In a recent esssay Mr Dinesh D’souza defends the history of colonialism against its modern detractors, arguing that on the whole it has been a force for good.
So what do you think? What has the impact of colonialism been? Would the world be better or worse had it not occured? What about different countries/areas like Africa, India, China, the Americas?
Well, it’s a tenuous position at best to claim that the deaths of millions and the slavery of millions more was on the whole a good thing.
Some native populations have benefitted on the whole from colonialism, but many more have not. Many don’t even exist any more. Have the Australian Aborigines benefitted from colonialism? How about most Native American tribes?
I was actually wondering if anyone was going to post anything on this article after I read it the other day. One of the problems I see with Mr. D’Souza’s thesis is that he doesn’t seem to allow for the possibility that non-colonial contact ( i.e. trade and exchange ) wouldn’t have allowed for the eventual development of some of those same Western instituitions that he cherishes.
This is the case in particular with regions such as China and India, which had a strong urban component, with educated literaci that would have begun exploring Western ideals and culture as a natural outgrowth of ( more or less ) peaceful contact. Adoption of some of those ideals may have been slower, but they would, I’m guessing, been integrated in a much smoother manner. Certainly technological transfers between West and East proceeded along quite nicely before the period of overwhelming European dominance ( say 1800 in most areas ).
The Americas are a bit different. The impact of European disease was so profound, that even peaceful contact would have been devastating. It is a certainty that European exploitation did contribute to the devastation of native polities. But it is difficult to say just what the Americas would have looked like in a “hands off” context.
Here’s an old thread discussing Africa a bit:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81460
Overall my take on the issue is similar to Mr. D’Souza’s, but skewed in the opposite direction. Some European introductions and innovations, including Western political ideals, were welcome additions. But the overall legacy of colonialism is far more negative than positive. I think the long-term good D’Souza sees ( while acknowledging the short-term evils ) could have been achieved without colonial exploitation.
I’d also argue that those short-term evils are not so short-term, insomuch as there remain a lingering malaise as a result of colonial exploitaton and misrule in many former colonial possesions, especially in Africa. But then I believe I have already argued that pint with TruthSeeker and others in previous threads ).
I think I agree with the rest of your post, but not this part. Disease still could have taken many lives, but I doubt as many as through forcible contact. I’m sure given an option the original americans would have cut off or minimized contact. Perhaps later when the Europeans could cure their diseases, full contact would have been resumed.
Even if you won’t grant that, I’m sure the US gov. , for example, would have been willing to kill just as many with guns had they needed. Look at the treatment of those who were not killed by disease for the evidence.
I agree with Tamerlane and perspective. The position that force and exploitation can be justifiable as long as it eventually helps the descendents of whom it was originally thrust upon is really a tenuous argument. I don’t know about China but there was always a great deal of cultural and mercantile exchange between India and other parts of the world, Arabic, Central Asian etc. and that seems to be the “optimal” way for interacting systems to change and evolve.
D’Souza makes other points which on the surface seem too vague to actually holding true on rigorous analysis. I wish I was a student of history and political science, but can someone please comment on his claim that Science, Democracy and Capitalism are Western inventions? IIRC, the methods of theorizing, experimentation, and deduction was a pretty common methodology amongst scientists in many urban civilizations: Egyptian, Islamic, and Chinese. While democracy in its current form may derive from the Greeks, I remember reading in a museum that political treatises in ancient cultures dealt with ways to implement public participation in making decisions. Even if it was a Greek idea, calling it Western appears a little infactual. The geography might fit but modern western civilization in my eyes is 1600-onwards, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution etc. Thirdly, the author claims that the structures of capitalism such as contracts, stocks etc were Western inventions. I don’t know but this argument sounds anachronistic (a better word?). I mean, he seems to be force-fitting the natural development of mercantile techniques and resultant concepts to the past and claiming that all these modern capitalistic ideas sprung out the the sky only during Western civilization. While it is indisputable that the fact that many Western nations are fiercely capitalistic has contributed a great deal to their success, especially during post-colonial times, I doubt the argument that colonial exploitation takes the back seat as a contributer to their success. If I find time, I will come back after more research, but the learned ones can intervene if they deem necessary!
perspective: Well, I’m not I see how you can disagree with me, seeing how vague my conclusions on the Americas were :D.
Seriously, you’re certainly correct the damage would have been less. I’m just not sure it is quantifiable just how much less it would have been.
Take Mesoamerica for example - Let’s assume just for the sake of argument a pre-contact population of 25 million around 1520, an estimate I consider a reasonable compromise figure. By around the the turn of the 17th century ( I don’t have the exact census date, I think it was in the 1590’s ), that population had dropped to less than a million. Now, the clear consensus from historical records was that disease, principally smallpox, but also measles and cholera, accounted for the great majority of that mortality. Brutal forced labor conditions also exacted a toll, however. The question is how much of a toll it added.
We also know that in contrast the Andean plateaux, starting from what was almost certainly a significantly smaller base population ( say 7-11 million ) pre-contact, had probably a slightly larger population around 1600 than Mesoamerica. Why? Well, you could argue that labor exploitation was less severe because the Andes were a less readily exploitable region ( mines aside ), due to local geography. This is true. However what is also true is that Andean population were discontinuous in distribution compared to Mesoamerica, divided by ridgelines into separate communes, with little non-State controlled traffic between them ( whereas independant traders appeared to have been common in Mesoamerica ). Insomuch as smallpox, measles, and cholera all depend on human vectors, this discontinuity almost surely slowed the spread of disease, especially as the gaps between population centers would have actually increased as communities succumbed to disease, slowing the spread even more.
Also although the first epidemic was the most severe, new epidemics periodically burst forth to decimate the native populations again and again. Were these the result of continual reintroductions by new waves of European conquistadores? Or once introduced, did the diseases incubate in native immune “Typhoid Mary’s”, to explode outward from within?
See, not knowing the answers to the above, I find it hard to estimate if the population of Mesoamerica in 1600 if the Spanish hadn’t set down roots. It would have almost certainly been more than >one million. But would it have been 15 million? 10 million? 2 million? I dunno. How much would it have taken to knock out city-centered polities like that of the Aztecs? Not much, I’m guessing. Their’s in particular was in essence a tribute-based City-State, dependent on their formidable military machine to generate the outside tribute necessary to feed Tenochitlan’s ( and associated near-satellites like Texcoco and Tlacopan ) population. Given cities were likely going to be hardest hit due to population density issues, the Aztecs would have surely folded. The Inca state might have fractured into pieces as it tried to contain epidemic centers. etc. The ensuing political chaos would have likely caused even more loss of life.
Not saying they wouldn’t have still been better off. They probably would have been. I’m just not sure how much better off they’d be, is all :).
This is the case in particular with regions such as China and India, which had a strong urban component, with educated literaci that would have begun exploring Western ideals and culture as a natural outgrowth of ( more or less ) peaceful contact.
I’m not so sure… China and Japan were extremely insular. Both countries, in fact, closed themselves off as much as possible.
No man is an Island 
- Not for long anyway. The isolationist policies of Qing China and Tokugawa Japan would not have lasted into the twentieth century. The changing nature of the world and the rise of globalism would have compelled a policy shift eventually.
Japan is both the best argument for colonialism ( Admiral Perry et al shocked Japan into an eventual frenzy of innovation and modernization ) and against it ( it wasn’t really colonized per se and its development, all purely internal, is arguably the twentieth century’s greatest national success story ).
China was already in decline before Opium and the colonialism that came trailing behind took hold. Indeed it’s weakness was the reason the European powers were able to get a foothold at all. The unprecedented population boom of the 18th and first half of the 19th century but an enormous internal strain on the Manchu system. A civil service administration that was barely adequate in 1700 was buckling badly by the 1780’s. Add to that the stagnation of the Imperial court and you had a recipe for internal revolt even before Opium began to bleed the country white. Colonial interference exacerbated many problems, but was not necessarily the root cause of most of them until relatively late in the game. At any rate the industrial revolution in Europe in concert with the population rise was going to rob an isolationist China of its hitherto complete self-sufficiency eventually anyway.
The Qing would have either turned to the outside world and modernized to survive or they would have gone under and some eventual successor regime would have done so.
Millions were already being killed and enslaved before colonialism, except that the exploiters were their neighbors.
And neither the native Americans nor the colonizers understood that germs transmitted disease. So it is a little unrealistic to imagine that they would know enough to hold America under quarantine until modern medical science developed.
Practically any history of Africa since the end of colonialism gives an idea of what would probably have happened even if colonialism had never occurred. Any contact between the two kinds of societies would work to the detriment of the less industrialized side.
I don’t exactly say that colonialism was a good idea, but I misdoubt that the less technologically advanced cultures are going to have an easy time of it under any circumstances.
Look at Japan. They were never colonized by the West, but their history is hardly one of peace and tranquility.
Regards,
Shodan
I guess you could say they developed a monopoly on the business though.
Where the English better than Genghis Khahn? In some countries yes, in others I’m not so sure. All the same, it ain’t exactly like winning a beauty contest.
You don’t need germ theory to understand that people can transmit a sickness to one another.
Merely trading with distant cultures brings far less contact than colonizing or military conquest.
Please elaborate.
Well yes, life has been tough from the get-go, but would you say that on the whole, colonialism generally worked out for the best for the native populations?