Colonialism Was Part of a Now Discredited Zeitgeist

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Incredible as it seems to us today, until the end of the Second World War, the colonial empires of European powers plus the United States were considered “normal,” and even beneficial to the non-western peoples under their domination.

Imperial rule was justified and supported by most of the citizens in the imperial countries. The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance, even among those who associated imperial colonization with oppression and exploitation.

For example, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand by future European socialist governments and led by them into eventual independence.

One of the biggest motivations behind imperialism was the idea of “civilizing” people in underdeveloped places. This was a religious motive for many Christian missionaries, in their attempts to “save the souls” of non-Christian people. Other Europeans claimed that they were only in these areas because they wanted to protect the weaker tribal groups they conquered.

Virtually all of Africa, the Caribbean and South Pacific islands, and much of Asia and the Middle East, were run from capitals in Europe and America. Even such populous and large areas as today’s India, Indonesia and Indochina (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) were under British, Dutch, and French control, respectively.

Until 1945, no colonial power had given up a single colony, save to another empire. Germany lost all its colonies after the First World War to the victorious Allies, but in the 1930s Hitler kept demanding their return. And a latecomer to the imperial game, Italy, conquered Ethiopia, one of the only two independent countries in Africa, in 1935-36.

Yet four decades later, virtually all these places had become sovereign states, and only a few specks on the map -- mostly tiny islands -- remained under foreign rule.

So what changed? Why was colonialism suddenly discredited? A number of factors came together as a result of the 1939-1945 war.

Fascism, which glorified conquest, and Nazism, which divided humanity into “superior” and “inferior” so-called “races,” made the philosophical underpinnings of imperialism illegitimate. As well, the European countries were all devastated by the war: Belgium, France and the Netherlands had all been defeated by Germany, and even Britain emerged in a much weakened state.

Most of their Asian colonies, meanwhile, had been occupied by Japan, a non-European state, and the subject peoples there were in no mood to allow their colonial masters to return.

Finally, one of the victors in the war, the Soviet Union, set itself up as a champion of “national liberation.” After 1949, a newly established Communist China, itself a non-western country, followed suit.

Both provided economic, military and political aid to independence movements. (The Chinese and Soviets wouldn’t acknowledge that they were themselves land-based empires, with millions of non-Russian and non-Han Chinese inhabitants.)

So as the Cold War began, the western powers were forced onto the defensive. The Philippines were granted independence by Washington in 1946, India and Pakistan by London, in 1947, and Indonesia by Amsterdam in 1949. The remaining Asian colonies soon followed.

In Africa, fighting began in 1954 against French rule in Algeria and soon all of North Africa was self-governing. In sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana’s independence in 1957 was followed by most of the continent attaining freedom from European rule by 1980. Caribbean and South Pacific islands also gained their independence during that time.

A map of the pre-1939 world looks to us today like that of a different planet. That’s what happens when one zeitgeist replaces another.