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| [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4], 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ] |
| Subject: The question is why they need aid in the first place | |
Author: Andrew | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 15:58:38 01/06/05 Thu In reply to: Jim (Canada) 's message, "Yet Africans are quite happy to take aid from Britain" on 03:00:29 01/06/05 Thu The rulers' incompetence and corruption is one factor, but the colonial record of the Europeans all over the third world certainly has contributed to their poverty... as has the current relationship between the first and the third world. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: Well.. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:15:34 01/06/05 Thu Until the 1930s, the wealth gap between the developed and developing world was narrowing. Now it is widening. Post-colonial regimes have made it easier for white people to exploit other peoples, not less... just because corporations rather than countries are now doing the exploiting doesn't make them any less exploited. But I agree about our poor record. Okay, so we weren't as bad as the Beligians and French and other European Empires, but the 'socialist empire' movement between the 1930s and 1960s, impressed with what could be achieved by societ-style central planning etc., handed over to the successor regimes a ready-made framework for totalitarian rule: central controls, the use of government as a buying cartel, licensing, economic dirigisme, the side-lining of traditional structures in favour of educated elites who were forunate enough to have gone to the LSE, and all that garbage. This has driven Africa down a path of indigence and starvation and we shouldn't be especially proud of it. On the other hand, it is not this sort of thing about which chaps like Mugabe is complaining. Indeed, he seems to imagine that the starvation visited upon his people as a direct consequence of his own policies are the fault of Britain. "You have forced this evil policy on me by colonialism", never specifying which precise aspect of the colonial regime in Rhodesia has caused him to rig a lot of elections and beat up his opposition. I would also argue that the British government's role in the places in which we settled in great numbers, such as southern Africa, was to restrain the rather gung-ho instincs of our colonists. We didn't much like Ian Smith, and he declared independence from Britian (the only UDI since 1776) because he wouldn't have Westminster interfering in Rhodesia with liberal ideas about treating Africans as real people. This can be seen elsewhere: the Proclamation of 1763 to try to stop the American colonists from nicking all the native Americans' land; the Treaty of Waitingi; the Privy Council's insistance that Australian colonists could be hanged for murdering aborigines; the list goes on. All I'm saying is that British government policy should not be blamed so much as the actions of individuals which were repellent to the government. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: Didn't the Empire set up economies in the African colonies? | |
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Author: Jim (Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:46:30 01/06/05 Thu [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> Subject: Yes... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:05:08 01/06/05 Thu ... and then it destroyed those economies with socialist claptrap and premature abandonment. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Colonialism and “Under Development" | |
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Author: Steph (U.S.) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:40:10 01/06/05 Thu The problem with the idea that colonialism is the cause of Africa’s poverty and misgovernment is that it is counter factual. If it were true that English colonial government was the cause of Africa’s problems then it would stand to reason that the United States which “suffered” from this problem from 1620 to 1775 or 1781, depending on how you measure the end of British colonial rule, would have a much worse problem. Like wise, India which was a colony for about 200 years should be worse off than Africa. While the British experiment with socialism in the mid 20th century at home and through out the empire was a catastrophe especially for the African Colonies, the fundamental fact is that Africa was poor when the Europeans arrived, it was poor (though less so in the British colonies) when they left, and it is poor now. Colonialism is just an excuse for the post colonial ruling class to trot out to take the blame for its failures. That is not to say that the Empire and the U.S.A. didn’t make mistakes, we did, but our failure was to lose confidence in the superiority of our ideas and fail to teach them to those we had won dominion over. Instead many of our forbearers indulged in the unspeakably mindless and vile belief in racial superiority. Steph [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Quite so. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:54:08 01/06/05 Thu The old argument goes that the richer countries are rich becuase they all had colonies, and the poorer countries are poor because they all were colonies. The USA, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and others were all colonies and are some of the richest countries in the world. Norway and Switzerland never had any colonies and are even richer. On the other hand, until the 1990s Britain, which was the ultimate coloniser, was a complete economic failure. Bhutan is reckoned to be the poorest country on Earth but is also the oldest independent kingdom in history. I disagree, however, that we failed to teach our ideals to our sibject peoples. Often we taught them all too well. The democratic ones learnt about freedom and what-not at Oxford, then went home and failed to see any reason why that shouldn't apply to them as well. The less democratic one's went to the LSE in the 30s and thought that economic and social controls should be concentrated in the hands of a central committee dominated by a chairman, and turned Africa in a a collection of People's Republics whose human rights record makes the Belgians look friendly. And I'm not sure that doctrines of racial superiority were mindless - they were just very wrong! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I think the problem with the Empire was... | |
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Author: Andrew [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:52:59 01/06/05 Thu that they didn't really train the natives how to run the establishment they'd created. The settlers left, and so did the admin. It would be like the government privatising a company and sacking all the management and secretaries. The first Kikuyu (?) to get a degree was in the post-war period. So, it was difficult for a place like Kenya to rule itself since the natives never got told how. It was often an alien system to them. Mugabe is the result of colonialism rather than a real response to it. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |