Rethinking Imperialism
<p>One of the effects of the Soviet meme war I&#8217;ve been writing about<br />
recently is that to most educated Westerners it is absolutely taboo to<br />
think that Western imperialism might have been a good thing.  Since<br />
the end of World War II, even conservatives have generally conceded<br />
this point, as a way not to look reactionary with respect to a class<br />
of controversies that seemed safely dead.  Why defend imperialism when<br />
your country no longer has either the desire or the capability to<br />
engage in it?</p>
<p><span id="more-270"></span></p>
<p>Unfortunately, as I <a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=38'>observed<br />
in 2002</a>, some parts of the Third World have now become so<br />
dangerous to the whole world that some kind of neo-imperialism seems<br />
to be required of us as a matter of self-defence.  Or, as I put it a<br />
few months before the second Iraq war began,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the 19th century, the Western powers built empires for prestige<br />
and economic advantage. In the 21st century, we may be discovering<br />
that we need to get back into the imperialism business as a matter of<br />
survival. It may turn out that the 20th century was an interlude<br />
doomed to end as cheap transportation made the world smaller and<br />
improving weapons technology made large-scale destruction inexpensive<br />
even for barbarian thugs like Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>Envy the British of Sir Richard Burton&#8217;s time. They could conquer<br />
half the world for simple gain without worrying about the<br />
Fuzzy-Wuzzies or the Ndebele aerosol-dropping pasteurella pestis on<br />
Knightsbridge. We &mdash; and I mean specifically the U.S. now &mdash;<br />
may have to conquer the Islamic world a second time, simply because<br />
the risks of war and the moral hazards of imperialism are less<br />
threatening than the prospect of some Allah-crazed Islamofascist<br />
detonating a knapsack nuke on the Smithsonian Mall.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was only a little ahead of the curve on this one.  In the war<br />
year of 2003, historian Niall Ferguson came at the same question from<br />
a slightly different angle in <a href='http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0141007540/202-3481020-8738217'>Empire:<br />
How Britain Made the Modern World</a> and, later, in <a href='http://www.nrbookservice.com/products/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=c6480'><br />
Colossus: The Price of America&#8217;s Empire</a>.  A summary of his<br />
argument can be <a href='http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i29/29b00701.htm'>read here</a>.<br />
Ferguson makes a strong case that the British Empire was, despite<br />
obvious flaws, a good thing for the world.  In 2006 that seems an even<br />
more difficult case to refute than it did three years ago &mdash; one<br />
doubts, for example, that an Iran still run by the British would be<br />
threatening to nuke Israel.</p>
<p>Ferguson goes on to argue explicitly that the U.S. has a global<br />
empire, that contrary to the fulminations of remnant Marxists this is<br />
a <em>positive</em> development, and that we&#8217;d bloody well better get<br />
good at running it.  I&#8217;m not so sure about that; writing as an<br />
economist rather than a cultural historian, I have <a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=190'>argued</a> that U.S.<br />
hegemony has neither the intentions nor the structural features of<br />
empire.  (Analysis continued <a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=191'>here</a>.)</p>
<p>For libertarian reasons, I hope the U.S. hegemony can continue to<br />
get away with not having the structural features of empire.  Because,<br />
in the long run, empire is bad for the imperialist country itself on<br />
many levels ranging from economic to moral. Imperialists have to spend<br />
a lot of blood, treasure, and talent maintaining their dominion; the<br />
common end result is that the home-country economy is hollowed out and<br />
the imperial class becomes lazy and parasitic. Former imperial powers<br />
tend to degrade into stultified, shambolic backwaters absorbed in<br />
tattered dreams of past glory.</p>
<p>Still, at this point in world history it&#8217;s fair to reopen the older<br />
question: was imperialism so bad for the natives?  Are there cases where<br />
they should have been grateful to be overrun and ruled by foreigners with<br />
Maxim guns? Are there cases where they were grateful, and even still are?</p>
<p>Actually, the answer turns out to be yes.  The two most conspicuous<br />
cases I know of are the Phillippines and Belize &#8212; both places where a<br />
primarily non-European population looks rather fondly on its colonial<br />
occupiers.  Some parts of what was formerly French West Africa have<br />
positive memories as well.</p>
<p>Very few places other than the Phillippines ever had the good luck to<br />
be colonized by Americans, and it&#8217;s indicative of the &#8216;good luck&#8217; that<br />
almost all of them are parts of the U.S. now and the natives&#8217;<br />
descendants have full citizenship and are more numerous and wealthier<br />
than when they were at time of first contact.</p>
<p>But, as Ferguson eloquently argues, the British empire was<br />
generally a pretty good deal for the natives.  Railroads, sanitation,<br />
and the rule of law count for rather a lot.  And by objective measures<br />
like incidence of famine, warfare, and civil disorder much of Africa<br />
(and Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia) has been worse off<br />
since independence than under colonial rule.</p>
<p>More generally, whether imperialism was a good thing our not<br />
depends on who the imperialists were. All were bad some of the time,<br />
but only some were bad all of the time. Japanese imperialism was a genocidal<br />
nightmare, and the Russian Empire&#8217;s brutality was limited mainly by<br />
its incompetence.  What the Belgians got up to in the Congo doesn&#8217;t<br />
bear much thinking about either.</p>
<p>But the Germans, despite nasty spots like the Herero massacres,<br />
weren&#8217;t too awful.  Nor the French; they, like the British, believed<br />
in a <em>mission civilatrice</em> and usually behaved<br />
accordingly. Another objective check on this is that France still has<br />
overseas departments in the Third World that are in no hurry to get<br />
out from under the supposed yoke of European domination.</p>
<p>I think Niall Ferguson is correct when he argues that what made the<br />
British Empire mostly a good thing was the presence of a strong<br />
classical-liberal critique of empire from within itself.  The effect<br />
was that the British were unable to resist demands for autonomy and<br />
liberty from their subject peoples once those subjects had become<br />
civilized enough to make those demands in the language of classical<br />
liberalism.</p>
<p>What was true of the British is even more true of the U.S., as (for<br />
example) the independence of the Phillippines demonstrates. In Iraq,<br />
which opponents of the U.S. repesent as an imperial adventure, there<br />
has never been any question that the Iraqis would swiftly form their<br />
own government and have political independence from the U.S.; the<br />
option of ruling the country through proconsuls as we did for years<br />
after WWII in Germany and Japan wasn&#8217;t even on the table.</p>
<p>A kinder, gentler, imperialism?  Yes, actually; but, as Ferguson<br />
and I have pointed out, the U.S.&#8217;s behavior is still continuous with<br />
the entire history of Western imperialism, with all the promises and perils<br />
that implies.  Which means that, rather than accepting the simple<br />
&#8220;imperialism = evil&#8221; equation dinned into us us by the Soviets and<br />
their apologists, we need to learn from that history and, as much as<br />
possible, try to avoid the bad parts and replicate the good.</p>
