Colonialism Rupert Emerson It is difficult to decide which is to be accounted the more extra- ordinary event: western Europe’s achievement of imperial pre- dominance over so much of the world in the last few centuries, or the recent spectacular demise of virtually the entire colonial system as one of the major manifestations of the decline of that pre- dominance. My inclination is to press the claim of the overthrow and abandonment of colonialism. Here was a system of world-wide dimensions which only a few years earlier still had a look of solidity and permanence to it and which had ordered - or disrupted - the affairs of very large segments of mankind for centuries in some instances, for decades in many others. Is there any other occasion on which so global and commanding a scheme of things was swept away in so brief a time? ‘That western colonialism — in brief, as a working definition, the imposition of white rule on alien peoples inhabiting lands separated by salt water from the imperial centre - should have come to so sudden an end is all the more extraordinary in that at least one of the principal circumstances involved in its coming into being remained to some degree intact. It is an obvious condition of the establishment and maintenance of colonial rule that there should be a significant disparity in power between those who govern and those on whom alien rule is imposed, and this disparity was in- creasingly multiplied as Europe moved from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment into the Industrial Revolution. The sudden downfall of colonialism should indicate a striking change in the power relationships. Such a change there has undoubtedly been in various respects, and yet it is notorious that the gap be- tween the advanced and the backward (if a euphemistically dis- carded term may be employed) has continued to widen rather than to contract. In science and technology, productivity and material well-being, transport and communications, armaments, and political and social organization, the advanced peoples have 3 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY been moving ahead more rapidly than the developing have been catching up with them. The disparity in power has in some senses grown, but it no longer carries imperial predominance with it. One signal and peculiar fact, to be added to the appalling losses of two world wars on one side and the rise of nationalism on the other, is that the possession of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems has by no means assured easy military superiority to those who have them, as witness Malaya, Kenya, Algeria, and first the French and then the Americans in Vietnam, But at least as important as any other element is the sapping of the will to empire and the change in the climate of domestic as well as world opinion from acceptance to rejection of colonialism, in which the rise of com- munism as a world force can be accorded as large a role as the observer may be inclined to allot it. The repudiation of colonialism has been both swift and all- embracing, even though it has not yet caught up with the Portu- guese, thus incidentally raising the question whether readiness to suppress ruthlessly can in appropriate circumstances hold back for some indefinite period what otherwise seems the irresistible forward sweep of nationalism. In the past, if colonialism was not praised or at least indifferently accepted as a fact of nature, the attack was not ordinarily directed against it as an institution but against particular abuses or practices. ‘Now the entire range of colonialism is condemned out of hand. Although many warning signals had foretold what was to come, the most ardent enemies of colonialism opened fire with all their batteries for the first time in their first international gathering on their own, the Bandung Conference of 29 Asian and African countries in 1955. Here it was flatly laid down that ‘colonialism in all its manifestations is an evil which should speedily be brought to an end’, and that the subjection of peoples to alien rule and exploitation is a denial of fundamental human rights, contrary to the UN Charter, and an impediment to world peace. Five years later these central tenets of the anti-colonial creed were spelled out in further detail in the UN General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which summed up what the anti-colonialists had been working to- wards from the beginning and charted the course to be followed in 1 Resolution 1514 (XV). 4 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCOLONIALISM the future. Reiterating some of the key phrases of the Bandung final communiqué, this Declaration went far beyond Bandung in that it was unanimously adopted by the General Assembly, even though the United States, Great Britain, France, and six other ill- assorted countries abstained. Solemnly proclaiming ‘the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations’, the Declaration proceeded to affirm the central positive proposition that ‘All peoples have the right to self-determination’, a phrase taken over intact in the first article of each of the two Covenants on Human Rights, unani- mously adopted by the Assembly in 1966. A resolution of 1965 went a step further than the Declaration in asserting in its pre- amble that the continuation of colonial rule and the practice of apartheid not only threaten international peace and security, but also ‘constitute a crime against humanity’. In similar vein the Charter of the Organization of African Unity proclaims it as one of its purposes to eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa, and maintains ‘the inalienable right of all people to control their own destiny’. In other times and places colonialism has been pilloried as permanent aggression to be right- fully attacked by all comers, and the communist powers, however much they may differ among themselves, give their support to wars of liberation on the ground that they are just wars. It is, of course, evident that the radically anti-colonial pro- nouncements of the UN and other international bodies have no necessary effect on actual colonial situations ~ a state of affairs which generates a sense of bitter frustration particularly among the African leaders.? Portugal holds its colonies without appearing to be gravely worried by the UN challenge to its rule, and Britain, the United States, and the handful of others involved in colonial affairs hold on to a dwindling few of their overseas possessions or trust territories and act towards them in such fashion and at such tempo as they themselves determine. The hostility of the UN majority to colonialism no doubt influences the policies of the remaining colonial powers, but they accept neither the accusation of being international criminals nor the injunction that they must 2 The frustration of Africans in the directly colonial sphere is greatly ag- gravated by their inability to do anything drastic themselves about South Africa, Southwest Africa, and Rhodesia, or to persuade others who might achieve significant results to swing into action. 5 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY take immediate steps to grant independence. If a case challenging the right of a colonial power to hold the territories it controls were to be brought before the International Court, the Court would presumably sustain the right of the colonial power to rule, al- though the new majority on the Court might call for a speeding up of steps taken to ensure complete independence and freedom in accord with UN resolutions. Taken at face value (which the immediately preceding comments indicate they need not be), the anti-colonial resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and by the Committee of 24, established to implement the 1960 Declaration, go far beyond both the language of the Charter and the apparent assumptions of its prin- cipal drafters. While the Charter represented a substantial advance over the League Covenant which, apart from the inconclusive mandates system, virtually ignored the colonial problem - as did the League itself — it recognized only a principle of self-determina- tion and in Chapter XI went no further than to exact a pledge of movement towards self-government. But it did open up a crack of international concern with colonial issues into which in due course the anti-colonial majority drove a huge wedge of international accountability, giving to the UN prerogatives which the colonial powers would never have dreamed of conceding at San Francisco or for a decade and more thereafter. In the course of the anti- colonial drive, the safeguarding of domestic jurisdiction in Article 2:7 was for all practical purposes deleted from the Charter as far as colonial issues were concerned. An experienced observer fresh from the San Francisco conference reported that independence was not mentioned as a goal because only the United States among, the colonial powers saw it as the natural outcome of colonial status, and he explicitly denied that the obligation of the powers to provide information concerning their non-self-governing terri- tories gave the UN ‘authority to meddle in colonial affairs .. 7. But the ‘meddling’ has swollen to ever larger dimensions. With the adoption of the 1960 Declaration one of the most important moral and theoretical bulwarks of colonialism was } Huntington Gilchrist, ‘Colonial Questions at the San Francisco Conference’, American Political Science Review, October 1945, 987-8. He conceded, however, that if there had not been a controversy over the use of the word ‘independence’, it would have been clear that the pledge to develop free political institutions must have included independence. 6 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCOLONIALISM demolished. Under the Covenant tutelage had been overtly acknowledged as necessary for peoples not yet able to stand by themselves in a strenuous world, and the advanced powers had taken on the burden of tutelage as the sacred trust of a civilization presumably identified with themselves. Implicitly under the Charter the same doctrine held, although the clear identification of civilization was evaded, and for the trust territories the goal of independence was now stated. In 1960 the justification of colonialism on grounds of tutelage was unambiguously removed, since Article 3 of the Declaration of that year held that ‘Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence’. The colonial powers, of course, did not accept the new standard which had been laid down, but henceforward their plea that a colonial people was not yet ready for independence would be met by citation of a UN resolution unanimously adopted. One of the most entertaining and hazardous of parlour games is speculation as to what might have happened if there had been no colonialism, speculation which seems peculiarly in order at a time when the anti-colonialists have stripped the last shreds of legitimacy from colonialism no matter what the circumstances. It is possible to come to at least tentative conclusions as to the effects which colonial rule in fact had on different peoples, but we have only the most dubious of clues as to the might-have-beens if the same peoples had entirely escaped subjection to such rule. Colonial and ex-colonial peoples have from time to time found it tempting to assume that if they had remained free all kinds of good things would have fallen to their lot, enabling them to advance on the path to modernity, prosperity, strength, and national unity far more rapidly than proved possible under alien control. Much more rarely does there appear to be a belief that it would have been preferable to linger undisturbed in the older traditional society, or to seek to return to it, sloughing off the alien intrusions of modernity. It is manifestly highly consoling to believe that one’s present woes, weakness, poverty, and internal divisions derive, not from anything inherent in one’s own race, society, or history, but from the wounds inflicted on an otherwise sound body by those who encroached on it and exploited it for their profit and pleasure. In its simplest form this satisfying myth holds that the peoples 7 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY involved were just about to launch themselves on an autonomously inspired drive towards catching up with the advanced countries when they were taken over by the imperialists and herded back into a less developed way of life than they had already achieved, or were at least denied the advancement which would otherwise have been theirs. ‘The major difficulty with any such claim is that the evidence, if any, on which it might be based is highly unconvincing. Thus it is sometimes said that just as Europe’s diverse ethnic groups were forged into nations over the centuries, so Africa’s tribes were in process of being amalgamated into stable large-scale nations at the time when the slave trade and later the Scramble disrupted all hope of African development, imposing an arbitrary set of Euro- pean boundaries instead of those which would have emerged from an unforced natural evolution of the continent. What actually appears to be the case is that African tribes were, in an essentially haphazard way, dividing, coalescing, forming empires and breaking them up again, as other peoples around the world have throughout history seen their political communities wax and wane. No general trend either of amalgamation or of disintegration is evident in the complex and inadequately recorded history which is available. ‘What political shape African peoples might have taken on if they had been left to themselves is a mystery to which only the most speculative and controversial answers can be given. What we do know is that there was a multiplicity of tribes in many kinds of relations with each other and that these tribes were forced into a peculiar pattern of colonial states whose boundaries have, in the few brief and tempestuous years since independence, held sur- prisingly constant, as have those of many ex-colonial territories elsewhere, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Again, what would have been the fate of India if British rule had never been established ? Would it have been possible to hold the entire sub- continent together, untroubled by an imperialist policy of divide~ and-rule, or, in reverse, lacking the unity which Britain imposed, would it have broken up on the European model into, say, a dozen or more historically and linguistically determined states ? If one would play this parlour game, the prime necessity is that the rules be firmly and clearly established in advance, because various radically different assumptions can be made which produce quite different results. To discuss the hypothetical fate of peoples 8 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCOLONIALISM exempt from colonialism without having determined what sub- stitute relationship with other peoples is to take its place as the framework of the inquiry, is to open the door to hopeless confusion. To draw on Africa as an example again: if the rules lay down the utterly fanciful assumption that no intercourse whatever, directly ‘ough intermediaries, took place between Africa and the new civilization growing up in western Europe, then there is no reason to read back into the history that never happened the belief that Africans would on their own have then or in due course produced some approximation of the unique European developments. Such a civilization had not in fact emerged anywhere else in the world, there were no significant hints that it was likely to blossom forth in Africa, and, when introduced primarily under colonial auspices, it took hold only tenuously and slowly. What kind of civilization of its own Africa might have produced if it had been fenced off from the rest of the world for the last few centuries, and for a millennium or two ahead, can be guessed only by spinning idle clouds in the air. The presumption must be that its peoples would have pre- served their traditional guise, subject of course to eccentric eruptions which no one could predict. If total isolation be abandoned as wholly unreal, a number of kinds and gradations of intercourse with the increasingly dynamic, restless, and powerful peoples of western Europe, and a little later of the United States, Japan, the Soviet Union, and China come into the picture. The changes that one can ring on such a theme in the realms of speculation are so diverse as to make it a fruitless occupation to seek to pursue more than two or three of them. For the present purpose the heart of the matter is the ease or the suffering, the speed or the slowness, the effectiveness or the in- adequacy of the process of adaptation of traditional societies to the characteristic forms and forces of modernity which have indisput- ably demonstrated their power and productivity, whatever the evils which accompany them. Peace must in some fashion be made with them if there is to be any hope of extended independent survival and of achieving sufficient well-being at home to escape grave disaffection and upheaval, perhaps played upon and guided from abroad. If contact with the advanced countries, but not colonialism, be allowed, perhaps its most utopian form would confine the contact to men of skill and benevolence who, financed from outside and 9 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY able to draw on large capital sums for such projects as came to seem in order ~ roads, railroads, ports, dams, irrigation works, schools, hospitals, etc. - would disinterestedly see to it that the traditional societies made the mostpainless transition into modernity compatible with preserving the best of the old society or the ele- ments most essential to the maintenance of its corporate life and spirit. But the questions which come immediately to mind are legion. Would one include among such men missionaries, one of whose major purposes would be the introduction of Christianity, or perhaps Islam or some other faith, at the evident cost of thereby undermining one of the main pillars of the traditional social order ? Would that old order be taken as the starting point both in terms of an indirect rule based on the traditional authorities and in rela- tion to the demographic-geographic scope of the society or must the old order be swept away to make way for the new? So massive a scale of benevolence has never been seen in this world, nor can we have any assurance that, even if the men and the means to practise it could be found, the extraordinarily difficult job by which they would be confronted could be done. Would the expatriates en- gaged in such an enterprise be accepted as benevolent instructors by those whose lives they sought to change, or as intruders to be got rid of as speedily as possible; and would they be tough-minded enough to inflict the kind of blows which are usually needed to break the cake of custom and to start the flow of a new kind of life and labour ? To ask such questions is to open up some of the major controversies which have in fact surrounded the practitioners and theorists of colonialism. At a next remove, coming uncomfortably, and indeed indis- tinguishably, close to historical reality except for the continuing ground rules ban on colonial regimes, far the most likely turn of events would be that western economic interests - traders, seekers after raw materials or labour, money lenders — would establish themselves in what has now come to be known as the third world. Since only governments stronger than any the third world could provide would be able to bar them from entry or effectively regu- late them, such interests could not only penetrate deeply into the undeveloped countries but often also dominate them, and, as an accidental by-product for which they accept no responsibility, profoundly disrupt them. Two possibilities appear: either the economic interests involved would calculate that they could get by, 10 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCOLONIALISM despite disruptions and disaffections, with no more than occasional manipulation of the existing government of the country in which they were operating, although its ultimate collapse or drastic over- hauling could be foreseen; or, in order to establish and maintain the conditions necessary for carrying on profitable enterprise, they would move to take over the government and reconstruct it to meet their own needs. Here, evidently, one begins to swing full circle. A government stemming from outside the society has been imposed, but, as the game’s ground rules require, it is a government deriving from the economic enterprise itself and not from the government of the country from which that enterprise originally set out. At this point it is not irrelevant to go back to the dictum of Adam Smith that the worst of all governments for a colony is the government of a com- pany. The argument is essentially the simple one that a company’s primary concern is to make a profit, while a government has other responsibilities which, gravely as it may neglect them, are likely to have some positive bearing on its activities. At its by no means unknown worst a colonial government may in fact be little more than an agent providing labour and other facilities for commercial interests, or itself exploiting the manpower and resources of the country for the profit of the home government, as in the Dutch East Indies for much of the nineteenth century. The hope, how- ever, certainly not without some measure of justification in colonial history, is that a colonial government will come to accept at least a minimum of responsibility for the well-being of its subjects and their adaptation to the modern world, Although the altruistic desire to promote welfare and adaptation to modernity has pre- sumably never been the root reason for imperialist expansion, the existence of a government and its civil servants nonetheless pro- vides another channel of contact with the modern world - some- times a quite inadequate one, as in the case of Spain and Portugal in recent times - and may provide a safeguard against the worst abuses of exploitation and neglect. As the colonial powers pro- gressed into the mid-twentieth century they increasingly tended to acknowledge that their responsibilities went beyond the crude maintenance of law and order, harshly summarized in the term ‘pacification’, and beyond the provision of the basic facilities re- quired by their businessmen, planters, and miners. At least the rudiments of welfare, economic and social development, and 11 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY political advancement came to be accepted by most colonial governments as necessary features of contemporary colonial rule, It is, I trust, clear that I am not contending that colonialism offered any ideal means of access to the modern world. Indeed, I am not at all sure that any ideal means of access exists, although I am sure that colonial regimes do not provide it. But when I play the game of ruling out colonialism, leaving other conditions realistically as they were, I find myself inexorably driven to the conclusion that, as an interim and transitional measure, colonialism is likely to be the lesser of the evils in a predatory world. It has in fact been the agency of diffusion through which hundreds of millions of people have begun the long and painful transition from their traditional societies into the modern world created by the West and now available in the alternative packaging of communism, ‘Two further observations may be briefly added. The condition of otherwise comparable countries, such as Liberia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and the Central American states for the last century and a half, all of which escaped colonialism or most of it, leads to no optimistic conclusion that all would have been well if colonialism had never been invented. Second, that colonialism is oddly seen to have its virtues was demonstrated by the earlier insistence of African spokesmen and men of good will in general that the Colonial Office should retain control in Kenya and the Rhodesias until the Africans could take over, rather than allow white settlers to take over predominant political control. Whatever its achievements throughout the ages as one of the chosen instruments for the diffusion of civilization, those on whom colonialism has been imposed detest it for its besetting sin of arrogance. For a relatively brief period there are a few who find the colonial situation more than barely tolerable: the first genera- tion or two of the new western-educated élite who feel a great distance between themselves and their less fortunate tradition- bound countrymen, and set as their goal acceptance by the superior beings who have taken command of their society. As self government and independence come nearer, others - the tradi- tionally privileged or other hangers-on who have been artificially sustained by the colonial authorities, or ethnic groups who feel threatened by those who are coming into power ~ may prefer the 12 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCOLONIALISM existing colonial status to what lies ahead. But the growing and in- creasingly universal sentiment has been one of refusal to tolerate the inherent arrogance of a system in which alien superiority pre- sides over the inferior ‘native’. The issue is not at all necessarily the arrogance of individuals in a crude sense, although that is also frequently involved and finds in colonialism an ideal breeding ground. Outside the colonial relationship individuals and groups representing the two races or communities are often able to get along easily and happily, as is demonstrated by the surprising readiness of ex-colonial peoples to establish close and friendly relations with both the former imperial power itself and with the many expatriates in the newly independent countries. ‘The arrogance of colonialism takes many forms. The simplest, most straightforward form, endowed with the most ancient heri- tage, is the principle that the right of the stronger, the right of conquest, puts the conquered wholly at the disposal of the con- queror. A more sophisticated version rests upon belief in some form of racial or cultural superiority which justifies colonial rule either on a permanent basis, since the ‘natives’ are congenitally incapable of overcoming their backwardness, or for as long a period — seen, perhaps, as lasting many generations or even cen- turies - as they are regarded by their colonial masters as being incompetent to manage their own affairs. At least in the more or less contemporary scene the presumption has been that such superiority carries with it the white man’s burden of seeking to bring about the advancement of the colonial wards, but it may also serve merely to establish the legitimacy of continued colonial rule. Basic tenets of the colonialism of the last centuries were the sole sanctity of Christianity and the self-evident supremacy of the white man. The arrogance of the League Covenant’s assumption that the sacred trust of civilization in relation to the mandates, and by implication to all colonial peoples, was vested in the colonial powers has already been noted. It was an integral part of the arrogance of the colonial administrator that he honestly believed that he spoke more authentically for the colonial masses than did the new-style nationalist leaders. No doubt he sometimes did, but the nature of the colonial system made the nationalist the inevitable heir to power. It might be contended that the supreme arrogance was displayed 13 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY by the devoted and unself-secking colonial civil servant or missionary who set as his goal only the transformation of the native society and its beliefs into a closer replica of his own, There is here in a sense an ultimacy of arrogance which far surpasses that of the strong ruler who exploits his subjects for what he can get out of them but is indifferent to their creeds and institutions, allowing them to save their souls in their own fashion, Rebelling against the inherent arrogance of the colonial situ: tion, the anti-colonialist finds the appeal to the dignity of man his most passionately convincing slogan. It would be absurd to think that any definitive verdict on colonialism can be pronounced in this immediate aftermath of the era of western imperialist expansion. It is far too varied and com- plex a phenomenon to lend itself to an easy summing up, and its effects, of which we have seen only the first manifestations, will surely be felt for generations to come. The climate of opinion at the moment is peculiarly confusing because, while the dominant trend is the condemnation of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations, a renewed sense begins to creep in that perhaps all was not evil and that, however clumsily and often inadvertently, it made positive contributions which are not to be ignored. In the manner of their unexpectedly peaceful departure from many dependent countries, the colonial powers made possible a calm and even friendly reassessment of what they had accomplished, failed in, and put on the agenda for future action. The ceremonial speeches of good will and mutual congratulations which have accompanied the lowering of imperial flags and the raising of the new national banners were by no means wholly insincere, as has been shown by the close ties maintained between so many of the newly independent states and their former overlords. It may be, too, that the shortcomings of the new countries make 4 Professor Ali A. Mazrui of Makerere University College, Uganda, sees colonialism as having helped to transform Africa's intellectual universe: ‘In fact, the most significant thing about the colonial experience for Africa is that ‘it was at once a political bondage and a mental liberation. We might even say that the colonial fact was the most important liberating factor that the African mind has experienced in historical times.’ ‘Borrowed Theory and Original Practice in African Politics’ in Herbert J. Spiro, ed., Patterns of African Develop- ‘ment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), 92. A generally favourable estimate of the ‘colonial experience is made by Peter Duignan and L.H. Gann, Burden of Empire (New York, 1967). 4 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCOLONIALISM the colonial interlude look better than might otherwise have been expected. The naive vision of oppressive colonialism giving way to the freedom and progress of liberation has been supplanted by a more grubby reality. One-party one-man rule, military dictator- ships, corruption, inadequacies and failures in development and modernization, and other deficiencies dim the lustre of indepen- dence and tend to turn what the anti-colonialists painted all black into more neutral grays. Except perhaps for a handful of the older Asian and African civil servants, who look back nostalgically to the days of colonial bureaucracy, no one wants to return to colonialism, but it can at least be assessed with a larger measure of cool dispas- sion. Or, of course, the other side of the coin may be that precisely colonialism is held responsible for present shortcomings because it failed to educate, democratize, develop, and modernize, leaving the underdeveloped peoples whom it exploited still undeveloped. To the sins of colonialism in this latter version must be added the accusation that the former colonial powers, and particularly the United States, are following a neo-colonialist policy of seeking to maintain the substance of control over the nominally indepen: dent new states through the acquisition of economic predomi: nance. Neo-colonialism is a difficult term of which to make much sensible use because it is usually employed by the spokesmen of the left who, discovering imperialism in every action or inaction of the non-communist countries, lump together everything from monopolistic exploitation and armed intervention to technical assistance and the Peace Corps. The general drift, however, is clear: the advanced countries are in various ways deeply involved in the former colonies. Given the extent of the ties built up under colonial rule and the amount of debris it left behind, the gross disparities in wealth and power which continue to divide the world, and the demand of the new countries for aid in develop- ment, it would be incredible if there were not many relationships which could be tagged with the label of neo-colonialism. A more important question than the invidious use of the label is whether the diverse activities it embraces are meeting some of the urgent needs of the new countries, notably in the sphere of development, and meeting them in ways both more effective and more tolerable to the people concerned than the colonial regimes which preceded them, It is arguable that what is extraordinary is not the extent of 15 This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONTEMPORARY HISTORY imperialist yearning to restore the substance of colonialism, but rather the readiness to be rid of what have come to be seen as imperial burdens. For profit, prestige, and political advantage, and from a sense of tasks left unaccomplished, the ex-colonial powers have understandably sought to maintain a greater or less degree of contact with their former dependencies. In some in- stances - Houphouet-Boigny’s Ivory Coast is the most frequently cited example - expatriate economic, political, and cultural control and influence have undoubtedly gone beyond what is compatible with real independence, although the later recapture of inde- pendence is by no means excluded. The dilemma confronting poor and ill-equipped countries which are struggling both to survive and develop and to cling to freedom is a very real one, and some have sold out or come close to it. On the other side, the record of such countries as Burma and Indonesia, Guinea and Mali, which in their different fashions have sought to cut loose from the ad- vanced West, has not been very impressive. With all the temptations open to them in this condition of the world’s affairs, the erstwhile imperialists seem in large measure to have accepted the anti~ imperialist convictions of their opponents. Of a yearning for a renewal of imperialist aggrandizement there is little trace. Throughout history, save at the rarest of intervals, men have acted upon the assumption that expansion, conquest, and far- flung rule over others were the fruits and symbols of virility and grandeur. Have we now come to a turning point in history, or will the next throw of the global dice bring forth a new imperialism and a new colonialism? This content downloaded from 142.157.17.13 on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:06:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions