Filed with 60.14 Colonialism · Related: 60.23 History · Politics MOC
aluate this pejorative meaning. The notion that colonialism is always and everywhere a bad thing needs to be rethought in light of the grave human toll of a century of anti-colonial regimes and policies. The case for Western colonia
show annotation
aluate this pejorative meaning. The notion that colonialism is always and everywhere a bad thing needs to be rethought in light of the grave human toll of a century of anti-colonial regimes and policies. The case for Western colonia
show annotation
aluate this pejorative meaning. The notion that colonialism is always and everywhere a bad thing needs to be rethought in light of the grave human toll of a century of anti-colonial regimes and policies. The case for Western colonia
show annotation
aluate this pejorative meaning. The notion that colonialism is always and everywhere a bad thing needs to be rethought in light of the grave human toll of a century of anti-colonial regimes and policies. The case for Western colonialism is about rethinking the past as well as improving the future. It involves reaffirming the pri
show annotation
aluate this pejorative meaning. The notion that colonialism is always and everywhere a bad thing needs to be rethought in light of the grave human toll of a century of anti-colonial regimes and policies. The case for Western colonialism is about rethinking the past as well as improving the future. It involves reaffirming the pri
show annotation
ly varied with time and place. I n a brutally patriarchal society, for instance, access to justice for women may have been more important than the protection of indigenous land rights (which may be part of that patriarchy), as Andreski argued was the case for women in northern Nigeria under colonialism. 3A second challenge is measuring
show annotation
lonial encounter with the West. Countries that did not have a significant colonial history – China, Ethiopia, Liberia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Haiti and Guatemala, for instance –provide a measure of comparison to help iden-tify what if anything were the distinctive effects of colonialism. So too does research into pre-colonial histories that, almost by definition, reveal comparatively weak institutions, Downloaded by [Portland State U
show annotation
r 2017 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY 3 divided societies and subsistence economies, for instance in Biber’s study of pre-colonial Namibia. 5Noting some of these complexiti
show annotation
ting some of these complexities, Abernethy summarises the objective costs/benefits question as follows: [I]n times and places where colonial rule had, on balance, a positive effect on training for self-gov-ernment, material well-being, labor allocation choices, individual upward mobility, cross-cultural communication, and human dignity, compared to the situation that would likely have obtained absent European rule, then the case for colonialism is strong. Conversely, in times and places where the effects of foreign rule in these respects were, on balance, negative compared to a territory’s likely alternative past, then colonialism is morally indefensible.6 Beyond these requirements, there
show annotation
resources in a given territory. One is hard-pressed, to take a prominent example, to find a single example of such care in measurement in the vast critical scholarship on the British counter-insurgency campaign against the Mau in Kenya from 1952 to 1960, especially the scolding work of Elkins.7 Daniels argues that ‘[h]ad the British left Kenya to the Mau, there would have been anarchy and further civil war, perhaps even genocide’.8 Just as many Kenyans joined
show annotation
did (in order to exploit it).14 Colonialism is credited with near-magical powers to sweep away everything good in its path (like tribal chiefs or ethnic identity) and with equally magical powers to make per-manent everything bad in its path (like tribal chiefs or ethnic identity). Finally, there is the simple
show annotation
basic prescriptions above. Research that is careful in conceptualising and measuring controls, that establishes a feasible counterfactual, that includes multiple dimensions of costs and benefits weighted in some justified way, and that adheres to basic epistemic virtues often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit, as the literature review by Juan and Pierskalla shows.16 Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowl-edge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions.1 7This leads to the second failur
show annotation
d to the feasible alternatives. The ‘preservers’, ‘facilitators’ and ‘collaborators’ of colonialism, as Abernethy shows, far outnumbered the ‘resisters’ at least until very late: ‘Imperial expansion was frequently the result not just of European push but also of indigenous pull’.2 0 In Borneo, the Sultan of Brune
show annotation
people tired of British rule.22 In most colonial areas, subject peoples either faced grave security threats from rival groups or they saw the benefits of being governed by a modernised and liberal state. Patrice Lumumba, who became an
show annotation
dernised and liberal state. Patrice Lumumba, who became an anti-colonial agitator only very late, praised Belgian colonial rule in his autobiography of 1962 for ‘restoring our human dignity and turning us into free, happy, vigorous, and civilized men’. 23 Chinua Achebe’s many pro-colo
show annotation
a cesspool of human suffering. Western and African anti-colonial scholars continue to extol Cabral’s ‘national liberation’ ideas.42 But actually existing Guineans may be asking: When are the Portuguese coming back? Guinea-Bissau seems like an extr
show annotation
like an extreme case. It is not. Of the 80 countries that threw off the colonial ‘yoke’ after World War II, at least half experienced similar trauma, while most of the rest limped on. For 60 years, Third World despo
show annotation
-quences for human welfare. A sobering World Bank report of 1996 noted: ‘Almost every African country has witnessed a systematic regression of capacity in the last 30 years; the majority had better capacity at independence than they now possess’.4 6 This loss of state capacity wa
show annotation