Considering empires…

In my book “Evidence for Hope” I have several chapters with a historical perspective. While the Global West has been characterised as “empirical” in its colonial and trade efforts, this was in distinct periods. At first, only Spain and Portugal established empires, Spain in what would become Latin America, and Portugal in Brazil, from roughly 1500 to 1835, when all of Latin America became independent. The other three main colonial powers, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands became involved in empire building after 1835. The Industrial Revolution provided a huge drive towards conquering the world, as its products needed markets. Other European powers joined when the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) divided the African continent between them. Germany, Italy and the Belgian King Leopold II became involved. Empires were established in Africa and Asia. Germany lost its empire in 1914; Italy was relatively quickly thrown out of Ethiopia, and Belgium finally had to take over the Congo from its King. Decolonisation ended the empires after the Second World War.

While the Global West supported a global legal system through the United Nations after the Second World War, it considered development cooperation as a sufficient support for the newly independent countries, sufficient to provide reparations for colonisation and empire. Reparations for slavery were not considered, and are still very difficult to raise. And the exploitative trade arrangements of the colonial and empire periods for the most part just continued after independence. The important issue is that a leopard cannot change its spots. In Dutch we have a slightly longer version of this: “A fox may lose his hair, but not his pranks”. The Western European nations who had a history of 500 years of mistreating, colonising and exploiting others in the world, have not suddenly changed after the Second World War. They have lost their hair, but their pranks are in danger of reappearing. Empires may again become fashionable. If the Global South thinks the Global West is past it, and can no longer make a fist, it is playing with fire. A good example of how to consider the reappearance of empire can be found on the Responsible Statecraft website in a blog of Gareth Smyth of 19 July 2020 (http://tinyurl.com/5yzpspdh). Smyth notes that the idea of empire becomes more attractive when the world becomes more unstable. While we hear this more from the populist right, it can become more attractive in general. The Global South is also in danger of misusing the idea. The Global West could conquer the world in the past, because there was no international system, and because there were no countervailing powers in the world to stop the West. There is no reason to suppose that empires created by nations from the Global South would suddenly be a friendly, humane version of what the Global West inflicted upon the world. Beware of appealing ideas that seem a solution to our current problems!