site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31421 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

How much did America contribute to decolonization?

Over the years @2rafa and i have had a debate a few times about whether or not America drove decolonization - in theory due to its liberal, anticolonial ideological founding and sympathies. Good points have been made on both sides but I realized we can actually just go and check. This is an attempt to give a quick, surface level look at decolonization globally and see what, if any, role the US might have played. I’ve started and stopped this several times because there’s always more detail but eventually it will just be too long to read. Assuredly I’m going to miss important things because I’m not an expert on most of these places, so let me know if I do and I’ll edit it in.

(P.S. Transnational Thursdays will now be in their own thread instead of the Culture War thread.)

The British Empire

See @Tollund_Man4's comment for more details on America influence on Irish independence.

Asia

America certainly pushed Britain on India and President Roosevelt in particular was very dedicated to the idea of decolonization, going so far as to breach it to Stalin at the Yalta Conference. However, Roosevelt died without putting meaningful pressure on the issue and his successor Truman abandoned the issue. Indian and Pakistani independence ultimately happened without American intervention.

During the Malayan Emergency Britain engaged in 12 years of brutal counterinsurgency against the Malayan Communist Party’s battle for national independence. America did nothing to oppose Britain in this openly colonial endeavor and in fact provided them funding - ostensibly for development in Malaysia but much of the funds went to the conflict, and with open requests for items like “tear gas” it’s hard to believe the American decision makers were unclear on this. Britain abandoned Singapore after a period of defense budget cuts necessitated by the devaluation of the pound. America was not involved.

Sub Saharan Africa

Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, British Somaliland, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Nigeria, and Ghana directly negotiated their independence with Britain. As far as I can tell America was not a concern for either party in any of these independence movements.

Zimbabwe became independent from Britain in 1965 and white minority rule was ended from elections in 1980 at the end of a fifteen year guerilla insurgency. There were Americans fighting for the white Rhodesian security forces but without the approval of the US government (though “There is evidence that the Departments of Justice and State tacitly encouraged Americans to volunteer for Rhodesia as part of efforts to prevent the country's collapse prior to a negotiated solution to the war”).

South Africa became independent from Britain peacefully in 1960 but white minority government continued to 1994. America supported South Africa throughout almost all of this period, long after it had become an international pariah state, because South Africa’s participation in the wars in Mozambique and Angola against Soviet proxy forces established them as a bulwark against communism in the region. Bilateral trade was actually at an all time high between our countries in the 80s under Reagan’s “constructive engagement,” and America was quite literally the last relevant country in the world to join sanctions in ’86. These sanctions didn’t do much to the South African economy anyway (most econ indicators actually modestly improved in the late 80s) in large part because the Reagan Admin only weakly enforced them. From our Government Accounting Office review of the sanctions:

The U.S. government does not have adequate tools to effectively enforce the provision. The State Department issued a list of South African government agencies and state-owned corporations that it designated as parastatals [state-owned enterprises] but did not identify the products produced. marketed, or exported by them. Therefore, Customs does not know which South African products could have come from parastatals . . . Customs also cannot target any audits of certificates to those of products in industries where known parastatal activity exists”

According to De Klerk at least, the Safrican leader who ended apartheid, he did it because the Soviet Union had fallen and there was no longer the risk of South Africa becoming a communist Soviet satellite.

The Middle East and North Africa

Britain pulled out of Libya voluntarily following the war, and left Egypt in stages following the 1919 and 1952 coups. Egypt is a little odd, the CIA was likely in communication with the Free Officers movement who led the coup and it’s definitely alleged that they supported the coup but as far as I can tell there’s nothing concrete, no record of weapons or money transfers even by the CIA whistleblower who claims to have led the communications. You won’t find a mention of allegations of American on the actual wiki page for the coup, for whatever that’s worth. Later, during the 1956 Suez Crisis British attempted to reassert itself over the Suez only to be slapped down by America. From Hitchcock’s “The Age of Eisenhower,” President Eisenhower’s motivations in intervention were threefold:

1: He was worried about Egypt and third party countries watching the incredibly unpopular conflict becoming Soviet allies.

2: He was worried about nuclear war. The USSR was desperate to rehabilitate their anti-imperialist credentials after crushing the Hungarian uprising the same week, and Premier Nikolai Bulganin threatened: “we are fully determined to crush the aggressors and restore peace in the east through the use of force”.

3: He was furious with Britain and France for having their diplomats lie to ours and took it personally as a huge breach of trust.

Sympathy for the colonized was nowhere on his list of concerns, nor was Egypt’s sovereignty genuinely at stake in the crisis. I don’t really know how to categorize Egypt but I think we might as well count it as the US spurring decolonization, because we seem to have been meddling around and did oppose the colonial powers, but for self-interested reasons rather than anti-colonial fervor.

Britain pulled out of Yemen following the protracted Aden Emergency, and disengaged from its remaining gulf protectorates after deciding the expense wasn’t worth it - especially after the pound crashed domestically. Britain withdrew postwar troops from the remainder of the Middle East only after nurturing and leaving pliant leaders in Iraq, Jordan, Iran, Bahrain, and Oman. Their remaining influence in the region was ended by coups in Iraq and Iran, the latter of which featured America famously helping Britain reassert itself when Mossadegh’s government threatened Britain quasi-colonial domination of the oil industry.

Caribbean

The British Caribbean possessions, Jamaica, Barbados, etc, achieved independence directly with the British government without American involvement.

The French Empire

Sub Saharan Africa

Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Madagascar, and the Republic of Congo achieved independence directly via negotiations with France. America was not involved nor did we oppose France’s attempts to keep its former territories in a quasi-colonial arrangement, or regularly coup their leaders.

Middle East & North Africa

France was forced out of the rest of the Middle East during the Levant Crisis, where they launched an airstrike on Damascus in an attempt to re-colonize the area. America was indeed happy to see them gone but did not play the role in forcing them out - Britain did, sending in troops as the intervention became a massacre and demanding that France back down, which they did reluctantly. France negotiated independence directly with Tunisia and Morocco and of course left Algeria in the Algerian War of Independence, which America did not participate in on either side.

Asia

America very famously sent aid, materiel, and military advisors to help France hold onto its colonial possessions of Vietnam, and then just took on the project ourselves when they didn’t have the grit to see it through. Cambodia and Laos achieved independence via direct negotiation with France.

Caribbean

America made no effort to help Haiti during its revolution, blockaded it, didn’t recognize it as a country till nearly forty years after even France itself had done so, and in the early twentieth century conquered Haiti ourselves and ruled it as a colony for nineteen years.

(Continued in next comment - plz comment there for simplicity's sake)

Do we need to accept that decolonization was good? Or that decolonization is a lot of places had negative effects? South Africa current situation just makes me conclude that colonization in many places was better than self rule. Didn’t Scott have a post we he looked at wealth and per capita income today and in Africa the more colonization equates to more income and better governance today.

I believe I’ve just concluded that Western European civilization was good and spreading and enforcing it elsewhere led to better rule.

The only place I’ve really come across that crushed decolonization in Mena would be the Saudis.

You do you but I'm generally pretty dubious. I think the quote you're thinking of from Scott is below:

Several come to my mind as comparatively liveable. Kenya. Tanzania. Botswana. South Africa. Namibia (is your list similar?) And one thing these places all have in common was being heavily, heavily colonized by the British.

Maybe he takes a closer look elsewhere but he doesn't actually compare wealth or gdp per capita or anything here, just kinda picks some good sounding ones. Most of these countries are spread across the continent's HDI and gdp per capita rankings except for South Africa (which was a self governing dominion) and Botswana (which was maybe the least heavily colonized country on the continent - the British basically left the existing monarchy in place and just demanded taxes). I could counter that other heavily British-colonized areas remain basket cases at the bottom of most relevant rankings: Sierra Leone, Malawi, the Gambia, Uganda, etc.

I did take a deeper look at India at least and found the British record pretty dismal. A while back I had ambitions of doing one of these for each of a bunch of the larger colonies, like Indonesia, Algeria, Malaya, Egypt, but got too duanted by the size of the project.

Do we need to accept that decolonization was good?

Self-determination counts for a lot. People getting to rule themselves makes people happier. No taxation without representation, after all.

I think the idea of "White man's burden" could've been true, the Brits could've altruistically given good government and institutions to weaker peoples and raised their quality of life. In practice, there was a lot of resource extraction with minimal effort to raise the quality of life for the masses.

I think decolonization was also handled horribly though. I think ideally it would've been a longer process with a slow but consistent withdrawal as institutions are built up and colonial leadership trains their successors as they hand off the reigns. But I'm sure it was a tricky situation when the locals look around, see that their poor and the whites are rich even though they live on the same sort of land, and they know for a fact that there's been a decent amount of exploitation going on, so they not unreasonably conclude that exploitation was 100% of the reason their lives sucked and want the whites out of their ASAP.

I think what I’m really getting at is an HBD argument. Africa never developed for Garret Jones style low average IQ making it difficult to build state capacity. And some sort of colonial aristocracy was better and providing functional government - even if it wasn’t Democracy.

It’s seems like the old trope

White people move in - gentrification

White people leave - white flight and we don’t have resources. White people stay resource extraction. White people leave no development. It seems like the only constant is a poorer dysfunctional underclass regardless of which policy choices are made. Now if colonials want resource extraction they are still building railroads, infrastructure, and enough state capacity to make sure militias aren’t raiding their mines.

People on the left would cite like “Why Nations Failed” and if we just did these policy rules everything would work out. But it’s feeling a lot more like Garret Jones world where some areas just always fail.

We don't need to, but if you're going to take the opposing counterfactual you need to frame it in light of what was likely to have actually happened rather than simply assuming that things would have continued along in a sort of empire at its height best case scenario. This is the fallacy Niall Ferguson points out with regard to critics of the British Empire; if the British hadn't colonized, say, Malaya we can't just assume that the alternative was Malay civilization continuing to develop nicely on its own terms. The more realistic scenario is that they would have simply been colonized by the French, or the Portuguese, or the Dutch.

With regard to decolonization, I don't think there are any rosy scenarios where the bulk of the colonies continue to happily be British subjects indefinitely. A lot of the places that were decolonized saw increasing amounts of political violence during the 1950s and 1960s as their inhabitants grew resentful of foreign rule, and there's no indication that any of these could have been forcibly suppressed without stoking additional resentment and violence, especially if it were made clear that there was no intention of ever leaving. Had the decolonization project been delayed by even ten years we would have likely seen the Soviets funnel money into any anti-imperial forces, much as they did to their preferred sides in the civil wars that followed independence in many areas. This would have all happened at a time when Britain was still reeling from the economic malaise that marked the decades following WWII, and it would have had to justify to its own public ever-increasing expenditures of money it didn't have and the lives of its young men to hang on to whatever benefit they got from controlling a place like Nyassaland that most people can't point to on a map.

Now, I'm sure there's some alternate reality where WWII and the Cold War don't happen and everyone likes being a British subject and they get to hold onto their colonies indefinitely, but there's also an alternate reality where Africa is never colonized and its tribes organically form modern states that trade and interact with the rest of the world. But by that point you're moving too far into fantasy land to make a legitimate counterfactual.

The British Empire

Ireland owes a lot to America for independence. A great deal of this is due to the embittered Irish American community, who were always more radical than the ones living on the island, providing organisation and funding for basically every nationalist political group, but specifically the IRB whose leadership instigated the 1916 Rising. This wasn't yet anti-colonialism per se as it's Americans rather than the American government, but during the 1920s it was America's trumpeting the right to self-determination that implicitly constrained Britain from waging the much larger war that would have been needed to put down the IRA (though tiny in comparison to the one they had just fought in Europe). Michael Collins himself recognised the debt he owed:

The Washington conference was looming ahead. Mr Lloyd George's cabinet had its economic difficulties at home. Their relationships with foreign countries were growing increasingly unhappy, the recovery of world opinion was becoming — in fact, had become — indispensable. Ireland must be disposed of by means of a 'generous' peace . . . Peace had become necessary. It was not because Britain repented in the very middle of her Black and Tan terror. It was not because she could not subjugate us. It was because she had not succeeded in subjugating us before world conscience was awakened and was able to make itself felt . . . What was was the position on each side? Right was on our side. World sympathy was on our side (passive sympathy, largely).

From Collins' Why Britain Sought Irish Peace.

This still seems pretty different to me than openly pushing for decolonization, especially since as late as the 90s when world sentiment had completely soured on colonialism and America had the direct opportunity to influence negotiations for the Northern Irish peace process, we still didn’t use our leverage to push actual NI independence. Still, good points all and I’ll add it in.

we still didn’t use our leverage to push actual NI independence

Northern Ireland is complicated by the fact that up until very recently a majority of the people living there saw themselves as being just as British as those on the island of Britain (this might still be the case but it has gotten much closer). It wouldn't be so much granting independence as it would be forcing the majority to join a nation they want no part in.

Fair point there.

The British Caribbean possessions, Jamaica, Barbados, etc, achieved independence directly with the British government without American involvement.

I realize it's a complicated history, but how would you describe Grenada, which was invaded by the Reagan administration within a decade of formal independence?

Also worth noting would be American possessions: the Philippines were granted independence from the US in a decade-long process that started before WWII. Cuba was won from Spain in 1898 and granted independence (mostly) by the US in 1902.

There are also quite a few quasi-colonial possessions still floating around under various flags and governance: Puerto Rico, Tahiti, the Falklands, Aruba, Guyane, American Samoa, and so forth.

I realize it's a complicated history, but how would you describe Grenada, which was invaded by the Reagan administration within a decade of formal independence?

I guess it's an instance of America behaving in a colonial empire like way, the same way we do with a lot of Latin America. But I wouldn't say we really influenced their independence process or colonized them either - they had a Marxist military coup which we overthrew then withdrew pretty swiftly.

As for the countries we colonized and later gave independence too, it feels weird to me to give us credit for decolonizing places like the Phillipines that we kept under our yoke for half a century, repressing their independence movements all the while. It's like if a mugger grabs your wallet, you fight back for a while, and eventually he gives it back to you - you wouldn't normally give the mugger credit for your fiscal health.

I guess it's an instance of America behaving in a colonial empire like way,

I think a more accurate way of putting this is that America actually is a colonial empire.

Sure, no disagreement with the definition, I just meant that Grenada was only a few days so I wouldn't put it on the same tier as Nicaragua or Haiti.

That analogy fits right at home in America.

The falklands isn’t really the sine qua non of what I think of when I think of de colonization (ditto with South Africa).

(continued from OP)

The Dutch Empire

The Netherlands is the strongest example of America forcing an empire into actually decolonizing. Why? Because the Netherlands is our greatest foe and must be destroyed at all costs we were fighting a prestige battle in southeast, first against Japan and then later against both the Soviet Union and the PRC, and support for decolonization was the currency that purchased regional alliances. Public opinion on Dutch repression had soured everywhere as well, within the American public and even within the other major colonial empires, and after the Indonesian nationalists crushed a communist rebellion they cemented their reputation as a potential anti-communist bulwark within the region. The Netherlands having outlived its usefulness and dragging down public opinion everywhere, America threatened to cut off Marshall Plan funds unless the Netherlands agreed to decolonization. America allowed the Dutch to keep West New Guinea for another little while and eventually encouraged them to pull out of there as well. Don’t worry though, we coup’d Indonesia’s anti-colonial leader shortly after and helped them genocide all the leftists.

Suriname negotiated directly with the Dutch for their independence; America was not involved.

The Belgium Empire

Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC all achieved independence without American intervention. See below comment for more detail on the DRC.

The Portuguese Empire

In 1944 the US agreed to respect Portugal’s sovereignty over its colonial possessions in Africa and even restore its control over East Timor in exchange for gaining a military base on the Azores. Following the war Harry “I have always been an anti-colonialist” Truman, focused on Soviet containment, greenlit Portugal into the Marshall Plan and NATO and “never regarded the existence of the Portuguese colonial empire as an obstacle to the establishment and maintenance of good relations with Lisbon”. When India tried to kick Portugal out of its remaining enclaves, the Eisenhower Admin formally recognized those territories as Portuguese “provinces”.

As Soviet expansion in Africa spread, and the Portuguese repression of the Angolan rebellion grew to be an international embarrassment, the Kennedy Administration stopped selling them weapons, started voting in favor of unsuccessful UN Resolutions for Portugal to “consider” reforms in Angola, and started offering support to the UPA (later the FLNA) (notably, in their fight not against Portugal, but against the Communist Soviet backed MPLA).

This was short lived, however, during the Cuban Missile Crisis America tracked Soviet submarine movements using the Azores base, which further cemented its importance. Shortly Kennedy reversed course, allowed weapons shipments to be sold to Salazar in 62 and 63, barred American officials from communicating with Angolan rebels, and even sent Portugal aid packages. The US moving forward abstained in UN resolutions or voted in Portugal’s favor. Little changed with LBJ; under Nixon’s “Tar Baby Option” of not opposing the white minority governments in Southern Africa, a treaty was concluded in 1971 reestablishing American support for Portugal and supplying generous grants, loans, free military advisory officials and new weapons sales (against the will of Congress).

The Empire eventually ended in 74 not because of the US but the Carnation Revolution, in no small part driven by a population sick of being taxed and conscripted for colonial wars. The US was not involved in the coup and rather looked upon it warily as the possible beginnings of a Communist state. In the wake of the revolution “the United States, unlike the UN and the majority of Western European governments, did not exert significant pressure for rapid decolonization,” and even encouraged a two year transition period rather than the immediate independence demanded.

The Spanish Empire

The Americas won their independence from Spain with no intervention on the part of the US (who promptly took a bunch of Mexico’s newly independent territory). America fought against Spain in the 1898 war to “liberate” its colonies, and then just colonized them ourselves and ruled over them from afar for decades to come, often brutally suppressing their attempts at independence. We also later separately conquered and occupied for decades the former Spanish colonies of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and otherwise coup’d any anti-colonial leader we didn’t like and frequently supported brutal dictators that would be our own puppets. In my opinion all this is near fatal to the idea that America opposed colonialism because we ideologically identified with the victims; we literally just were a colonial power ourselves.

Conclusion

Tl;dr There are two things America can’t stand in this world: anti-colonial leaders trying to deny our hegemony, and the Dutch.

America played the primary role in decolonizing Indonesia (including West New Guinea), may have played an important but uncertain role in Egyptian independence, and advocated half heartedly and unsuccessfully for the decolonization of the Portuguese Empire and British India, but mostly tolerated or supported both Empires. In situations where America supported decolonization, it looked much less driven by ideological dogmatism or anticolonial sentiment than by a desire to maintain a good reputation among other countries that could drift to the USSR and China. More frequently America continued to sustain diplomatic relations and military support for colonial empires and their successor states long after public opinon in Europe and the rest of the world had turned on them. The overwhelming majority of colonies earned their independence without American intervention but due to factors like sustained counterinsurgency, being too costly to maintain, dwindling public support, and dwindling benefit to the metropole. In other areas America literally just colonized countries ourselves.

I really liked this detailed writeup, puts a lot into perspective.

Thanks, much appreciated.

The Belgians were quite upset with the US (c.f. Michel Struelens' book) for supposedly making decolonization in the Congo go badly, especially under the Kennedy administration. The Kennedy administration did a lot to increase the presence of the UN in the Congo, and the UN actions were in turn heavily driven by resentful anti-colonial nations like India and Ghana. Apparently the Johnson administration was not as anti-colonial and reversed many of these policies, but the damage was already done.

I don't think anyone would call our approach to the Congo "anti-colonial" though. We looked the other way when the Belgians tried to create a secessionist state in Katanga, refused to give Lumumba any assistance in fighting the secession, and refused to convince Hammarskjöld that the UN should help either:

The arrival of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) was initially welcomed by Lumumba and the central government who believed the UN would help suppress the secessionist states. ONUC's initial mandate, however, only covered the maintenance of law and order. Viewing the secessions as an internal political matter, Hammarskjöld refused to use UN troops to assist the central Congolese government against them; he argued that doing so would represent a loss of impartiality and breach Congolese sovereignty. Lumumba also sought the assistance of the United States government of Dwight D. Eisenhower, which refused to provide unilateral military support. Frustrated, he turned to the Soviet Union, which agreed to provide weapons, logistical and material support.

After refusing to assist Lumumba in holding together his nation's soveirgnty against his former colonizer we drove him in desperation to the last major power around, the USSR. For this mistake we immediately made plans to have him killed, and then when he was eventually assasinated with assistance from the Belgians, rather than condemn this colonial coup we became bosom allies with his successor, the tyrant Mobutu. This was all already complete by the time Kennedy took power, who continued to maintain positive relations with Mobutu:

In the Congo, U.S. policy [under Kennedy] seldom departed from the policy preferences of Belgium and Britain. The Administration initially supported negotiations to foster unity between the Congo's warring factions and, later, reluctantly endorsed the use of military force to achieve this goal. Throughout the administration, it sought a policy acceptable to Belgium and Britain. Once a degree of order was established by early 1963, the U.S. reduced its own involvement while urging Belgium to assume increasing responsibility for the country. A February 1963 government document captures the character of American policy toward the Congo during the Kennedy administration with the observation that the U.S. had conducted its Congo policy "in association with" Belgium's leader and even avoided any irreparable parting with Britain...

Under John Kennedy, U.S. policy did not keep pace with the tide of change sweeping across Africa. Nor did it adequately harness, on behalf of U.S. foreign policy, the spirit of nationalism and radicalism making inroads on the continent. In the congo the administration helped to consolidate the power of Joseph Mobutu, who would only retain power in subsequent years through the assistance of white mercenaries and military involvement by pro-Western states.

Hmm. I've always nursed a small grudge against the US because I was always under the impression it had a greater influence on accelerating decolonization than it seems is the case, at least from reading your effort post.

Why would an Indian be against the end of colonization you might ask? Well, for one, I think that a counterfactual world where India didn't become outright independent in 1947, or had self-rule phased in over decades, with full independence in the 60s or later, would have been a far wealthier and more stable India. Of course, they burnt their credibility by reneging on promises of enabling Home Rule in the 20s as a treat for our WW1 contribution, so who knows how that might have worked. I still think they could have dragged it out a little bit longer if they really wanted to.

Call me a congenital optimist, but that might have mitigated our brush with socialism for an odd 40 or 50 years, which at the very least would have made it likely that we could have liberalized earlier since all the real economic growth happened after that happened in the late 80s or early 90s.

Given the way that Indians run the place, I'd put more faith in distant, slightly bored bureaucrats who at the least aren't corrupt or beholden to identity politics. And I am speaking English here, and moving to the UK, at least for a while, so you can see where my personal loyalties lie.

It's such a fascinating counterfactual, I often fantasize how it would have gone had we had one European power that kept a small colony, in Africa or LatAm or the Indian Ocean, so we could see how it went. Bigger than Hong Kong, but smaller than India. Malaysia, or Algeria, or Kenya. I wish the USA had given Cuba and the Phillipines statehood rather than cutting them loose.

It feels like decolonization happened just as European countries were, at the very least, becoming more tolerant of ethnic differences.

The Caribbean has a good mix of former colonies and present overseas territories of various European nations, so it's probably the best bet for a head to head comparison under similar circumstances. My impression is that the independent islands do worse, but I'm not familiar enough with living standards and economics in that region to be sure. France also has some of the most populous remaining colonies in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and they seem like nicer places than most of their neighbors.

Puerto Rico is the richest place in the Caribbean, I believe. French Guiana is richer than its closest neighbors Brazil, Suriname, and Guyana.

I was gonna say Puerto Rico as well but I realized it had less people than Hong Kong. Still maybe the closest example though. Greenland easily the most prominent former colony in size but the population is like a small city or a large town.

Well, with the Philippines you'd have to enfranchise some 110 (and rapidly growing) millions — a voting bloc an entire third of the entire US population. If you're opting for state-hood, and not some sort of Puerto Rico-tupe non-representative colonial rule, anyway.

Granted, it'll probably be lower in a counterfactual where the Philippines is annexed relatively early on, and receives the "benefits" of modernity (the demographic transition, etc.)—but not infinitesmally smaller; likely the population will still be in the high tens of millions.

I don't really see Americans accepting that: tens of millions of icky brown people with voting rights and significant sway over US politics inherent to their population size alone. I'll note the US has often been wary of directly annexing territories full of non-white people (densely populated, anyway): one of the main arguments against taking more of Mexico historically, besides just the Cession, was that other areas had too many Mexicans to drive off.

(That's not even asking whether Filipinos want US statehood to begin with. Actually, they might, especially if the US dumps a lot of money into investing in the place, and making it a model example of how Murica Gets Shit Done TM, but then you circle again to Americans, running into the same generalized xenophobic arguments over tax monies going to not-properly-non-melanated Americans.)

The Philippines, assuming they were one state and maybe throw in some other islands, would have been the most populous state circa 1950, but were more like 15% of the total population.

Of course in my totally crazy counterfactual, the USA encourages white migration into the Philippines, and allows free migration from the Philippines to the mainland, balancing the ethnic questions a little differently. Hawaii made statehood despite a lack of whites.

Imagine the strategic history of Asia with tens of millions of American citizens right there.

Interesting idea...

Was going to mention French Guiana but it only has a few hundred thousand people.

If only, then we'd have a better comparison of the before/after colonization thing

While I'm bringing up a bunch of stuff from the past, a while back I tried to do a deep dive into colonialism's impact on India. My takeaway was that Britain performed worse than either the independent princely states or post-colonial India on pretty much every factor we care about: economic growth, literacy, life expectancy, etc.

I think the idea that Britain would have kept India from socialism is less likely considering that postwar Britain was also diving headlong into mass nationalizations of the economy, expansive welfare, industrial licensing, high taxes on income and capital, etc.

We did have a productive debate in the comments to that post:

My reply is readily visible, but link for the lazy: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/sgv76g/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_31/hvnwsgw/

For the even lazier, the points I brought up were:

  1. No Britain=No unified India, or an India that wasn't unified under another Great Power.

  2. The Brits were doing better at the whole uplifting a subcontinent thing towards the end of their regime.

  3. When people point out that India did a lot better on measures like agricultural productivity and life expectancy in the decades post Independence, that is hopelessly confounded by the fact that most of this was the Green Revolution and the advent of cheap and effective antibiotics. I personally think they did all the heavy lifting.

Yeah, fully agreed the health stats are pretty confounded by general advances in agriculture and medicine - I gave you credit in the original for that point! :) Other stats like growth, literacy, access to roads, hospitals, and schools I think are harder to fudge.

I can easily imagine another colonial empire being worse than Britain (many were), and I even agree in some ways they were improving, or at least planning to improve (like the Dawes Plan for literacy). But I just don't see a good enough record for them pre-war in India, or post-war in Britain, to assume things would really be better.

Your personal experience gives you some insights into this that I don't necessarily have though.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats