{"id":270,"date":"2006-03-03T13:23:38","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T18:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=270"},"modified":"2006-03-03T15:00:42","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T20:00:42","slug":"rethinking-imperialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Imperialism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the effects of the Soviet meme war I&#8217;ve been writing about<br \/>\nrecently is that to most educated Westerners it is absolutely taboo to<br \/>\nthink that Western imperialism might have been a good thing.  Since<br \/>\nthe end of World War II, even conservatives have generally conceded<br \/>\nthis point, as a way not to look reactionary with respect to a class<br \/>\nof controversies that seemed safely dead.  Why defend imperialism when<br \/>\nyour country no longer has either the desire or the capability to<br \/>\nengage in it?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, as I <a href='http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=38'>observed<br \/>\nin 2002<\/a>, some parts of the Third World have now become so<br \/>\ndangerous to the whole world that some kind of neo-imperialism seems<br \/>\nto be required of us as a matter of self-defence.  Or, as I put it a<br \/>\nfew months before the second Iraq war began,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In the 19th century, the Western powers built empires for prestige<br \/>\nand economic advantage. In the 21st century, we may be discovering<br \/>\nthat we need to get back into the imperialism business as a matter of<br \/>\nsurvival. It may turn out that the 20th century was an interlude<br \/>\ndoomed to end as cheap transportation made the world smaller and<br \/>\nimproving weapons technology made large-scale destruction inexpensive<br \/>\neven for barbarian thugs like Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n<p>Envy the British of Sir Richard Burton&#8217;s time. They could conquer<br \/>\nhalf the world for simple gain without worrying about the<br \/>\nFuzzy-Wuzzies or the Ndebele aerosol-dropping pasteurella pestis on<br \/>\nKnightsbridge. We &mdash; and I mean specifically the U.S. now &mdash;<br \/>\nmay have to conquer the Islamic world a second time, simply because<br \/>\nthe risks of war and the moral hazards of imperialism are less<br \/>\nthreatening than the prospect of some Allah-crazed Islamofascist<br \/>\ndetonating a knapsack nuke on the Smithsonian Mall.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I was only a little ahead of the curve on this one.  In the war<br \/>\nyear of 2003, historian Niall Ferguson came at the same question from<br \/>\na slightly different angle in <a href='http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0141007540\/202-3481020-8738217'>Empire:<br \/>\nHow Britain Made the Modern World<\/a> and, later, in <a href='http:\/\/www.nrbookservice.com\/products\/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=c6480'><br \/>\nColossus: The Price of America&#8217;s Empire<\/a>.  A summary of his<br \/>\nargument can be <a href='http:\/\/chronicle.com\/free\/v49\/i29\/29b00701.htm'>read here<\/a>.<br \/>\nFerguson makes a strong case that the British Empire was, despite<br \/>\nobvious flaws, a good thing for the world.  In 2006 that seems an even<br \/>\nmore difficult case to refute than it did three years ago &mdash; one<br \/>\ndoubts, for example, that an Iran still run by the British would be<br \/>\nthreatening to nuke Israel.<\/p>\n<p>Ferguson goes on to argue explicitly that the U.S. has a global<br \/>\nempire, that contrary to the fulminations of remnant Marxists this is<br \/>\na <em>positive<\/em> development, and that we&#8217;d bloody well better get<br \/>\ngood at running it.  I&#8217;m not so sure about that; writing as an<br \/>\neconomist rather than a cultural historian, I have <a href='http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?p=190'>argued<\/a> that U.S.<br \/>\nhegemony has neither the intentions nor the structural features of<br \/>\nempire.  (Analysis continued <a href='http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=191'>here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>For libertarian reasons, I hope the U.S. hegemony can continue to<br \/>\nget away with not having the structural features of empire.  Because,<br \/>\nin the long run, empire is bad for the imperialist country itself on<br \/>\nmany levels ranging from economic to moral. Imperialists have to spend<br \/>\na lot of blood, treasure, and talent maintaining their dominion; the<br \/>\ncommon end result is that the home-country economy is hollowed out and<br \/>\nthe imperial class becomes lazy and parasitic. Former imperial powers<br \/>\ntend to degrade into stultified, shambolic backwaters absorbed in<br \/>\ntattered dreams of past glory.<\/p>\n<p>Still, at this point in world history it&#8217;s fair to reopen the older<br \/>\nquestion: was imperialism so bad for the natives?  Are there cases where<br \/>\nthey should have been grateful to be overrun and ruled by foreigners with<br \/>\nMaxim guns? Are there cases where they were grateful, and even still are?<\/p>\n<p>Actually, the answer turns out to be yes.  The two most conspicuous<br \/>\ncases I know of are the Phillippines and Belize &#8212; both places where a<br \/>\nprimarily non-European population looks rather fondly on its colonial<br \/>\noccupiers.  Some parts of what was formerly French West Africa have<br \/>\npositive memories as well.<\/p>\n<p>Very few places other than the Phillippines ever had the good luck to<br \/>\nbe colonized by Americans, and it&#8217;s indicative of the &#8216;good luck&#8217; that<br \/>\nalmost all of them are parts of the U.S. now and the natives&#8217;<br \/>\ndescendants have full citizenship and are more numerous and wealthier<br \/>\nthan when they were at time of first contact.<\/p>\n<p>But, as Ferguson eloquently argues, the British empire was<br \/>\ngenerally a pretty good deal for the natives.  Railroads, sanitation,<br \/>\nand the rule of law count for rather a lot.  And by objective measures<br \/>\nlike incidence of famine, warfare, and civil disorder much of Africa<br \/>\n(and Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia) has been worse off<br \/>\nsince independence than under colonial rule.<\/p>\n<p>More generally, whether imperialism was a good thing our not<br \/>\ndepends on who the imperialists were. All were bad some of the time,<br \/>\nbut only some were bad all of the time. Japanese imperialism was a genocidal<br \/>\nnightmare, and the Russian Empire&#8217;s brutality was limited mainly by<br \/>\nits incompetence.  What the Belgians got up to in the Congo doesn&#8217;t<br \/>\nbear much thinking about either.<\/p>\n<p>But the Germans, despite nasty spots like the Herero massacres,<br \/>\nweren&#8217;t too awful.  Nor the French; they, like the British, believed<br \/>\nin a <em>mission civilatrice<\/em> and usually behaved<br \/>\naccordingly. Another objective check on this is that France still has<br \/>\noverseas departments in the Third World that are in no hurry to get<br \/>\nout from under the supposed yoke of European domination.<\/p>\n<p>I think Niall Ferguson is correct when he argues that what made the<br \/>\nBritish Empire mostly a good thing was the presence of a strong<br \/>\nclassical-liberal critique of empire from within itself.  The effect<br \/>\nwas that the British were unable to resist demands for autonomy and<br \/>\nliberty from their subject peoples once those subjects had become<br \/>\ncivilized enough to make those demands in the language of classical<br \/>\nliberalism.<\/p>\n<p>What was true of the British is even more true of the U.S., as (for<br \/>\nexample) the independence of the Phillippines demonstrates. In Iraq,<br \/>\nwhich opponents of the U.S. repesent as an imperial adventure, there<br \/>\nhas never been any question that the Iraqis would swiftly form their<br \/>\nown government and have political independence from the U.S.; the<br \/>\noption of ruling the country through proconsuls as we did for years<br \/>\nafter WWII in Germany and Japan wasn&#8217;t even on the table.<\/p>\n<p>A kinder, gentler, imperialism?  Yes, actually; but, as Ferguson<br \/>\nand I have pointed out, the U.S.&#8217;s behavior is still continuous with<br \/>\nthe entire history of Western imperialism, with all the promises and perils<br \/>\nthat implies.  Which means that, rather than accepting the simple<br \/>\n&#8220;imperialism = evil&#8221; equation dinned into us us by the Soviets and<br \/>\ntheir apologists, we need to learn from that history and, as much as<br \/>\npossible, try to avoid the bad parts and replicate the good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the effects of the Soviet meme war I&#8217;ve been writing about recently is that to most educated Westerners it is absolutely taboo to think that Western imperialism might have been a good thing. Since the end of World War II, even conservatives have generally conceded this point, as a way not to look&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=270\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Rethinking Imperialism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}