“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” – Life of Brian
Well, since the Romans subjugated what is now France, Britain, Germany, and England, it’s sad that they never managed to flourish as independent countries. Because colonialism is awful, right?
I was having a conversation over the phone with a friend who is a little bit more politically correct than me.
“Maybe colonialism wasn’t such a bad thing after all.”
Coming out of the blue like that, it was, I could tell, a difficult concept for him. Certainly he understood the words, but in the life he leads, I imagine absolutely no one would have said anything like that to him, ever. He was currently in a very, very, very liberal establishment. His brain might have broken from the unapproved thought. It wasn’t as bad as saying, “I decided that maybe killing and eating calico kittens and wearing their fur as a hat might be a thing I’m in to,” but it was close. One thing I like to do, in real life and in this blog, is to make people think thinks they haven’t thinked. Very few pleasures exist for me as when I make people make that face which I call an Oh-face, as in, “Oh, my, I never thought of that.”
Of things that have a bad reputation since the year 1900, the two things that come to mind with the worst reputation are Madonna and Colonialism. And nobody wants to be compared to Madonna. What spurred my comment to my friend was an article by Dr. Bruce Gilley, of that noted bastion of conservatism, Portland State University.
Madonna is over 60 now, which might explain her overuse of eye makeup. Oh, and the hormone replacement therapy . . . .
Dr. Gilley put forth a relatively straight-forward question: Is there a case for colonialism?
His paper, The Case for Colonialism (you can find a .pdf of it here – LINK) was published in a scholarly journal with the unlikely name of Third World Quarterly. Third World Quarterly was described by at least one scholar as a location to come up with anti-colonial ideas. The reaction was predictable. Over 10,000 people signed a petition at Change.org noting, in part, that “We thereby call on the editorial team to retract the article and also to apologize for further brutalizing those who have suffered under colonialism.”
It would be difficult to find many people who had suffered under colonialism who were still alive, since the last thing even remotely like an atrocity was the British reaction to the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya. I can’t find numbers that the Mau-Mau killed, which is a key indicator to me that the number was larger than anyone wants to admit. Did the British commit atrocity in response? Yes. So, if you were counting, probably the last colonial victims would date to the 1950’s, making the minimum age of someone who suffered under colonialism somewhere in their 70’s.
In my mind it’s also pretty tough to claim that a magazine article brutalized anyone, but maybe it’s just the “magazine article proof” vest I wear and a vestige of “magazine article proof vest-wearing privilege.” For the record, I wear the vest because I was once highly offended The Family Circus.
Yes it DOES look like Steve Buscemi! Triggered!
Gilley has the temerity to point out that since colonialism ended, things have not always been the picture of health in Africa. In his paper, Dr. Gilley notes:
Yet until very late, European colonialism appears to have been highly legitimate and for good reasons. Millions of people moved closer to areas of more intensive colonial rule, sent their children to colonial schools and hospitals, went beyond the call of duty in positions in colonial governments, reported crimes to colonial police, migrated from non-colonised to colonised areas, fought for colonial armies and participated in colonial political processes – all relatively voluntary acts. Indeed, the rapid spread and persistence of Western colonialism with very little force relative to the populations and areas concerned is prima facie evidence of its acceptance by subject populations compared to the feasible alternatives. The ‘preservers’, ‘facilitators’ and ‘collaborators’ of colonialism, as Abernethy shows, far outnumbered the ‘resisters’ at least until very late: ‘Imperial expansion was frequently the result not just of European push but also of indigenous pull’.
The legacy of colonization appears even today – those areas that were colonies of the British Empire are freer and have lower levels of corruption than those that weren’t colonized by Britain. Why? Perhaps the colonies offered rule of law versus tribal vengeance. Perhaps the colonizers offered science, medicine, and education. Perhaps the liberty of Western Civilization was fascinating. Me? I’m betting that it was mail-order catalogs that were filled with pictures of lacey undergarments, or maybe the taxation system.
We’ll apologize for colonies after they give up the Internet.
But the relics of de-colonization were also pretty clear. This is one additional case Gilley makes. In Gunea-Bissau, 25,000 people were killed as colonialism ended. 150,000 were displaced – all from a starting population of only 600,000. Thankfully, Marxists took over and turned it into a worker’s paradise, dropping rice production from 182,000 tons per year to 80,000 tons per year. No more tedious time spending cooking and eating! That Marxist diet plan always works, and thankfully the government feels so much love for their people that they provide a secret police, too! Gilley notes that at least half of the nations that de-colonized during the twentieth century had similar success at eliminating pesky excess food supply and pesky excess population.
I don’t think that colonization was all party and no hangover. There are plenty of descriptions of older colonial atrocities, especially when you go back to the 1700’s or 1800’s – the Belgian Congo under King Leopold was one very notable horror show so that the Belgium government took it away from him in 1908 prior to giving the Congo full independence in 1960, yet, today (from no less than The Daily Beast):
Wembore calls life under Belgians “très bon,” despite the segregation, and many of Stanleyville’s residents agree. “I look at the river, I used to see speedboats; now I see wooden boats,” he says, gesturing to the long, roughly carved canoes on the Congo River filled with traders. “This is poverty.”
So Gilley has confirmation from at least some Congolese that being colonized wasn’t all bad.
That doesn’t stop his University from “investigating” him. You can read about it in this article, but it doesn’t say much (LINK). Since he still has a web page up, and is still publishing papers that specifically poke the finger in the eye of academia (like this one on how Yemen did much better as a colony (LINK) and this one about how non-leftists are treated in academia (LINK)), I think he probably came out okay.
The question of colonialism remains. I tend to think that colonization can help a nation, especially if it brings about the systems that allow for efficient administration of a free country and gives the people faith that those systems can work. None of this happens in a short period of time, and it’s susceptible to corruption and tribalism. But we simply have to have colonies in the future. Why?
If we don’t we’ll never get Colonial Marines.
Okay, true fact, Vasquez in Aliens® is John Connor’s™ step-mom in Terminator 2©.
Addendum: Per the Comments.
With Personal Seal:
