After Empire Imperialists can change their subjects, but not in any way they choose.

As soon as I qualified as a doctor, I went to Rhodesia, which was to transform itself into Zimbabwe five years or so later. In the next decade, I worked and traveled a great deal in Africa and couldn't help but reflect upon such matters as the clash of cultures, the legacy of colonialism, and the practical effects of good intentions unadulterated by any grasp of reality. I gradually came to the conclusion that the rich and powerful can indeed have an effect upon the poor and powerless--perhaps can even remake them--but not necessarily (in fact, necessarily not) in the way they wanted or anticipated. The law of unintended consequences is stronger than the most absolute power.

I went to Rhodesia because I wanted to see the last true outpost of colonialism in Africa, the final gasp of the British Empire that had done so much to shape the modern world. True, it had now rebelled against the mother country and was a pariah state; but it was still recognizably British in all but name. As Sir Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the short-lived and ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, once described himself, he was "half-Polish, half-Jewish, one hundred percent British."

Until my arrival at Bulawayo Airport, the British Empire had been for me principally a philatelic phenomenon. When I was young, Britain's still-astonishing assortment of far-flung territories--from British Honduras and British Guiana to British North Borneo, Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland--each issued beautiful engraved stamps, with the queen's profile in the right upper corner, looking serenely down upon exotic creatures such as orangutans or frigate birds, or upon natives (as we still called and thought of them) going about their natively tasks, tapping rubber or climbing coconut palms. To my childish mind, any political entity that issued such desirable stamps must have been a power for good.

And my father--a communist by conviction--also encouraged me to read the works of G.A. Henty, late-19th-century adventure stories, extolling the exploits of empire builders, who by bravery, sterling character, superior intelligence and force majeure overcame the resistance of such spirited but doomed peoples as the Zulu and the Fuzzy-Wuzzies. Henty might seem an odd choice for a communist to give his son, but Marx himself was an imperialist of a kind, believing that European colonialism was an instrument of progress toward History's happy denouement; only at a later stage, after it had performed its progressive work, was empire to be condemned.

Since this article was posted at the FreeRepublic two months ago, you can read the rest of it here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/893347/posts

I'm posting this excerpt because now that the article was posted in today's edition of the opinionjournal.com, it may have attracted new readers who didn't see it the first time around.

It's interesting, and the writing style is excellent.

The main thesis seems to be that colonialism has been, on balance, harmful to Africa because it gave the population new tools that they wouldn't have otherwise had for harming each other.

I'm not sure whether I can agree with that, but since the author knows more about the subject than I do, maybe I'll accept his view.

I'd love to know what others think.

The author, Daniels, has failed to take what he has learned to its obvious conclusions. He notes the material and spiritual benefits he gained from his time in Africa, and the goodness of many Africans. He fails to understand to what a degree he, and others like him, were a blessing in turn to them. The racial discrimination was wrong, of course, but he makes it clear that this was passing away, just as over time it had once existed and then faded in the US.

Empire is not only a function of rapacious greed on the part of the British, far from it. Greed was very obviously the driving force behind the German and Belgian colonies in Africa, but British colonialism was always more than that, it was a natural result of commerce and cultural confidence. His description of the Rhodesia they had built is a snapshot of who these people were. They built, they created, they established the rule of law, and the common people of Africa were the beneficiaries. The British were not doing charity work, by no means, but the benefits of British rule were the natural byproduct of their presence..

Daniels goes to great pains to point out that the Africans were at heart very good people, and sees dimly that something in their culture made them unable to sustain the civilization they inherited upon taking power. But he fails to understand what that was.

The creation of wealth is, first, the natural result of creation. You build, you create, and the obvious result is wealth. But there are other preconditions that are equally necessary; individual liberty, so that each person may do what he sees best with his own life and goods; clear and predictable laws; and honest courts to protect him and the fruits of his labor.

Daniels recognizes that the British brought rule of law, and that they sought to apply the law equally, to all whatever their station in life. He recognizes that for many cultural reasons the Africans simply do not understand the rule of law, and he sees the chaos that resulted once the rule of law was ended.

He blames the chaos that resulted, though, on the fact that the British were there, imposed changes to Africa's natural order, and then departed. He doesn't see that the chaos, and slaughter, that ensued are exactly what the British found when they arrived two hundred years previously; that the order and freedom and prosperity he saw were what the British had built out of misery, and that once you take the rule of law away, misery and slaughter and mendacity are the natural and obligatory results.

He does correctly note that African wars for independence were not about winning freedom, and that in the end they destroyed freedom for African and colonial alike. Independence and freedom are two separate things. Power and freedom are two separate things. African wars against British colonialism were not wars for freedom, far from it, they were wars that put an end to the rule of law, and Africa has paid a tremendous and bloody price for that.

Simply educating Africans did not help, as the author notes, because the British themselves did not fully understand what they brought to the equation. Individual liberty and rule of law were embedded in the culture, but are not expressly taught anywhere. Far from it, most universities teach from an almost Marxian perspective, and the Africans returning home with their degrees came home often as confirmed Marxists. And the British themselves, mis-educated in the same schools, were unequipped to dispute philosophically the Marxian attacks on their rule. They lost their confindence, and they went home.

The dam burst, and the result is what you see.

We are not immune to the African disease. As our societies move away from the simple concepts that made us, individual liberty, individual responsibility, rule of law, the moral and social chaos sets in among us as well. What you see in Africa is what we are if we let go of the key concepts that made us.

He blames the chaos that resulted, though, on the fact that the British were there, imposed changes to Africa's natural order, and then departed. He doesn't see that the chaos, and slaughter, that ensued are exactly what the British found when they arrived two hundred years previously.

Yes, if I read your comment correctly I think you have articulated something I was thinking about but didn't put into words.

The author tells us about Africa under colonial rule, and he tells us about Africa after colonial rule. But the article says nothing about what it was like before colonial rule.

It seems to me to be entirely possible that Africa was worse (or about the same) before coloniazation than it is today. If so, the colonists can't really be blamed for making things worse, and in fact they might deserve a little bit of credit for making things better for at least a temporary "window" of time.

Americans help by doing what they do naturally, without apology, as the British once did before they lost their confidence.

Americans and their companies operate all over the world, and wherever they go they upend the status quo by their presence. You can't invest without legal protection for your people and your money, so they work with the local government to establish the legal norms they require; the result is that the laws that protect them also permit the growth of local, national, business using the same protections. American workers are used to exercising personal authority well-beyond their position in the chain of command, and they are used to making decisions; they have a way of forcing their local colleagues to behave and think in the same way, and people who have worked with Americans and their companies over time are changed by it.

American treatment of its local workers always exceeds the norm. They are treated better, paid better, entrusted with more authority, and more respect, than any local firm. And the result is a new, higher standard of treatment in the country.

The best thing that happens in most countries is for American firms to move in and go to work. The results are revolutionary; those whose fortunes depend on the status quo hate it, of course, those whose wealth and prestige comes from their position in the old order will try to undermine the new order anyway they can. Sons of civil servants will hate it that local welders suddenly make more than they do, and no longer look at their feet in the presence of their social betters; Americans hate it when people do that, and their local colleagues and workers soon learn to quit doing it.

Western countries have a lot of well deserved guilt where Africa is concerned, as a quick read of German and Belgian and Arab history in Africa will show you. But the British and Americans have got to get over their guilt for a colonial history that is not theirs, and for a human disaster that is not of their making. The sooner, and the deeper, they get back to work doing what they do in Africa as well as in the rest of the world, the better it will be for everyone. It may look like colonialism, but it isn't. You build, you create, you establish legal norms that protect others while protecting you, and you create an economy that puts people to productive work, and trains them in productive, advanced, skills. Not out of charity, not out of some misplaced paternalism, we are all men here, we are all joined in important work, and we are all worthy.

That is how you change countries. You will be going against the flow, and the old elites will not like it once they see their old authority eroding, and their rage will be vented using the most unlikely tools; student riots, leftish newspaper editorials, Euro NGO's will be invited to organize grass-roots opposition, and Arabs will fund guerrillas to drive you out. But you can't lose confidence in who and what you are. You just keep doing what you do, and you will change the world without really intending to.

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