Why I gave up African studies

Mots Pluriel ^ | December 2003 | Gavin Kitching

[wizardoz]

Or we could send our best Western scholars there to teach them John Locke, the Constitution, Aristotle, Ludwig Von Mises, Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt, etc. No one would think of that though. We live in an irrational time.

I'm with you. I just finished reading Leonard Peikoff's OMINOUS PARALLELS and my hair is still standing on end. I don't even need gel anymore.

[JSteff]

I don't know about that but I have heard some say Africa had some great empires, "with great influence, trade, literature, astronomical and mathematical knowledge, social structure"

They have ruined every empire or socal structure that they or others created on that continent. All of them.

[speekinout]

Yet the former colonial states of the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan (if it counts in this line of thought) are hardly seeing their annual GDP decline as is most all of Africa

There are key differences between those states and Africa. The US, Canada, and Australia were settled by immigrants. The native populations were overwhelmed and pushed aside. The others have overwhelming majorities of one ethnic group, and India still has problems with poverty in areas dominated by an ethnic minority.
Other countries that were formed by some rather unthinking Western notions of where borders should be drawn have also had economic problems. Iraq and Israel are two.

[Virginia-American]

In African cultures, where family and tribal rights take precedence over any concept of national kinship

There are something like 1500 different languages spoken in Africa. A few countries have just one, but some have hundreds.

[little jeremiah]

I am not denying that undoubtedly Africa was much greater in the past than now, with cohesive social structure, knowledge of various arts and sciences, and trade. It's just that India's history of civilization is so much older and more vast that they are not interchangeable.

[Southack]

"There are key differences between those states and Africa. The US, Canada, and Australia were settled by immigrants. The native populations were overwhelmed and pushed aside."

Rubbish. What "native populations" were pushed out of Singapore, India, and Hong Kong?!

You see, all of this "blame Colonialism" nonsense is counter-productive. You can point to nation after nation that has shrugged off colonialism and become successful, so simply being colonized isn't sufficient excuse for national failures centuries later.

[speekinout]

Rubbish. What "native populations" were pushed out of Singapore, India, and Hong Kong?!

Read my post. I said those colonies didn't have diverse populations. India did somewhat, which is why they're having trouble in Kashmir, but on the whole, they're still the same tribal grouping they've always been.

Colonialism did cause problems in some countries, and to pretend that it didn't is to have one's head in the sand.

[Southack]

It doesn't matter if colonialism caused *any* problems or not. What matters is that colonialism doesn't doom a nation to perpetual disaster even after a nation has freed itself from said colonialism.

Singapore, Hong Kong, and the U.S. easily show that former colonies can rid themselves of their colonial masters and then go on to thrive under their own management.

This is important. If people erroneously believe that they are doomed *because* of colonialism, then they may give up the intellectual challenge of trying to figure out how to solve their own problems.

"Oh, we're victims of colonialism, so we can't solve our own problems" isn't going to save Africa. They've got to rise above it, and they've got to do it on their own.

Blaming colonialism won't save them. Outside aid won't save them. New African leadership won't save them.

The *people* themselves have to want to make their nations better.

[King Prout]

I weep for Axum.
I despise Islam for eclipsing the Christian trading and military empire of Ethiopia. Once Axum turned inward, Africa was cut off from the rest of the world for the better part of a millenium. Without intercourse with the rest of the world, Africans lagged behind in cultural and technological development. When Europe once more landed in Africa, that lack of sophistication became the justification for the slave trade and colonialism which followed.
It will take centuries of dedicated (and often bloody) catch-up for Africa to join the world as an equal, and I truly doubt the rest of the world will give Africa the necessary breathing room it needs to do so.
I am a pessimist.
I hope I shall be proven wrong.
I doubt it.

[The Westerner]

That was a good book! Great chapter on the Founding Fathers.

[speekinout]

If people erroneously believe that they are doomed *because* of colonialism,

I never said that. I did say that the West drew some utterly unexplainable borders when they gave up colonialism. And that has caused ongoing problems.

Who's responsible for the problems? The West has to take most of the responsibility.
Who's responsible for fixing the problems? Well, if the former colonies don't, they will never have the sovereignity and prosperity they thought they were getting when the colonists left.

We don't disagree much. I just think the colonizers have more of the blame than you do.

[Southack]

"I never said that. I did say that the West drew some utterly unexplainable borders when they gave up colonialism. And that has caused ongoing problems. Who's responsible for the problems? The West has to take most of the responsibility."

Nonsense.

Logically, if the *borders* were the problem, then those colonies would have been unsuccessful even when they were being run by the Europeans. They had the same borders back then, after all.

That's clearly not the case. Zimbabwe was a global food EXPORTER under colonial rule, yet now foreign aid into Zimbabwe is its largest single "industry," hardly a good sign.

Moreover, not all colonies had arbitrary borders drawn onto maps for them by Europeans. Some colonies/nations still have their natural borders, for instance (e.g. Jamaica, Bermuda, etc.).

So again, logically speaking, clearly arbitrary borders can't explain Jamaica and Bermuda...so the whole "European borders caused all of our woes" argument fails to fly by that route, either.

[marron]

Colonialism is a natural response by a nation-state to a collapsed state, or a region in which there is no state. In and of itself it is not a negative thing, nor is it automatically something that should inspire guilt or opprobrium.

In certain cases, of course, it was accompanied by horrific crimes. The Belgian and German colonies in Africa are good examples. Belgians and Germans have a lot to answer for as a result of their dealings in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. In their case colonialism meant mass murder and a ferocious repression.

But any lawless region will act as a vacuum, and people with an interest in operating there will be forced to see to their own security; if they are successful, the secure area they establish for themselves acts as a magnet for the people of the region themselves, and the "colony" gives birth to itself. This is separate from any venal motives which may exist, or which may subsequently take advantage of the monopoly of order which their operations have brought.

This is going to happen again and again. We won't call it "colonialism" anymore, since it has become a dirty word, but it will still exist and thankfully so.

A modern example would be where valuable deposits of some natural resources lie in the territory of a failed state. Oil and mining companies want to be able to operate there, but in safety. So they begin to work with the local leadership to establish the conditions of physical security and contract law they need to be able to risk their investment dollars. They may subsidize the creation of a constabulary, and the building of roads and bridges. The infrastructure and security bubble they create for themselves allows local businesses to operate in legal and physical safety as well, and they also begin to prosper. It is a kind of colonialism that is much better disguised than the 19th century variety, and is much more respectful of the sovereignty of the countries where they operate. And there is nothing evil about it.

Whether it is ultimately a positive thing for the people of the region depends to the degree to which it brings rule of law, and respect for individual citizens. If the "colony" provides cover for crimes against humanity, as in the Belgian and German models, then all bets are off, of course. But failed states such as Somalia, and Sierra Leone, and Liberia, cry out for some kind of neo-colonialism. UN and humanitarian agencies and regional peacekeepers are in the process of creating a kind of colonial rule there.

The great difference in modern colonialism is that the purpose is not to build some kind of permanent empire, but to establish order and the rule of law, and to relinquish political control to the people themselves. But rule of law and respect for individual rights do not spring fully formed from out of the unformed universe, they must be established by an act of will if you don't want to wait millenia for them to develop organically out of the native soil.

Afghanistan and Iraq have recently fallen under outside rule, and if Pakistan implodes it will force outside control. We won't call it colonialism, and I will avoid the use of the word "empire". But chaos demands and invites a strong outsider to impose order, whether out of humanitarian concerns, or pragmatism, self defense, or commercial opportunities, or as is common a combination of motives. It is not automatically evil, it can in fact be a positive good; it is an evil if the power imposing order behaves in an evil manner.

[RWG]

It seems that 'studies' programs are for academic elitists to do what this fellow has done: provide a perspective of the history and nature of present day chaos. Whether it's because the analysis is leftist, academic, or elitist there are no specific solutions to be had in any of their discussions. They do however prescribe the styles of social, religious, economic, and political life that need to be imposed on the dominant/majority group. The only effort these 'studies' programs can make is the revision of history to promote a social movement with at least some political power in one jurisdiction or another. None of them are capable of developing a schedule and list of steps to take to displace the particular pathology of humanity for which there is a 'studies' program for their group so that they can hold a seat at the table for being nothing more than breathing and warm. For those who use dysfunction as the occasion for them to lament the failure of humanity to fix something, the cure is death to their narcissitic possing for producing nothing but their own celebrity.