What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
How to Spot a Police Spy
Is it the
guy who asks you after the meeting about how the antiwar movement
needs to get "serious" and asks you lots of questions
about terrorism and "fighting back"? Jennifer Van Bergen
reports, first-hand. Part
2 of our series on what really happened on 9/11/2001: the physics
of collapse, and how not to make a "pancake" by Manuel
Garcia, PLUS Engineer Pierre Sprey on why "controlled demolition"
theories are off target.What
you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul
Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are
funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch.
Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
I will set down an encounter (from the
early 1990s) with a colleague at Northeastern University that
carries some useful lessons about how our views of history can
be shaped by our kinship to it.
Even in academic circles, conversations
remain fairly mundane in this country. Politics, which is the
first and, often, the only subject of conversation in Pakistan,
almost never comes up for discussion here. Momentous events pass
unremarked. I would never have found out from talking to my colleagues,
whether at lunch or in the corridors, that there were changes
taking place in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe or China which
would alter the world forever.
The conversations I hear are
usually about more local events. Most of the talk is about the
affairs of the department, the university, the city or state,
usually in that order of importance. This is perhaps as it should
be. It reflects a pragmatism in American culture, evincing a
greater solicitude for events that concern them directly, affairs
they participate in and can hope to influence. We find this narrowness
to be irksome. It shows a provincialism which we find constricting.
We even feel a certain superiority in our concern for larger,
global events. But our heated debates about politics, I suspect,
are a substitute for social involvement. We will work ourselves
into a rage over what goes on halfway around the world, as if
the outcome of those events depended on the positions that we
would be taking. I have noted that we get more worked up over
things that are usually beyond us. It excuses us from not doing
the things that we can do.
And now to return to the encounter.
A few days back, I made some remarks on how colonialism had produced
many of the problems poor countries faced today. The subject
had been on my mind since I had been teaching a course on the
economic history of developing countries; and I aired the proposition
that colonial rule had hurt economic development in the Third
World. I ventured that a case could be made that had they not
been colonized, at least some of today's poor countries
might have industrialized sooner. I did not believe that the
absence of formal colonization would have guaranteed industrial
progress, but historical evidence is quite convincing on the
point that only sovereign countries developed any substantial
industries--at least till the end of the Second World War.
While I made these remarks,
one of my colleagues, a specialist in the economics of developing
countries, was conveying strong signals of disagreement with
his body language. Later, when I had finished, he eagerly proposed
the opposite view, stating that he could not see how any
Third World country could have done any better without colonialism.
Colonial governments were not inherently worse than the indigenous
governments they had replaced. And nearly always, they were better
managed than those that had now succeeded them.
I took the liberty of pointing
out what should have been obvious. Colonialism was bad for colonized
peoples because it set over them a tyranny, a government of foreigners,
appointed by and accountable to some distant metropolitan power.
Moreover, as foreigners, the colonial rulers could feel little
natural sympathy for the people over whom they ruled. Afraid
that a modicum of sympathy might develop over time, good colonial
policy everywhere demanded that the rulers live apart from the
natives; they lived in colonial enclaves to which natives were
admitted only as servants. In addition, to prevent the colonial
rulers from acquiring a personal interest in the colonies, their
service rules demanded that they return to the 'mother country'
upon retirement. Not to forget, most colonials came to the colonies
with attitudes that could scarcely have allowed them to associate
with the 'inferior' natives, even if colonial life did not prevent
such intercourse.
If we took a measure of all
these conditions that were common in the colonies, it is difficult
to see how colonial rule could have worked to the advantage of
the colonized peoples. Neither their political nor social circumstances
could persuade the colonial rulers to take more than a perfunctory
interest in the lives or welfare of ordinary people in the colonies.
They could only promote the interests of the superiors who employed
them or the people they met socially in the colonies: other expatriates
from the 'mother country.' As a result, the colonial rulers could
normally be expected to ensure that capital from the 'mother
country'--that is, the mother country of the colonial rulers--would
have free and privileged access to the colonies. All capital
and skills not connected to the 'mother country,' including those
from the colonies, would be discouraged or prevented legally
from competing with the favored children of the 'mother country.'
Admittedly, fear of local insurrections
might have given pause to such colonial policy. It might place
a check on the rapacity of colonial rulers. But since they enjoyed
an overwhelming military superiority over the natives, a superiority
that would be maintained well into the middle of the twentieth
century, the colonial rulers generally preferred repression to
accommodation. In many colonies, this policy was aided by the
largest native landowners, a partnership that worked to the advantage
of both. In other colonies, the best agricultural lands were
parceled out amongst white settlers who drafted natives to work
them for their own profit. Aside from a very few exceptions,
then, the colonized peoples were pushed to the margins of their
societies--as peasants, plantation and mine workers, coolies,
domestic servants, soldiers, and clerks.
My colleague remained unconvinced.
He could not see that a tyranny imposed from outside could be
more harmful to a country's economic interests than one imposed
by local despots. I then proposed the following question. Everything
else being equal, I asked if a government by rulers of alien
vintage--who retire to their countries of origins--would be more
repugnant to the dignity of a colonized people than an indigenous
oligarchy. He did not think it should make any difference. At
this point I suspected, for a moment, that my colleague might
be pulling my leg. But he was quite serious.
Though we in the Third World
recognize that the pieties about the West's civilizing mission
for what they are--a cover for their plunder of colored peoples--Western
audiences have for long taken them at face value. Most of them
still believe in their own innate goodness and superiority. A
good people--it follows-can only use their superior powers to
help the less fortunate. This sums up their faith in the civilizing
mission. Colonial conquests and colonial rule were missions of
mercy to the benighted peoples inhabiting the tropics. All this
and more they were taught by many of their best philosophers
and poets.
Perhaps, there was another
explanation for my colleague's obtuseness. Since colonial rule
was Western, talk of the harm is seen as signaling animus towards
the West. When this talk comes from people of color, it sounds
even more reprehensible to Western ears. I have also seen this
with my students. It appears to them that the 'whites' today
are being accused for their past misdeeds. It appears that the
responsibility, the guilt, of our underdevelopment is
being passed on to them. This 'shirking' of responsibility
by people of color--passing the buck, in American lingo--is also
seen as unmanly, cowardly, for a culture that teaches people
to take responsibility for their actions.
To this day, scholars, editors,
columnists and talk-show hosts in the West engage in a great
deal of polemic to show how good they have been to people of
color. To show that developing countries were incapable of developing
on their own. Incredibly, this was also Karl Marx's position.
Colonialism was engaged in the historic mission of destroying
the archaic institutions that had for long blocked progress,
and which these societies could not dislodge on their own. Colonialism,
howsoever brutal, was reintegrating these peoples into the great
stream of world history whose deep waters always flow through
the West.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
