Decolonize Explained: What is Colonization?
Decolonization: it’s all the rage. But what does it actually mean?
To help answer this question, I’ve produced a series of videos with Dr. Bruce Gilley—who, in addition to being a world-class scholar and expert in colonialization, has also recently become the most hated person a Portland State University!
So, it is indeed an honor to have him guest write a post my Substack.
I hope you enjoy and learn from his videos. Without further ado, here's Dr. Gilley's guest post and the first video in the series:
Decolonize Explained
By: Bruce Gilley
A growing clamor to “decolonize” Western societies preys upon mistaken notions of what Western colonialism was and the results of decolonization in most societies.
The original “decolonizers” were the European imperial powers themselves. Their extension of liberal governance to the Third World brought the first wave of decolonization to societies long ruled by illiberal empires such as the Fulani slave state of West Africa, the corrupt Mughal dynasty of India, or the sadistic Comanche empire of the American southwest and Great Plains. Other indigenous empires who were in the process of colonizing native peoples, such as the Buganda of East Africa or the Tongans of the South Pacific, were stopped by European expansion.
The European empires were the most liberal the world had ever seen because European states were the most liberal forms of rule at the time. European rule rested upon a combination of legitimacy and self-interest for the colonized peoples. Coercive forces were minimal and most domestic threats were subdued through the participation of the colonized in counter-insurgency efforts.
Because of their liberal norms, European empires cultivated and encouraged liberal norms among the colonized, one of which was the development of self-government and extensive freedoms. From the mid-19th century onwards, European colonial rule was premised explicitly on the aim of creating self-governing states that would uphold liberal rights, good governance, and steady development, all of which was centered on the expansion of human flourishing.
After World War II, the economic crisis in Europe led to an acceleration of plans to withdraw rule from the colonial eras. Native politicians stepped into the growing power vacuum, styling themselves as “liberators from colonial oppression.” The problem was that most areas were far from ready to stand on their own as independent states. Rapid decolonization in the Third World led to the greatest humanitarian catastrophe the world has seen as country after country succumbed to civil war, economic collapse, and political repression. Decolonization did not bring liberation but a return to the pre-colonial oppression by rival groups of the past.
Calls today to “decolonize” the West amount to an open appeal to similarly destroy the foundations of liberal civilization on which human flourishing depends. The “decolonize” movement is nothing if not consistent with the Third World nationalists of the past. It seeks a destruction of the market economy in favor of state socialism; a rejection of liberal equality in favor of neo-racism and group-based status arrangements; an overthrow of electoral democracy in favor of street protest; a circumscribing of extensive freedoms and pluralism in favor of Woke ideology and censorship; and a replacement of neutral and good governance with revolutionary agitation orchestrated by progressive political and economic elites.
Twitter: @BruceDGilley
Bruce: So, colonization is kind of way of tutelage, or kind of mentoring program is a way to think of it, where an established state establishes rule in an area where there's not an established state, with the aim to help them develop the foundations to become a self-governing people.
More about colonialism from Dr. Bruce Gilley next week!
For all the current talk about the brutality of colonization there seems to be a purposeful oblivion of how barbaric and cruel some tribes were before they were colonized.
This point of view is a useful corrective to the current conventional wisdom about imperialism, especially by referring to the countless non-Western imperial regimes. But there's such a thing as going too far. The primary goal of imperial governments, including Western ones, has always been collective self-interest, not altruism. Imperial regimes foster the acquisition of wealth in addition to exploration, scientific research or even personal adventure.
Some empires, in any case, were better than others. Moreover, some Western empires were better than others. After 1857, the British ruled not through the rapacious East India Company but directly from Parliament in London. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, Parliament gradually began to prepare India for home rule (by absorbing Indians into the civil service and military services) and eventually for independence. The latter was made inevitable only by two world wars, which left Britain heavily in debt. Some notable lapses notwithstanding, it's true that British or French colonial rulers were generally more enlightened and less corrupt than other colonial rulers were--or, as you say, much more enlightened and much less corrupt than local rulers would have been--but only a few administrators (along with Queen Victoria) and missionaries, along with a few physicians, teachers and scholars, were truly interested in the welfare of the colonized peoples. Fewer still were actually altruistic.
The British and French did leave behind countries that were better prepared for modernity (the rise of which was inevitable in any case), although even these countries faced wrenching adjustments nonetheless. The best example is India, which remains a democracy on the British model (albeit a shaky one), and has become much more prosperous than many other former colonies. India is indeed better off in many ways than it would have been without the British Raj, but it's better off also that the British finally left. I'm not sure that the same could be said of what was the Belgian Congo, say, or the German colonies in southern Africa or the Portuguese colony of Angola.