewellyn King

This was the summer when much of Europe said to the ever-increasing flow of tourists, “Sorry, we are full.” Of course, Europe isn’t full at all. It is just those places that we all want to go, that have been tugging at our imaginations since we began imagining, are hopelessly crowded — and some are […]

Trump Hostility To Wind And Solar Has Utilities Treading Softly

Trump Hostility To Wind And Solar Has Utilities Treading Softly

Llewellyn King

This commentary was originally published in Forbes. President Donald Trump reiterated his hostility to wind generation when he arrived in Scotland for what was ostensibly a private visit. “Stop the windmills,” he said. But the world isn’t stopping its windmill development and neither is the United States, although it has become more difficult and has […]

PBS Has a Future by Leaving the Past Behind

PBS Has a Future by Leaving the Past Behind

Linda Gasparello

Over the years, I have often been critical of the Public Broadcasting Service. That in spite of the fact that for 28 years, I have produced and hosted a program, “White House Chronicle,” which is carried by many PBS stations. It is an independent program for which I find all the funding and decide its […]

Copyright © 2025 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in