An impressively erudite article by Aris Roussinos. He is always interesting.
hayden eastwood
2 years ago
Aris thank you for writing this. I often point out to the postmodern leftwing aid workers in Southern Africa that their projects of “gender mainstreaming” and “ending homophobia” are scarcely different in principle to the mission of those that colonised the area centuries before.
The European export of the idea of liberty and equality of treatment under some rule of law (which is colonial in origin in any case) is, I argue to them, something that has happened for centuries and is something that they are continuing.
Of course, when I suggest this, I am usually greeted with anger and derision for daring to suggest this parallel.
I also ask them why they are here given that the central premise of their social justice education is that all cultures are equal. “Why, if this is the case” I ask, “are you working to eliminate child marriage’?”
After a long convoluted explanation of double-think, I am left with the message that all cultures are equal, but that some are more equal than others.
Last edited 2 years ago by hayden eastwood
Alexander Morrison
2 years ago
A really good article by Roussinos, and I am delighted to see my former colleague Richard Huzzey’s brilliant book featuring so prominently. Broadly speaking I think Roussinos is correct about anti-slavery as a major driver of British expansion in West and East Africa, and above all when he says that we should not conflate the Atlantic Slave trade with European colonialism in Africa. A few caveats however – firstly, much of Africa was not of course colonised by the British, but by the French, Portuguese, Germans and Belgians. Although King Leopold did indeed try to mask the brutal and shameful exploitation of the ‘Congo Free State’ with anti-slavery rhetoric, none of the other European powers was nearly as interested in or motivated by anti-slavery as the British were.
Secondly the British also had some much more hard-nosed interests in parts of the African continent – obviously the gold and diamonds of the Rand, where Rhodes made his money, though their targets there were the Boer Republics (the object of much Liberal sympathy in Britain at the time, though they truly were white supremacist regimes). At the opposite end of the continent there was Egypt, crucial both because of the enormous debts it owed British and French creditors, and because of the Suez Canal and its place at the key junction of routes towards British India, the real keystone of the Empire. This was what led to its annexation as a nominal British protectorate in 1881, and it was this in turn that sparked the celebrated ‘Scramble’ for Africa, as the French were peeved at this intrusion in what they had considered to be their sphere of influence and sought compensation elsewhere. The British would later conquer Sudan and annex Uganda and Kenya largely as a means of securing the whole length of the Nile and thus further guaranteeing Egypt’s security.
My final caveat is a more controversial one – where I think the comparison with modern liberal interventionism breaks down is that of course modern interventionists are desperate to avoid being labelled as ‘colonialists’, and instead go out of their way to insist that their occupation is temporary and that they will be on their way soon. It is precisely this which makes their attempts at state-building so futile, as we saw in Afghanistan, because all their opponents then need is patience. Rory Stewart wrote in a rather good NYRB piece about South Sudan last year that the modern NGO-ocracy have all the privileges and pay of colonial officials with none of the long-term responsibility (by coincidence he was writing about precisely the part of Africa where my late grandfather spent 29 years working as an engineer on the Nile Steamers). I think there is something in this – colonial systems of governance were imperfect, often cruel, and became unsustainable in the era of modern nationalism, but the structures they created were often much more stable and lasting than anything the doctrine of liberal interventionism has been able to achieve in the last thirty years – never mind Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, even Bosnia is still a basket-case.
Not just British imperialism. Although we tend to associate Spanish conquisators as being driven by greed – which undoubtedly the early ones were – the reality is Spain’s consolidation of rule was driven by need to spread Catholicism and impose moral values such as monogamy – which is seen in the widespread promotion of the very monogamous St. Joseph in churches through Latin America. Even today Spanish people will point out Spain came and stopped cannibalism among native tribes. Bartolomé de las Casas specifically wrote against the depredations of the conquisatadores against the native population which was one of the main factors the Spanish crown needed to step in and impose order on the freebooters who were emerging as powerful figures there.
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
Really interesting article. Exemplifies that old saying: ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.’
Or, as King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, who are clearly familiar with the Orange LibDem logo put it:
“…Remember where to enter, The door to Hell is Amber…”
A fine and informative article by the author, especially about the British in West Africa. The irony being, there are now more slaves in Africa than ever in history, a direct consequence of the population explosion.
The situation in East Africa around the great lakes (where I was born), where the British also ended up with a version of benign rule and colonisation, was somewhat different. Zanzibar was of course originally established by the Arabs, who were (are?) historically great slavers, as a trade station into the interior for the buying and bringing of slaves into the Arab world. Unlike European countries though, where little cell-like ghettos grew in some cities (eg Bristol and Liverpool) containing the descendents of slaves living in slum poverty, no such ghettos grew in Arab countries, and I see no evidence of populations of African descent there, I wonder why.
For evidence go to Saudi Arabia and look at the people – plenty of “African looking” Saudis. Children of slaves were treated as members of the family and full citizens/tribe members. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1965.
I had a Saudi student staying with me a few years ago. Very bright young lad, and a devout Muslim. He explained the Saudi caste system to me without a trace of embarrassment. As with Apartheid, each caste can only live in designated areas, marrying into their own group.
The groups are divided for religious reasons into Sunni and Shia. Then there are the Bedouin, who live in rural areas but are considered like our ‘travelling’ community in terms of their distain for the law.
But the lowest caste are Blacks. Whether these are descendants of slaves, or migrants from the past, I’m not sure.
Richard Riheed
2 years ago
Brilliant article, thank you. Conrad knew all this and wrote about it so well that he is chronically misunderstood. His settings, whether Africa, South America or The East Indies, were there to explore the European mind and its greedy/confused/well-meaning relationship with those lands and people. His writing is not about those lands and people. In Nostromo, the greedy silver prospector, Gould, carries on regardless as they country fights with itself while his humanitarian wife struggles to make sense of it all. Fascinating insight into this topic, Aris.
Martin Dukes
2 years ago
A very timely and instructive article that deserves to be widely read.
Matthew Powell
2 years ago
A really fascinating piece. I’m sure to the Victorian mind, the opponents they fought must have been viewed very much as the ISIS or Taliban of their day and would be bewildered to see modern liberals condemning their actions as immoral.
I’m sure in a hundred years time there will be middle class Marxists professors, still waiting in hope for the revolution, teaching their students about how ISIS were noble anti imperialists, to be celebrated for battling the evils of capitalism.
In some cases, like the followers of the Mahdi in Sudan, the colonizers’ opponents were not only viewed as being like ISIS or the Taliban, they WERE like ISIS or the Taliban
I’m sorry to say that there are already some professors who characterise ISIS as primarily motivated by anti-imperialism, and hence in some way to be excused.
Charles Whitcombe
2 years ago
Aris is brilliant yet again
Howard Gleave
2 years ago
This is a brilliant “article”, approaching a mini book. A veritable history lesson. Fascinating.
Yes – this is the kind of piece for which I subscribe to Unherd – excellent.
Ian Cooper
2 years ago
Useful analysis about the fate of good intentions but it still raises the question as to what the alternative would have been. Abandoning the good intentions in favour of cynical indifference and contempt for Africa or finding better ways to have implemented them? Or perhaps, realising that along with the crimes and follies of colonialism they were also real achievements. My father was a missionary headmaster in East Africa whose work, and that of many others, changed and advanced the lives of thousands as they will so amply testify. Perhaps we need to await Prof Nigel Biggar’s project evaluating Empire.
Jason Smith
2 years ago
Fascinating
Peter LR
2 years ago
I wonder if the Quaker attempt to create settlements in Niger had something to do with what was a Quaker success in establishing Pennsylvania in the 17th century. For the first 50 years after it was begun there were no murders in that State. Of course, Africa was a different proposition, but I don’t think their motives would have been colonial, rather holistic in a social sense.
There was a fortuitous consequence of British colonialism in Africa of course. It prevented what would have been the inevitable Islamisation of the whole continent by establishing Christian missions and British governance. It probably also prevented Africa from predation by Communism too as there were efforts on the Soviet Union’ part to get a foothold there. I was intrigued that at Mandela’s funeral, they addressed one another as comrade; so, there was no doubt some communist influence around. Also there was a concerted effort to prevent Germany from expanding its Empire into Africa especially under the Nazis.
The adoption of independence by Empire countries was also much more orderly when the British handed over if you compare it to the Belgian Congo, for instance, or Germany in Namibia and Tanzania.
fabrizio ghiandai
2 years ago
Very interesting article. Would it be possible to know the sources/ bibliography? I want to learn more about this subject.
This was a fascinating read where parallels with the “War on terror” are hard to miss But I’ll take issue with part of the conclusion.
Mr Roussinos seems to be putting the cart before the horse here in saying: “lobbying of activist groups about the evils of slavery, colonialism and imperialism for which we must all now make penance.”
Atlantic slave trade was a lucrative trade for European countries, and a good deal of the wealth in slave trading cities such as Nantes or Bordeaux can be traced back to this where a single city such as Bordeaux would be responsible for sending as many as 150 000 Africans to the Caribbean. (Compare this with the size of the city as it would be then). This is not yet speaking of the wealth created in the plantations in the New world with slave labour and the treatment (/eradication) of the native populations there.
It’s also fairly clear outright racism (not of the systemic type) played a role in justifying some of this where many cherished Enlightenment thinkers invented racial categories and saw some (e.g. Africans) as lesser humans than the superior Europeans.
That liberal imperialism has had troubles similar to today doesn’t take away from any of the above.
The author’s claim is that the trade in slaves itself did not provide any reason to colonise west Africa, it was only the attempt to suppress the trade that did that. This speaks directly against your suggestion that colonisation was motivated by profits from that trade. The timeline surely supports this thesis, with the foreign settlement of Sierra Leone only beginning in 1787.
An impressively erudite article by Aris Roussinos. He is always interesting.
Aris thank you for writing this. I often point out to the postmodern leftwing aid workers in Southern Africa that their projects of “gender mainstreaming” and “ending homophobia” are scarcely different in principle to the mission of those that colonised the area centuries before.
The European export of the idea of liberty and equality of treatment under some rule of law (which is colonial in origin in any case) is, I argue to them, something that has happened for centuries and is something that they are continuing.
Of course, when I suggest this, I am usually greeted with anger and derision for daring to suggest this parallel.
I also ask them why they are here given that the central premise of their social justice education is that all cultures are equal. “Why, if this is the case” I ask, “are you working to eliminate child marriage’?”
After a long convoluted explanation of double-think, I am left with the message that all cultures are equal, but that some are more equal than others.
A really good article by Roussinos, and I am delighted to see my former colleague Richard Huzzey’s brilliant book featuring so prominently. Broadly speaking I think Roussinos is correct about anti-slavery as a major driver of British expansion in West and East Africa, and above all when he says that we should not conflate the Atlantic Slave trade with European colonialism in Africa. A few caveats however – firstly, much of Africa was not of course colonised by the British, but by the French, Portuguese, Germans and Belgians. Although King Leopold did indeed try to mask the brutal and shameful exploitation of the ‘Congo Free State’ with anti-slavery rhetoric, none of the other European powers was nearly as interested in or motivated by anti-slavery as the British were.
Secondly the British also had some much more hard-nosed interests in parts of the African continent – obviously the gold and diamonds of the Rand, where Rhodes made his money, though their targets there were the Boer Republics (the object of much Liberal sympathy in Britain at the time, though they truly were white supremacist regimes). At the opposite end of the continent there was Egypt, crucial both because of the enormous debts it owed British and French creditors, and because of the Suez Canal and its place at the key junction of routes towards British India, the real keystone of the Empire. This was what led to its annexation as a nominal British protectorate in 1881, and it was this in turn that sparked the celebrated ‘Scramble’ for Africa, as the French were peeved at this intrusion in what they had considered to be their sphere of influence and sought compensation elsewhere. The British would later conquer Sudan and annex Uganda and Kenya largely as a means of securing the whole length of the Nile and thus further guaranteeing Egypt’s security.
My final caveat is a more controversial one – where I think the comparison with modern liberal interventionism breaks down is that of course modern interventionists are desperate to avoid being labelled as ‘colonialists’, and instead go out of their way to insist that their occupation is temporary and that they will be on their way soon. It is precisely this which makes their attempts at state-building so futile, as we saw in Afghanistan, because all their opponents then need is patience. Rory Stewart wrote in a rather good NYRB piece about South Sudan last year that the modern NGO-ocracy have all the privileges and pay of colonial officials with none of the long-term responsibility (by coincidence he was writing about precisely the part of Africa where my late grandfather spent 29 years working as an engineer on the Nile Steamers). I think there is something in this – colonial systems of governance were imperfect, often cruel, and became unsustainable in the era of modern nationalism, but the structures they created were often much more stable and lasting than anything the doctrine of liberal interventionism has been able to achieve in the last thirty years – never mind Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, even Bosnia is still a basket-case.
Another fascinating addition to the article itself. This is what I love about UnHerd. Thank you.
Thomas ‘Scramble for Africa’ Packenham’s wife Valerie bought our house when we left London 25 years ago.
I can’t believe it! There are actually intelligent people around writing sensible, informed pieces here on Unherd.
Such a pleasure. Thank you.
Not just British imperialism. Although we tend to associate Spanish conquisators as being driven by greed – which undoubtedly the early ones were – the reality is Spain’s consolidation of rule was driven by need to spread Catholicism and impose moral values such as monogamy – which is seen in the widespread promotion of the very monogamous St. Joseph in churches through Latin America. Even today Spanish people will point out Spain came and stopped cannibalism among native tribes. Bartolomé de las Casas specifically wrote against the depredations of the conquisatadores against the native population which was one of the main factors the Spanish crown needed to step in and impose order on the freebooters who were emerging as powerful figures there.
Really interesting article. Exemplifies that old saying: ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.’
Or, as King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, who are clearly familiar with the Orange LibDem logo put it:
“…Remember where to enter, The door to Hell is Amber…”
https://youtu.be/bdjl5nygwJQ
A fine and informative article by the author, especially about the British in West Africa. The irony being, there are now more slaves in Africa than ever in history, a direct consequence of the population explosion.
The situation in East Africa around the great lakes (where I was born), where the British also ended up with a version of benign rule and colonisation, was somewhat different. Zanzibar was of course originally established by the Arabs, who were (are?) historically great slavers, as a trade station into the interior for the buying and bringing of slaves into the Arab world. Unlike European countries though, where little cell-like ghettos grew in some cities (eg Bristol and Liverpool) containing the descendents of slaves living in slum poverty, no such ghettos grew in Arab countries, and I see no evidence of populations of African descent there, I wonder why.
Male slaves were usually castrated in Arab lands…
For evidence go to Saudi Arabia and look at the people – plenty of “African looking” Saudis. Children of slaves were treated as members of the family and full citizens/tribe members. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1965.
I had a Saudi student staying with me a few years ago. Very bright young lad, and a devout Muslim. He explained the Saudi caste system to me without a trace of embarrassment. As with Apartheid, each caste can only live in designated areas, marrying into their own group.
The groups are divided for religious reasons into Sunni and Shia. Then there are the Bedouin, who live in rural areas but are considered like our ‘travelling’ community in terms of their distain for the law.
But the lowest caste are Blacks. Whether these are descendants of slaves, or migrants from the past, I’m not sure.
Brilliant article, thank you. Conrad knew all this and wrote about it so well that he is chronically misunderstood. His settings, whether Africa, South America or The East Indies, were there to explore the European mind and its greedy/confused/well-meaning relationship with those lands and people. His writing is not about those lands and people. In Nostromo, the greedy silver prospector, Gould, carries on regardless as they country fights with itself while his humanitarian wife struggles to make sense of it all. Fascinating insight into this topic, Aris.
A very timely and instructive article that deserves to be widely read.
A really fascinating piece. I’m sure to the Victorian mind, the opponents they fought must have been viewed very much as the ISIS or Taliban of their day and would be bewildered to see modern liberals condemning their actions as immoral.
I’m sure in a hundred years time there will be middle class Marxists professors, still waiting in hope for the revolution, teaching their students about how ISIS were noble anti imperialists, to be celebrated for battling the evils of capitalism.
Hmm. Isis is a bit more complex than that. They were fighting to overthrow the regime, as was the west.
In some cases, like the followers of the Mahdi in Sudan, the colonizers’ opponents were not only viewed as being like ISIS or the Taliban, they WERE like ISIS or the Taliban
I’m sorry to say that there are already some professors who characterise ISIS as primarily motivated by anti-imperialism, and hence in some way to be excused.
Aris is brilliant yet again
This is a brilliant “article”, approaching a mini book. A veritable history lesson. Fascinating.
Yes – this is the kind of piece for which I subscribe to Unherd – excellent.
Useful analysis about the fate of good intentions but it still raises the question as to what the alternative would have been. Abandoning the good intentions in favour of cynical indifference and contempt for Africa or finding better ways to have implemented them? Or perhaps, realising that along with the crimes and follies of colonialism they were also real achievements. My father was a missionary headmaster in East Africa whose work, and that of many others, changed and advanced the lives of thousands as they will so amply testify. Perhaps we need to await Prof Nigel Biggar’s project evaluating Empire.
Fascinating
I wonder if the Quaker attempt to create settlements in Niger had something to do with what was a Quaker success in establishing Pennsylvania in the 17th century. For the first 50 years after it was begun there were no murders in that State. Of course, Africa was a different proposition, but I don’t think their motives would have been colonial, rather holistic in a social sense.
There was a fortuitous consequence of British colonialism in Africa of course. It prevented what would have been the inevitable Islamisation of the whole continent by establishing Christian missions and British governance. It probably also prevented Africa from predation by Communism too as there were efforts on the Soviet Union’ part to get a foothold there. I was intrigued that at Mandela’s funeral, they addressed one another as comrade; so, there was no doubt some communist influence around. Also there was a concerted effort to prevent Germany from expanding its Empire into Africa especially under the Nazis.
The adoption of independence by Empire countries was also much more orderly when the British handed over if you compare it to the Belgian Congo, for instance, or Germany in Namibia and Tanzania.
Very interesting article. Would it be possible to know the sources/ bibliography? I want to learn more about this subject.
The Pakenham book ‘The Scramble for Africa’ is a good resource.
As I remarked to Alexander Morrison above, his wife Valerie bought our home when we left London 25 years ago.
Wow, that’s a nice anecdote!
I think he’s relying mainly on Richard Huzzey Freedom Burning. Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2012)
This was a fascinating read where parallels with the “War on terror” are hard to miss But I’ll take issue with part of the conclusion.
Mr Roussinos seems to be putting the cart before the horse here in saying: “lobbying of activist groups about the evils of slavery, colonialism and imperialism for which we must all now make penance.”
Atlantic slave trade was a lucrative trade for European countries, and a good deal of the wealth in slave trading cities such as Nantes or Bordeaux can be traced back to this where a single city such as Bordeaux would be responsible for sending as many as 150 000 Africans to the Caribbean. (Compare this with the size of the city as it would be then). This is not yet speaking of the wealth created in the plantations in the New world with slave labour and the treatment (/eradication) of the native populations there.
It’s also fairly clear outright racism (not of the systemic type) played a role in justifying some of this where many cherished Enlightenment thinkers invented racial categories and saw some (e.g. Africans) as lesser humans than the superior Europeans.
That liberal imperialism has had troubles similar to today doesn’t take away from any of the above.
The author’s claim is that the trade in slaves itself did not provide any reason to colonise west Africa, it was only the attempt to suppress the trade that did that. This speaks directly against your suggestion that colonisation was motivated by profits from that trade. The timeline surely supports this thesis, with the foreign settlement of Sierra Leone only beginning in 1787.