Imperial Power and the Post-Colony - Essay Example

Imperial Power and the Post-Colony: A Changing Relationship After Independence The age of imperialism saw a handful of European powers - ly Great Britain, France, Spain, The Netherlands, and Belgium - armed with sophisticated and powerful navies extend their dominion across (most of) the rest of the world. International history took on a new course as the colonial era saw the imposition of European rule over territories as distinct as South Africa and erstwhile Siam (Thailand) to countries as geographically distant as Mexico and India. The process of decolonization, occurring in waves since the 1940s, seminally changed the nature of international politics, with a proliferation of free and sovereign nations emerging throughout the world. Naturally, with a change in the source and location of power, the relationship between former imperial powers and their one-time colonies underwent dramatic changes. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and extent of these changes within the broader context of the politics and theoretical understanding of the imperial age. Essentially, economic interests drove the colonial relationship between the imperial power and the colony, where the flow of capital was from the latter to the former. Indeed, by 1900, the forces had capital had pervaded the global economic process so deeply that it was difficult to imagine a time when an economy was still local and driven by consumption and not profit. The Industrial Revolution in 18th century Britain has placed it at the pinnacle of global economic power; Britain used this economic prowess to fuel its military might and develop the most formidable navy in the world, utilizing it with telling effect to colonize more than half of the planet (Zakaria 2008: 167-171). It is important to understand that the colonial hierarchy was maintained not only by force but also by the superior technology of the West, which was able to absorb and reap the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. Technological advancement, in turn, made for better armed forces that were organized to take over and administer foreign territories. The advent of the electric bulb, the electric motor, the typewriter and the telegraph, large-scale manufacture and production in factories, and iron and steel works decidedly turned the technological comparative advantage to the imperial powers' favor. This coincidence of economic advantage and technological superiority drove forward the imperial mission and secured the ascendancy of Europe, and especially Britain, throughout the world. As the 20th century unfolded, the demise of the age of imperialism looked more and more a certainty. While the crucial events of the first half of the century - the First and Second World Wars - changed the economic and geo-strategic imperative of colonial powers significantly, Vladimir Lenin and John Hobson penned two telling critiques of the imperial movement to stir sentiments against the economic and political exploitation of the colonies. Lenin, the celebrated leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia, claimed that the spread of imperialism would bring about the eventual decline of the capitalist world (1916). He argued that the forces of capitalism had created monopolies in the production, leading to grave consequences for economic life. The gradual shift of focus from global production to global finance, and the trade in capital - as opposed to commodities - had ushered in a system characterized by chronic imbalance and exploitation of the working classes. As a result, a few industrially advanced nations and "capitalist associations" dominated the world economy: "The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still 'reigns' and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the 'geniuses' of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit... the speculators." (Lenin 1916: 207) The surplus capital of these capitalist associations would be exported to countries at such stages of development that they would find it difficult to compete with the capitalist onslaught. Lenin labeled this condition of the world economy (of the time) as imperialism, distinguishing it from free competition, where "[p]roduction becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable." (1916: 205) Lenin claimed that within this imperial framework capitalist intentions for profit generation would lead to friction and ultimately war; war, in turn, would lead to the demise of the imperial system. He identified the United States (US) and Germany as emerging challengers to the economic superiority of Great Britain. While the US was able to sustain its growth by tapping into its huge array of untapped internal markets, Germany had no such option to exercise and looked towards acquiring external markets through colonies. This upset the prevailing balance of power in Europe and led to the First World War. In effect, Lenin had theorized the causation of the war, though his prediction of capitalist downfall never materialized. Hobson, on the other hand, similarly argued that the excesses of imperialism were a direct result of the forces of modern capitalism. The Boer War and imperial exploitation of the colonies were all though to be a part of the capitalist process, which had corroded the economic development of the world and abridged the freedom of its citizens. "Hobson's conclusion was that finance was 'the governor of the imperial engine' [which] rested on a number of assumptions.He had argued: first, that the value of foreign trade to the nation was small and that it was unnecessary to the prosperity of advanced industrial countries; secondly, that not only was the trade gained from imperial expansion in tropical and subtropical lands very limited but the benefits were much outweighed by the costs of their acquisition; thirdly, that the power of finance was indicated by the immensity of the returns on foreign investment compared with those on foreign trade." (Cain 2002: 122) The growing discontent with the imperial process was evident as the colonial structure crumbled with the end of the Second World War, as the US and the Soviet Union (USSR) emerged as the dominant powers of the era. Significantly, the waves of democratization that swept the globe, along with the flurry of nationalist sentiment and sovereign, independent nations seminally changed the relations between the colonies and their former masters. Though the decolonization process signified the end of colonialism, it did not mean the demise of imperialism. Imperialism did not particularly mean formal political control, as has been already established above. Instead, imperialism persisted, in an altered form, post-decolonization. Indeed, the dissolution of the colonies in the aftermath of the Second World War was carried out in such a way that many of the imperial advantages of the former colonists were maintained. As neo-colonial elites came to dominate power in most of the newly independent and democratic nations, channels to peripheral economies could still remain functional as the erstwhile imperial powers pumped in investments to ensure a continual supply of cheap raw materials and a net outflow of economic surplus from peripheries. These peripheral economies were set up to serve the interests of imperialism (now under the guise of neo-imperialism) and sustain the neo-colonial elite, perhaps the only class to enjoy the fruits of this exploitative relationship in the developing country. Therefore, the demise of colonialism was only a political qualification, which did not remove the economic underpinnings of imperial domination; post-colonial nations remained in conditions of unending dependency on advanced industrialized countries, even as they fell into a debt-trap that could only be serviced by further exploitation of their economies by developed nations (Magdoff 1972). The role played by the neo-colonial elites determined to a large extent the changing relationship between post-colony and erstwhile imperial power. While the handing over of power was fraught with great dangers in many cases, the elites - who had in many cases cooperated and co-opted with the colonists - largely assumed political leadership and affected democratic transformations. However, the political history of the second half of the 20th century bears testament to the fact that this enterprise was hardly ever a successful one. For instance, India emerged as a functional and relatively stable democracy in South Asia; however, the rest of the extended South Asian region, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, have all experienced failed democratic experiments and authoritarian regimes. This back and forth between representative and totalitarian forms of government indicate that decolonization did not result in a transfer of power that could guarantee stability and order in newly independent (and almost invariably turbulent) societies. The psychological and economic dependence of neo-colonial elites on the former colonists became a novel way to maintain imperial domination; capital and technology still remained a competitive advantage for the developed world, which could readily be used to control fledgling states. If turbulence and instability did not beset the post-colony, it was plagued by the failures of the leaders of mass movements to deliver on promises to improve the social and economic conditions. Thus, such leaderships soon became identified as the remnants of a despotic and abusive system of control and governance, further destabilizing the newly formed polity. Indeed, we can identify several crucial linkages and continuities between the age of imperialism and the age of democratization. The monopolistic tendency of capitalism was further exacerbated in the post-World War II financial system, dominated by large transnational firms and financial organizations. The imperative for these remained to control the flow of capital across nations and to expand markets. The interests of metropolitan centers like New York and London were served through this arrangement, but the burden of this system of an international division of labor was borne by post-colonial states, mired in the weight of neo-imperial domination. Moreover, competition between advances industrial societies seeking export and investment opportunities in each other's markets and throughout the developing world pushed prices lower, thereby endangering indigenous industries in Third World countries. However, newer patterns of international engagement also emerged in this era of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. The spread of communism throughout Eastern Europe and large sections of the Third World posed a serious challenge to the neo-imperial domination of developing countries. As national populations grew impatient with the intransigence of neo-colonial elites, they sought to remove such leaders and extricate their countries from the intrusive networks of trade and investment that had hindered economic development since independence. Also, the political power and influence of imperial powers suffered a blow after the Second World War; while they were able to maintain bilateral relations of exploitation and advantage with their former colonies, their global reach was no longer anywhere close to that before the decolonization process began. As the two post-War superpowers encroached on traditionally imperial economic spaces, the contestation for superiority on the world stage also sucked in the post-colonial nations into the conflict. Of course, post-colonial experiments to shake off the colonial baggage abounded, whether politically or economically. These occurred at two levels: firstly, on the international stage, the Third World movement gained ground with the ideas of non-alignment and the calls for a New International Economic Order; secondly, at the domestic level, many countries employed protectionist economic policies, collectivized agriculture, and even adopted import-substitution industrialization. However, it was difficult to escape the structure of economic dependency and local measures met with relatively little success. Thus, as we can see, the fundamental change in the relationship between imperial powers and their colonies after independence was the shift in political power from the former to the latter. However, as a system of domination and control, imperialism persisted unabated, through the economic subversion of post-colonial countries. The economic influence of metropolitan centers, preferential trade agreements and the maintenance of currency blocs, the policies of the Bretton Woods financial system, and a general control over the economic direction of post-colonial development, underscored the true nature of this confounding relationship. Imperialism as an economic system of power and command was able to survive, even though colonialism as a system of political dominance could be thwarted. References Cain, P. (2002) Hobson and Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism, and Finance: 1887-1938. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenin, V. I. (1916) Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Retrieved 2 May, 2009, from < http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/> Magdoff, H. (1972) 'Imperialism Without Colonies.' In Studies in the Theory of Imperialism. Ed. by E. R. J. Owen & R. B. Sutcliffe. New York: Longman. Zakaria, F. (2008) The Post-American World. New York: W. W. Norton. Read More