Boggle away, young man, boggle away. London_Calling and I will be here having some tea and waiting for you to de-boggle.
Earl Grey or Prince of Wales, London, dear?
Rik, a lot of people read these things. If you have something to say, we’d all like to read it.
“New-caught, sullen peoples”? The Filipinos were not “new-caught.” They had been colonized by Spain in the 16th Century. The Spanish-American war did not bring them into the sphere of colonial imperialism, it merely transferred them from one white imperialist power, Spain, to another, the U.S. Perhaps Kipling thought the shift from Latin Catholic to Anglo-Saxon Protestant administration was just as much a redemption from barbarism as the British Empire conquering a new region in Africa.
Kipling’s racial and imperial attitudes are summed up even better in a much less well-known poem, “Song of the White Men” – see http://www.captaincook.freeuk.com/ns3005.htm.
Okay.
The most obvious difference between the early 20th Century and the present is that in the early 20th Century, the European nations and to a lesser extent the US were active in physically colonizing nations in Africa, South America and the Far, Near and Middle East. No western nation today will or would physically colonize another. Those who believe we are colonizing Iraq will be hard-pressed to explain why we are trying our damndest to bug out of the country as soon as we can without looking like we’re running away.
Secondly, and a bit more subtly, in the early 20th Century, nations were physically colonizing in economic competition with each other. Invading another nation’s colony and siezing it was an economic coup. Today, for the most part, nations aren’t in economic competition because nearly all big business is multinational. War is bad for business and it’s preferable to have a market in an unfriendly nation than to invade it, no matter how despicable the dictator. Those who think we’re in Iraq “for the oil” need to explain how invading is more cost-effective than simply dropping the sanctions on the condition that Saddam sell to those to whom we wish him to sell and allow a few hundred McDonald’s franchises.
And finally, aside from missionary endeavors and peripheral benefits from the roads and buildings built for the benefit of the colonizers, colonization was a one way street. Those who try to equate capitalism spreading markets into non-European nations with the physical colonization of the 20th Century are ignoring the fact that the nations in which corporations establish market have a say in the matter. No one puts a gun in the face of the president of Thailand to force him to allow a Nike factory to be built there. True, the workers are paid incredibly low wages, but it’s more than they would have had otherwise----which is why they choose to work there.
The dynamic that governs international relations has changed at least three times since Kipling’s day…the situation is totally different in almost every way.
Fair enough. But:
- The assailed country doesn’t have to be completely occupied permanently for the charge of imperialism against the occupier to have substance. Nineteenth-century power had no other way to effectvely control a country’s resources other than total occupation, but techniques in this global community are a little more advanced now.
It is also not clear that we’re trying to bug out of Iraq, not until a compliant but stable native government that will serve our wishes is in place. Well, hell, Britain ruled India more through bought-off local rajahs than through direct force of arms, too, but that was still colonialism.
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The availabiliy of the Iraqi market for western products is hardly the point of any of this. It was there before, but was actually shut off by sanctions. Battering it by war is not an effective way to build it, either. This war, to the extent it has mercantile aspects at all, is about securing resources. To the extent it’s about regional stability for other markets and supply sources, it’s mistaken. But earlier colonialism was about securing resources and sites for military bases, too - this isn’t different.
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It is not at all clear that this war is about a two-way street at all. The proposed long-term benefits for the Iraqi people are political and even psychological, not economic. No new Western-owned factories or sources of wealth creation are planned there; it’s about taking over existing ones.
You’re also a bit disingenuous about the Thai government’s real ability to say no to the Nikes of the world. That isn’t a real option, and the absence of a gun doesn’t matter. Nike’s purpose is to cut its own costs, not to “uplift and Christianize” (McKinley’s words about the Filipinos) anyone. The higher wages offered to Thai workers stabilize the workforce and reduce training costs, and any benefit the Thais receive is incidental to those purposes. Imputation of altruism or two-way commitment is undermined by asking what would happen if Nike could get a similar situation in, say, Cambodia for a few percent lower wage scale.
But, anyway, the attitudes reflected in the Kipling poem are what resonate, and provide what should be cautions. The situations aren’t entirely the same now, sure, but they’re not entirely different, either, and we do need to learn from those who have gone before.