somewhat impatient

[winterbadger]

OK, so I'm catching up with this week's topical humour. And I watched Jon Stewart's interview with Howard Zinn.

I have to issue my own personal objection to Mr Zinn's comparison between George W. Bush and Christopher Columbus. It's simply not intellectually honest to pretend, as he is clearly happy to do, that there's a similarity there. That the actions of a 21st century state are the same as the professed interests of the Roman Catholic Church, the objectives of the Crown of Spain, and the objectives of a personally directed, privately financed scientific and adventuring expedition.

First because Zinn applies 21st century standards of conduct to Columbus. That's simply just silly, but it's easy and painless for him, because he knows that most of the people watchimg and listening are going to expect a 16th century person to be just like them; why wouldn't he be, right?

Second, because he's disingenuous about Columbus' real motivations. Columbus, from all I've read about him, was not a religiously motivated conquistador like Cortez and Balboa. He was interested in finding trade routes, not converts.

Last of all, for the reason most unpopular with people like Mr Zinn. The IDEA, the CONCEPTION that people in the colonized countries might have been better off under colonial rule than native rule. Of course I'm not going to attempt to justify Columban or 16th century Spanish (or English) rule. But cast you minds on this poem about the responsibilities of empire as seen by the most 19th century Englishman and tell me with a straight face that Jinnah, Gandhi, Musharraf, Kenyatta, arap Moi, Smith, Mugabe, Botha, de Klerke, Doe, Strasser, Sankoh, yes even Ben Gurion and Meir have done a better job, created more free and more democratic more prosperous and open states than the ones they inherited from colonial governments.

You see, it's very easy to criticize and carp. When you're actually on the ground and are responsible, it's a different matter, one that I'm obliiged to think most academics are sadly unprepared for.

Comments

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Interesting that it was the same poet ( Rudyard Kipling) who first coined the term 'The White Man's Burden'.

[winterbadger]

A phrase which is used very cynically now, but which Kipling meant literally. Many of the British, and to a lesser extent the French, took seriously their role as "civilizers" trying to make the world a better place, and The White Man's Burden (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.html) acknowledges that those who strive to improve the lives of others will often get no thanks for it.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

You're...kidding, right?

You have got to be kidding. Kipling was not at all serious about the "White Man's Burden", he was issuing a sarcastic critique of the exploitive way that the Europeans ruled their colonies.

They were most assuredly not better off under colonial rule than under native rule...we only have post-colonial times (a period of about 40-50 years, in most cases) to compare with. The time previous to colonization? Well, pre-colonial Africa had the great kingdoms of Ghana and Mali, pre-colonial China was one of the most advanced nations on the planet, pre-colonial India was home to several great empires... And so forth.

The fact that, post-colonial collapse, these nations have had great trouble building free, democratic, and prosperous nations, is simply due to the fact that they've been working under a great burden: not only were their economies left wrecked by the former colonial powers, but those selfsame powers have used the new imperialism of "globalism" to shackle their economies and governments, making them powerless. Our megacorporations call the shots in many of these countries, and our government has a long history of intervening with military force to prevent local governments from enacting laws or electing people who would be disadvantageous to our corporations. (Look up the origin of the term "Banana Republic", or the interventions in Chile, Columbia, Nicaragua, etc.)

[winterbadger]

No, Kipling was not being sarcastic. And I'm not kidding. Yes, some of those areas had great kingdoms in them before, but very few, comparatively, and life in those was, for the most part, wonderful and wealthy and free only if you were one of the tiny prcentage in the ruling classes.

India today is a democratic nation united by a common language. It's one of the world's second-rank powers, and (for better or worse) is one of the nuclear powers. None of that would be the case if it had not been colonized by Britain and dragged, kicking and screaming, out of pretty barbaric feudalism into modernity.

Were the British entirely kind, gentle, and altruistic? No, many of them were greedy, selfish, cruel, and mean-spirited. But then so were the monachs of the princely states that came before, and they didn't leave behind a legacy of unity, the rule of law, and democratic elections.

imperialism

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

Wow. Regardless of the end results, it strikes me as stunningly arrogant to think that a nation has the right (much less the duty) to forcefully impose their way of life on other "more barbaric" cultures.

I really don't feel like arguing this, but I admit that i'd love to see the straight Doope thread that would result from posting it there...

Re: imperialism

[winterbadger]

I'm not prepared to argue that nations have a *right* to do that. But it seems to me undisputable that the subjects of it have been, in many cases, much better off in the long term. It's been very fashionably lefty for the last 50 years to pretend that that's never the case, that native tyrants and home-grown autocracy is always better than colonial rule of law and (eventual) democracy, that it's better for people to develop sanitation and communication and formal education on their own, no matter how many centuries of disease and ignorance and poverty that condemns people to.

I think it *is* a _duty_ of nations to _offer_ to help those less fortunate than themselves, to the extent they can without failing their responsibilities to their own citizens. But when that aid is offered to an independent nation, it is very often either refused on the basis of pride or accepted and then corruptly diverted by the ruling elite.

[robbysmom.livejournal.com]

I see your point, though, still, the movements toward self-rule do tend to be in response often to the burdens of colonial rule. Raj India seems to me for most Inidans to *not* have been better than the modern state, though problems abound.

I am also interested to consider-- which I say off the top of my head-- in what time frame is it reasonable to critique the long-term well-being of former colonial states. India is a very young nation and its democracy seems solid, if imperfect (as one could say of ours).

Do you disagree?

[winterbadger]

The movements to self-rule often put a very good face forward, and include many people interested in justice and liberty. Very often they have ended up being *run*, however, by people who were only interested in power.

I would say that, by and large, pre-Independence and post-Independence India are for most people very similar. The oppressors and rule-benders, the fat cats and self-interested officials are Indian rather than British. I'm not sure life is all that much better for the common man. And that's in one of the best examples of post-colonial rule. The Belgians were some of the most vicious and oppressive colonial rulers around, but I think that post-WWII Belgian-ruled Belgian Congo was a safer and more prosperous place for most common people than Zaire has been for most of its existence.

I don't get the impression that elections are, by and large, massively corrupt in India, but I think that the rule of law is nowhere clsoe to what it is in the US or Europe and that government corruption, police brutality, and mob violence are worse, far worse than, say, the American South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement. India has been a self-governing democracy for over 50 years, and that state inheritied a well-organized civil service and judiciary; I'm not particularly disposed to give it any excuses at this point.