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rfmcdonaldAndrew Barton just reacted to an article by convicted British felon Conrad Black in National Review, "Post-Colonial Killing Fields", wherein Black defends Western imperialism: "No one could seriously dispute that almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, all of North Africa except Morocco, all of the Middle East except Israel and Jordan and most of the oil-rich states, and the entire former British Indian Empire were better governed by Europeans."
Actually, yes, the case can be made. The various problems that the least-developed colonies had in maintaining functional, prosperous societies speaks to the sustained underinvestment of most colonial powers in their colonies, a sustained underinvestment that was consciously adopted so as to prevent the emergence of social strata that could contest colonial rule. Colonial powers committed numerous sins of omission: Amartya Sen's observation that, for all of its policy failures, independent India has never experienced famines on the scale that regularly hit the British Raj, simply because the Indian government was responsible to its citizens in the way that foreign colonialists never were to their subjects. And, of course, sometimes colonial powers actually did terrible, terrible things to their subjects, the Congo Free State being a prototype but (sadly) not exceptional. The achievements of post-colonial countries were often achieved despite the legacies of past imperialisms.
Barton's conclusion is worth sharing.
Actually, yes, the case can be made. The various problems that the least-developed colonies had in maintaining functional, prosperous societies speaks to the sustained underinvestment of most colonial powers in their colonies, a sustained underinvestment that was consciously adopted so as to prevent the emergence of social strata that could contest colonial rule. Colonial powers committed numerous sins of omission: Amartya Sen's observation that, for all of its policy failures, independent India has never experienced famines on the scale that regularly hit the British Raj, simply because the Indian government was responsible to its citizens in the way that foreign colonialists never were to their subjects. And, of course, sometimes colonial powers actually did terrible, terrible things to their subjects, the Congo Free State being a prototype but (sadly) not exceptional. The achievements of post-colonial countries were often achieved despite the legacies of past imperialisms.
Barton's conclusion is worth sharing.
Let me sum this up real quickly, here: modern states that were European colonies were not better off when they were European colonies, and there's a simple reason for it that goes beyond the lack of representation, the oppression, and general exploitation. European colonies were run for the benefit of the colonial master, not the colonies themselves - if a certain thing improved the lot of a colony, it would be because the ruling colonial power believed it to be in its own best interest. Choice is sacred, self-determination is vital, and the colonies of Europe had neither.
