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Pankaj Mishra: The ruins of empire: Asia's emergence from western imperialism
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he British empire, George Orwell wrote, was "despotism with theft as its final object". So what has made imperialism an intellectual fashion in our own time, reopening hoary disputes about whether it was good or bad? After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man's right to rule, Orwell was convinced that the imperial relationship was that of "slave and master". Was the master good or bad? "Let us simply say," Orwell wrote, "that this control is despotic and, to put it plainly, self-interested." And "if Burma derives some incidental benefit from the English, she must pay dearly for it."
Orwell's hard-won insights were commonplace truisms for millions of Asians and Africans struggling to end western control of their lands. Their descendants can only be bewildered by the righteous nostalgia for imperialism that has recently seized many prominent Anglo-American politicians and opinion-makers, who continue to see Asia through the narrow perspective of western interests, leaving unexamined and unimagined the collective experiences of Asian peoples.
Certainly, as Joseph Conrad wrote in 1902, "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." Two years after Conrad published Heart of Darkness, Roger Casement, then a British diplomat, revealed in a report that half of the population of Belgian-ruled Congo – nearly 10 million people – had perished under a brutal regime where beheadings, rape and genital mutilation of African labourers had become the norm. Such overt violence and terror is only a small part of the story of European domination of Asia and Africa, which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade – and plain callousness (Indians, after all, would go on breeding "like rabbits", Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44).
The unctuous belief that British imperialists, compared to their Belgian and French counterparts, were exponents of fair play has been dented most recently by revelations about mass murder and torture during the British suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. Nevertheless, in one of the weirdest episodes of recent history, a Kipling-esque rhetoric about bringing free trade and humane governance to "lesser breeds outside the law" has resonated again in the Anglo-American public sphere. Even before 9/11, Tony Blair was ready to tend, with military means if necessary, to, as he put it, "the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant" around the world. His apparently more intellectual rival Gordon Brown urged his compatriots to be "proud" of their imperial past. Sensing a sharper rightward shift after 9/11, many pith-helmet-and-jodhpurs fetishists boisterously outed themselves, exhorting politicians to recreate a new western imperium through old-style military conquest and occupation of native lands.
Embracing such fantasies of "full-spectrum dominance", American and European policymakers failed to ask themselves a simple question: whether, as Jonathan Schell put it, "the people of the world, having overthrown the territorial empires, are ready to bend the knee to an American overlord in the 21st"? After two unwinnable wars and horribly botched nation-building efforts, and many unconscionable human losses (between 600,000 and one million in Iraq alone), the "neo-imperialists" offering seductive fantasies of the west's potency look as reliable as the peddlers of fake Viagra. Yet, armour-plated against actuality by think tanks, academic sinecures and TV gigs, they continue to find eager customers. Of course, as the historian Richard Drayton points out, the writing of British imperial history, has long been a "patriotic enterprise". Wishing to "celebrate" empire, Michael Gove plans to entrust the task of rewriting the history syllabus to Niall Ferguson, one of the "neo-imperialist" cheerleaders of the assault on Iraq, who now craves "creative destruction" in Iran and whose "skilful revision of history" the Guardian's Jeevan Vasagar asserted last month, "will reverberate for years to come".
Clearly, it would help if no Asian or African voices interrupt this intellectual and moral onanism. Astonishing as it may seem, there is next to nothing in the new revisionist histories of empire, or even the insidious accounts of India and China catching up with the west, about how writers, thinkers and activists in one Asian country after another attested to the ravages of western imperialism in Asia: the immiseration of peasants and artisans, the collapse of living standards and the devastation of local cultures. We learn even less about how these early Asian leaders diagnosed from their special perspective the political and economic ideals of Europe and America, and accordingly defined their own tasks of self-strengthening.
Asian intellectuals couldn't help but notice that Europe's much-vaunted liberal traditions didn't travel well to its colonies. Mohammed Abduh, the founder of Islamic modernism, summed up a widespread sentiment when, after successive disillusionments, he confessed in 1895 that: "We Egyptians believed once in English liberalism and English sympathy; but we believe no longer, for facts are stronger than words. Your liberalness we see plainly is only for yourselves, and your sympathy with us is that of the wolf for the lamb which he deigns to eat."
In 1900, British atrocities during the Boer war and the brutal western suppression of the Boxer rising in China had provoked the pacifist poet Rabindranath Tagore to compare, in one unusually violent image, such bards of imperialism as Kipling to mangy dogs. "Awakening fear, the poet-mobs howl round / A chant of quarrelling curs on the burning-ground." Writing in 1907, the Indian nationalist Aurobindo Ghose was even harsher on lachrymose claims about the white man's burden. As Ghose saw it, previous conquerors, including the English in Ireland, had been serenely convinced that might is always right. But in the 19th century, the age of democratic nationalism, imperialism had to pretend "to be a trustee of liberty … These Pharisaic pretensions were especially necessary to British imperialism because in England the puritanic middle class had risen to power and imparted to the English temperament a sanctimonious self-righteousness which refused to indulge in injustice and selfish spoliation except under a cloak of virtue, benevolence and unselfish altruism."
There is something to Ghose's tirade. Free-traders and freebooters may have found merely convenient the idea that Asia was full of unenlightened people, who had to be saved from themselves. But many European and American intellectuals brought to it a solemn sincerity. Even John Stuart Mill, the patron saint of modern liberalism, claimed that "despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, if the end be their improvement." By 1900, such views had hardened into propaganda, and a mania for imperial expansion, drummed up by the press and politicians, had become part of the political life of European societies.
Scrambling to catch up with Europe, even the United States embraced the classic imperialism of conquest and occupation, expelling Spain from its Caribbean backyard and flexing its muscles in east Asia. In 1903, Liang Qichao, China's foremost modern intellectual and a major early influence on Mao Zedong, was visiting America when Washington manipulated its way into control of Panama and its crucial canal. It reminded Liang of how the British had compromised Egypt's independence over the Suez canal. Liang feared that original meaning of the Monroe doctrine – "the Americas belong to the people of the Americas" – was being transformed into "the Americas belong to the people of the United States". "And who knows," Liang added in a book he wrote about his travels, "if this will not continue to change, day after day from now on, into 'the world belongs to the United States'".
"In the world," Liang concluded bleakly, "there is only power – there is no other force … Hence, if we wish to attain liberty, there is no other road: we can only seek first to be strong." A whole generation of Chinese leaders and intellectuals grew up sharing Liang's social Darwinist belief "in the present-day international struggles in which the whole citizenry participate (and compete) for their very lives and properties, people are united as if they have one mind". No less a "westerniser" than Deng Xiaoping would uphold the primary imperative of national self-strengthening even as he broke with Maoism in the late 1970s and supervised China's transition to a market economy: "Our country must develop," Deng declared, using words emblazoned on billboards across China and still guiding the Communist party's politburo. "If we do not develop then we will be bullied. Development is the only hard truth."
Liang described the endless struggle between peoples enjoined by global capitalism as extremely dangerous. The first world war, which almost all European nations entered with great jingoistic fervour, following a period of hectic expansion, confirmed these anxieties. The poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who had spent three rewarding years as a student in Europe in the first decade of the 20th century, now wrote satirically of his old inspiration: "The West develops wonderful new skills / In this as in so many other fields / Its submarines are crocodiles / Its bombers rain destruction from the skies / Its gasses so obscure the sky / They blind the sun's world-seeing eye. / Dispatch this old fool to the West / To learn the art of killing fast – and best."
"European imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of the Yellow Peril," the Japanese art historian Kakuzo Okakura had written in 1906, "fails to realise that Asia may also awaken to the cruel sense of the White Disaster." In the wake of the first world war and the Paris peace conference, which inflicted cruel disappointments on India, China, Turkey, Egypt and Iran, many thinkers and activists in the east began to reconsider their earlier dalliance with western political ideals. Modernisation still seemed absolutely imperative, but it did not seem the same as westernisation, or to demand a comprehensive rejection of tradition or an equally complete imitation of the west. Freshly minted movements such as revolutionary communism and Islamic fundamentalism, which promised to immunise Asian countries against western imperialism, began to look attractive.
Europe's capacity and willingness for overseas expansion would be further diminished by an empire manqué – Germany – gone mad in its midst. Hitler turned out to be lethally envious of the British venture in India – what he called "the capitalist exploitation of the 350 million Indian slaves" – and hoped that Germany would impose a similarly kleptocratic despotism on the peoples and territories it conquered in Europe, while avoiding what he saw as Britain's lax racial segregation in India. "Nazism," Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, shrewdly diagnosed in 1940, anticipating Hannah Arendt and other analysts of 20th-century European politics, was the "twin brother" of western imperialism, the latter functioning "abroad in colonies and dependencies, while fascism and Nazism functioned in the same way" within Europe.
For many people in Asia, the two world wars were essentially conflicts between Europe's rival empires rather than great moral struggles, as they were presented to European publics, between democracy and fascism – indeed, the long experience of imperialism made Asians experience the 20th century radically differently from their European overlords. Chafing at their degraded status in the white man's world, they were uniformly thrilled – Mohandas Gandhi, then an unknown lawyer in South Africa, as well as a young Ottoman soldier called Mustafa Kemal (later, Atatürk) – when in 1905 Japan defeated Russia. For the first time since the middle ages, a non-European country had vanquished a European power in a major war. And Japan's victory sparked a hundred fantasies – of national freedom, racial dignity, or simple vengefulness – in the minds of those who had sullenly endured European authority over their lands.
Gandhi correctly predicted that "so far and wide have the roots of Japanese victory spread that we cannot now visualise all the fruit it will put forth." Thirty-six years later, Japan struck the decisive blow to European power in Asia. In about 90 days beginning on 8 December 1941, Japan overran the possessions of Britain, the US and the Netherlands in east and south-east Asia, taking the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies, much of Siam and French Indochina, and Burma with bewildering swiftness to stand poised at the borders of India by early 1942.
Shortly before Singapore fell to the Japanese in early 1942, the Dutch prime minister-in-exile, Pieter Gerbrandy, confided his anxiety to Churchill and other Allied leaders that "Japanese injuries and insults to the White population … would irreparably damage white prestige unless severely punished within a short time". After a long, hard struggle, the Japanese were finally "punished", fire- and nuclear-bombed into submission. The Japanese themselves behaved extremely brutally in many of the Asian countries they occupied. And yet, in the eyes of many Asians, the Japanese completely destroyed the aura of European power that had kept the natives in a permanent state of fear and political apathy.
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father, recalled the lessons learnt by his generation of Asians: "that no one – neither the Japanese nor the British – had the right to push and kick us around". Accustomed to deferential natives, European powers mostly underestimated the post-war nationalism that the Japanese had both unwittingly and deliberately unleashed. They also misjudged their own staying power among populations unremittingly hostile to them. This led to many disastrously futile counter-insurgency operations and full-scale wars, especially in Indochina, which still scar large parts of Asia. Nevertheless, the speed of decolonisation was extraordinary.
Burma, which barely had a nationalist movement before 1935, became free in 1948. The Dutch in Indonesia resisted, but Indonesian nationalists led by Sukarno finally threw them out in 1953. Postwar chaos plunged Malaya, Singapore and Vietnam into prolonged insurgencies and wars, but the European withdrawal was never in doubt. A calamitous partition of the Indian subcontinent, which condemned two new nation-states to endless conflict, marked Britain's half-panicked departure in 1947; the following year, a similar combination of skulduggery and dereliction of duty in Palestine radically shrank the prospects for peace and stability in the Middle East.
Still, formal decolonisation, often accompanied by revolutions, transformed much of Asia and Africa in the 1950s and early 60s. Such leaders as Nehru, Mao, Nasser and Sukarno initially enjoyed great popularity and prestige, ostensibly engaged in the gigantic task of postcolonial consolidation – in Nehru's words, "What Europe did in 100 or 150 years, we must do in 10 or 15 years."
In contrast, "Europe," as Jean-Paul Sartre claimed in his strident preface to Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, seemed to be "springing leaks everywhere". "In the past we made history," Sartre asserted, "and now it is being made of us." Watching Churchill's funeral in 1965, VS Pritchett felt an "undertone of grim self-pity" and premonitions of a "mean" future in which Britain would become to the larger world "one more irrelevant folk culture". But by the late 1960s, the massacre of communists in Indonesia, the intensified American assault on Vietnam, the overthrow of Nkrumah in Ghana and, finally, the election of Richard Nixon had made Hannah Arendt conclude that the "imperialist era", which seemed "half-forgotten", was "back, on an enormously enlarged scale".
The cold war, in which whoever was not with us was against us, had already distorted western views of Asia and Africa. The press of the "free world" was usually eager to assist the cold warriors define new enemies and allies. As Conor Cruise O'Brien described it, anti-communist liberals who dealt with the "sparse" news of brutal western puppets in Asia with "calm agnosticism" were prone to get very worked up over any signs of independent thinking among Asians. Indeed, as early as 1951, the New York Times had written off, in an editorial titled "The Lost Leader", the non-aligned Nehru as one of the "great disappointments to the post-war era".
In his book The Myth of Independence (1969), the Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto warned his postcolonial compatriots that their "power to make decisions radically affecting the lives of our peoples" was being "curtailed by the cannons of neo-colonialism". Overthrown and murdered by a pro-American military despot, Bhutto was himself to exemplify what Ryszard Kapuscinski described as the tragic "drama" of many well-intentioned Asian and African leaders. Kapuscinski focused on the "terrible material resistance that each [leader] encounters on taking his first, second and third steps up the summit of power. Each one wants to do something good and begins to do it and then sees, after a month, after a year, after three years, that it just isn't happening, that it is slipping away, that it is bogged down in the sand. Everything is in the way: the centuries of backwardness, the primitive economy, the illiteracy, the religious fanaticism, the tribal blindness, the chronic hunger, the colonial past with its practice of debasing and dulling the conquered, the blackmail by the imperialists, the greed of the corrupt, the unemployment, the red ink. Progress comes with great difficulty along such a road. The politician begins to push too hard. He looks for a way out through dictatorship. The dictatorship then fathers an opposition. The opposition organises a coup. And the cycle begins anew."
The incompetence, corruption and brutality of many postcolonial leaders had become apparent by the end of the 1960s. Exhorting China to catch up with Britain's industrial output in less than a decade, Mao Zedong exposed tens of millions to a catastrophic famine, and then forced its exhausted survivors into a "cultural revolution". The extensive disorder of the postcolonial world, in which coups and civil wars became commonplace, made the age of European empires, when the unpoliticised natives knew their place, look peaceful in comparison.
Recoiling from absurd infatuations with third-worldism, even Maoism, on the left, many writers and intellectuals in Anglo-America began moving to the greener grass on the political right. A bien-pensant reaction to the 1960s also gathered strength (it was to culminate in our time in Sarkozy's and Blair's assaults on the decade's evidently dangerous "radical" consensus). In one sign of the reactionary climate of the 70s and 80s, Conor Cruise O'Brien, originally known for his exposé of western neo-colonialism in Africa, turned into a near-hysterical defender of apartheid in South Africa and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It was also during these decades that VS Naipaul's withering accounts of "half-made" postcolonial societies came to be hugely influential.
Tracing Conrad's journey through the Congo, Naipaul claimed to see little difference between the imperialist and post-colonial eras. As he described it, the nihilism of Kurtz had been supplanted by "African nihilism, the rage of primitive men coming to themselves and finding that they have been fooled and affronted". Naipaul ignored cold-war machinations in the Congo just as he would later scant the brutal rule of Iran's shah in exchange for broad musings on the innate defects of Islam. Though quickly credited with ethnographic as well as literary authority, Naipaul offered mostly culturalist and pseudo-psychological generalisations – "Islam", for instance, was to blame for the incorrigible backwardness of Muslim countries, India was a "Wounded Civilisation" and of course "African nihilism" had done Africa in. These reductive accounts actually helped entrench, among even liberals, an ahistorical outlook on the non-west while confirming the western supremacist disdain for it. Speaking in 1990 to a rightwing think tank in New York, Naipaul evoked a widespread post-cold-war triumphalism by hailing the "universal civilisation" created by the west, which he claimed would blow away all rival ideologies and values.
Such was the aggressively self-congratulatory mood between the end of the cold war and 9/11: western-style democracy and capitalism stood poised not only to abolish the particularities of religion and culture but also to terminate history itself. Not surprisingly, al-Qaeda's attacks provoked yet more minatory readings of Islam as the irreconcilable foe of benign western liberalism rather than the long-delayed reckoning with the history of the west in the non-west and the divergent political and economic journeys of postcolonial countries.
As the Arab spring and its troubled aftermath shows, the long-delayed release from illusion and falsehoods in that part of the world will proceed from within; and it will be a long and arduous process. However, a similar effort to cleanse the west of imperial-age dogmas and attitudes has barely begun, as the recrudescence of a bellicose neo-imperialism in our time shows.
Could it be that Europe's abandonment of formal empire failed to provoke a cathartic revision of grandiose old notions of national and racial superiority? Certainly, projecting military force deep into Asia and Africa, Blair and Sarkozy seemed overly eager to borrow macho postures from the 19th century. Public nostalgia for the imperial era in Britain also continues to be tickled by patriotic historians, and "may appear", Drayton warns, "to be an innocent kind of solitary vice".
But the last decade of neo-imperialist "creative destruction" ruined, almost invisibly to its perpetrators and cheerleaders, millions of lives in remote lands. It is now obvious, as Drayton writes, that the intellectual "narcissism which orders the past to please the present" can also find "violent external expression in war and in an indifference towards the destruction, suffering and death of others".
Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today. For most people in Europe and America, the history of the present is still largely defined by victories in the second world war and the long standoff with Soviet communism, even though the central event of the modern era, for a majority of the world's population, is the intellectual and political awakening of Asia and its emergence, still incomplete, from the ruins of both Asian and European empires. The much-heralded shift of power from the west to the east may or may not happen. But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy.
• Pankaj Mishra will be talking about his book From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia at the LSE on 30 July at 6.30pm. More information at http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents.
the primitive economy, the illiteracy, the religious fanaticism, the tribal blindness, the chronic hunger, the colonial past with its practice of debasing and dulling the conquered, the blackmail by the imperialists, the greed of the corrupt, the unemployment, the red ink. Progress comes with great difficulty along such a road
Delete chronic hunger and this is what end of empire means in the almost last English colony.
Vote YES Scotland!
But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy.
That's quite a claim. I would see the Chinese involvement in Africa and monetary support for local dictators as a step towards swapping despotic Europeans for despotic Asians, rather than as some kind of cosmopolitan partnership of equals.
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The implied narrative at all times is that Asian and African noble peoples are subjagated and can't be genocidal or colonialistic.
Well, look at the history of Asia and Africa - long before and after the short period of European colonialism they were invading and destroying indigenous civilizations. It's not a European thing it's a human thing.
Armenian genocide?
Cutural revolution
Mughal invasion
Islamic caliphate
Barbary slaversthe list is endless.....European colonialism was undoubtedly cruel in places. But what Europe also gave the world was the enlightenment and those values shine through and in the dark times we leave in it does not make you an apologist for imperialism to realise that this is the best hope we have for the future.
The way European overlords exploited foreign natives is simply an extension of the way the exploited the underclass in their own country. This is a class issue, not a racial one.
I think any reasoned argument in book form to put alongside the countless 'Why The British Empire was so Great' type of books (of which we have so many) will go some way to rederessing the balance..should be more of these boks..for a balanced view at the very least..if we dont..we risk having Govian/Fergusonian History being taught in our schools and that would not be right
"After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man's right to rule"
He shoots the elephant because the large crowd of Burmese behind him had gathered and followed him in expectation of a spectacle and he felt compelled by their presence to provide one.
Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today
They have you and your ilk pegged too.Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today
They have you and your ilk pegged too with dudes like Nial Ferguson in particular.
Some interesting phrases here from a semiotic perspective:
"What Europe also gave the world was the enlightenment"
"those values shine through"
"in the dark times we leave in"As a response to an article on colonialism and race, this is a revealing metaphorical thread.
One of the best articles in the best artiucles in the Guardian for ages, intellectually first rate ! Any suggestion that imperialism wasn't entirely perfect unleashes racist ridicule, but that in itself indicates why these things need to be confronted..
"Indians, after all, would go on breeding "like rabbits", Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44)."
As offensive as the statement was by Chuchill, even most Indian people today admit that their 1.2 Billion population which looks set to grow to about 1.8 Billion by 2050 is a disaster in the making.
I agree with 'ceedoyle'.
By describing history in terms of conflicts and domination/subjugation between countries and continents rather than economic classes you replicate the stereotypes you think you are undermining.
Oh dear.
it's so despairing to see apologists out in full force in threads such as these - pointing out how pretty shitty some of our erstwhile colonies are and how much better off they would be if they were still under us.
If anyone has actually spent any amount of time in any of these countries before shooting their mouths off, they'd realise that the root cause of almost ALL the problems plaguing these nations is crippling poverty. There's a reason why some of these countries are poor, and no, it is not solely because they are dirty, filthy, uneducated and somehow inferior to their first world counterparts.
The West's economic clout - achieved in no small part by exploiting poorer nations in the past - skews the balance heavily in its favour, so much so that the world today is ruled by plutocrats with Western interests at heart.
So please. The Empire isn't something we ought to be proud of. It was exploitation of the less fortunate on the most disingenuous pretexts, pretty much what the Tories are doing to the less fortunate of our very own society. Shame on anyone who apologises for it, or worse, takes pride in it.
But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/ivory-seizures-china-domestic-trade - Ivory seizures prompt calls for China to end domestic trade
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576580020012406078.html - Chinese Demand Revives Ivory Trade
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17675816 - The illegal ivory trade threatening Africa's elephants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_trade#The_rise_of_China_and_the_modern_poaching_crisis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11568485 - Chinese bosses charged over Zambian mine shootingHmmm... delusional much?
As an expat in China, I can assure you that the Chinese views towards Africa and Africans is very contemptuous and negative. There's an advert played regularly on the subway, I've never remembered what it advertises because it's so damn racist. It features African tribesmen dancing about, doing some ooga booga while the Chinese stand about in safari gear. A few frames later, the tribes men and Chinese men go all gawk eyed as they spot something in the distance. A beautiful Chinese woman decked out in African tribal wear - she smiles and the African men finish off the ad by doing some more ooga booga behind around her.
Yeah, equals. And if you think that's bad, go learn Chinese and hear what they have to say about India. In the meantime, read this:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/SPECIALCOVERAGE/ForeignDevilsorAngels.aspxIt poses a similar questions to your article, just in more racist terms.
Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today
In China history is only useful for propaganda purposes. I also suggest this blog post.
http://ishamcook.com/2012/05/07/questioning-chinas-5000-year-old-master-trope/Happy reading and educating! 加油！
A balanced view of empire is valuable but to be balanced an honest appraisal of the asian countries themsleves needs to be added.
I am pleased to see this author does at least refer to the most notorious of these in particular the horrific japanese empire whose actions in China especially were evil.
The one thing I find annoying is the assumption of moral superiority in this article for those nations who were subjugated by outside powers, somehow believing that they would have been beacons of decency but for the imperialists which even a limited knowledge of pre imperial times will tell you is nonsense.
Asian imperialism is growing today.China is occupying Tibet by main force and is building an ocean going navy to project military power across the oceans (it has not done this since the early 1400's) and is being very aggresive in the south china sea in a clear bid to take territory from it's neighbouring states.
This time with clickable links:
But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/ivory-seizures-china-domestic-trade - Ivory seizures prompt calls for China to end domestic trade
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576580020012406078.html - Chinese Demand Revives Ivory Trade
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17675816http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17675816 - The illegal ivory trade threatening Africa's elephants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_trade#The_rise_of_China_and_the_modern_poaching_crisis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11568485 - Chinese bosses charged over Zambian mine shootingHmmm... delusional much?
As an expat in China, I can assure you that the Chinese views towards Africa and Africans is very contemptuous and negative. There's an advert played regularly on the subway, I've never remembered what it advertises because it's so damn racist. It features African tribesmen dancing about, doing some ooga booga while the Chinese stand about in safari gear. A few frames later, the tribes men and Chinese men go all gawk eyed as they spot something in the distance. A beautiful Chinese woman decked out in African tribal wear - she smiles and the African men finish off the ad by doing some more ooga booga behind around her.
Yeah, equals. And if you think that's bad, go learn Chinese and hear what they have to say about India. In the meantime, read this:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/SPECIALCOVERAGE/ForeignDevilsorAngels.aspxIt poses a similar questions to your article, just in more racist terms.
Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today
In China history is only useful for propaganda purposes. I also suggest this blog post.
http://ishamcook.com/2012/05/07/questioning-chinas-5000-year-old-master-trope/Happy reading and educating! 加油！
"Indians, after all, would go on breeding "like rabbits", Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44)."
As offensive as the statement was by Chuchill, even most Indian people today admit that their 1.2 Billion population which looks set to grow to about 1.8 Billion by 2050 is a disaster in the making.
If you're so certain, why not do something about it then?
Surely, you realise that the reason why some of the poorest and less fortunate regions of this planet are also the most populated? Lack of affordable birth control, lack of sex education, lack of affordable healthcare and so forth.
So instead of making disparaging comments on the internet, why not contribute something to charities working tirelessly to help these people. Surely, as fellow human beings, we should all be pitching in and helping each other out, especially the least fortunate?
Or do you reckon it's none of your concern? If so, then please stop trying to dress up your condescension as concern for the planet.
More attempts at justifying post colonial cant and humbug.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/national/18-Jul-2012/un-polio-doctor-driver-shot-in-karachi.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/86147/pakistan-polio-immunization-drives-and-resistance/
and in here note the claims made by local clerics.Go figure
I think you got it at line 14.
"Their descendants can only be bewildered by the righteous nostalgia for imperialism that has recently seized many prominent Anglo-American politicians and opinion-makers, who continue to see Asia through the narrow perspective of western interests, leaving unexamined and unimagined the collective experiences of Asian peoples."
Not to overlook the role of international banksters as the new imperialists, i.e. John Perkins - Confessions of an Economic Hitman; Michael Hudson - Super Imperialism - The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance.
why not do something about it then?
You mean like going to those countries and forcing them to behave like us? The places where women aren't educated are the places where they aren't valued.
why not contribute something to charities
If charities were even remotely effective, then there would be no need for government. Charities are to social ills as plasters are to medical treatment.
The implied narrative at all times is that Asian and African noble peoples are subjagated and can't be genocidal or colonialistic.
Well, look at the history of Asia and Africa - long before and after the short period of European colonialism they were invading and destroying indigenous civilizations. It's not a European thing it's a human thing.
Armenian genocide?
Cutural revolution
Mughal invasion
Islamic caliphate
Barbary slaversthe list is endless.....European colonialism was undoubtedly cruel in places. But what Europe also gave the world was the enlightenment and those values shine through and in the dark times we leave in it does not make you an apologist for imperialism to realise that this is the best hope we have for the future.
Your argument can be summed up as follows: Non-Europeans did horrific things as well. Thus they shouldn't speak about European imperialism.
Europe gave the world Enlightenment, thus the world shouldn't speak about Europe's atrocities.
Extending the same logic, Germany's contribution to science, architecture, music, philosophy etc is enormous, thus we shouldn't speak about German atrocities.
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father, recalled the lessons learnt by his generation of Asians: "that no one – neither the Japanese nor the British – had the right to push and kick us around".
You completely lost me by quoting this fatherly fascist, founder of the world's most anodyne totalitarianism and master kicker and pusher-around of anyone who stood in his way.
I'm Malaysian, and hence deeply affected by colonialism (in fact I would probably never even have been born without it). And I can tell you this has nothing to do with the colours of the colonised or the colonisers. It's all about power and what people do when they have it. Overwhelmingly they turn nasty. In the last few hundred years a lot of this nastiness has radiated outwards from Europe, but there's nothing necessarily European about it. A clash between Asian or African empires would have been no less ugly. In turning to people like Lee Kuan Yew to make your point you have instead ended up making a different and much more depressing one.
Obsessed with western ideals.....hmmmm, unable to understand the world today?
Do you really think that the Chinese haven't learned a thing or two from colonialism?
Their economic miracle is predicated on internal and external colonialism and exploitation, on the suppression of nationalism within their borders, and a bloody war of aggression against a neighbour (Tibet), ostensibly to 'help' free them from a system they seemed perfectly happy with.IMO, it is unfortunate that more people in the world aren't 'obsessed' with western ideals (liberte, fraternite, egalite for example).
I speak as an Irish post-colonial person, whose grandfather was a 'terrorist' and whose great-uncle was sentenced to death for rising up against his colonial masters. I live here in London among them now ;-)Good essay. Humanitarian imperialism is just as harmful as the original format. The 'white man's burden' for the 21st Century
Yup everything was ring a ring a roses sweetness and light in Africa & Asia until imperial powers imposed order.
Maybe Britains biggest crime in Africa was interfering with free trade by banning the traditional slave trade upon which several African tribes and kingdoms depended for their wealth in W Africa and Arabia depended on for labour from E Africa.
Britain should also apologise for messing about with local flora by introducing rubber, palm oil, railways, ports, tin mining etc etc in Malaya thus forcing the locals to be dependent on them for their economy instead of traditional odd bit of happy subsistence rice growing and hunter gathering in forests.
After all what did the Romans do for us ? ecept for ......
What a vile and thoughtless comment.
You mean like going to those countries and forcing them to behave like us? The places where women aren't educated are the places where they aren't valued.
Forcing anyone to behave like us reeks of cultural superiority, and contrary to what you might believe ensconced in your ivory tower, not all cultures WANT to be like us.
Yes, there are places where women aren't educated, but this isn't because women are universally hated. Men aren't very highly educated in these parts of the world either. It's due to poverty. Not too long ago, women in this country weren't educated either, and neither were many men.
Almost ALL middle-class families in Asia and Africa educate their children, as education is seen as their one-shot chance to escape poverty. The working class and the underclass aren't being educated, but that is on grounds of poverty, not because these people are by default inferior to us.
If charities were even remotely effective, then there would be no need for government. Charities are to social ills as plasters are to medical treatment.
I've worked with charities when I was in Asia. Yes, charities isn't the catch-all solution to the social ills plaguing developing nations, but they sure as hell do make a world of difference in some of the most destitute parts of the world. Perhaps they don't go a long way, but that's no reason to give up on them, or to NOT contribute to them, however meagre the amount may be.
Frankly, such condescension and patronisation is poor form. It's like an ultra wealthy 1%er who has made his wealth by dint of exploiting the less fortunate people of the society, and then telling them it's their fault they aren't as rich as he is, it's their fault they are stupid, uneducated, lazy and inferior that they couldn't be as successful as he is.
I agree entirely with your analysis. It is also very curious, if ex-colonial countries in Asia and Africa are doing so well, that so many people from those parts of the world want to come to live in the west rather than stay in their liberated "brave new world". Odd, that.
They wish to come here because we're rich as they are poor.
As George Monbiot said in a previous thread, there are reasons why these countries are poor and why some countries are rich, and these aren't entirely innocent reasons either.
Yup everything was ring a ring a roses sweetness and light in Africa & Asia until imperial powers imposed order.
Maybe Britains biggest crime in Africa was interfering with free trade by banning the traditional slave trade upon which several African tribes and kingdoms depended for their wealth in W Africa and Arabia depended on for labour from E Africa.
Britain should also apologise for messing about with local flora by introducing rubber, palm oil, railways, ports, tin mining etc etc in Malaya thus forcing the locals to be dependent on them for their economy instead of traditional odd bit of happy subsistence rice growing and hunter gathering in forests.
Yup, was wonderign how long it'd be before someone trotted out the old chestnuts about banning slavery, introducing railways and ports, about how we 'modernised' these countries, about how we brought Enlightenment to unreconstructed and barbaric people...
To paraphrase Orwell, the benefits were incidental, and these countries more than paid for it.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Similarly, a couple of rights do not offset a litany of wrongs either.
Spare a thought for the poor whites that had to go out to these dreary native lands to spend their lives oppressing and stealing. We did it for ourselves, our Queen and country, yet lets face it, you didn't have that much to offer that was of value to us, other than your land which we put you to the plow, your minerals, of which you were not aware, your cultures, which had the odd interesting remedy and practice. Now that you walk our streets, with your bloodied nose held high, are you really so obsessed with your colonialist wounds or are you just expressing your inferiority, yet again?
Nobody cares about your lost Nivana.
And plain callousness (Indians, after all, would go on breeding "like rabbits", Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44).
Without taking about the handling of the famine, India's population growth rate "exploded" after independence and doesn't seem to be abating much. I wonder if Churchill (for all his mistakes) was remarkable prescient in this regard. source
Sensing a sharper rightward shift after 9/11, many pith-helmet-and-jodhpurs fetishists boisterously outed themselves, exhorting politicians to recreate a new western imperium through old-style military conquest and occupation of native lands.
What's your source for this Pankaj? Who were these fetishists? Do you intend to personify this through one or two individuals or do you accuse entire cultures of Europe and West tending towards this? And while we are at it, how many people took part in the march in London opposing Iraq war?
Astonishing as it may seem, there is next to nothing in the new revisionist histories of empire... We learn even less about how these early Asian leaders diagnosed from their special perspective the political and economic ideals of Europe and America, and accordingly defined their own tasks of self-strengthening.
I wonder if you deal with this in your book. or do you skirt it even after realising the obvious gap in the historical understanding. What was Harrow's influence on Nehru and London's on Gandhi. Did VKK Menon like Hyde Park much or Raja Ram Mohun Roy a part of the Bloomsbury bohemians?
The incompetence, corruption and brutality of many postcolonial leaders had become apparent by the end of the 1960s. Exhorting China to catch up with Britain's industrial output in less than a decade, Mao Zedong exposed tens of millions to a catastrophic famine, and then forced its exhausted survivors into a "cultural revolution". The extensive disorder of the postcolonial world, in which coups and civil wars became commonplace, made the age of European empires, when the unpoliticised natives knew their place, look peaceful in comparison.
I am not sure I agree with your comprehension of historical processes. For you everything seems to neatly fall into cause and effect categories. The collapse or the empire and the disorder are processes which were intertwined. You should read D.A.Low.
Speaking in 1990 to a rightwing think tank in New York, Naipaul evoked a widespread post-cold-war triumphalism by hailing the "universal civilisation" created by the west, which he claimed would blow away all rival ideologies and values.
Appalling comments Pankaj. For a start your essay doesn't come close to the perspective or the sophistication of Vidia's Wriston Lecture. I am especially thinking of his interaction with an aspiring poet in a Far East country. Vidia understood very early that complex world cannot be reduced to simple sentences; something you still seem to be grappling with. You seem to easily quote eminent names commenting on the empire, but give us no real understanding of the processes behind them or even their complete contexts.
As the Arab spring and its troubled aftermath shows, the long-delayed release from illusion and falsehoods in that part of the world will proceed from within; and it will be a long and arduous process. However, a similar effort to cleanse the west of imperial-age dogmas and attitudes has barely begun, as the recrudescence of a bellicose neo-imperialism in our time shows.
Bring me back again to your understanding of historical processes. How were these revolutions organised from "within"? What were the tools at disposal? And who made those tools?
Got to about the third paragraph.
As a colonial officer once said to a Suti (widow burning) crowd 'When a man burns a woman we hang him' or words to that effect. I don't have any problems with the Empire, I was born in 1968 and it was something my grandfather was involved with as a very junior soldier, he loved Indians and supported Ghandi but he was a soldier from a broken home so needed to live.
The Empire had its good points and its bad, countries ruled by Empire had their good and bad before it, the Mughals and caste system etc.
Does the author live in the UK and if we are so bad why does everybody want to live here?
Asian imperialism is growing today.China is occupying Tibet by main force and is building an ocean going navy to project military power across the oceans (it has not done this since the early 1400's) and is being very aggresive in the south china sea in a clear bid to take territory from it's neighbouring states.
Indeed.
One can be critical of all forms of imperialism, whether it's practised by the West or by China.
Criticising the West isn't tantamount to giving the Chinese a free pass, nor is it in anyway suggestive that European nations have a monopoly on exploitation.
Again, two wrongs do not make a right. Just because China is behaving increasingly like we did back in the day, it doesn't condone our actions. If anything, we must be vociferously opposed to Chinese/American supremacist tendencies.
No country or people must be exploited and subjugated by wealthier and more powerful nations. It's bullying, pure and simple.
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The simple fact about colonialism is that it exists to enrich the coloniser; nothing else.
For instance, the British did not give a f*ck about the poor Indians or Kenyans whom they were enslaving, other than how these people were going to make the mother country richer.
The pernicious belief that the coloniser is simply morally superior to the colonised was prevalent throughout the entire colonial era (and in many places still is...) and helped to justify what truly were unconscionable and unspeakable acts.
Complicated ugly issue is complicated and ugly. I disagree with anyone who says there's been enough said and written about imperialism.
" the ravages of western imperialism in Asia: the immiseration of peasants and artisans, the collapse of living standards and the devastation of local cultures. "
Gove and Ferguson don't give a damn about those things: they're strictly irrelevant. Reduced living standards make the poor more morally mature whilst keeping inflation at bay and maintaining a nice flexible and competitive labour market.Devastation of local cultures is the necessary and good purpose of the free market: whichever culture becomes dominant (coca cola or w/e) does so by virtue of its greatness and mass appeal. Immiseration is the perfect means to prevent economically destructive protest since a man who's scared he might starve is less likely to talk back to the person who allows him occasionally to eat.
All good! It's not that Ferguson deliberately ignores these things, it's just that he sees them as evidence to prove his point: that Empire was good because it brought about such desirable outcomes. Gove understands all of this very well.
Might be more responsible and humane to let Jared Diamond write the new history syllabus, but sadly it's just not what Mickey ''Mouse not a rat honest'' Gove wants to hear.
We can ignore all the bad stuff because there was good stuff too
or
They were terrible before we turned up so we can ignore all the terrible stuff that we did to them.
A couple of logical, reasonable and well thought out arguments and no mistake.
Spare a thought for the poor whites that had to go out to these dreary native lands to spend their lives oppressing and stealing. We did it for ourselves, our Queen and country, yet lets face it, you didn't have that much to offer that was of value to us, other than your land which we put you to the plow, your minerals, of which you were not aware, your cultures, which had the odd interesting remedy and practice. Now that you walk our streets, with your bloodied nose held high, are you really so obsessed with your colonialist wounds or are you just expressing your inferiority, yet again?
Nobody cares about your lost Nivana.
Strangely enough, these countries and people got by on their own accord before we landed on their shores and 'taught' them how to plough, how to make use of the minerals and sneered at their 'practises and remedies'.
Funnily enough, they've been getting by since before our civilisations came into existence, and somehow managed to survive.
You may not care about their lost Nirvana, but then why would you? It wasn't YOU who lost anything, was it? Europe only ever gained from colonialism, as against the colonised countries which LOST not only their dignity but their wealth and resources.
Still, let that not weigh on your conscience. Bask in your smugness and superciliousness to your heart's content. You may never know, people may even begin to give you a wide berth, guessing - quite rightly - that disabusing you of your delusions may be more trouble than it's worth.
MaMaPeng3 27 July 2012 12:15PM
But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/ivory-seizures-china-domestic-trade - Ivory seizures prompt calls for China to end domestic trade http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576580020012406078.html - Chinese Demand Revives Ivory Trade http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17675816 - The illegal ivory trade threatening Africa's elephants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_trade#The_rise_of_China_and_the_modern_poaching_crisis http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11568485 - Chinese bosses charged over Zambian mine shooting
Hmmm... delusional much?
As an expat in China, I can assure you that the Chinese views towards Africa and Africans is very contemptuous and negative. There's an advert played regularly on the subway, I've never remembered what it advertises because it's so damn racist. It features African tribesmen dancing about, doing some ooga booga while the Chinese stand about in safari gear. A few frames later, the tribes men and Chinese men go all gawk eyed as they spot something in the distance. A beautiful Chinese woman decked out in African tribal wear - she smiles and the African men finish off the ad by doing some more ooga booga behind around her.
Yeah, equals. And if you think that's bad, go learn Chinese and hear what they have to say about India. In the meantime, read this: http://www.globaltimes.cn/SPECIALCOVERAGE/ForeignDevilsorAngels.aspx
It poses a similar questions to your article, just in more racist terms.
Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today
In China history is only useful for propaganda purposes. I also suggest this blog post. http://ishamcook.com/2012/05/07/questioning-chinas-5000-year-old-master-
Happy reading and educating! 加油！
A bit like compare the meerkat
The world's two oldest cultures, India and China are now resurgent.
The Chinese had scientific instruments like seismographs when the Britons were still painting themselves in woad and living in mud huts.
If China dumps the US dollar it will become worthless overnight.
The it's game over for the US of A.
The Anglo-American hegemony is finished, whatever David Cameron, Michael Gove or that clown Niall Ferguson think and however many books neocon "historians" churn out.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are LOST. Britain's economy is tanking with no recovery in sight.
And though the Euro is in trouble, sterling is DROPPING against the Euro. I wonder why ?
As for America, their debt is growing exponentially and is basically unrepayable. What's worse, they can't agree on a solution and don't think they even have a problem !!! Soon they won't be able to pay the interest.
In the last analysis, money talks and bulls**t walks. The Brits and yanks and very good at historical BS.
Pankaj, the boot's now on the other foot, whatever happened in the past.
Asians and Africans v the White Man. Always tactically omitting Britain's last remaining colony is that of the whitest people on Earth and the people it was most brutal towards - Ireland.
Is that because white mans burden becomes somewhat diluted in Britain where 20% of people claim a degree of Irish ancestry and as such their ancestors suffered far worse faiths under British rule than yours?
Which of the subtitles do you reckon was tweaked by the publisher's publicity bimbo? The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia or The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia?
I was responding to a misery of spirit, not an interpretation of right and wrong in history. Morality should be practised in the here and now, not patronising the past, long gone.
Does the author live in the UK and if we are so bad why does everybody want to live here?
This is yet another of those tiresome old chestnuts that get wheeled out every so often.
Criticism of colonialism is NOT criticism of the people who live in Europe at present, nor is it a criticism of current European policies and practises.
Similar to how condemnation of slave trade is NOT tantamount to condemnation of the present day residents of African countries who had nothing to do with the anathema that was slave trade.
Only we need to confront our past with objectivity and disinterest, and admit we were wrong about some things. That is not lefty self-flaggelation or self-loathing, but simply the honourable thing to do. I can admire Churchill and his writings and take pride in the fact that he was British, while at the same time acknowledging that he was a man of his time, and as such a racist, sexist, misogynist and an unpleasant person to many people who aren't exactly like me.
the Chinese = not white , so its ok for them to do so , ya see.
Whilst we look at some of our Past history and see the Shame in it. The Chinese look to the future rubbing their hands at what can be taken or coerced. And stupid Articles like this try to turn our thoughts back , instead of looking forward.
straight off you know this going to be a piece of typical Guardian readers idiocy 'asia is finally emerging from the ravages of western imperialism'?? what, so decades of communism and Chinese dictatoriship didn't have anything at all to do with their poverty then? India's socialist 'Hindu rate of growth' also didn't hold the country back for decades either?
get a clue the GuardianArticles like these make me want to weep. This is another western empire bad, asian and african empires wonderful, elightened and liberal. It's all nonsense. The history of the world has been about conquest and subjugation of one people by another. It has brought great slaughter, cruelty and sufferign and yet has also resulted in great advances. To judge it now as being "good" or "bad" is infantile. It happened and we can all learn lessons from it. Unfortunately if we look at the Chinese invasion and subjugation of Tibet the east seems to be as bad at learning the lessons as we all are. And let's not start on India and Pakistan over Kashmir, let alone the ongoing wars in Africa - which are of course all the west's fault (not that I'm saying they are entirely blameless).
A very poor and dare I say it racialist article.
Africans and Asians are nostalgic for Imperialism - they are just nostalgic for their own Empires. The Chinese are rebuilding theirs, African scholars and cultures are influenced and rediscovering their imperial glories from Ashanti to Timbuktu, the Egyptians never stop reliving their imperial heyday...Indian commentators are constantly banging on about the Mughals, Japan still has an Emperor... this is nothing new. The only difference is that the European Empires are by and large more recent (though not in the case of China or Japan).
Sorry I forgot about the most brutalised and colonised country on earth, the galaxy, the universe. Grow up. Ireland hasn't been colonised since Eire became a separate country. That a majority in the north didn't and still don't want to be party of a united Ireland is something to accept, not bleat about. Nor is it something that the muppets that still think they are republican heroes should again resort to violence about. If you don't like N Ireland as it is, use your vote, try and peacefully persuade your fellow citizens and if they can't be persuaded then go live in Eire.
British imperialism followed the pattern of the Norman conquest in many respects.
Local aristocratic families/heirarchies were destroyed, their lands and properties seized. Properties and lands approriated and the conquered populace put to work for the benefit of the local lord, i.e. feudalism. Vicious taxes and levys imposed, i.e. Boston Tea taxes, backed by brutal physical repression to keep the population subjugated, i.e. beheadings, hangings and transportation. This model has never been successfully reversed which makes it difficult to imagine other more holistic models of social organisation.Well, its not just about the decline of european imperialism - it's about who next is powerful enough to do the same to others, even if on a less global scale. As others have said, imperialism is more about the power one nation has over others, the and opportunity to enforce it how ever bloody - race might be used as a justification, but at best it runs in paralell to the power to dominate. Unlike Joseph Harker bizarrely claims, racism runs both ways in a power relationship, but one party has the power to dominate.
As for the nostalgia and revisionist justifications (which of course does happen in the UK in some quarters) I think I've yet to have visited a nation or people who don't also have some skewed nostalgic yearning for some glorious powerful dominating. Its all inexcusable.
or some glorious powerful dominating. Its all inexcusable.
should be: or some glorious powerful dominating past. Its all inexcusable.
Forcing anyone to behave like us reeks of cultural superiority, and contrary to what you might believe ensconced in your ivory tower, not all cultures WANT to be like us
Moral relativism then.
What do you think about the institutionalised racism in former European colonies like Malaysia and Indonesia?
You know, they don't really want to be like us with all that Western equality bullshit.
As for those who claim the undoubted benefits as some sort of justification for imperialism, what the hell are the former colonised supposed to do with the good stuff? Turn their back on them? Quell any criticism of the past colonial power's actions?
It is a moral paradox of some sort. The Nazi's killed hundreds of "inferior" people in experiments in hyperthermia. Yet the knowledge gained has helped many times more since. You could decide to destroy any gained knowledge - but that would be absurd .
And as for the good stuff that came with the bad - It doesn't mean we have to condone the abusers. It doesn't mean, given the chance again, that it would be justifiable to or you would want to go thru it all again when it is predicated on abusing and demonsising people as not quite human o achieve those benefits
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Are you trying to get as many PC postings in as you can? You are starting to sound a little desperate. Good luck with your moral complex.
You lost me at George Orwell. He was a good journalist, not Plato.
I assume the rest of this article is a convoluted essay with uncommon words inserted to show how clever you are explaining that: Europeans did bad stuff, now they pretend to they didn't and talk about Hitler, they shouldn't, and we'd live happily ever after.
You are starting to sound a little desperate. Good luck with your moral complex.
Oh come on. You can do better than that.
Like, you know, pulling out the PC card, or branding me a self-loathing, self-flagellating lefty, like, so totally wins the argument.
Hi Pankaj, fantastic stuff, as always. You've got a confirmed buyer for the book. And this:
Clearly, it would help if no Asian or African voices interrupt this intellectual and moral onanism. Astonishing as it may seem, there is next to nothing in the new revisionist histories of empire, or even the insidious accounts of India and China catching up with the west, about how writers, thinkers and activists in one Asian country after another attested to the ravages of western imperialism in Asia: the immiseration of peasants and artisans, the collapse of living standards and the devastation of local cultures. We learn even less about how these early Asian leaders diagnosed from their special perspective the political and economic ideals of Europe and America, and accordingly defined their own tasks of self-strengthening.
is spot on. I remember a reviewer of Niall Ferguson's Empire making the point that it had no book by an African in the list of references. I was so shocked I looked --- and couldn't find one.There's (generally) four steps in arguments defending imperial injustice.
(1) We're great: we're better than everyone else, so it's OK if we do it (Cecil Rhodes, Niall Ferguson, @JamesDavid in prior threads).
(2) They're crap. They were rubbish, and so they deserved it (Ian Smith was a past master: in his telling, White supremacy was justified by the fact that Africans didn't independently invent the wheel.)
(3) You suck: you're a self-hating liberal for mentioning the injustice (standard on CiF).
(4) Everything sucks: the world is shit, everyone was doing it, so it's OK (ditto).
I think @templeforjerusalem jumped straight to 3 --- getting the sequencing wrong is something of a faux pas for defenders of empire
Do you really think that the Chinese haven't learned a thing or two from colonialism?
It's an interesting comparison that of British Imperialism and modern China. Right now the bbc are farting out documentaries about how English law has saved the world through colonial beneficence!
How about this. I live in Glasgow and its was once a rich industrial city probably like many in China today. But Glasgow's rich's began in the import of tobacco from colonial America and almost two thirds of tobacco was traded through Glasgow. What our noble historians never tell us is that this trade was built on slavery. And while millions of slaves were caught in Africa, the people of the Americas were being exterminated and their land stolen. Profit taken from the tobacco and slave trade in this country then provided the capital for our industrial revolution but it remains to be seen what China does with its wealth now.
One things for sure, we had better hope they never invent as powerful weapon as the one that really enabled our imperialist slavery and mass murder, guns.Yet you said I sounded like a cultural supremacist when I said it'd be good for these cultures to be a bit more like us i.e. bit less racist, less homophobic and no FGM.
Quite right too. Those values are independent of Western culture: you can be Western and fail to have them, or non-Western and have them. If you meant to say that others ought to emulate them, then you're at liberty to. If you mean to say that others ought to emulate Western culture, then that's just cultural supremacism, since it just starts by assimilating good things to Western values, and then demanding that everyone live up to Western values, when, in fact, the reason to live up to those values is that they're sound, not that they're Western.In order not to be 'cultural supremacist' you would have to say you deplore racism, FGM, forced marriages, homophobia etc. except when it's perpetuated by Asians, Africans and former European colonies.
Um no? You'd just have to distinguish values from their cultural expression, and stop demanding that everyone else fall in line with your culture.I agree with you. Niall Ferguson is such a humourless twit--and of course he gets to do the Reith Lectures. It figures: imperialism needs its apologists.
I was responding to a misery of spirit, not an interpretation of right and wrong in history. Morality should be practised in the here and now, not patronising the past, long gone.
Yeees. I take it you don't return library books, seeing as you think morality is confined to the here and now.Research note for author: I've heard of another empire that lasted, I think, for over 600 years - I think it was called 'The Ottoman Empire' or something like that - some would say that it was in the east, but in some respects it was jolly far west, yet you don't mention it - perhaps it doesn't strictly meet your inclusion criteria for 'The West' for what I'm sure are very sound well-argued reasons... Actually, it would be lovely to hear where 'The West' begins, and indeed what unifies this collective entity, as they sound like a bad lot best to be avoided... Not that I wish to generalise or anything...
Perhaps those in 'The West' were fired with an overwhelming sense of superiority through their attachment to a religion that had its origins as an obscure middle eastern cult - in which case I find your inclusion criteria entirely sound and they are right to receive such a comprehensive drubbing. However, I did hear tell that those Ottomans were in some way similarly inspired...I'm confused... Of course, the Ottomans may have bucked the trend in empires by being a jolly nice lot, and making everyone feel part of one big happy family - in which case I defer to your greater wisdom...
If you mean to say that others ought to emulate Western culture, then that's just cultural supremacism, since it just starts by assimilating good things to Western values, and then demanding that everyone live up to Western values, when, in fact, the reason to live up to those values is that they're sound, not that they're Western.
You would be really desperate to be trying to pretend values have nothing to do with culture. When a certain set of values becomes dominant in a culture, it is part of the culture.
I agree with you. Niall Ferguson is such a humourless twit--and of course he gets to do the Reith Lectures. It figures: imperialism needs its apologists.
Yes. He took a beating off his audience in one of them, so it's not all gloom ;)Yet you said I sounded like a cultural supremacist when I said it'd be good for these cultures to be a bit more like us i.e. bit less racist, less homophobic and no FGM.
In order not to be 'cultural supremacist' you would have to say you deplore racism, FGM, forced marriages, homophobia etc. except when it's perpetuated by Asians, Africans and former European colonies.
So, are you a cultural supremacist or moral relativist?
Rubbish.
Cultures need not be a 'bit more' like ours to not practise FGM, forced marriages, homophobia etc. There are various non-European cultures where these things don't take place which are NOTHING like us. European culture isn't the only one where FGM etc are considered abhorrent. There are plenty of other cultures which would deem these abhorrent as well, and each of these cultures is no better or worse than our own.
FGM, forced marriages and homophobia are not cultural issues - they are humanitarian issues, which transcend culture.
Basically, your posts suggest that European culture (what exactly is that, anyway? As I've been saying time and time again, there's no such thing as a monolithic European culture.) is better than every other culture on the planet and ergo everyone else ought to be like us and every other culture which isn't like us and which we find bizarre is inferior was pretty much the mainspring of colonialism. The Burmese and the Sri Lankans and the Rhodesians weren't practising FGM or forced marriages, so why then did we colonise them, or why do we now believe that these cultures need to be a 'bit more like us'?
You would be really desperate to be trying to pretend values have nothing to do with culture. When a certain set of values becomes dominant in a culture, it is part of the culture.
Um, no? Imperial values were dominant in colonial cultures, and they were most definitely not part of the culture colonised, since many were thrown out once formal imperialism came to an end. For an entertaining example, the enforcement of legal penalties (up to death) for interracial sex in colonial Kenya was a dominant value of the colonial culture, without ever becoming a part of the culture of the colonised.(I do think, though, that your defence here is telling, since your view appears to be that what is supposed to recommend a certain value isn't that it's good --- don't be racist, because racism is bad --- but rather, the fact that it's a Western value. And you've the cheek to accuse others of relativism.)
I cannot fathom why no less than 45 idiots have recommended your ridiculous and ill-informed comment. You clearly do not have a clue what you are talking about, cannot have seen much of the world, and I doubt you have ever talked to the victims, or the families of the victims, of western imperialism. The slaughter has been immense: 50,000 Vietnamese killed in operation Phoenix in Vietnam, half a million murdered in Indonesia, thousands eviscerated by B52 bombers in Cambodia, a generation of children wiped out by sanctions against Iraq (China is itself an imperial power, and has been for a long, long time, it's subjection by the western powers a mere blip in its history.) The wars in Africa equal the wars in Europe, or have you forgotten them? A "racialist" article? What does that mean? You mean a "racist" article, but did not have the intellectual honesty to say so. Rubbish comment all round.
You would be really desperate to be trying to pretend values have nothing to do with culture. When a certain set of values becomes dominant in a culture, it is part of the culture.
Incidentally, this view just seems wrong. There's a very interesting recent book on cultural change, in which it's argued, with a number of convincing examples, that cultural change happens most readily when people come to see that one of their cultural practices dishonours them. This appears to show that culture and values are distinct and independent, since the dishonourable practice is still a part of the culture even when its deprecated by the members of the culture.I would love to read an article about Arab slave traders and Zulu imperialists.
Oh sorry, I forgot, only 'white Europeans' colonised anyone.
i suspect that you're confusing the examples of what you describe in your number 4 with defending. when people come back at these kinds of articles with the fact that it has hardly only been white Europeans that have been guilty of collonialism that isn't examples of people justifying or defending imperialism. if you read these comments and see that then you have the blinkers on and are reading what it is you want to read not what has been written.
no one is saying that because violent subjugation of the weak by the strong has been a part of history since humans first started to create communities -(and pre if you count men v women) it makes Europeans contribution to that history ok. what people are saying is that non whites living in Europe seperate European collonialism from the rest of history and mark it out as especially sadistic and cruel. which is rubbish. it was no different.
but non whites in this country wouldn't be capable of understanding themselves if they didn't have their especial victim status to describe themselves by. they need to be able to cling onto the idea that they're victims of especially monstrous whites to feel that they belong to a special, different and superior to the whites club. the writer of the article has to mark whites out as monstrous caricatures to that he can understand himself as superior. otherwise he may have to look in the mirror and see ordinary and nothing much in the whole scheme of things looking back at him.
so no, nobody is 'defending' collonialism when people write that thjat Europe's contribute was just yet another part of the world's same old story of the weak being victimised by the strong. people are just pointing out that Europe's story doesn't describe a group of people that are any crueler, more sadistic, more racist, more of anything in comparison to all the other Empires throughout history. Europe's non-whites can't deal with hearing that though, it's too difficult for them to accept. so the blinkers immediately come out.FGM, forced marriages and homophobia are not cultural issues - they are humanitarian issues, which transcend culture.
Again, you would be really desperate to try to pretend widespread homophobia, forced marriages and FGM etc. in some cultures have nothing to to do with the cultures themselves. How would you describe the phenomenon where a large group of people share the same values, customs and practices humanitarian or inhumanitarian? You call it 'culture'.
The Burmese and the Sri Lankans and the Rhodesians weren't practising FGM or forced marriages, so why then did we colonise them, or why do we now believe that these cultures need to be a 'bit more like us'?I never said it was okay to colonise other people. My point was that it's not 'cultural supremacist' to want some other cultures to be a bit more like ours.
I am starting to enjoy this bun and bitch fight. Isn't it wonderful that our texting generation can get along so well considering our dreadful past.
If I was grading this I would give it 5 out of 10.
I find it bizarre that people born in the last stages of the 20th century still have colonial chips on their shoulders.
But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals
Tell that to the Tibetans.
Also often tha exploitation was enabled by cast hierarchies and systems of exploitation already in place - see the British Empire in India.
Urm China has raised nearly 1bn people out of poverty in the last 20 years alone, it is a feat unparalleled in all human history, have you actually been there? I suggest you go it is nothing like you are lead to believe by the news.
The majority of people in Bradford want Sharia Law imposed by your reckoning they should have it in their area and either those that don't in that area persuade them otherwise or go live in another town.
Northern Ireland is a disgusting colonial product, it is irrelevant what the majority of people in one particular corner want if they have been democratically outnumbered by the country as a whole otherwise Bradford should have its Sharia Law and Burnley should be able to enact it's BNP policies locally.
no one is saying that because violent subjugation of the weak by the strong has been a part of history since humans first started to create communities -(and pre if you count men v women) it makes Europeans contribution to that history ok.
You must have missed darwin70's contribution on the first page of this thread --- everyone else was doing it, so that's OK. For a more direct, and somewhat more brutal way of making the point, you'll want to see @LordEsh's comment under Monbiot's article on the British empire in Kenya.I'll leave your speculations about non-White identity in the obscurity they richly deserve.
"The way European overlords exploited foreign natives is simply an extension of the way the exploited the underclass in their own country. This is a class issue, not a racial one."
How very true! This account by Mr. Mishra is an one-sided petit bourgeois nationalist view of the history of the colonial and neo-colonial era. A people, a nation or a country cannot rule and oppress another one without at the same time harnessing the tools and mechanism of oppression of its own people. The intensity of the oppression and exploitation of foreign nations is directly proportional to the extent of subjugation of internal population. The degree and efforts of de-colonization described in this article does not belong to the people of the colonized countries alone, but also has contribution from the working people of the colonizing countries.
It is also true that the foreign adventure (including wars in modern time) by the imperialist rulers was often necessitated by the internal crisis of capitalism and by the formidable threats from their own exploited mass of people. It is hardly necessary to point out that the degree of freedom gained through struggle by the exploited working class in Europe diminished the ability of their ruling class to exploit the foreign lands. The victory of the Russian woking class (Bolshevik) revolution unleashed the fire of independent struggles in Asia and Africa.
Also the internal divisions (racial, tribal, religious, class etc,.) and lack of social and economic development in the major countries in Asia and Africa created the fertile ground and necessary conditions for foreign intervention and colonization to thrive - it was hardly one-sided. Japan for example was not colonized until after its defeat in the second world war because it was already a developed and a colonizer itself. The colonizers; even with superior military force could not have a foot-hold in the colonies without the support of at least a part of the ruling elite in the colonies and this situation continues till today.
The apologists for neo-colonialism, globalization etc. comes no less from the Third World than the imperialist West. Mr. Mishra names only one - V.S. Naipal but there are many more and even more potent ones. To name a few: Deng Xsioping, the counter revolutionary in China who paved the path for the reinvigoration of world monopoly capitalism (by opening the vast potential in China) after it was mortality wounded by the revolutionary people of Vietnam; Nelson Mandela a once jailed revolutionary now sold out to monopoly capitalism and is a decorated icon; Amartya Sen who greased the machine of loan driven monopoly and corporate capitalism in the Third World and who now dons a Nobel Award and an University Professorship after he absolved (with a theory!) colonial Britain of any responsibility for the man made famine in his native Bengal (the author refers to) in which millions of his people perished.
"...we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy".
This is a romantic wishful thinking of Mr. Mishra. Only a concerted revolutionary struggle of the working people of the West and the peoples and nations of the Third World (like anti-imperialist Iran) against Anglo-American led Western imperialism can bring the "cosmopolitan future" this author hopes for.
Incidentally, this view just seems wrong. There's a very interesting recent book on cultural change, in which it's argued, with a number of convincing examples, that cultural change happens most readily when people come to see that one of their cultural practices dishonours them. This appears to show that culture and values are distinct and independent, since the dishonourable practice is still a part of the culture even when its deprecated by the members of the culture.
This appears purely academic and of no relevance to common sense.
You know, we all know all cultures are equal and no one is superior to any other, so better call some dubious elements in some cultures values and write an entire book trying to prove they have nothing to do with the cultures in which they happen to be widely held.
Currently the only country which is practising the sort of rapacious capitalsim which we are all supposed to abhor is China, gleefully so. It has essentially "bought" large swathes of Africa, is flexing its naval muscle in east asia and has embarked on a systematic obliteration of Tibet under an ideology of Han Chinese supremacy.
Also spelling Éire without the síneadh fada over the E (Eire) isn't referring to Ireland but the colloquial West Cork term for nappy rash. Best just call it Ireland in future there Nigel.
what people are saying is that non whites living in Europe seperate European collonialism from the rest of history and mark it out as especially sadistic and cruel. which is rubbish. it was no different.
This is quite probably false. First, there's pretty decent evidence that the key variable in the spread of genocide in modern times has been the western nation state (see here, for evidence, and see also Ben Kiernan's survey of genocide across the globe, which finds that roughly half had broadly Western perpetrators.) Second, the extent of Western empires is unmatched by any other set --- for just one example, see this for what the author calls the settler revolution, unprecedented movement of goods and English-speaking people around the world over the last three hundred years. As he's at pains to note, no other empires have had this sort of global reach.these countries are poor - and sometimes that's because their own politicians,and business men have stripped them of all assests and wealth see - Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Dubai (bulit basically on slavery) All these are post colonial - I am not excusing the was colonial powers behaved, but it was not the british that sold off Nigeria's oil, or desimated farming in Zimbabwe, they did that all on their own.
White guilt really doesn't help, doesn't hinder much either, but it is fairly pointless.This appears purely academic and of no relevance to common sense.
You'd better hope that it isn't true as well. Since it appears to be true, and to show the separation of culture and value, you have a problem on your hands if you want to identify them.You know, we all know all cultures are equal and no one is superior to any other, so better call some dubious elements in some cultures values and write an entire book trying to prove they have nothing to do with the cultures in which they happen to be widely held.
You know, we all know that you can think up deeply unamusing retorts that have sod all to do with the evidence, so I'd skip that bit if I were you.
All these are post colonial - I am not excusing the was colonial powers behaved, but it was not the british that sold off Nigeria's oil, or desimated farming in Zimbabwe, they did that all on their own.
For a nice argument, with lots of empirical data, backing the claim that colonialism had disastrous long-term consequences, there's Lineages of Despotism: British Colonialism and State Power.Couldn't agree more with you.
I did the mistake of expressing similar views on a Daily Telegraph forum and invited some serious cyber death threats.
And though the Euro is in trouble, sterling is DROPPING against the Euro
No it isn't. Sterling has risen substantially against the Euro in the last year. Get your facts right.
>>Do you really think that the Chinese haven't learned a thing or two from colonialism?
Opium addiction, being one of them.
It's astonishing how it's conveniently forgotten in all colonial conversations
The writer's central point, that the revisionist narratives put forth by Niall Fergueson and his ilk express a curious nostalgia for empire that is possible only at the cost of deliberately ignoring and excluding the perspectives and experiences of colonised peoples, is both self-evidently true and utterly uncontentious; and the fact that this entirely reasonable argument has drawn such an array of odiously arrogant, xenophobic and racist comments in this thread serves only to sadly reinforce the writer's central point: that Europe is yet to show much willingness to honestly confront the reality of its imperial history.
so you read this and see it as evidence that white Europeans are of a special breed? that there was always some version of an ethical barrier that other empires couldn't cross due to what? their more ethical Islamic faith? their non white, not racist morality?
or, do you think that as technoology advanced with each new century collonialism became easier to achieve. the Ottoman Empire was a spent force in the 19th century, are you really being serious w dearhen you beleive that with the same money behind them ethics would have held them back??!!!
you can't seriously believe that??I recommend, Ghosts of Empire by Kwasi Kwarteng
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosts-Empire-Britains-Legacies-Modern/dp/1408829002/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343401032&sr=1-1
The ignoramus trolls and the illetarati are out again, exposing their dark hearts and some kind of superiority which they can't find in their own free market and liberal capitalist systems, seeking some kind of justification for their views for neo colonialism so they can find they are the betters of Asians and Africans.
They cry for the holocaust in Europe yet find it difficult to accept that these colonialists perpetrated the same in their colonies, the history books have been twisted too, so these people have been brainwashed by their historians and the white establishment which seeks to re colonise and afraid of the emergent Asian economies which will lay bare their way of life based on exploitation redundant in the next decades, and they might well turn on themselves to scramble for lands and occupations which have have started already under the guise of freedom and democracy, wESTERN STYLE
Perpetrators of holocaust in these poor lands and peoples be gone and learn from history properly but the gunslingers are back in town
the writer's central point is that Asia is only just 'emerging' from the 'ravages' of European Empire. he ignores the decades long harm inflicted on those countries at their own hands. China would have 'emerged' decades ago if they hadn't become a communist country. that was not inflicted on them by the West. India freely choose to become a socialist country, that wasn't this nations doing.
India wouldn't exist if it wasn't for collonialism. that part of the world would be 6 or 7 seperate smaller, rival countries now if it wasn't for the unifying effect of the British collonialism. their history would have been one of constant wars, probably not very different from Europe. so the fact that India is a large, holding together nation is something we created.Not surprisingly, al-Qaeda's attacks provoked yet more minatory readings of Islam as the irreconcilable foe of benign western liberalism rather than the long-delayed reckoning with the history of the west in the non-west and the divergent political and economic journeys of postcolonial countries.
YEAH! They were sticking it to the man!
Al-Qaeda were doing it for the oppressed in India, China and Africa, man!
Not a bad book, on the whole, but I think the reviewer who noticed that David Cannadine had already covered much the same ground had a point.
"the unifying effect of the British collonialism"
LOL
I thought Niall Ferguson was only just drafting the history syllabus now, but you write as though you were nursed at his breast
common history, shared experience, a common enemy . . . err, yes, British collonialism would and did have that effect.
so you read this and see it as evidence that white Europeans are of a special breed?
No, because that's a crude error --- in roughly the same way that I don't look at the difference between the history of Germany and the history of Switzerland or Bhutan, and conclude, from the fact that Germans are a different breed from Bhutanese or Swiss.that there was always some version of an ethical barrier that other empires couldn't cross due to what?
Ideology, for a start --- 19th/early 20th century German military conduct was often significantly worse than European others, even though they were at roughly the same stage of technological competence, and ideology seems to have had quite a lot to do with it. Likewise, the settler boom in English-speaking cultures had something to do not just with opportunity but with beliefs.What's starting to worry Anglo -America is the relentless demographic shift against the White West.
They are too polite or cowardly to say this out loud mind.
But they do worry.
Opium addiction, being one of them.
It's astonishing how it's conveniently forgotten in all colonial conversations
Yes. I did a personal project about the Opium Wars during history lessons at school, having found a book in the library about them. Hardly any of the adults I asked for information had ever heard of them, and certainly nothing was ever mentioned during the lessons. I wonder what else is brushed under the carpet?
I'm sorry, but your post is bang out of order and misrepresentative.
To accuse anyone that disagrees with the author's point of view as being 'odiously arrogant, xenophobic and racist' is pathetic.
'Europe' has spent that last 60-70 years confronting its imperial history and Niall Ferguson is very much an exception that proves the rule.
The problem is this constant attempt to paint 'Empire' and 'Slavery' as purely Western European phenomena. This simply isn't true. Nor is it 'racist' the point this out.
India wouldn't exist if it wasn't for collonialism. that part of the world would be 6 or 7 seperate smaller, rival countries now if it wasn't for the unifying effect of the British collonialism. their history would have been one of constant wars, probably not very different from Europe. so the fact that India is a large, holding together nation is something we created.
No-one can say what would have happened to these countries if it wasn't for colonialism - that is pure retrospective crystal ball gazing. What we can say is what did happen, and the subsequent effects.
...last English colony.
Yes, even in recent years Scotland has suffered under this brutal imperialism. Scots are woefully underrepresented in politics and media, and were cruelly oppressed by those wicked Englishmen, Blair and Brown.
Sadly I must stop my sarcasm there as, despite the name, Cameron is English so we're stuck with him even if Scotland does go independent.
By the way, the British Empire wouldn't have got far without the Scots on board.
It's equally disgusting that the Scots rampaged out of Ireland to displace the picts and the Britons. And what's more, they haven't even given the colony back.
Germany wasn't any more aggressive than any other country. i haven't read 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace' but Keynes was ahead of the pack in predicting what punishing economic reperations would have on Germany. i thought with hindsight EVERYONE had become aware of it.
ideologically they were nationalist and self-serving. empires are.
from what i know of the history behind the spread out across the New World this was due to the Ottoman's blocking access to the Asian trade routes. they spread out across those routes are were in a position to impose crippling taxes on the Europeans. so the Western Europeans accidentally discovered North and South America in search of easier access to Asia. the Ottoman's ignored that part of the world because they didn't know it existed and didn't need it. again, the 'settler boom' wasn't evidence of different ethics, just better opportunities.true what i said, India wouldn't exist if it wasn't for British collonialism. they would be 6,7, 8 more possibly, smaller nations.
we didn't introduce a different religion to India, so different.The "West" emerged as the rulers of the planet because of geography and it won't be changing anytime soon. Europe has the Northern European Plain, navigable rivers allowing capital to freely flow, etc. This allowed Europe to develop faster and build navies to expand their economies around the world (markets and resources in the mercantalist world that pre-dated Pax Americana).
The United States has the Mississippi River connecting to the Midwest and into the Gulf, Pacific/Atlantic trading basins, intracoastal waterways, and etc. The United States is blessed due to having some of the best geography in the world to build a society. Whoever controls the aforementioned areas is destined to be a world power. Once the U.S. captured New Orleans and took control of the Mississippi River, it was inevitable that the U.S. would turn into a world power. There is a reason Northern Europe is wealthier than Southern Europe and it is because of geography.
China and India are cursed with their geography and will never be able to build societies as wealthy as the United States or Europe. There is not enough arable land in China and too little rainfail. India has even worse geography predisposing the region to overpopulation in certain pockets and a lack of centralization.
Also, the talk of the end of Western dominance is foolhardy. The American Alliance still has complete control over the international trade system through dominance of the oceans and the financial system. The "emerging" powers are not trying to re-shape the world, but to compete within the system built by the United States. At any time, the U.S. could remove a country from the international trade system ala Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and etc. and turn the country into a basket case without having to fire a shot. Moreover, there is no incentive for the likes of China, Europe, Brazil, and etc. to change the system since it is in all the world's powers interest to work with the United States.
Funny how I was told by a Hong Kong taxi driver today how, although he did not admire colonialism, he considered that the British ran Hong Kong (latterly) more fairly than the current lot who are in bed with greedy tycoons and property developers and where the gap between rich and poor is widening.
One reason being that British administrators by and large left Hong Kong after their government careers were over whereas the current lot are looking for jobs themselves from greedy developers or are looking for advancement for their families.
A recent Chief Secretary Rafael Hui has been arrested by the British-founded Independent Commission Against Corruption for his links with a property development group and the favours that he received from it.
The British in Hong Kong also provided a sanctuary from the horrors of mainland China where around 70 million Chinese died as a result of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Cultural Revolution, not to mention the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 4 June 1989.
Interesting post. Geography plays a far more important role in a state's dominance than people realise.
Despite all the talk of the 21st century as being all about China and India, I think Turkey is far better placed to emerge as a genuine superpower.
Unbelievable load of nonsense. Where to start? Being picky on details matters because a failrue to grasp detail can give a clue to the credibility of the wider vision. So for example- Ataturk is cited as an Asian yet he was born in Thessalonika and led a national movement that Europeanised Anatolia. The alleged crushing burden of British Imperialism- which left its colonies at independence with massive surpluses owed in dollars by a Britain bankrupted by WW2 (debts which were honoured). South Africa was of course exploitative but it's status within the Empire was entirely nominal. India as bastion of freedom- where legitimate regional aspirations for independence or autonomy (Nagaland & Kashmir for starters) were crushed and where the Congress regime used 'emergency powers' of detention without trial at a rate that completely dwarfed the British (see Perry Anderson's article in the current edition of the London Review of Books on this)?
The European colonial empires were shortlived relative to almost all Empires that preceded them - Asian American etc). They were run on a shoestring and frequently at a loss). Moreover they were run in cooperation with local elites and often more to the advantage of the local elites than to the colonial power (qv. for example Rathbone's work on the way Indirect Rule enhanced the power of the chiefs in the Gold Coast).
There are two underlying errors here. One is to suppose that Niall Fergusson represents generally held views amongst western historians or in the West generally. The second is the paranoid and bankrupt post-colonial narrative of victimhood.Hey dude, don't blame us for imperialism. We were driven to it by the scars in our psyche, the post-colonial legacy of the Roman Empire. Also Vikings. We're the real victims in all this.
;-)
@haldir
27 July 2012 11:29AMCan't you spew any thing other than the caste etc. about India. Just shows how half baked your knowledge is about India. For your information, caste is based on the work done before the stupid Brits came to India. They destroyed a wonderful system. Also women had a great role in India before. Just seeing India aping west is the saddest part. You guys spoilt the whole world and you sit in judgement now. Damn you.
Unfortunately our boys (the Gaels of the Highlands) lost out to your lads (the effete lowland Anglo-Saxon-Jutes) and Scotland was once more folded into the greater Anglo-Saxon-Jute island of Britain. So we never actually had the chance to give back our disgusting little colony as it was never ours during a time in history when colony ownership was deemed to be the preserve of absolute cocks.
A couple of minor points on detail--insignificant details in the overall picture--does not negate the author of this article's argument, and remarks about the article being an "Unbelievable load of nonsense" are simply ignorant, bigoted, and quite out of place in any intelligent discussion about colonialism. Yes, the formal European empires were short-lived, in historical terms, but the legacy of imperialism lives on, lives on in the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example.
Bla bla bla, nothing fools like Mishra and his ilk like better than ranting about the evils of colonialism. It's not only pathetic it's totally bigoted and biased. Mishra and his ilk should really grow up! They could start by recognizing all the good that west has brought to these parts of the world, not just the bad. Norman Borlaug might be a good place to start.
Okay, I stand corrected, a racist article and you are even more deluded then the writer of the article. No sensible person defends the atrocities you quote, but are they worse then the Mongol Empire's, worse then the expansion of the Islamic Empire. Were all the tribes in Africa at peace before the Europeans arrived? Horrible things happen, it is up to us to learn from it. If you only look one way you will only see one thing. You are a fool.
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Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today. For most people in Europe and America, the history of the present is still largely defined by victories in the second world war and the long standoff with Soviet communism, even though the central event of the modern era, for a majority of the world's population, is the intellectual and political awakening of Asia and its emergence, still incomplete, from the ruins of both Asian and European empires. The much-heralded shift of power from the west to the east may or may not happen.
That could have been written by Niall Ferguson himself http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP_X7cb-gwU
At its core this is what the Scottish Independence movement is about. Offering a fake account of history and a false identity for Scotland.
Historically, Scots are some of the most brutal people that have lived. Alongside their English neighbours they bullied a lot of the world. Disproportionately in their numbers.
Perhaps you should educate yourself on the "Scottish Empire"?
Despite all the comments like 'oh god another article on postcolonialism', I find that in general people are largely indifferent to colonial atrocities. Look at the response to the claim brought by the Mau Mau on this website and others. Thank you for this article.
Ravages of Imperialism? Most of those countries are grateful for what the West ultimately left them.... Ingrates abound!
Good to see that the "intellectual and moral onani[sts]" are out in full force in the comments section.
I'm sure some of your best friends are brown people.
[Pankaj Mishra] "After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man's right to rule"
[LautaroRicardo] "He shoots the elephant because the large crowd of Burmese behind him had gathered and followed him in expectation of a spectacle and he felt compelled by their presence to provide one."
[DetlevR] "no contradiction between the two statements"
They're two completely different statements making two completely different points about Orwell's essay.
Orwell makes some incredibly honest and refreshing observations in the essay and Mishra misrepresents him. I would urge people to read Orwell's essay, it's much more interesting than Mishra's article.
Human beings like power and wealth, whether you are Mongol. Japanese, Chinese, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Spanish, Maya, Inca, Arab, African or indeed the English who came on the scene quite late. We are all much the same. Give us an inch and we will take a mile. And now it looks as if the time of the Europeans is going!
Oh good. Another essay on postcolonialism. There aren't nearly enough.</blockquote
Sadly, the british are very good at blotting out that which forces them to examine the cultural and historical conscience and then soundbiting what they see as the good bits.
So rape, murder, torture, cultural, physical and spiritual destruction of Africans during slavery for hundreds of years, as horrific and traumatic as it was, and still remains, is completely pushed aside in a fury of finger pointing and national mottos such as 'but the british ended slavery'. I guess next they will be writing history books praising serial killers because they stopped killing.... whoops, they've already done that in their revisionist accounts of their so-called glorious empire!
The British Empire was a complete disgrace. Living in the north of Ireland it makes me sick to see it paraded around by Unionist bigots every July. Such a genocidal empire only deserves a bad press.
Ravages of Imperialism? Most of those countries are grateful for what the West ultimately left them.... Ingrates abound!
I watched Amistad again last night - I always have to gear myself up for that film because it seriously traumatises me to watch how savagely and callously my Ancestors were bound by rocks and thrown into the sea. Grateful we are not. But then after your Ancestors have been through such trauma and then the generations of trauma on the plantations, you would eventually submit.
Bad stuff happens, so it's okay to be bad. Is that what you mean when you say "...it is up to us to learn from it." Hmm...we could have a discussion about the logic of power, but I'd rather have a discussion about the logic of peace, and I don't think that makes me a fool.
The vast majority of the british people have no idea about the evil that their nation has committed to make this country what it is today. And I suspect, they actually don't give a shit. This is why it is so easy to exploit and brainwash the british people and woo them with festive jamborees - they are culturally a people who never introspect.
Aside from the whitewash history taught in school, I could probably count on one hand the number of white British people who have bothered to pick up one book on slavery or colonialisation in Africa, Asia, South America or the Pacific nations and read it cover to cover, let alone one written by someone who is non-British.
Sadly, the mind-numbing induced by the violent trauma experienced by our fore-bearers also means that we too traumatised to re-visit what was done, though of course we may hear the accounts passed down in our families or experience the legacy of that trauma in our lives.
In short all the faults of Africa and Asian are the faults of the 'evil west , they always been the fault of the 'evil west ' and they will always be the fault of 'the evil '
An approach which in turn wipes out the very long history of these people before the 'evil west ' had any involvement', treats these people like children who can't take responsibility for their own actions , which is rather rascit and acts as excuse for the type of first class bast*rd who to often runs these countries and treats its people very poorly.
But there were two types of British in Hong Kong : the rich explotative types, and the often more enlightened administrators. Indeed, much of colonial history was a power struggle, which the taipans generally won. The British "protected" Hong Kong not ourt of charity but because it was in their own interests, and they made billions more after 1949 than before. The Chinese were not "pro Britsh" so much as anti-communist. Without them to build up the economy the British would not have benefited.
You poor victims. Have some more money.
This is why I am so glad to see this country fall down the toilet. You fuck over people for centuries, pillaging resources, land and people - and then start grandstanding because you believe you are giving money? Setting aside the bureaucracy of your aid agencies which ensures that a substantial portion of that money goes straight to the CEO of the so-called aid agency, this country would still be in the dark ages if it hadn't murdered, raped and stolen its way to a leading capitalist society.
So really, the british need to revert back to the position they were in originally and give money until those nations you have destroyed until they are also back in the same position they were in before they were devastated by the evil hand of 'empire'. Until then, seriously, you really should not be trying to claim the higher ground.
In short all the faults of Africa and Asian are the faults of the 'evil west , they always been the fault of the 'evil west ' and they will always be the fault of 'the evil '
The british have mental health problems. Just impossible to get them to approach anything with humility or remorse.
No one is saying that our homelands were perfect. What we are saying is that when the european missionaries went to our lands and fucked little children into submission, that was evil. When the british systematically tortured millions of my Ancestors, that was evil. When they severed the tongues, limbs, genitals of Africans on the plantations who tried to escape, that was pure evil. When they buried children in the sand in Australia and viciously killed them by kicking their heads in like football, that was absolutely fucked up. When they stole children away from their families in Australia, Asia, Africa and South America, that caused GENERATIONS of trauma.
If you can't empathise, introspect and feel shame then I pity you because in essence, that means you are no longer human.
When I hear about the abuse of children in the caribbean, I feel absolutely mortified, I feel ashamed, disgusted and want to do something to change this. I dont start saying making excuses and trying to abdicate and sense of responsibility! I might not be the abuser, but I have a responsibility as a human being to firstly look at myself, then at my family, then at our community, then at our history and try to make amends. If the purpose of being here is not to overcome suffering, and help others to also overcome suffering, then what else is there? Tescos? iPhones? No, I know, the olympics!
Damn!
Ah! Guardian, when will you get an edit function! I was so enraged, I made a few typos in the above post - apologies readers.
Moreover, a narcissistic history - one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges - can only retard a useful understanding of the world today.
Surely that is exactly wrong.
It is only by understanding the perspectives of the Colonial powers that one can understand their legacy and so the state of the world today.
Understanding their Imperial motives, both commercial and cultural is essential. Many westerners believed at the time that they themselves were doing good (whatever that means). Reconciling that value system that with the effects of colonialism in the modern world has not yet been touched on.
I don't think anyone is suggesting a return to 19C. colonialism is currently going on, but the past is a foreign land and they do things differently there. We cannot wish away the past, and we can't atone for our father's sins. All we can do is try to do better.
Scotland was exploited and brutalised by English imperialism old fruity!
If the English Empire was such a good thing, how come the colonialists were chased out of almost every country they thought they owned with bullets whizzing past their ears?
Stupid reality eh. Long to reign over us? no thanks.Great piece, really informative and the point borne out by the initial BTL comments.
It's amazing how victor's history from a particular perspective can blind a whole people to their place in the political structures that allow them that luxury. Condescension to the history of peoples and places you know little to nothing about - afcone and haldir: looking at you - in smug self satisfaction is the reason that postcolonial pieces like this need to be written, not least of all read and thought about!
FWIW Africa is not a homogeneous zone of backwardness and underdevelopment, it has a rich history, thousands of languages and cultures, and is 'developed' in ways that Europeans might actually gain from if they were prepared to look past all the infantilising and manipulative pictures of poverty the press and imperialist development agencies like to bandy around. Values of respect between peoples, networks of supportive familial relationships, entrepreneurship and innovation - these are just a few. Yes, there is also much conflict on the continent, but if you had read less whitewashed texts you would understand how a lot of the issues have been exacerbated, if not initiated, by the continuing imperialist project(s).
It's easy to brush off the Chinese as despots isn't it, does it alleviate some of the guilt? Perhaps you should look at their involvement in Africa from the perspective of the African peoples and accept that not all of them consider it a bad thing to do business on a basis which reaches equality of persons. It's too easy to go on about 'Asian despots' and not look at your own leaders. And too insulting to be so thoughtless.
What I believe is that the people in countries like the UK who excitedly try to push contraception and family planning on these people are much, much more damaging to the cause of these people taking up the methods to reduce their fertility rates than the most ardent religious groups in the UK, or any other western country for that matter, who are opposed to family planning and its funding. Having contraception foisted upon people has all to often had the opposite effect to that intended, i.e it has increased fertility rather than decreased it.
Reducing fertility rates of a country or a community requires difficult adjustments to culture, as well other enablers like family planning. These decisions to adjust a peoples culture are only decisions that the people themselves can make. And in fact the most important factor, the critical thing is leadership in these countries and these communities, without this you and anybody else, however good and noble their intentions are wasting their time.
thank you for this article. I must read the book.
I really appreciate the chance to read some serious history, rather than living in our own delusional propaganda. So much of western history has read like religion ... Just a fantasised belief system.
Its great to begin to see the world, more as it was......
But colonialist values are not in the past by any means. Just read some of the comments so far. Until we recognize that natives have a right to make their own decisions right or wrong, that's a form of colonialism. And if Mitt Romney has his way, we''ll get the Iraq treatment....(except he's too stupid)
These Pharisaic pretensions were especially necessary to British imperialism because in England the puritanic middle class had risen to power and imparted to the English temperament a sanctimonious self-righteousness which refused to indulge in injustice and selfish spoliation except under a cloak of virtue, benevolence and unselfish altruism.
Sparkling prose on the part of Aurobindo Ghose.
It perfectly encapsulates a principal strand of my own thinking about the typical Guardian columnist, even today.
Hi Pankaj,
Pretty positive review of the book in today's Independent (and from John Gray, of all people). Well done you!
Germany wasn't any more aggressive than any other country.
That is false. For a handy look at the culture of extreme violence in the German army at the time, you might want to look through Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, which has some handy case studies, as well as comparative discussion.again, the 'settler boom' wasn't evidence of different ethics, just better opportunities.
You might have noticed that emigration rates differed even inside Europe. For a nice, short discussion of the importance of ideology for White English-speaking emigration to the New World --- the mix of culture, markets, and religion which encouraged emigration across classes --- check out Ch. 5 of Belich's The Settler Revolution.This is history...written and revised....but always about a few....never the many who suffered under British subjugation and grand larceny...this is the nature of history....now the future is a very different beast...and I cannot be alone in saying that we live in a time of global failure because we have not dismantled these artificial barriers we call countries and borders....it is a failure of history and of emotional intelligence to continue with them.
Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom.
T.S.Eliot Little Gidding.......I thought Asia was big on imperialism? If not, then what is China currently doing in Africa and South East Asia?
Quick summary why not:
It was also published under the title Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years.[2] The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (in which he includes North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while refuting the assumption that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.
Setting aside the bureaucracy of your aid agencies which ensures that a substantial portion of that money goes straight to the CEO of the so-called aid agency
OK - give examples of this
Dear Mrs Hedgehog...."The british have mental health problems. Just impossible to get them to approach anything with humility or remorse".
You have hit the bullseye....mental illness in the form of delusions affects the entire human race....it is passed on by memes....and some of these take the form of the official histories of countries....many of which are pure works of fiction.....why is it that revisions of history are needed.....because the original chroniclers were dishonest and used spin to put the best gloss on their actions....because they were only chronicling the actions of the elite and powerful...not an easy task when a wrong punctuation mark can cost you dearly...so critical revisions from a temporal or geographical distance are essential in determining the actual truth of an issue...and that it seems is what Mr Mishra is engaged in..and more power to him for it.
The initial crimes are compounded by the evasion, dishonesty and bias of historians....and as Mrs Hedgehog says these are negative attributes lacking empathy and human concern....and further contribute to the certain perdition awaiting us.....at some future point in time...unless we treat this mental illness as it is expressed through greed...venality...the imposition of poverty.....the fear of marshall reprisals.....hegemony and the destruction of participative democracy....and we can start by teaching children that Empire fostered all of the above bastard siblings.
Thank you Pankaj,
Your book accords with my politics exactly
Did the editor of the editor of the Guardian actually read this article before it was printed?
This despoils most of the Guardian's editorial policy on Syria and much else.
Let's not downplay the achievements of Empire:-
Virtual extermination of Native Amercans (the usual response is not our fault Gov' , it was them viruses, - the fact that their lands were invaded and their pity and kindness [ think thanksgiving] was repaid with barbarism had no role)
Destruction of African Culture and History replaced with nonsensical ideas of warring tribes - probably less than a score of people were killed every year in tribal warfare before the colonialists arrived , thousands were killed in violence after this ( the usual response is that empires brought good governance - like Price Leopold amputating millions of hands)
Slavery - black people kidnapped and chained in slave ships to be thrown overboard like animals ( I'm waiting for the replies with "nothing to do with us it was black people enslaving black people that made us do it")
Starvation - the man made starvation of millions in India ( there will be squeals of "not the fault of the British it was them local babus" - odd then how the number number of people who starved in one year in the 40s in the area that is now Bangladesh is more than the number who have starved in all the years since Independence)
Sexual violence - the castration of boys in Kenya and the rape of women there and around the colonies (What would the response to this one be? - it was character building, another duty of the white man's burden)
Economic destruction - India reduced from the wealthiest to one of the poorest of nations.
Of course the apologists for colonialism will shriek that look what happened after these countries gained self-rule - corruption and mismanagement. In reality the post-independence failings were engineered by former colonial masters - think of Patrick Lumumba dissolved in acid with the Belgian officer responsible retaining his teeth as a gruesome momento. Think of the imposition of the Shah of Iran and the desire to smash India into hundreds of pieces (only partially achieved by a division into two - with constant pressure to destablise India further).
We should also be grateful for neo-colonial gifts to the world - agent orange to Vietnamese children and of course the burden of cancer in Hiroshima.
Finally remember that empire is the gift that keeps on giving - even today Aboriginal life expectancy is 20y less that whites in Australia.
History is written by the victors. We've had a swing to the right
in this country and Mr Ferguson is their pin-up boy."Couldn't agree more with you."
"I did the mistake of expressing similar views on a Daily Telegraph forum and invited some serious cyber death threats."
How could you be so damn negligent. You must be more careful in the future - these people are vicious.
This is like a 6th form essay, oh whitee did bad Asians survived whitee and were great, Asia is a nasty cruel greedy cesspit with corruption, racism, sectarianism and wealth inequalities
The book you quote is interesting and a good starting point for debate. Unfortunately, it's also a bit flawed on a number of premises. I don't want to go into too much detail but refer to the following review:
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2005-2-228
For your argument, I hope that you have not neglected the comparatitive approach. The question is, did German embark on a Sonderweg in it's development or not? Was Germany's civilian and military cullture in summation more brutal, racist etc. than that of its neighbours? From all the books I read and stories I know of I venture to doubt that.
If you read the article thoroughly, you'll find that it gives the names of some of them and says where they come from.
Spare a thought for the poor whites that had to go out to these dreary native lands to spend their lives oppressing and stealing. We did it for ourselves, our Queen and country, yet lets face it, you didn't have that much to offer that was of value to us, other than your land which we put you to the plow, your minerals, of which you were not aware, your cultures, which had the odd interesting remedy and practice. Now that you walk our streets, with your bloodied nose held high, are you really so obsessed with your colonialist wounds or are you just expressing your inferiority, yet again?
Nobody cares about your lost Nivana.
Seriously - you need some serious professional help - to make a statement like that you got to be really sick - alternatively David Cameron would give you a job - like yourself, he's got a sick ideology and he's proud of our disgraceful past as well and remember, Europeans are quite simply the descendents of Africans, not their masters or their superiors in any way shape of form and someone should have told you by now, that the vast majority of people do care, they care about this planet and it's people. The world has moved on and people like yourself are being left behind to rot in your arrogance.
Interesting article by Mishra on account of the multitude of novel factoids, but the unifying narrative is just a polemic against the mythical monolith 'the west', and ultimately all that is concluded is an asinine psychologism that 'narcissism' is to blame for these geo-political ills.
Seriously?
Anyway Capitalism has moved beyond needing nation states to fight its battles for it. Despite the tide of Imperialism receding, traditional forms of life and economic hierarchies fade away at an ever increasing rate in the face of the churning force that is globalisation.
Mishra sounds like a romantic reactionary from one point of view, yearning for 'authentic' nativists forms of life which probably never were and are certainly nothing essential.
This vituperative article and the vituperative comments from some posters on this thread are indicative of their natures, not only the poor Africans and Asians but it seems also some poor Scots and Irish.
Of course no one wants to believe that another might be better than himself especially someone who comes along with different and better ideas, but wouldn't it be a good thing if we could 'see ourselves as others see us'. (Robert Burns said that if I recall correctly).Now where was I? The article and comments are such a jumble I have lost the thread. But as pointed out in a previous comment, the article and many comments are so 'holier than thou' that they lose all credibility.These ex-colonised people feel so sorry for themselves.
I'm an ex-colonial (who would have guessed?) and I know where they are coming from. What is more I am more than lucky to be in touch with a few people from those ex-colonies, Asia and Africa, and I am humbled by their command of another language (English as well as their own). Would they be so cosmopolitan if they had not been colonised? To me, they are all intellectually brilliant and I don't think would have been happy with less.If someone is going to write something like this, please do it properly. You are all so insistent that you have not been treated fairly and properly and if you consider yourselves to be capable of fair and proper treatment then it's about time you gave your British colonisers a fair and proper trial. You won't, because if you did, you know they would actually come out of it pretty well.
The alleged crushing burden of British Imperialism- which left its colonies at independence with massive surpluses owed in dollars by a Britain bankrupted by WW2 (debts which were honoured)...
So Britain gave its former colonies a few quid and you call it a surplus? Just what conception of the losses incurred by these peoples must you have for you to dream up such a crass understanding of 'surplus'. Anyway, the inconvenient existence of Irish Land Annuities gives the lie to your premise here.India as bastion of freedom- where legitimate regional aspirations for independence or autonomy (Nagaland & Kashmir for starters) were crushed and where the Congress regime used 'emergency powers' of detention without trial at a rate that completely dwarfed the British (see Perry Anderson's article in the current edition of the London Review of Books on this)?
Because India did Imperialism to separatist regions on the subcontinent Britain's doing Imperialism to India was fine? Not sure exactly what you're saying but my contradiction senses are tingling.The second is the paranoid and bankrupt post-colonial narrative of victimhood.
So, uh there were no victims? Or is it they just shouldn't talk about the monumental devastation unleashed by the forces you align yourself with? You're calling them either liars or you're telling them to shut up and get over it. The second option would have some legitimacy if the repugnant ideological seeds of empire had been crushed which, as we can see and as you prove, is far from accomplished.Cringe inducing sycophantic waffle aside, a question- do you honestly believe that all prejudice and sense of supremacy of the type that fueled the Empire's expansion has been cleansed from British culture?
Oh wait, despite identifying as a 'colonial' it seems you have been infected by what turns out to be the answer; the old 'British-Empire-was-an-altruistic-enlightenment-spreading-service-to-mankind-'-itis.The cure for which is the realisation that the sloppy but expedient conflation of Empire and Enlightenment, of the empirical and the imperial, did more to tarnish Enlightenment values by association with their hijackers than any other force that can be thought of.
Maybe it's not 'about time' just yet
Any chance you know of a recording of this beating to which I could chortle along? Had a quick search but couldn't find anything
So your argument is the Kenyan lady ( mentioned in recent pieces about the atrocities in the mid 20th century) should be grateful for having a bottle of hot water forced into her vagina as a child by British Troops because some of her compatriots were taught English.
So if the empire had spread 'pure enlightenment' values would that have met with your approval?
Could it be that the form of liberal discourse as manifest in the article and which is self-consciously 'right' is but a function and product of the same intellectual and historical forces at work in the spread of empire?
Dear me, what a badly written article. Reminds me of the sort of tosh I used to read in 'Living Marxism' back in the day. Stringing together a series of poorly-constructed 'soundbites' (eg"intellectual and moral onanism" -what does that even mean?) and out-of-context quotes from superior writers (Orwell, Sartre et al) does not amount to a cogent argument.
In fact, I remember producing stuff like this 20 years ago when doing my degree. It never got me a publishing deal or a place in the Guardian though. Life is so unfair.
Why are we characterising imperialism by horrendous atrocities. Would we characterise Islam by 9/11?
There are two types of democracies: imperialist and non-imperialist. Imperialist democracies such as Britain, America and France practise democracy at home, but fascism abroad - might is right, imperialist domination by means of constant war and colonisation are fascist principles. Imperialist military aggressions are always legitimised in the name of democracy, human rights, or humanitarian concerns.
Mishra's analysis is a useful corrective to the pro-Western perspectives of Niall Ferguson as he himself suggests. Mishra is perhaps more anti-imperialist than of the left.While he rightly notes the importance of the Arab Spring and the emphasis on change coming from within he rather skates over the reality that many 'non-western' countries have Governments of a very similar complexion to the West with much the same neo-liberal aims. Partly that is a result of Western influence and imperialism but it also reflects failures of the left unfortunately.
More widely while Ferguson is a serious historian it might be reflected that some of his recent historical narratives reflect a desire to provide an historical context to western interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. If Mishra can counter some of that his work is welcome
There are two types of democracies: imperialist and non-imperialist. Imperialist democracies such as Britain, America and France practise democracy at home, but fascism abroad - might is right, imperialist domination by means of constant war and colonisation are fascist principles. Imperialist military aggressions are always legitimised in the name of democracy, human rights, or humanitarian concerns.
Might is right is the principle so beloved of the 'realists' on the left though.
Fact is that the liberal democracies - where the individual is relatively free- only cam about themselves out of conflict and civil war, sometimes direct conquest. If there is no law there is no freedom, I think Locke said that. The anti-colonialists tend to conceive of freedom in terms of collective freedom, I think this is a mistake.
1. The Kenyans didn't arm and train the British soldiers. The CIA fed and nurtured Al Quaeda (read about Alistair Cooke the diplomat who warned the Americans in the early 80s of the dangers of creating militant Islam).
2. There was no benefit to any society from colonialism ( even the argument about the railways in India is akin to saying that if the Germans won WWII then British Rail would have run on time). If you ever attend an inter-faith meeting (which I suspect you do not) you will see the good work done by Muslims.
But colonialist values are not in the past by any means. Just read some of the comments so far. Until we recognize that natives have a right to make their own decisions right or wrong, that's a form of colonialism. And if Mitt Romney has his way, we''ll get the Iraq treatment....(except he's too stupid)
Colonialisation is built on this phenomenon of seeing ones form of life, ones morality and values as being universally right and superior to the other. Ironically this is exactly the way the left view their own form of life. Instead of subjugating the other they seek to patronise him unless he has a lot of power then they subjugate him instead.
It is said that no good deed goes unpunished. It is clear that Britain's attempt at exporting civilization to the world via Empire whilst patently successful in terms of the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand amongst others, is destined to keep on causing us pain at the hands of those who would do better to emulate the British rather than stew uselessly in their own juices in the three rings of the seventh circle forever.
Consider this. You are born in an African or Asian country. Would you rather it historically independent, a previously French Colony, or previously a British colony?
There was no benefit to any society from colonialism ( even the argument about the railways in India is akin to saying that if the Germans won WWII then British Rail would have run on time). If you ever attend an inter-faith meeting (which I suspect you do not) you will see the good work done by Muslims.
This is hard To refute because 'advantage' is subjective. Was there an advantage to the industrial revolution in Britain? Some people might think so, others yearn for the pastoral idle.
Certainly imperialism I think was a neccescry precursor to globalisation. India might still be a large collection of medieval fiefs frozen in time it it were not for imperialism. It's doubtful there would be an India in the self conscious sense.
The author is another victim of Rousseau's Bon Sauvage syndrome.Does he really think that giving the ways and means to China Or South Africa, Iran or Venezuela,they wouln't act as the so called white western imperialist nation?This is a rethorical question,of course he does.
Britain did not export civilisation to the countries you mention - it exported mass migration and killed off the indiginous people.
The uncomfortable flip side to that is that the aboriginal people failed. Should one side with failure?
Gosh! Nostalgia for empire. What a concept. Why nostalgia when when it is, for the West, horrifyingly current. Empire continues. Tactics change. But we still rape the earth of resources which do not belong to us and to exploit the weakness of every defensless nation for our own advantage.The world remains under the Anglo-Saxon jack boot
In terms of the Industrial Revolution: people will argue in favour of (ultimately) increased life expectancy , education the expansion/creation of a middle class etc etc and a few people may take the opposite view you suggest.
Do you really think anyone on the receiving end of empire - say in India would value the fact than an area went from 25% of world GDP ( read William Dalrymple's articles) to abject poverty. Who would appreciate the Empire created starvation in Bengal in the 40s (grain being exported from India to Europe). Are there any Indians who wish for the life-expectancy of 28y at independence - I doubt it. I think that they do applaud the measures after independence - laws against caste and race discrimination (exacerbated by the British in a divide and rule policy) , laws against dowry, the building of hospitals and universities , representive democracy , current life expectancy in mid 60s (well behind Europe but a massive improvement on colonial times) etc etc. The same could be said for all former colonies.
Native American people were capable of the most extreme barbarism against each other. A paradise lost it was not.
So if the empire had spread 'pure enlightenment' values would that have met with your approval?
If it had, it would, by definition, not have been an empire. Of course I would support any venture that aimed to empower the peoples of the planet with the gifts of science and literacy without the rape of conquest.Could it be that the form of liberal discourse as manifest in the article and which is self-consciously 'right' is but a function and product of the same intellectual and historical forces at work in the spread of empire?
No. You are somehow implying that reasoned consideration (the intellectual force you refer to) results in empire. The Enlightenment (the historical force) is a triumph of skepticism and compassion, nobody endeavoring to be worthy of the adjective 'enlightened' could ever believe himself entitled to the fruits of others' suffering.Native American people were capable of the most extreme barbarism against each other. A paradise lost it was not.
If that was so, since when did two wrongs make a right?
Hypothesis: I am an outside nation. I look at the UK and take note of the crime, the binge drinking and young people taking drugs, the number of people without jobs, the injustice and ever widening gap between rich and poor etc etc. I say that is wrong and barbaric, and decide to invade and colonise to civilise and enlighten this poor country. Would this be right?
The uncomfortable flip side to that is that the aboriginal people failed. Should one side with failure?
I echo truesportsman's question - failed at what? By whose standards did they fail - yours?
Should one side with failure?
Of course we should when it is the righteous who fail.This thinking must surely sound from the conservative heart of darkness- whatever twisted historical nightmare which contrived to make the powerful of today who they are, the simple glorious fact of their power can justify sundry atrocities.
I expect an inductive, mangled reading of Darwinian evolution to follow.
In the words of Major Duncan Heyward in Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans when asked about the slaughter of British settlers by a Huron or Mohawk war party, "Things were done."
Inter alia , we exported English Law, modern democracy, industrialisation, education, Christianity and religious tolerance and perhaps the most important of all things, the English language, the language of the world - it gladdens my heart no end to hear a German in Spain speaking English to a Spanish barman and a fellow Italian customer, and all replying in kind.
Superior, moi? Well yes, actually, as a Briton, I am, because we are the most advanced civilisation the world has ever seen. All the world will suffer if we do not continue as the world's leading lights, and allow our purity of intention and intellect be infected by all the corrupt influences of so many of the non-English speaking nations.
I don't want the Spanish culture to change in toto - I am happy in Spain to do as the Spanish do, hablar Castellano, have chocolate con churros for desayuno, I am even fascinated by La Corrida. But, I do not enjoy being pulled over on an empty road to Herrez by a gun-toting traffic cop who tells me I was speeding and must pay him 80 euro in cash with no receipt offered or available.. Even if I had been speeding, which I wasn't , a practise allowing police to stop and fine people in cash just stinks to high heaven to an Englishman, whilst considered disturbingly 'nor-marl' abroad.
Do you really think anyone on the receiving end of empire - say in India would value the fact than an area went from 25% of world GDP ( read William Dalrymple's articles) to abject poverty. Who would appreciate the Empire created starvation in Bengal in the 40s (grain being exported from India to Europe). Are there any Indians who wish for the life-expectancy of 28y at independence - I doubt it. I think that they do applaud the measures after independence - laws against caste and race discrimination (exacerbated by the British in a divide and rule policy) , laws against dowry, the building of hospitals and universities , representive democracy , current life expectancy in mid 60s (well behind Europe but a massive improvement on colonial times) etc etc. The same could be said for all former colonies.
The East India company then Raj certainly kept the economy arrested, but what evidence do you have that the feudal fiefs and princes would have been able to industrialise? The Brits were the first to have a national plan in case of famine, nothing existed under the Moguls like that and there was war and conflict in pre-Imperial India with population decimation at times.
All those elements of modernity, centralised state, health care, universal law, markets, democracy, these were a result of western colonialism.
The problem was the west's moralizing. Look at china, not interested
in moralizing, they only want to do business and are welcomed by former
colonized country's. Who are happy to do business, just don't interfere with
their rules, morals and laws. Would we like them to interfere with ours. NO.
(Or do you like Brussel's and all those human rights regulations). That's when
you see the hypocrisy of imperialist, when they complain about Europes
interference in our laws. They despise it and yet, still think it was fine for
us to do it to former colonies. How can such xenophobic people, genuinely
be interested in the welfare of other nations, it's an oxymoron, but still
they keep up the pretense. Anyone else would give up the ghost.
But the right can't even come to terms with relativism. Absolutism
and literal mindedness is the foundation of their ideology. Blatant
self interest, faux morals (only when it's convenient with making money).I echo truesportsman's question - failed at what? By whose standards did they fail - yours?
Their form of life failed to adapt to the new circumstances. Everywhere advanced people meet primitive pre-technological people the outcome is universally the same.
Sorry was anybody laboring under the illusion that imperialism was a moral triumph? Talk about pushing at an open door...
We need to start discussing imperialism as a historical process rather than trying to stake out moral positions on it.
If that was so, since when did two wrongs make a right?
You (?) were trying to present a false dichotomy of gentle Aboriginal vs barbaric european which is incorrect.
Superb piece - thank you for this. One of the top three best things I have ever read in this paper. Bravo - if I could afford the book I'd buy it...
No. You are somehow implying that reasoned consideration (the intellectual force you refer to) results in empire. The Enlightenment (the historical force) is a triumph of skepticism and compassion, nobody endeavoring to be worthy of the adjective 'enlightened' could ever believe himself entitled to the fruits of others' suffering.
The 'enlightenment' motifs of humanism, moral philosophy, reason etc are universalising values, it's hardly surprising they are intimately tied to Imperialism.
yes there are people saying imperialism was a moral triumph. Your comment was more than a little peevish old bean
The problem was the west's moralizing. Look at china, not interested
in moralizing, they only want to do business and are welcomed by former
colonized country's. Who are happy to do business, just don't interfere with
their rules, morals and lawsFirstly when you say 'their rules' you are really talking about a local elite. When China gives guns to despots it is not 'the people' it is siding with but a local elite. I very much doubt the people proper get a say in which despot is ruling them. This is the whole problem with thinking about these societies as monoliths, as if 'they' have a singular will.
Secondly China is able to rely upon US hegemony to keeps its trade secure, it can get all the economic benefits of empire at the moment without the messy deployment of force to protects its interests.
Who are happy to do business, just don't interfere with
their rules, morals and laws....and hear we are celebrating beaming a lesbian kiss unto Saudi Arabia.
Empire is a tale of two sides.
In absolute terms, India's wealth did not greatly decline during the Raj, neither did it grow. Rather it was the Western powers which grew rapidly, which shrunk India's share of world GDP. This reflects the shift of the global economy from agrarian to industrial, a large land area was no longer enough, you needed inventors and solid institutions to propser.
It's strange you mention the Bengal famine. The Bengal famine in the 40's was due to fact Burma had fallen to the Japanese and the British couldn't get food out of there anymore. Further, food shipped out also went to troops in Ceylon and the Eastern theatre. A piece of mismanagement for the region perhaps, but the a Japanese occupation of India could have been far worse in terms of native suffering, just ask the Chinese.
What about the Hindu practice of Sati (widow burning) outlawed by the British in 1829? The fact that many of the anti-discrimination clauses of the Indian constitution were drafted by Ambedkar who, as an untouchable, was terribly treated by his fellow Hindus, yet was able to get an education in a British run college in India and later the LSE?
It is a tale of two sides.
Your hypothesis is that of a Britain-hater or self-loather. We are not perfect, but every other nation of any consequence ( and in this context with some chance of actually conquering us) would have to remove the log from its own eye before being able to justify attending to the splinter in ours.
The 'enlightenment' motifs of humanism, moral philosophy, reason etc are universalising values, it's hardly surprising they are intimately tied to Imperialism.
But that's precisely where you're wrong- it wasn't the Universal Empire, it was the British Empire. Yes it embraced enough empirical, universal truths to build guns and efficient ships and to feign the platonic purity you entertain here but there is no denying it indulged in hysterical idiosyncratic fantasies, that it was an exercise in racial supremacy and Bourgeois pillage. Ultimately it was Industrial scale tribalism and the rankest form of hypocrisy. If Britons believed their superior civilization gave a mandate to annex then they weren't really civilized after all all.If the Tory government gets it's way we may, in the future, experience what it is like to be a colony of China. The govt. are apparently considering allowing China to build nuclear power plants in Britain. This will involve giving detailed knowledge of the National Grid to the Chinese company building the plants. The British Empire started with trade with India in the guise of the East India Company. Then the military took over.
Having spent 5 years Middle Eastern studies departments I have not once come across an article which argued that that imperialism was a moral triumph. Certainly no Guardian reader would hold such a view. What is the point of this article? Everything in it has been argued a thousand times before. If the author still thinks the West hasn't gotten the message and needs to persist in this obsession, he should just post a link to some of the well known critiques, and maybe send them to the BNP or whoever else still holds these obscure opinions.
The more challenging and interesting task is trying to figure out how the West should define its role in the world without a complete retreat into isolation and without indulging in narcissistic masochism... This article has nothing to say about that except for bashing "neo-imperialism" something which is done on the Guardian at least twice a week and is, frankly, boring.
Neuromantic_
27 July 2012 1:42PMBritish imperialism followed the pattern of the Norman conquest in many respects.
Local aristocratic families/heirarchies were destroyed, their lands and properties seized. Properties and lands approriated and the conquered populace put to work for the benefit of the local lord, i.e. feudalism.....brutal physical repression to keep the population subjugated, i.e. beheadings, hangings and transportation.
______________________________________________________________________________
No it didn't, it was much more along the lines of the Roman conquest of these islands, both of them used local chiefs to rule the indigenous people. Your final sentence applies equally to the way ordinary people of this country have been treated by the upper classes.
Superior, moi? Well yes, actually, as a Briton, I am, because we are the most advanced civilisation the world has ever seen. All the world will suffer if we do not continue as the world's leading lights, and allow our purity of intention and intellect be infected by all the corrupt influences of so many of the non-English speaking nations.
This is a study in cognitive bias taken to pathetic depths. Of course you see yourself as pure, we all see ourselves and our cultures in the clear light of Ego yet yours is a tragic example in unreconstructed narcissism. Probably aided and abetted by a culture fawning at its own Protestant puritanism. The protestant paradox, it being the fool's atheism, is central to the British farce.
Your sense of purity is a false enlightenment but one that has been shared by colonists for centuries and the reason Britain and all other self righteous tyrants, from Zionists to Los Reyes Católicos, have been such a danger to the world.No I believe than in the early days, the empire builders were buoyed with a certain optimism: bringing universal civilisation to the world etc. You don't think like that without the tools to enable you and those tools are a optimistic universalising value system. Sure the late empire became more conservative especially after the India mutiny. Yes even from the get go it might have been exploitative, but what isn't? It wasn't nihilistic like the nazis though driven by crazy mythology.
AlpineWalker
27 July 2012 5:32PM
For your information, caste is based on the work done before the stupid Brits came to India. They destroyed a wonderful system. Also women had a great role in India before.Caste was invented by the conquering Aryan race to subjugate the indigenous Dravidians of India. Not so wonderful for the Dravidians. Not so wonderful for the women forced to commit suttee on their husband's funeral pyre - a practice outlawed by the British.
No it didn't, it was much more along the lines of the Roman conquest of these islands, both of them used local chiefs to rule the indigenous people. Your final sentence applies equally to the way ordinary people of this country have been treated by the upper classes.
Britain was never fully Romanised like places such as Gaul, this was always a bit of a crappy outpost of the Roman empire. Anyway the Roman model was more like French Imperialism, with the Romans seeking to make everywhere like Rome, that is regulated, normalised, according to Roman markets, culture, administration, religion etc, you could call it a kind of Roman francise which people were forced into and in turn wanted to join.
British strategy otoh involved the line of least resistance, with Britain asserting itself at the top of the superstructure only as local elites or using proxies to rule through in a model of pragmatism. There was never much interest in making every Indian a mini-englishman although some people espoused this philosophy but the lost the argument over time.
Unlike the Normans, British elites had steamships, telegraph, mail, they didn't have to assimilate, ties could be kept with the homeland.
That was more of a boast of our beliefs which is not the same as
invading and imposing them. You can't equate a tv broadcast with
colonizing a country.
I'm not saying China is perfect, far from it and neither am I saying we
should copy China. The point is, they do business with Africa not invasion.
The despot problem is for Africans to rise up and confront, democracy comes
from with in. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it never will.you've got to be a wind-up. What century did they dig you up from.
Absolutely hilarious, I love a good spoof.That was more of a boast of our beliefs which is not the same as
invading and imposing them. You can't equate a tv broadcast with
colonizing a country.
I'm not saying China is perfect, far from it and neither am I saying we
should copy China. The point is, they do business with Africa not invasion.
The despot problem is for Africans to rise up and confront, democracy comes
from with in. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it never will.They can do business only because because the social structure is in place. Could Britain have rocked up 300 years ago to the congo and just got a deal to get rubber with the chief? Maybe the chief didn't care about £££'s 'cos there was nothing for him to buy, or maybe he hated foreigners and would have killed them.
Point is we live in a globalised world now where culture is global to an extent and similar legals systems, social norms etc. Everyone understands markets now and Capitalism,is receptive to the, this enables China to make business deals with people who maybe only 100 years ago would have wanted nothing to do with markets and capitalism.
Response to abridge,
It is incorrect to say that the caste system was invented by the invading Aryans and imposed on the Dravidians. The caste system had been present in South India long before the northern Aryans invaded. What's more, there is far too much vagueness in the argument about "Aryan invasion". Which "Aryan peoples" are we talking about? Those from North-Central and East Asia? Those from Central Asia/the Caucasus? Those from Anatolia? The Scythians who migrated more than two millenia ago to Parthia and Afghanistan? Or maybe the Persians?
No I believe than in the early days, the empire builders were buoyed with a certain optimism: bringing universal civilisation to the world etc.
But on their terms, and it was much less universal than the arrogance of the time held it to be.Yes even from the get go it might have been exploitative, but what isn't?
True civilizationHow stupid can anyone be? Where are you from Mr Falstaff - just stepped out of the laundry linen basket in an Opera? Now who's fooled you? I'm afraid your mind so filled with fetid thoughts has become blocked like a drain. You must learn to think. There are two sides to every coin. Have you read 'The Tribe that Lost Its Head' by Nicholas Montsarrat. As I say, two sides to every coin.
I know people, both colonisers and colonised, who have suffered greatly in the colonies, and it's strange that the ones who have suffered most are kinder and more forgiving than virtuous moralists like you. As a result they spread goodness not spite. I'm talking about Zimbabwe that was Rhodesia. They and not any decent people want anything to do with your nastiness.
Anyway what sort of people do you associate with? Your remarks make me wonder.It is a question of how some nations choose to spend their wealth.
India has nuclear missiles, a space program, and aircraft carriers with actual planes on. Millions working in modern air-conditioned offices. And who seem happy to literally step over whole families living on the pavements every day.
If you are invaded by a bellicose nation who has superior fire power and wants to take your resources, you may 'fail' by their standards. Standards which are morally questionable. You have certainly not failed ethically or morally.
"This is a study in cognitive bias taken to pathetic depths. Of course you see yourself as pure, we all see ourselves and our cultures in the clear light of Ego yet yours is a tragic example in unreconstructed narcissism. Probably aided and abetted by a culture fawning at its own Protestant puritanism. The protestant paradox, it being the fool's atheism, is central to the British farce.
Your sense of purity is a false enlightenment but one that has been shared by colonists for centuries and the reason Britain and all other self righteous tyrants, from Zionists to Los Reyes Católicos, have been such a danger to the world."You've chosen the right nom de plume, because the first paragraph certainly made me laugh.
But in a different time, your second paragraph would have been deemed seditious. In living memory, Britain sacrificed its young and idealistic people in two world wars, fighting oppression and totalitarianism and you don't deserve to live in this country if you do not appreciate how momentous this fact is.
You (?) were trying to present a false dichotomy of gentle Aboriginal vs barbaric european which is incorrect
.
Not at all. There is no one nation who is superior to another and the 'savage', being human just like the colonials, is no more noble than they were. They were no less noble either, btw. My point is that one cannot say 'they were barbaric, so that justifies us going into their country and being barbaric'.
If the colonisers claim to be superior than others, if they claim to be a civilising element, then they must be one. Civilisation is not about killing, nor coercion, not raping, torturing, polluting and plundering.
Where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise, I know.
One of my other great hobbyhorses is the burgeoning Western Idiocracy, and with the like of the thoughts of foggysteepbanks, QED.
Doubt Obama will travel to the West Bank and say: "Mr Netanyahu, tear down this wall!".
The hypocrisy of the West has been refined over many centuries. National interest/security dictates terms and conditions on all issues. The US screamed at the Russians for what they saw as their 'betrayal' over the Syrian veto at the UN, one would think the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the slaughter of unknown numbers of people had never occurred.
Asia had its own experience with these countries (slaughter in the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, Vietnam war, boming of Laos and Cambodia, slaughter in East Timor). China especially is under no illusions, however its response to internal criticisms and dissent is straight out of the authoritarian handbook there seems little subtlety in their system and a tree that cannot bend inevitable breaks, if there economy starts to sink like Western ones then you could see something dramatic, the place does have a house of cards feel to it.
What argument? Don't be so thick. I don't know where you picked up that story, but have you read, 'The Tribe that Lost Its Head' by Nicholas Montsarrat? You are quick to talk about atrocities thay may have been committed by British Troops. Where were you when Britain was trying to man the Empire. Sitting in a cosy little house all safe and sound.
If you are concerned about the suffering of humanity, you should be concentrating on the horrors that black Zimbabweans, men, women and children have had to suffer under their black leaders. Do something about that.Your hypothesis is that of a Britain-hater or self-loather. We are not perfect, but every other nation of any consequence ( and in this context with some chance of actually conquering us) would have to remove the log from its own eye before being able to justify attending to the splinter in ours.
No, my hypothesis is not that of a hater of any nation. My hypothesis is that of a hater of anyone, or any nation, who believes that they are so superior to others that they have the right to do as they please.
"Not at all. There is no one nation who is superior to another and the 'savage', being human just like the colonials, is no more noble than they were. They were no less noble either, btw. My point is that one cannot say 'they were barbaric, so that justifies us going into their country and being barbaric'.
If the colonisers claim to be superior than others, if they claim to be a civilising element, then they must be one. Civilisation is not about killing, nor coercion, not raping, torturing, polluting and plundering."
This is a discourse in 2012. Do you deny that Canada is more civilised than Liberia or that New Zealand is more civilised than Saudi Arabia? Oh, and just as a clue to what civilisation might mean in practise, consider the nature and rule of law, democracy, the treatment of women and the treatment of homosexuals in coming to your answer.
No I believe than in the early days, the empire builders were buoyed with a certain optimism: bringing universal civilisation to the world etc
That is probably the idea that some of them liked to delude themselves with. Sounds so much nicer than the greedy alternative.
Not at all. There is no one nation who is superior to another and the 'savage', being human just like the colonials, is no more noble than they were. They were no less noble either, btw. My point is that one cannot say 'they were barbaric, so that justifies us going into their country and being barbaric'.
If the colonisers claim to be superior than others, if they claim to be a civilising element, then they must be one. Civilisation is not about killing, nor coercion, not raping, torturing, polluting and plundering.
I wasn't trying to make a moral justification at any point. What I said was the Aboriginal people failed (which is about realism), and I think you are someone remarked that they were more civilised that Europeans. I said should we side with failure, which was kind of a moral question or rhetorical question.
What does it take to preserve a non-technological 'primitive' hunter-gather society in a technological, industrial world of Capitalism? Would it realistically have been possible to go back to 1492 and do this? What would this have made the Aboriginals? Vassals to us? Protected people? That is to be owned and no longer noble but subjugated in another way.
I'm just not sure if history could have followed another path.
Pankaj writes all of this as being surprised that we're surprised. I'm not, no illusions and wouldn't offer up much of a defence of either British or European imperialism.
However, what is surprising is his portrait or inference of a middle eastern religion and peoples as never having indulged in land grabs and neo liberalism as practiced by Muslims(slavery). This is just pure garbage and he probably knows it. Muslim sites are full of essays on how they brought their own particular enlightenment to us backward Europeans. A bit like our own apologists Pankaj.
The Frankish leader Charles Martel was fighting off Muslim imperialists led by Abdul Rahman and defeated him at the Battle of Tours. This Muslim defeat probably saved the whole of Europe from Muslim domination.
Another aspect of ME history that seems to be continually kept from the mainstream is their involvement in slavery.The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story
and piracy... The Barbary Pirates
It would seem at different times in both our history, a lot of Easterners as well as Westerners have viewed each other as the lesser breed. Although, at least we had the likes of George Orwell(and others) to tell it like it was unlike that rare muslim phenomenon..honest self- introspection.
Do the Muslims and the others feel any guilt for their ancestors crimes? I hope not, and neither should we.
So by your reasoning, it would be perfectly acceptable for New Zealand or Canada to go and colonise Liberia, using military force, or even terror, if necessary. That, of course, is proof of being civilised.
The colonising nations in the past were not particularly concerned about democracy, equal rights for women and homosexuals. Indeed, at the height of colonial power women in Europe did not have the vote and homosexuals risked imprisonment.
Our legal systems, voting rights and all those other things we enjoy came from internal reform - they were not imposed on us by colonising forces.
If you are invaded by a bellicose nation who has superior fire power and wants to take your resources, you may 'fail' by their standards. Standards which are morally questionable. You have certainly not failed ethically or morally.
In North America the Aboriginals principally failed because they could not adapt their lifestyle to the fall in game caused by Euro Pioneers. Even when some Aboriginals tried to farm they were half-hearted and despised work.
What does it take to preserve a non-technological 'primitive' hunter-gather society in a technological, industrial world of Capitalism? Would it realistically have been possible to go back to 1492 and do this? What would this have made the Aboriginals? Vassals to us? Protected people? That is to be owned and no longer noble but subjugated in another way.
Why would Aboriginals be vassals or protected people? You are assuming that we had a right to go and settle in their country. We had no more right to set up colonies in their country than other countries have the right to set up colonies in ours.
Why would Aboriginals be vassals or protected people? You are assuming that we had a right to go and settle in their country. We had no more right to set up colonies in their country than other countries have the right to set up colonies in ours.
No I never assumed a right. I'm assuming that Europeans like Columbus would sail West though on the promise of finding China or America, whatever. Assuming they do and come back, what do you do? How do you stop people sailing West to build new lives or plunder?
In North America the Aboriginals principally failed because they could not adapt their lifestyle to the fall in game caused by Euro Pioneers. Even when some Aboriginals tried to farm they were half-hearted and despised work.
There again, you are starting from the premise that Euro Pioneers had every right to take the game, thus ensuring that those whose country it was had to either adopt a lifestyle they didn't want, or take the consequences.
Even when some Aboriginals tried to farm they were half-hearted and despised work
They despised work? What a strange statement. Did they actually say they despised work? Did their lifestyle exclude work? Is there no work in a hunting and gathering/nomadic existence?
How do you stop people sailing West to build new lives or plunder?
If we're talking about America and Australia here, it would have been difficult to stop them (although I don't think they were all boat owners!). However, once there, they could have behaved in a more civilised way. Claiming land as your own just because you put a fence on it, when it is already lived on by other people is wrong, and no-one would accept that now, nor could anyone defend that as being civilised behaviour.
Of course, if we're talking about European colonies in Asia and Africa, different circumstances apply.
I miss it too it was the greatest empire the world had ever seen none was larger and none had the same power and might.
We conquered rampaged and we helped ourselves to what ever we wanted and it made our country rich and powerful it was a time of pride and glory i would love to see again, i hate this weakling idea that wars for profit are illegal whats the point of a war you are getting nothing out of?
Wars for profit bring profits and make your country nad people strong wars for humanitarian intervention just cost you a fortune and make you weak and soft.
I say we stop giving a damn about taking care of other people we should devote all our time and effort to reclaiming what is rightfully ours if anyone has a problem with it offer them a share of the profits to join in or use trident to make sure they mind their own business.
In todays unfair world such things are not possible and we would be blasted out of existance by the U.N but its nice to dream of a return to glory, but when it comes to war i say we side with the higgest bidder who ever offers us the most gets to win!!!Claiming land as your own just because you put a fence on it, when it is already lived on by other people is wrong, and no-one would accept that now, nor could anyone defend that as being civilised behaviour.
De Tocqueville remarks that the tragic plight of the Aboriginals was mostly because of legal means. In general land was 'purchased' legally or treaties signed normally via the federal government as negotiator. The problem was once settlers moved in, the game moved out, and the Aboriginals had to move out or starve, then the process repeated as Settlers encroached further into unsettled land, again normally fully legally.
Yes there were atrocities and murders etc but that was not the essence of what happened.
heedtracker
27 July 2012 11:19AM
the primitive economy, the illiteracy, the religious fanaticism, the tribal blindness, the chronic hunger, the colonial past with its practice of debasing and dulling the conquered, the blackmail by the imperialists, the greed of the corrupt, the unemployment, the red ink. Progress comes with great difficulty along such a road
Delete chronic hunger and this is what end of empire means in the almost last English colony.
Vote YES Scotland!
Oh god...you're serious aren't you?
Check out the iplayer recording of the last lecture. The Q&A goes seriously wrong when Ferguson says something about 'middle class bloodusckers' --- the audience was completely lost to him after that.
There is still colonialism, it just comes from a different place. The rhetoric of domination and subjugation by western powers has shifted, and new powers have been and are emerging. For ordinary people everywhere there have always been shifts to greater or lesser affluence/wellbeing, that are usually beyond control.
These come in cycles and are never dependable.
One of the big mistakes of the critics of western imperialism is the assumption that there was more equality and therefore more power for the ordinary worker in the west. The worker in reality was also colonised, and all social and economic advances have been hard won. The proof of this is evident in the so-called austerity measures being taken in such countries. When the same kind of measures were taken in what used to be called the third world, it was absolutely clear why they were happening and where they came from. When they come from within they are still being imposed for the same reasons.
A real dialogue of post-colonialism would acknowledge this and see that power follows money follows power, and everyone, everywhere, is currently subject to this, almost by default.
There is also the power of people, and right now many are exploring what this is, and what it could mean for the world if utilised with wisdom, a sense of social and economic justice, and a respect for the world.
Only time will tell whether we are collectively able to set aside old assumptions and grow up as a species.
People like myself look back upon "our history" with horror - a history of ignorance and crime - driven by greed, arrogance and the illusions of religion and its gods which don't exist.
It was the history of "the likes of them", not "the likes of us" - so stop warbling on with your undertone that we who are alive today are responsible for the endemic fascism, oppression and slavery that has always marked Asian, Arabic and African cultures
And just what did Sarkozy have to do with post-imperialism or neo-colonialism - he merely supported the bombing of Ghaddafis tanks and artillery - we see no European settlements in Libya - only Libyans in charge of their future.
And the rest of the Arab world was hardly affected by the military occupations of the 19th century and after the defeat of the Ottomans - the culture remained totally Arabic - and all Arab governments since have been guided by the inherent dictatorship of the Arab male mind.
If you want to understand the state of the Asian and Arab world today I suggest you forget the Imperial age and concentrate on its current mindset - it is still male, righteous, adolescent and arrogant - hardly different from one thousand years ago.
We understand very well the criminal and murderous history of white European aristocracies and capitalists - you write venal nonsense - implying the dictatorship of Bhutto and his clan was because he was "pro American" - it beggars belief.
You blame everyone but your own culture and religion for your own self made political disasters - so try writing about corruption in the Asian, Arab and African world - it was not imported by criminal imperialists but is, and always has been, endemic in their society structures.
"So by your reasoning, it would be perfectly acceptable for New Zealand or Canada to go and colonise Liberia, using military force, or even terror, if necessary. That, of course, is proof of being civilised.
The colonising nations in the past were not particularly concerned about democracy, equal rights for women and homosexuals. Indeed, at the height of colonial power women in Europe did not have the vote and homosexuals risked imprisonment.
Our legal systems, voting rights and all those other things we enjoy came from internal reform - they were not imposed on us by colonising forces."
Look, this article is arguing that political and intellectual changes have occurred in Asian countries in post WW11 times more important than any western, and as this is in the Guardain, so, British, sense of civilisation......and I would argue that this is bunkum. In the main, little has changed politically, but the path along the road from barbarism to decadence with no intervening period of civilisation ( cap doffed to Clemenceau) is clearly visible in India, China and others.
This is 2012. No one is talking about invasions. But even the section of Guardian readers who despise Britain with impunity need to be told by wiser Guardian readers that much of the reason for the way interaction takes place between nations these days is by dint of the spreading of the English way of doing things , resultant from the Empire experience and the fact that the institutions underpinning the international discourse are mostly British including International Law and the English language, albeit adopted and driven by the USA.
Correction - I meant the "dictatorship of Zia ul Huq after overthrowing Bhutto and his clan...".
Zia ul Huq was a pious Muslim and the beginning of Islamic terrorism - hardly an American choice - and I defy anyone to show me a US installed government anywhere - they all installed themselves - don't believe the bragging of the CIA.
Pankaj Mishra is a novelist. As such, he is good at making up a story line, and picking factoids that fit his narrative.
Unfortunately, Pankaj Mishra is no historian, hence his gibberish needs to be taken with more than a pinch of salt, and cannot be compared to the work of a professional, say a N Ferguson.
Even more unfortunate is that the Guardian is giving its column inches to such a tiring litany of old and tired anti-western cliches. But, as long as the last few commies and Ueberdenkers keep buying the rag it's OK I guess.
The problem is of course that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh all see themselves as great and powerful countries and to prove this they have created the population size to match. But unfortunately India, Pakistan and Bangladesh do not have the natural resources or the human resources to pull any but a small portion of its populations out of poverty. The vast majority of people in these countries will remain in dire poverty and will do so for the foreseeable future. This is very, very sad but there is very little people in the UK can do to help alleviate this poverty and blaming Colonialism for the massive problems that these countries now face because of these extremely large populations is totally beyond what is reasonable. The recent leadership in the countries is clearly to blame for failing to take the tough decisions to curb population growth. If the UK continues to take population overflow in the form of immigration from these countries in an attempt to satisfy the leadership of these countries and the Colonial Revisionists in the same numbers it has had in the past it risks being pulled down with these countries into a low income status country and the UK will share a common future with these countries.
I've read the arguments of the apologists/advocates of colonialism with increasing bemusement. Having a discussion with them is as futile as arguing with Obama Birthers or holocaust deniers. In a sense though it makes airing the history of colonialism even more important - and it remains relevant today when viewing the actions of neocons. In addition we should remember those who still suffer from the effects of colonial rule - Aborigines who are treated with patronising disdain and live in developing country conditions in a supposedly advanced nation.
You've chosen the right nom de plume, because the first paragraph certainly made me laugh.
I'm glad you find the reflected horror of your grotesque ideology amusing.In living memory, Britain sacrificed its young and idealistic people in two world wars, fighting oppression and totalitarianism and you don't deserve to live in this country if you do not appreciate how momentous this fact is.
Fighting some oppression and some totalitarianism (for which I admire Britain deeply) but not all of it and certainly not its own, at least until made to do so.What is so difficult to understand about the concept that a nation may do something glorious while also committing (and having committed) egregious sins? You can't seriously be indulging in the predictable, knee jerk jingoistic defense of Britishness by pointing to the World Wars?
Do you do the same with any criticism its systematic cultural problems?
Criminal justice system persistently failing the innocent? Not a British problem- we fought in the wars. Catastrophically unequal society? We fought Nazism don't you know?
Deference to monotheistic religious communities? Remember the Nazis.
Decimated working class? Nazis
Inherited privilege persistently allowed to determine destiny of nation? NAZIS!
Obnoxious British supremacists on internet message boards? We defeated German supremacists!@Afcone
That's quite a claim. I would see the Chinese involvement in Africa and monetary support for local dictators as a step towards swapping despotic Europeans for despotic Asians, rather than as some kind of cosmopolitan partnership of equals.
This may be so, Chinese involvement in capital (financial) imperialism in it self, does not negate a call for a new global aspiration for a cosmopolitan enlightenment, that would in every case be preferable to any form of neo-ignorant Western divined post modern colonialism or simply empire building.You also imply form an empirical stand point that, peoples of the African continent , prefer despots, incapable of dealing with their freedom, (comfortable with enslavement ) elect of their own freewill another; in the form of China, this being the case; why not just stick to the old despot of Western enslavement. well perhaps you again miss judge form a selfish stand point ? and China just offered a better e in a world that is still dominated dysfunctional western economic thinking ? time to put away the narcissistic mirror I think.
The issues run deep.
The 'West' though does export it's imperialism, nationalism, "righteousness" and manifest destiny both ideologically and in real politics. This backfires with analogues, where at its worst extremes creates befuddling and catastrophic results. These results become part of the daily news when Asian and African nations mimic heavy-handed models from the "West".
People like Mishra may not be perfect in their analysis, but they do as a Euro-Asian generation offer a curative gift to the "west"; the capacity to see their own history through a purifying lens. The hope in such efforts is not only that the "west" will not continue repeating its mistakes, but also that the rest of the world can evolve a better general model of governance and coexistence than might-makes-right.
I've read the arguments of the apologists/advocates of colonialism with increasing bemusement. Having a discussion with them is as futile as arguing with Obama Birthers or holocaust deniers. In a sense though it makes airing the history of colonialism even more important - and it remains relevant today when viewing the actions of neocons. In addition we should remember those who still suffer from the effects of colonial rule - Aborigines who are treated with patronising disdain and live in developing country conditions in a supposedly advanced nation.
There aren't many people making a moral apology for colonialism here but rather a historical apology. Vilifying the actions and intentions of the past though the morality of the present is the easiest thing in the world. Like hitting a punch bag over and over. One must ask what is the point?
Regarding the Aboriginals who you feels liberals have good intentions towards. What is more patronising than coming to the aid of people who you feels are incapable of looking after themselves?
There aren't many people making a moral apology for colonialism here but rather a historical apology. Vilifying the actions and intentions of the past though the morality of the present is the easiest thing in the world. Like hitting a punch bag over and over. One must ask what is the point?
The prestige that many today see emanate from the brutal imperial past; its economic, cultural and political legacies that are allowed perpetuate; the conflation of universal civilised values with Imperial vested interests: the continued existence of these phenomena are the reasons why the punch bag needs hitting over and over until the myths are shattered.Regarding the Aboriginals who you feels liberals have good intentions towards. What is more patronising than coming to the aid of people who you feels are incapable of looking after themselves?
This is willful disregard for context typical of conservative 'thought'. We may help those who are victims of the contexts that were forced on them by evil acts or tragic circumstance. In case it's unclear for you: the Aboriginal peoples were victims of British evil for which the ' they are a failed people' brigade share part of the guilt.What sort of argument is that? Why cannot people defend British and Britishness in the same way as Mr Falstaff condemns it?
You lot bash away at the British Empire. Tell the colonised what great good people you are (which you are not). Excellent. I am glad there is criticism of the Empire. Nothing is worth its salt if it cannot take it. The real good of it is that Britain allows criticism, encourages it and endeavours to make up for it.
Nobody is perfect, but many people on this thread believe they are. For those in this country who feel they have to hang their heads in shame, there are many good things the British Empire achieved and that I know of personally and have been of great benefit to colonised countries and the people.
I'm going now. I've had enough and I have to do lunch (no black servants to peel the onions and do the washing up). If I feel better about it I'll comment with a list of some of the good things the Empire achieved, there are too many things, you'd all get a warning that your computers do not have enough virtual memory).
I realise that I am flogging a dead horse but I should remind you of stolen children, the Australian government’s long and vigorous opposition to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Aboriginal infant mortality, life expectancy, dismal education and employment opportunities and grossly disproportionate rates of imprisonment.
PS With all your pseudo – intellectual babble and allusions to the greatness of the English language (which is true, I just don’t think it justifies castrating children in Kenya), I’d have though your grammar would be slightly less loose with the subjective/objective.
If you and your friends were not saying this, you'd be going on in your overblown verbiage about the Aborigines not being brought into the mainstream of 'civilisation'. I don't know about Australia, but as far as I do know the Aborigines have been encouraged to maintain their culture. They can look after themselves very well. Other colonies were criticised for 'forcing' the people to go into homes and gardens, farms, factories, garages and offices and learn 'their ways'.
The Empire will never get it right as far as you are concerned.Rubbish you will just supply a list of things created by civilisations from which the empire stole and if not stolen then copied from bridges to roads
I realise that I am flogging a dead horse but I should remind you of stolen children, the Australian government’s long and vigorous opposition to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Aboriginal infant mortality, life expectancy, dismal education and employment opportunities and grossly disproportionate rates of imprisonment.
Sure I won't apologise for the removal of children etc, and some of the other sufferings forced on Aboriginal people, but I think fundamentally their problem is a historical one. They represented a form of life which had ran out of time historically, this is why I strongly object to - what is alluded to in the US declaration you mention - this notion of a collective 'they' which has some essential form of life natural to it. Liberals would like to try and perpetuate this form of life under their patronage but you just end up with something weak, fossilised, and fake....a facsimile of a form of life which existed before euro settlers came bringing a whole new form of life which everywhere it has gone has superseded old forms, I am talking Capitalism, monotheism, reason, science, individualism etc.
So I think siding with this old form of life only perpetuates suffering, trying to perpetuate it is inhumane. Not that I think more can not be done, but it must be done in the name of the individual not this artifact we call a collective aboriginal people.
which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade
Quite the opposite is true of course. Free trade has helped improve the lives of billions of people the world over. In contrast to restrictive trade practises such as the common agricultural policy which has benefitted a small number of rich European farmers at the expense of millions of the world's poorest.
The book you quote is interesting and a good starting point for debate. Unfortunately, it's also a bit flawed on a number of premises. I don't want to go into too much detail but refer to the following review:
Thanks for the link to the review. You may be right that the book isn't the last word, but I can't see any reason in the review to revise the claim that Hull's book shows that German military culture led to unusual violence, compared to similar countries at the time.For your argument, I hope that you have not neglected the comparatitive approach. The question is, did German embark on a Sonderweg in it's development or not?
I think I can remain neutral about the Sonderweg thesis: all that is necessary to support my claim is not some claim about German culture, but only German military culture, which does seem to have been unusually violent.which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade
Quite the opposite is true of course. Free trade has helped improve the lives of billions of people the world over.
Really. Your claim:Free trade has helped improve the lives of billions of people the world over
even if it were true, would not show that it was false that:
the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines [was] caused by unfettered experiments in free trade
so you'd best not say that 'the opposite is true'.There's evidence (Late Victorian Holocausts, for example) which makes it plausible that the Indian famines were caused by the experiments in free trade that were mentioned in the earlier piece.
There aren't many people making a moral apology for colonialism here but rather a historical apology.
Well, you're certainly one of the select few making the apology for colonialism, since your attempt is to justify it by historical necessity.Unfortunately, Pankaj Mishra is no historian, hence his gibberish needs to be taken with more than a pinch of salt, and cannot be compared to the work of a professional, say a N Ferguson.
Um, Niall Ferguson's speciality is financial, not imperial, history.De Tocqueville remarks that the tragic plight of the Aboriginals was mostly because of legal means. In general land was 'purchased' legally or treaties signed normally via the federal government as negotiator. The problem was once settlers moved in, the game moved out, and the Aboriginals had to move out or starve, then the process repeated as Settlers encroached further into unsettled land, again normally fully legally.
Yes, the federal government. Bearing in mind that the federal government was made up of people, or close descendants of people, who had arrived in that country and then proceeded to claim it as their own, ignoring the fact that others were there before them.
The laws under which the legal agreements and treaties were made were laws created by those settlers. The indigenous population had no say in those laws, which were pretty much advantageous for the new arrivals.
It's easy to say that it was all fully legal when its you who make the laws, and others just have to put up or shut up, isn't it?
Well, you're certainly one of the select few making the apology for colonialism, since your attempt is to justify it by historical necessity.
I'm just questioning how it could have been any other way. Where you see some essential 'malevolence' in the white/western man, I just see economic necessity, people operating in a Capitalist framework which demands almost that they act in certain ways.
Yes, the federal government. Bearing in mind that the federal government was made up of people, or close descendants of people, who had arrived in that country and then proceeded to claim it as their own, ignoring the fact that others were there before them.
The laws under which the legal agreements and treaties were made were laws created by those settlers. The indigenous population had no say in those laws, which were pretty much advantageous for the new arrivals.
It's easy to say that it was all fully legal when its you who make the laws, and others just have to put up or shut up, isn't it?
Ok firstly I was trying to offer a counter-point to the narrative that white man just appeared and went on some bloody genocidal mission out of spite and bigotry. Whilst outrages did happen there was from what I can tell never some overarching plan to eliminate Aboriginal Americas, nor were things in the North as bloody and horrible as what happened in South America.
The appearance of Europeans may have been a cause, a necessary or sufficient condition for the suffering of the Aboriginals, but it wasn't the only one. If their culture or form of life had been able to adapt to settled existence and farming, then things might have been better for them, this alone offered their only hope once the settlers appeared and killed the game or caused it to move away.
They represented a form of life which had ran out of time historically
Ah the old linear, teleological reading of history. Not just intellectually bankrupt but a slave to the what ever IS is RIGHT school of moral philosophy and thus an accessory to great evil.Isn't it also curious how those on the right (N Ferguson would be a perfect example) read history as a narrative of great men, as a triumph of the canniest individual decision makers transcending, through their glorious wills and free intellects, what leftys regard as cultural determinism yet they will gladly read the extermination of entire ways of life as a mere historical inevitability.
What made the Empire great was individual choice rising man above nature, yet its wrongs were merely natural.
The irrational induction on display once again shows us how our foe here is brutish tribal pride raised to the power of false enlightenment.
The appearance of Europeans may have been a cause, a necessary or sufficient condition for the suffering of the Aboriginals, but it wasn't the only one. If their culture or form of life had been able to adapt to settled existence and farming, then things might have been better for them, this alone offered their only hope once the settlers appeared and killed the game or caused it to move away
Besides contradicting yourself on the role of Europeans in their suffering, (one minute it's one cause among many, the next it's the deciding factor in their decline) you're basically saying Aborigines were failures for not being obsequious enough to the will of the martially mightier settlers. For a nation that prides itself, and rightly so, for committing to fight on the beaches and landing grounds, this strikes me as curious.Ah the old linear, teleological reading of history. Not just intellectually bankrupt but a slave to the what ever IS is RIGHT school of moral philosophy and thus an accessory to great evil.
Not teleological more a form of representation. My question is how can Aboriginals go back to their pre-colonial form or life and cultural expression of that? How on earth is that possible? Ask yourself? What conditions must be met? It's almost as mad as demanding that English people go back to feudalism...a complete transformation of consciousness...how much must be forgotten?
I'm normally an opponent of historicism but when primitive people meet monotheism, then reason, science..universalising values which enable them to see the world in a new way, they don't forget, it's impossible? Could you picture a cosmology now which is maybe geocentric and take it as truth? See animist spirits and nymphs at work in the forests? Could you do this authentically?
The irrational induction on display once again shows us how our foe here is brutish tribal pride raised to the power of false enlightenment.Yet here you are apparently debating on what you perceive as the common ground of reason and rationality? Are these just our tribalistic and relativist truths or universal ones? You act like they are they latter.
I'm normally an opponent of historicism but when primitive people meet monotheism, then reason, science..universalising values which enable them to see the world in a new way, they don't forget, it's impossible?
What has monotheism got to do with imperialism? If we take Christianity, where in the gospels does Jesus exhort us to invade other countries and impose our laws, plunder the resources and reduce the indigenous people to the state of underlings with no say in how things are run? Love thy neighbour by fencing off his land and slaughtering the game?
My question is how can Aboriginals go back to their pre-colonial form or life and cultural expression of that? How on earth is that possible?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that it is possible to turn the clocks back. I think what is being suggested is that we take another look at past imperialism with all its faults and use it at a lesson for future decisions.
Your posts demonstrate the persistent fallacy of conflating empirical truths and even reason itself with pillage. The upheaval of the aboriginal peoples wasn't due to the arrival of well intentioned university professors keen to instruct on mathematics, science or literature. It was occasioned by a selfish, violent tribe with their own peculiar myths of monotheism and capitalism without the humility to think twice about imposing their unique ideological schema and value systems on an alien culture.
Yet here you are apparently debating on what you perceive as the common ground of reason and rationality? Are these just our tribalistic and relativist truths or universal ones? You act like they are they latter
As if the very framework of reasoned debate, much like impartial Imperial law, were a gift from Europe to the deluded, tribal peoples. Of course this myth ignores the fact that such pure incorruptable law existed under the most currupt outrage of the ages and that such 'reason' still found space for the Victorian tribe's totems of racial supremacy, bourgeois entitlement and Christianity. There are few things more dangerous than an idea that almost makes sense.Until you learn to distinguish the enlightened from the barbarous in the empire rather than seeing the latter absolved or even justified by the former then you will be blind to history.
What has monotheism got to do with imperialism? If we take Christianity, where in the gospels does Jesus exhort us to invade other countries and impose our laws, plunder the resources and reduce the indigenous people to the state of underlings with no say in how things are run? Love thy neighbour by fencing off his land and slaughtering the game?
Abrahamic monotheism is a universalising religion, with a unitary morality and value system in tow. One's God's presence then doesn't end at the hill or the forest...the boundaries of one's tribe's territory; God becomes everywhere, and the extension of that is His morality and values must apply to all men, it's a powerful incentive and justification to expansion and imperialism. Before monotheism morality and ethics were considered relative to which city you were in or which tribes territory one was in, not so with monotheism.
Your posts demonstrate the persistent fallacy of conflating empirical truths and even reason itself with pillage. The upheaval of the aboriginal peoples wasn't due to the arrival of well intentioned university professors keen to instruct on mathematics, science or literature. It was occasioned by a selfish, violent tribe with their own peculiar myths of monotheism and capitalism without the humility to think twice about imposing their unique ideological schema and value systems on an alien culture.
I'm talking about the consequences of universalising religion, ethics, morality, values etc however imperfectly realised.
Reason isn't an empirical truth btw, it's an axiom on which empirical or natural sciences rests. Reason is one of the universalising truths which I am talking about, which you are so well acquainted with that it doesn't occur to you that it might 'just' be one of the tribal truths you are otherwise willing to castigate: our One True God of Reason.
So the point is that here we are committing a similar sin to the Imperialists perhaps, even though we are ostensibly denying universal truths and values, but we are using reason as a court of appeal in our debates and Mishra is doing that unknowingly to?
Abrahamic monotheism is a universalising religion
I should say this proposition applies less strongly to Judaism than Christianity and Islam.
The Empire paid for what it gained from other countries. Thank goodness the Empire was particular about the people it hired. None of you lot on this thread would have made it. But all your rubbish aside, thanks for reminding me of the bridges and roads. I hadn't thought to mention them.
In Rhodesia/Zimbabwe alone, there is Beit Bridge over the Limpopo, Birchenough Bridge over the Sabi and of course the arched Bridge over Victoria Falls. There was also another little bridge of wooden slats at the Vic Falls and we loved going over it. We called it the Musical Bridge, but I don't think it's there now.For a start, let me tell you about The Shona Dictionary. Language in Mashonaland was oral, there was no written literature. There are many different dialects in chiShona, chiZezurur, chiKaranga, chiManyika, chiKoreKore and more. The Rhodesia Government set up a Language Committee to review Shona orthography and its phonetic symbols. By 1958 the enormous task of compiling the Dictionary was complete and the indigenous population was able to learn to read and write in their own language as well as learning to read and write in English. Lucky, lucky people. What would Mugabe and his cronies have done without it? There's more that was done for the benefit of the indigenous population, but I'm not sure you can take everything in.
Now I'll wait to hear you all slagging off any achievement and more verbal concoctions about all the bad things that were done. You lot might have credibility if you had a more logical and consistent honesty.
I'm talking about the consequences of universalising religion, ethics, morality, values etc however imperfectly realised.
But they weren't universalizing, they were fundamentally flawed versions of Platonic concepts warped by egocentric biases - and I don't just mean in their implementation. A good analogy is the one I made earlier: a Protestant may consider himself more skeptical than a Catholic but he is still no atheist in his complete devotion to reason. Similarly Britain's was a relatively more reasonable society than many others but it was far (and still is!) from being a vector of absolute universalizing truths. Only a people so steeped in arrogance and supremacy could have had no second thoughts about this, no rational skepticism about their own values- therein lies the rub.Reason isn't an empirical truth btw, it's an axiom on which empirical or natural sciences rests.
Which is why I said "empirical truths and even reason itself".we are ostensibly denying universal truths and values
I'm certainly not denying the possibility of there being universal truths and values, I am simply very skeptical of anyone who claims to wield them. Cursory investigation usually finds this skepticism to be well founded.Ok when I say universalising values I mean the acolytes of such values see those values as universal. If I subjectively believed they were universal I would explicitly call them universal not universalising.
Following the Times of India review of Mukerjee's book on Churchill and the 1943 Bengal famine a reader posted this comment which Mishra might consider:
In last couple of years, 200, 000 farmers have committed suicide whom you will blame. Even after 60 years of independence, 300 millions Indians go yo bed hungry everyday, whom you will blame. The same country also has world's most expensive private home of worth 2 billion dollar. Its all corrupted and dishonest Indians to be blamed. How come 30,000 British could rule 300,000,000 Indians. It is again some corrupted, dishonest, greedy Indians let it happened to feed themselves. Better not look back,look forward and make a zero corruption country.It needs the participation of every Indian.
I agree, the illusion of permanent and omniscient order free from the caprices of pagan deities allowed for the conception of a global realm. Being an island tongue and in need of a way to speak of navigation, English's linguistically stable concepts of space and time compared with other language's lack of verb tense and vocabulary of geometry furthers this idea.
Of course science has long since shown English (like all other languages to greater or lesser degrees) to be lacking in its ability to describe reality beyond the reach of the solipsistic subject's senses or egocentricity. We can see this cultural pathology manifest in the very make up of the Empire: it was universalising but with a centre: Britain, and therefore a barbaric contradiction. It was very much a Cartesian Empire in its 2 dimensional coercion of a multi-dimensional world.
The problem with the bridges and roads is that they were not built by altruistic people wishing to help others. They were built to enable colonisation, settlers and those who took the country's resources. Imperialists who try to make out that they were some kind of gift from a great, civilising force to the poor, backward indigenous people is naive.
A programme on TV here not so long ago mentioned that a lot of the suicides of farmers in India are due to the fact that they are virtual hostages of (western) countries who supply seed (a lot of it GM btw). These farmers don't have the right to use seed from their crops, they have to buy new seed and if they have a bad harvest and can't afford new seed, they are destitute.
God becomes everywhere, and the extension of that is His morality and values must apply to all men, it's a powerful incentive and justification to expansion and imperialism.
Abrahamic monotheism may be an incentive to expansion and imperialism, but it cannot be a justification (at least not in the Christian religion). It is possible to evangelise without invading and without imposing a regime on others.
In the case of Christianity, I would even say that using His message as an excuse for colonising other countries and imposing your own rule is the antithesis of His teachings.
Before monotheism morality and ethics were considered relative to which city you were in or which tribes territory one was in, not so with monotheism.
Where do Buddhism and Hindouism come into that statement?
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Pankaj Mishra wrote: "For the first time since the middle ages, a non-European country had vanquished a European power in a major war". I beg to differ. Actually, one-hundred years earlier, in November 1803, a non-European people, the African slaves and freedmen of the Caribbean French colony of Saint-Domingue, vanquished the army of the major power of the time, Napoleonic France, to found the new nation of Haiti. This humiliating defeat of a White Western power by presumably inferior Blacks, the ultimate rebuttal of White supremacist ideology, has understandingly been silenced in Western history.
Interesting, well-written and well-argued but missing one key factoid.
But first, it is amazing how the Guardian comments section is now full of such right-wing hate and prejudice of the more general order. It seems the preferred acitivity of such people is to infiltrate 'bastions of leftiness' such as the Guardian to let their views be heard clearly by 'the enemy'. It’s strange that the Times, Telegraph etc forums do not have an equal amount of 'extreme lefties' critising every article by Rod Liddle (only name that comes to mind) et al.
The overall argument by Mishra is pretty sound: we're going back to ideas of civilising the Other+Empire wasn’t really that bad+it is manifest destiny etc. He points out clearly that the big issue they overlook or wilfully delude themselves over is CAN THEY ACTUALLY DO THIS? As shown in Iraq, Afghanisan nope not really, not in any meaningful longlasting sense anyway.
However, there is a key issue not discussed or criticised or even alluded to by Mishra which is the rather nasty spectre of non-European colonial imperialism. The Chinese powerhouse view Africans and Indian in a very racist way too and would engage in similar acts of exploitation if given half the chance. Pakistan loves the new Chinese investment because they don't lecture them about morality like the Americans do – yet Pakistan will overlook the persecution of their Uighur Muslim borthers and sisters in China. As long as its not America or Israel seems to be the general docile mantra.
As others have commented, human beings oppress other human beings of other tribes and their own and to live as equals is a long way off. The biologival drive to dominate, secure resources and survive is now done on a global, techno industrial scale of which European racism is one modern aspect.
However, the academic-celebs who think a lite-imperialism will solve the problems of the world are as Mishra says himself ‘...armour-plated against actuality by think tanks, academic sinecures and TV gigs...'
Look at Ferguson's support for the Iraq invasion shrivle away when it all fell apart - he put away his pompoms and said that it was simply the lack of coherent post-war strategy and pesky neighbour meddling that had ruined it. Hitchens was quite similar but then spent his remaining days distracting everyone with a boring, tiresome and predictable crusade against religion.
I think the future peace of the world will be brought about when genetically modified humans have their DNA altered to castrate or tone down the war genes. Life will be more peaceful...probably a lot more boring but I'm sure safe controlled opiates could help there.
Yours ever lovingly,
Scrot.
Good point. When I read: 'For the first time since the middle ages, a non-European country had vanquished a European power in a major war". I did think I'm sure there was something before then. Maybe it was not classes as 'a major war?'
In these 'times of miracle and wonder', when the goals of universal freedom, suffrage, healthcare, peace and so much more of that for which humanity has craved are coming into clear view, we have still to endure essentially bigotted views like those of Pankaj Mishra taking full advantage of his membership of a global phenomenon...a freedom to say what you like..to everyone... to scorn the process thats brought it about. Perhaps it looks too "american' for him. That, from a past ridden with racist, colonialist, sexist, homophobic injustice(endless list), could there emerge a decent global committment to world peace, say. From an historical perspective, none of the evils accompanying European colonialism are particularly outstanding are they?
There are millions of 'humans' out there working for a better world indifferent to whether the person beside them is African, Asian or European...or American. But it looks like Mishra will have none of that! He lives in his world still inhabited by pith-helmetted district officers about to get a taste of their own medicine...he hopes.Mishra's club take the anti-imperialist free kick and then believe all else in the argument naturally follows...but to where? Intellectually damn lazy if you ask me. Maybe he picks up his game in the book but from here it looks like a yawn. I'll stay with Naipal for now.
There's a peace train slowly rolling along those famous imperialist railway tracks..You can get on board...maybe you can have a drive.. or just throw stones from the overhead bridges. Who cares why exactly they were built (how long ago was it?). The Peace Train doesn't.No mate...it was only silent to those who never took a history class in their lives.During the recent years earthquake drama I think even your local paper would have taken the opportunity to bring you up to speed with the Haitian slave revolt and independence. You know ...background stuff. Maybe the 'humiliating defeat' and 'White supremacist' lines were missing...which is what you likely object to eh.
Like your post, but:
Life will be more peaceful...probably a lot more boring but I'm sure safe controlled opiates could help there.
I think the only people who find a no-conflict life boring are those whose genes may need modifying! Once modified, they won't be bored. I would also hazard a guess that those who find conflict stimulating now wouldn't if it were on their doorstep.
Of course all bridges and roads and any other benefit of civilisation was built for altruistic purposes by you and so you are saying, why should the poor countries have the benefit of any civilisation?
Of course all bridges and roads and any other benefit of civilisation was built for altruistic purposes by you and so you are saying, why should the poor countries have the benefit of any civilisation?
Bridges and roads built by me? No, I don't build bridges and roads. Sorry, but I don't understand what you are saying.
My point about the bridges and roads was in response to the 'look what we did for them (bridges and roads)' attitude. My point is that the bridges and roads were not built 'for them'. They were built to make it easier for the colonials to travel, dominate and move resources. The fact that indigenous people also used them was a side effect, not the major objective.
Of course you don't build bridges and roads and of course you don't understand what I am saying because your point that bridges and roads were not built 'for them' (as you put it) is a remarkably stupid point to make. By the same token you would not approve that the Empire built dams in the countries they colonised. That meant that men, women and children would not be at the mercy of droughts and would not starve. Your baseless opinions and remarks leave me to realise you couldn't care less if the men, women and children do starve as obviously you think that dams and other benefits of civilisation must not be built if they are not for purely 'altruistic purposes', even if the indigenous population benefits in the long run.
I can and WILL say 'Look what we did for them', especially when types like you are saying, 'Look what the Empire DID NOT DO 'for them'.
Ciao.All those things could be done without colonising or taking over other countries. You don't have to have an empire to do good. That is my point.
Mishra omits the following quotation from Shooting an Elephant, presumably because it does not entirely suit his thesis: " I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it".
You do of course forget that most of what consists of 'the peace train' was built on the ripped up tracks of the corrupt regime. What light we enjoy today comes from that which worked against empire, what undid its brutal schema.
From an historical perspective, none of the evils accompanying European colonialism are particularly outstanding are they?
Why yes they are, for a few reasons:
The colonists believed their industry and the pillars of science and reason upon which it was built showed them to be God's chosen peoples. The industrial scale of the empires' atrocities was unprecedented. Never before was the adage 'a little knowledge is dangerous' so bloodily apparent. Never before had science been so hijacked by racists.These were bourgeoisie empires. Run under the banner of the nation for largely private, capitalist interests. No such hypocrisy as an empire of universal individual rights built on the economic slavery of millions was known in the pre-colonial period.
And of course the legacy of the empires. Historically, when empires crumbled, peoples moved on from identifying with their oppressive antecedents. Britain still has those 'railway tracks' stamped on its heart. It still thinks along the terms it used to beg the question of its own superiority.
@Workshop
We seem to still have those who make the argument that the rich, rapist husband of an arranged marriage has attenuated his guilt before his ravaged wife, whose children he has murdered, whose inheritance he has stolen, by simple virtue of the roads which he has built her to go to market. And he dared call her barbaric for he knew to build roads.Then it is not thought out carefully enough. You are at the point of saying, 'What's in a name? that which we call a rose ... ' .
Or perhaps you think all those rock stars with their altrustic motives are doing better, or all the Aid that is being sent to line the pockets of dictators who are certainly not going to build hospitals and schools let alone your bridges and roads.OMG! I still don't know where you are coming from. Have you lived in any of the colonies? Which one? I'm afraid your befuddled theorising befuddles my brain.
I can only tell you that I know more kind, ordinary, caring people, colonised and colonsers and pray God that such people will win the day. Zimbabweans are having to put up with too much of murdering, raping, starvation and being chased from their homeland by their black leaders for me to have any patience with the problems about Empire being regurgitated by people like you and others on this thread. I am not saying they don't have a place but I and those having to deal with the present don't want to know.Please read my responses to Fene... (oh gosh can't remember his name) Anyway they are just above.
Or perhaps you think all those rock stars with their altrustic motives are doing better, or all the Aid that is being sent to line the pockets of dictators who are certainly not going to build hospitals and schools let alone your bridges and roads.
Sigh. I'm perfectly aware of what is happening as regards dictators, tyrants and all the rest of them, and how they are more or less left alone as long as they don't interfere with business, or they don't have any resources worth making deals over. Many tyrants and dictators, of course, were at least partly educated in top western schools or institutions.
That's another old chestnut about education. Yes too many of the leaders in Africa today have only a veneer of education, but it is paternalistic to say that and very wrong to imply what you have implied - that they are what they are because of the Western education they have received. These people are intelligent. They have learned enough to know for themselves what is right. The trouble is they are still immersed in their traditional unChristian beliefs and their cults of witchcraft.
I'm just questioning how it could have been any other way.
That is incorrect. You're arguing that it could not have been any other way (your 'economic necessity' among other claims). The assumption is that if it could not have been any other way, then those who caused it were not responsible for it.This reasoning is bad, for both empirical and conceptual reasons. Colonies were grabbed even when there was no economic rationale for doing so (Kenya is an obvious example: the colony actually lost money for years after it was grabbed). Second, even if colonialism were necessary, Frankfurt casesshow that necessity doesn't absolve you of responsibility.
This is a very reasonable argument - makes readers see that some other posters are unreasonable, determined to find only the bad in anyone and everything.
Hi, thanks for your response. Though I don't think we'll come to share a common view. On the other hand, history, as you undoubtedly know, is not about what happened, but what historians make of historic events. It's a construction, quite artificial and always depending on perspectives. I happen to have a different one and maybe what we call a "Erkenntnis leitendes Interesse", which, in plain English means "bias". Can you also admit to a certain degree admit to bias? See you next time around here :-)
Lee Kuan Yew kicks asses and pushes bums around! May be a few good men as well. But not races or peoples or countries! And certainly not Malays or Malaysians. Neither he nor Singapore could if they wanted to.
You are missing the point of the essay. Get over your colonialism ills. Suck it up.
Without power and its judicious use, the world would not have been as educated. A lot poorer it would be, When it got nasty, DUCK!
Niall Ferguson probably got miffed by the hype and hubris of those calling this 'The Asian Century'. A bit like the actor Hugh Laurie taking up boxing in his old age because more and more whites are doing oriental taiji and kungfu. It's an English thing. They are the official Guardian of western imperial heritage.
When it comes to the crunch, empires, be they relatively benign or not, can never be justified, because they are all about one set of people going into someone else's land and imposing their laws. No country puts in more than they take out, otherwise they wouldn't do it!
Apply the same situation to your next door neighbour, and it's obvious how unacceptable empires are.
@ frenegonde
There are many colonised people who will be glad that the British Empire was not full of small minded people like you.I do respect those people who suffered in any way at all.
Sorry for changing the topic... Why is the World silent and ignorant about the mass massacre of BURMA MUSLIMS and NO ONE in the British Media is raising any voice against this issue????....
The disturbing feature of anti-colonial rhetoric is that it completely dismisses the humane efforts of many people within the colonial system. There is a reason former British colonies enjoy lower infant mortalities than their neighbours, and it is not the unparalleled exploitive viciousness of the English. If you want to make useful comments you must try to deal with the truth - it tends to be very mixed.
stu4rtm,
The problem with comments like these is that they in turn tend grossly to trivialise all the flaws and faults of Britain's colonial project.
They also fail to acknowledge something of key significance: that the admirable legacies of British colonialism are for the most part by-products. Despite the subsequent presentation by some apologists, schools, cricket and the like were not the raison d’etre of the project; they were its incidentals. Likewise, the undisputed existence of “good men” as agents of the project is incidental too; they did not form its agendas, and the appalling hubris of the driving political discourse is obvious to anyone who cares to examine any of the contemporary source material.
There is a reason former British colonies enjoy lower infant mortalities than their neighbours
Do you have some material with which to back up this assertion? Is the infant mortality rate in Thailand higher than in Burma?
Is Indonesia’s GDP per head lower and child mortality higher than India’s? Does Pakistan have a lower infant mortality rate than Iran? (and we haven't even visited Africa yet!)Wherever you can find a former British colony “doing well” it is firstly manifest that it forms part of no wider pattern: the nature of the “success” of, say, Malaysia and Singapore bear little resemblance to the “success” of India (which some would suggest is chimeric anyway), and even if you choose to disregard these differences and to proclaim some pattern you are still obliged ignore a mass of aberrant exceptions, from Bangladesh to a plethora of African basket cases.
If, however, you deal not in sweeping reductivism and you take a closer look at the individual cases you can generally identify unique, localised conditions which allowed post-colonial “success”, conditions which are generally linked at best obliquely to the experience of British colonialism.
Singapore and Malaysia are “doing better” than Indonesia, not because the former were colonised by Britain while the latter was under Dutch rule, but because what was once British Malaya is far smaller than what was once the Dutch East Indies; it is less geographically complex and remote, has more readily accessible resources for its size, and, crucially, it has a far larger ethnic Chinese population.
This is a classic example of one of those incidental upshots of empire I mentioned. The presence of so many ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia is tied to the history of British colonialism, but they were not brought in by a legion of sensitive, forward-thinking philanthropists in sola topees to provide the socio-economic conditions for independent advancement five generations down the line. They were shipped in for dirt-cheap labour on the plantations. I can hardly think of a better example to sum things up.
I was delighted to see that Mishra nails the pernicious influence of that dolt VS Naipaul on the discourse.
Naipaul as a travel writer/journalist was nothing more than a tourist, and he travelled with a case packed not with scholarship, not with linguistic or knowledge-based qualifications, but only with his own strange prejudices (some of which are pretty unsavoury, and certainly would never have been tolerated by the literati had he not been… well, you know…)
That one bigoted tourist who made a few brief visits to a few far-flung post-colonial corners has managed to have an enduring influence on the discourses about India, Africa and Islam is a pretty damning indictment of the sheer collective ignorance of much of what would like to regard itself as the western intelligentsia.
the brutal western suppression of the Boxer rising in China
Poppycock.
Early on, the foreign powers demanded redress when their nationals (typically missionaries) were slaughtered, and the culprits (or those the onlookers could be made to believe were culprits) were publicly executed by the Qing authorities under consular scrutiny. There was no military action on the part of foreigners until the siege of the Legations by combined forces of Boxers, imperial troops, and imperially contracted mercenaries accompanied by the slaughter of thousands of Chinese Christians, the destruction of shops with foreign goods, and the avowed intention to slaughter every foreigner in Beijing.
The column proceeding to Beijing to relieve that siege was attacked by a combination of Boxer and imperial forces, and initially driven back--it was a fraction of the size of the forces arranged against it. After the scaling of the ill-defended city wall and the relief of the siege the Boxers were driven out of the capital, and vast compensation demanded by the foreigners included punishments and execution of those thought responsible with the exception of the alien Manchu court itself, whose members had fled to Xi'an, and who were presently allowed to return and to resume their colonial control over the Chinese they had invaded and conquered two centuries before.
The 'western' [sic] forces that temporarily took control of Beijing included those of Japan.
No general excuse for Western behaviour in China is offered or intended, but let's get the facts right, even if, if the article is correct in its implication, Tagore didn't.
Apologies from an irish man to all those millions (hundreds of millions) of native people who flocked to colonial enclaves, Macao, HK, Bombay, Mallaca etc because life there was much better under european rule....
the auther is a total douche. he's not clever enough to pull my rickshaw.
Oh good. Another essay on postcolonialism. There aren't nearly enough.