Colonialism

World map of colonialism at the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizers generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population; this has led critics of colonialism to call it imperialism. However, if colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism, the latter is broader as it covers control exercised informally (via influence) as well as formally. The term of colonialism also refers to a set of beliefs used to legitimize or promote this system, especially the belief that the mores of the colonizer are superior to those of the colonized. Such beliefs are a form of racism, and where indeed codified in a form of scientific racism at the end of the 19th century.

Types of colonialism

Different types of colonialism may be distinguished, according to the form of colonization and also the date. Settler colonies, such as the original thirteen states of the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina arose from the emigration of peoples from a metropole, or mother country, and involved displacement of the indigenous peoples to their permanent detriment . Settler colonies may be contrasted with dependencies, where the colonizers did not arrive as part of a mass emigration, but rather as administrators over existing sizeable native populations, exercising control by use or threat of force. Examples in this category include the British Raj, Egypt, the Dutch East Indies and the Japanese colonial empire. In some cases large-scale colonial settlement was attempted in substantially pre-populated areas and the result was either an ethnically mixed population (such as the mestizos of the Americas), or racially divided, such as in French Algeria or Southern Rhodesia. A fourth category may be considered for plantation colonies such as Barbados, Saint-Domingue and Jamaica where the white colonizers imported black slaves who rapidly began to outnumber their owners, leading to minority rule, similar to a dependency. Trading posts, such as Macau, Malacca, Deshima and Singapore constitute a fifth category, where the primary purpose of the colony was to engage in trade rather than as a staging post for further colonization of the hinterland.

Furthermore, the British model of colonization, based on indirect rule, has been opposed to the French model, based on assimilation. While the British empire allowed colonized populations to live separately, in order to maintain their mores and ways of life, the French Republic, based on its universalist philosophy, tried to extend French citizenship to all of the colonized population. This ultimately led to the integration of Algeria as a French department, and to the famous phrase taught to to young students belonging to the French colonies: "Our ancestors the Gauls" (Nos ancêtres les Gaulois).

The European colonization of the Americas

Main articles: European colonization of the Americas and Indian Removal

The year 1492 marked the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Colombus on behalf of Spain and it was not long after this that Castille began the conquest of South America and the Caribbean. However, western colonisation has its roots in Portuguese trips, when the Portuguese went sailing from their capital Lisbon up to the Cape of Good Hope, before reaching India in 1498, opening a rush among other european nations to discover a route of their own.

Originally there was very little colonisation other than the soldiers and adventurers who had come to these areas seeking wealth (many of whom returned to Europe as rich men), however as time went by and the natives began to die out via the new disease pool from Europe and oppression by cruel landlords, leaving a lot of vacant space open for colonisation by Europeans. Despite this the Spanish mode of colonisation still mostly consisted of young men who found native wives leading to the creation of a hybrid native/European culture.

The 17th century saw other European nations beginning to colonise the Americas (mainly the Netherlands, France and England however many other nations attempted colonies) and these Europeans largely saw conventional movements of families into new lands. At the same time, England "planted" nearby Ireland extensively with English and Scottish settlers (see Plantations of Ireland).

The desire for labour in the Americas by the various European nations also led to the booming of the African slave trade leading to black 'colonisation' of the Americas- today this is especially apparent in the Caribbean where the largest ethnic group is of African descent.

The European colonization of the Americas was also the theater of the use of detention centers, population transfers (leading to the Seminole Wars in Florida at the beginnning of the 19th century) and "unvoluntary extermination" (through diseases). In the United States, the 1830 Indian Removal treaty was a policy seeking to relocate American Indian (or "Native American") tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river. In the decades following the American Revolution (1763-1783), the rapidly increasing population of the United States resulted in numerous treaties in which lands were purchased from Native Americans. Eventually, the U.S. government began encouraging Indian tribes to sell their land by offering them land in the West, outside the boundaries of the then-existing U.S. states, where the tribes could resettle. This process was accelerated with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which provided funds for President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) to conduct land-exchange ("removal") treaties. An estimated 100,000 American Indians eventually relocated in the West as a result of this policy, most of them emigrating during the 1830s, settling in what was known as the "Indian territory".

The first large-scale confinement of a specific ethnic group in detention centers began in the summer of 1838, when President Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) ordered the U.S. Army to enforce the December 29, 1835 Treaty of New Echota (an Indian Removal treaty) by rounding up the Cherokee into prison camps before relocating them. Although these camps were not intended to be extermination camps, and there was no official policy to kill people, some Indians were raped and/or murdered by US soldiers. Many more died in these camps due to disease, which spread rapidly because of the close quarters and bad sanitary conditions. This event, known as the Trail of Tears (or Nunna daul Isunyi - "The Trail Where We Cried" in Cherokee), resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokee Indians. Throughout the remainder of the Indian Wars, various populations of Native Americans were rounded up, trekked across country and put into detention, some for as long as 27 years.

In South America, colonization was also criticized, for example in Eduardo Galeano's famous 1971 book, The Open Veins of Latin America.

Colonization in Africa and in Asia

Main articles: New Imperialism, Rise of the New Imperialism, and Scramble for Africa

European claims in Africa, 1913, following the Scramble for Africa.

The latter half of 19th century saw the transition from an "informal" empire of control through military and economic dominance to direct control, marked from the 1870s on by the scramble for territory in areas previously regarded as merely under Western influence. The Berlin Conference (1884 - 1885) mediated the imperial competition among the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK), the French Third Republic and the German Empire, defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of colonial claims and codifying the imposition of direct rule, accomplished usually through armed force. According to Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), there was a contradiction between the unity of the nation-state and imperialism, which was, by definition, unlimited. She thus quoted Cecil Rhodes declaring: "all of these stars... these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets" . Arendt underlined this contradiction between the economic expansion upheld by the bourgeoisie and nationalism, which aimed at integrating all citizens in one unity, the nation-state. According to her, this explains the two different models of colonization: on one hand, the British Empire created the Commonwealth and used indirect rule, allowing the local elites to govern the colonies, under the supervision of the colonial administration; on the other hand, the French Republic directly ruled the colonies, claiming they were integrally part of the French Republic. Thus, the Crémieux decrees provided for representation of the French department of Algeria in the National Assembly. The Crémieux Decrees also granted blanket French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they were identified thereafter with the colonists. The measure had to be enforced, however, over the objections of the colons, who made little distinction between Muslims and Jews. This classic opposition between the British model of colonization and the French model, based on its universalist conception of the Republic, was doubled by a second opposition, between the colonial administration, which displayed open contempt for the indigenous people, which it considered as hardly superior to beasts, and the metropole, where colonialism sometimes met with opposition (e.g. Gladstone or Clemenceau) and where the Parliaments considered the Empire to be full part of the Nation, and thus the colonized people to be full citizens. Hannah Arendt's reasonment ultimately leads her to show that the human rights are in fact dependent of civil rights, and not the reverse as would let believe the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Colonial abuse was criticized in the metropole on behalf of the colonized people's supposed citizenship, while it was justified in the colonies because of their non-membership to the nation.

In Germany, rising pan-germanism was coupled to imperialism in the Alldeutsche Verband, which argued that Britain's world power position gave the British unfair advantages on international markets, thus limiting Germany's economic growth and threatening its security. Many European statesmen and industrialists wanted to accelerate the Scramble for Africa, securing colonies before they strictly needed them. The inventor of Realpolitik, Bismarck thus pushed a Weltpolitik vision ("World Politic"), which considered the colonization as a necessity for the emerging German power.

In Asia, the Great Game, which lasted from 1813 to 1907, opposed the British Empire to Imperial Russia for supremacy in Central Asia. China was opened to Western influence starting with the First and Second Opium Wars (1839-1842; 1856-1860). Japan willfully opened itself to the Western world during the Meiji Era (1868-1912). However, colonialism would take its full extent only during the period known as New Imperialism, starting in the 1860s with the Scramble for Africa: British, French, and German imperialisms opposed themselves to conquer the most territories possible as quickly as could be done.

Herero chained during the 1904 rebellion, before the Herero Genocide (1904-07) in German South-West Africa (finally independent, under the name of Namibia, in 1990).

Leopold II of Belgium also managed to have a colonial empire, while the Dutch had the Dutch East Indies. In the same manner, Italy tried to conquer its "place in the sun", acquiring Somaliland in 1899-90, Eritrea and 1899, and, taking advantage of the "Sick Man of Europe", the Ottoman Empire, also conquered Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Lybia) after the 1911 Treaty of Lausanne. The conquest of Ethiopia, which had remained the last African independent territory, had to wait till the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1935-36 (the First Italo-Abyssinian War in 1895-96 had been a disaster for Italian troops). The Portuguese and Spanish colonial empire were smaller, mostly heritages from past colonization. Most of their colonies had acquired independence during the Latin American revolutions at the beginning of the 19th century, led by famous Libertadores such as Simón Bolívar or José de San Martín, while Dom Pedro declared Brazil's independence in 1822, founding the Brazilian Empire.

Japanese imperialism

Main articles: Japanese imperialism and Imperialism in Asia

After being closed for centuries to Western influence, Japan opened itself to the West during the Meiji Era (1868-1912), characterized by swift modernization and borrowings from European culture (in law, science, etc.) This, in turn, helped make Japan the modern power that it is now, which was symbolized as soon as the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War: this war marked the first victory of colored people over a European group, and led to widespread fears among European populations (first appearance of the "Yellow Peril"). During the first part of the 20th century, while China was still victim of various European imperialisms, Japan became itself one of the first non-European imperialist power, conquering what it called a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". Allying itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, it would lose its colonies after its final defeat during World War II.

The French colonial empire

Main article: French colonial empire

File:Yabonbanania.JPG

Typical advertising for chocolate, working as propaganda for the Colonial Empire. Carries on a racist stereotype of the "Negro" as emotional - he is laughing - but quite slow-thinking. The badly structured sentence Y a Bon Banania tries to make the racist point that Negroes don't know how to speak properly.

In France, the colonial empire wasn't used for massive emigration, as in the British Empire. In fact, until the Third Republic (1871-1940), apart of the colonization of Algeria started on June 12, 1830, in the last days of the Restoration, France didn't have yet much colonies. The few ones which it had, such as New Caledonia or French Guiana, were used for transportation of criminals and Communards following the defeat of the 1871 Paris Commune. Because of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the "colonial lobby", gathering a few politicians, businessmen and geographers favorable to colonialism, was not very popular till World War I. In the 1880s, a debate thus opposed those who opposed the colonization, such as Georges Clemenceau (Radical), who declared that colonialism diverted France from the "blue line of the Vosges", referring to the disputed Alsace-Lorraine region, Jean Jaurès (Socialist) or Maurice Barrès (nationalist), to the "colonial lobby", supported by Jules Ferry (moderate republican), Léon Gambetta (republican) or Eugène Etienne, the president of the parliamentary colonial group.

Prime minister from 1880 to 1881 and 1883 to 1885, Republican Jules Ferry directed the negotiations which led to the establishment of a French protectorate in Tunis (1881) (the Bardo treaty), prepared the treaty of December 17, 1885 for the occupation of Madagascar; directed the exploration of the Congo and of the Niger region; and above all he organized the conquest of Indochina. The excitement caused at Paris by the sudden retreat of the French troops from Lang Son led to his violent denunciation by Clemenceau and other radicals, and his downfall on March 30, 1885. Although the treaty of peace with China (June 9, 1885), in which the Qing Dynasty ceded suzerainty of Annam and Tonkin to France, was the work of his ministry, he would never again serve as premiere.

According to Sandrine Lemaire, only 1% of the French population actually visited its colonial empire. Because of this relative unpopularity, until at least World War I, the colonial lobby set up an intensive propaganda in order to convince the French of the legitimity of its Empire, which most thought costly and rather useless. Ethnological expositions (including human zoos, in which natives were displayed alongside apes, in a tentative to justify scientific racism and to popularize the colonial empire) had a crucial role in the popularisation of colonialism . Although in France these colonial exhibitions played a crucial propaganda role, they were common in all colonizing powers: the 1924 British Empire Exhibition was one, as the successful 1931 Exposition coloniale in Paris. Germany and Portugal also had such exhibitions, as well as Belgium's, which had a Foire coloniale as late as 1948. The political scientist Pierre-André Taguieff said about the French Third Republic that it was host to "racialism or an ideological racism that didn't perceive itself as such, and that called neither for hate, nor for stigmatisation, nor either for segregation, but which found its legitimity in colonial exploitation and domination, and its justification in its thesis of the future evolution of these inferior peoples".

Olivier LeCour Grandmaison has argued, for his part, that the techniques used for the French colonization of Algeria starting with the invasion on June 12, 1830, a few days before the end of the Restoration, were later extended to the whole of the French colonial empire (Indochina, New Caledonia, French West Africa, a federation created in 1895, and French Equatorial Africa, created in 1910). LeCour Grandmaison argued that Algeria thus provided the laboratory for concepts later used during the Holocaust, such as "inferior races", "life without value" and "vital space" (translated in German by "Lebensraum", a concept used by the Völkisch movement), as well as for repressive techniques: the 1881 Indigenous Code in Algeria, the principle of "collective responsibility", the "Scorched Earth" policy, which made of French colonial rule in Algeria a permanent state of exception. Internment camps were also first tested during the 1830 invasion of Algeria, before being used (under the official name of concentration camps) to receive the Spanish Republican refugees first, than to intern communists and, finally, Jews during Vichy France . Concentration camps were also used by the British Empire during the Second Boer War (1899-1902).

After World War I, the colonized people were frustrated at France's quasi-total absence of recognition toward the effort provided by the French colonies (resources, but more importantly colonial troops - the famous tirailleurs). Although in Paris the Great Mosque of Paris was constructed as recognition of these efforts, the French state had no intention to allow self-rule, let alone independence to the colonized people. Thus, nationalism in the colonies became stronger in between the two wars, leading to Abd el-Krim's Rif War in Morocco and to the creation of Messali Hadj's Star of North Africa in Algeria. However, these movements would gain full potential only after World War II. The October 27, 1946 Constitution creating the Fourth Republic substituted the French Union to the colonial empire. In the night of March 29 to March 30, 1947, a nationalist uprising in Madagascar led the French government led by Paul Ramadier (Socialist) to violent repression: one year of bitter fighting, in which 90,000 to 100,000 Malagasy died. On May 8, 1945, the Setif massacre took place in Algeria.

In 1954, the states of French Indochina withdrew from the Union, leading to the Indochina War. In 1956, Morocco and Tunisia gained their independence, while the Algerian War was raging (1954-1962). With Charles de Gaulle's return to power in 1958 amidst turmoil and threats of a right-wing coup d'Etat to protect "French Algeria", the decolonization was completed with the independence of African's colonies in 1960 and the March 19, 1962 Evian accords, which put an end to the Algerian war. To this day, the Algerian war - officially called until the 1990s a "public order operation" - remains to this day a traumatism both for France and Algeria. Philosopher Paul Ricœur has spoke of the necessity of a "decolonization of memory", starting with the recognition of the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian war and the recognition of the decisive role of immigrated manpower in the Trente Glorieuses post-WW II economic growth period. In the 1960s, due to the necessity of reconstruction and of economic growth, French employers actively sought manpower in the colonies, explaining today's multiethnic population.

Debates about the value of colonialism continue to this day. In France, the vote of the February 23, 2005 law by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), asking teachers and textbooks to "acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa", was met with public uproar and accusations of historic revisionism, both inside France and abroad. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria, refused to sign the envisioned "friendly treaty" with France because of this law, which has been since repealed by president Jacques Chirac at the beginning of 2006. Famous writer Aimé Césaire, leader of the Négritude movement, also refused to meet UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy, leading the later to cancel his visit to Martinique.

Impact and evaluation of colonialism and colonization

Given that colonialism involves the rule or taking of territory of one people by another and without their consent, it is a highly emotive subject. Debate about the perceived positive and negative aspects of colonialism has occurred for centuries, amongst both colonizer and colonized, and continues to the present day. Different types of colonialism must first be distinguished, as they were spread in time and thus didn't represent the same historic phenomenon.

Advocates of colonialism point to such former colonies as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore as examples of post-colonial success. These nations do not, however, represent the normal course of colonialism in that they are either settler societies, or tradepost cities. Furthermore, critics point out that, in the case of the New World, colonialism involved the Atlantic slave trade.

Advocates of 19th century colonialism ("New Imperialism") argue that colonial rule benefited the colonized by developing transport infrastructures such as roads, railroads, ports, etc., necessary to economic development. This modernization, in turn, would lead to democracy. Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, The White Man's Burden (1899), thus claimed that it was the role of the West to bring civilization to so-called savage people. This thesis was harshly opposed in Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad, who pointed out that Kipling's argument was a form of ethnocentrism and underlined the obscure and racist aspect of colonial exploitation. This was exemplified by Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-55), colonial exhibitions (some of them including human zoos), disdain for the local population, forced labor, and even, in some cases, genocides. However, the debate on the link between economic growth and democracy continues to this day (in particular relating to China).

Miscegenation

In the Portuguese colonies, miscegenation was commonplace, and even supported by the court as a way to boost low populations and guarantee a successful settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. Some of the children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, possibly based on lighter skin color, but not race. Some former Portuguese colonies have large mixed-race populations, for instance, Brazil, Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe. Miscegenation was still common in Africa until the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in the 1970s. To the present day, Angolan, Brazilian, and Cape Verdian societies are defined by the degree of melanin (lighter skin). In Cape Verde, the population is often differentiated by lighter and darker skin (known as pele de chocolate, or "chocolate skin"). Because of white supremacist institutions and the values they inculcated among the populace, many such miscegenated societies were and remain to this day heavily stratified by color, with darker-skinned citizens assigned the lowest economic and social status. This was demonstrated by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre's famous Casa-Grande & Senzala ("The Great House and the Slave Quarters" - 1933). Eduardo Galeano also showed how the profusion of Spanish words to design various types of skin color demonstrated a very precise racial hierarchy in Latin America. In the US, anti-miscegenation laws were passed and racial segregation enforced.

Genocides and relation to the Holocaust

Concerning the scramble for Africa, most historians tend to describe both positive aspects (infrastructures) and negative aspects (racism, exploitation, and, in some cases, even extermination - see for example the Herero genocide between 1904 and 1907). Several authors, such as Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist (1992 ), French historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison or, in a more moderate way, Hannah Arendt (1951) have linked the possibility and the history of the Holocaust to colonialism. In Exterminate All The Brutes (a sentence taken from Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness), Sven Lindqvist argued that the techniques and inhumanity necessary to the Holocaust were indeed commonly practiced during colonial rule, in which several ethnic groups were exterminated. However, this thesis, linking the Holocaust to colonial genocides, has been harshly disputed by others authors.

Imperialism and dependency theory

Dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank argue that colonialism leads to the net transfer of wealth from the colonized to the colonizer, and inhibits successful economic development. Critics such as Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth , the Négritude movement (gathering Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor) argue that colonialism does political, psychological, and moral damage to the colonized as well. Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy likened debating the pros and cons of colonialism to "debating the pros and cons of rape".

Critics of the alleged abuses of economic and political advantages accruing to developed nations via globalised capitalism have referred to them as neocolonialism, and see them as a continuation of the domination and exploitation of ex-colonial countries, merely utilizing different means. Neocolonialism is in this sense a new form of imperialism, which had first been theorized by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg thought that the necessary economic expansion of capitalism automatically led to territorial expansion, in order to find new resources and markets.

Decolonization

Main article: Decolonization

After World War I (1914-1918), national liberation movements became more common, although they did not reach their full power until the end of World War II (1939-1945). Due to Western education of colonized elites, the use of colonial troops during WWI; US president Woodrow Wilson's January 8, 1918 speech on the Fourteen Points — the fifth one stated that: "A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined." — and also the prestige of the 1917 October Revolution, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism spread itself to the colonized people, most notably with Gandhi's pacific struggle in the British Raj, which was founded on civil disobedience. The movement of decolonization, however, really started only after the Allied victory over the Axis (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire which had conquered a so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere ) and the foundation of the United Nations (UN) on June 26, 1945, when 50 nations signed the UN Charter. The 1941 Atlantic Charter, signed by US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, continued the wilsonian tradition of the 14 Points.

In 1952, demograph Alfred Sauvy coined the term "Third World" in reference to the French Third Estate. The expression distinguished nations that aligned themselves with neither the West nor with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. In the following decades, decolonization would strengthen this group which began to be represented at the United Nations. The Third World's first international move was the 1955 Bandung Conference, led by Nehru for India, Nasser for Egypt and Tito for Yugoslavia. The Conference, which gathered 29 countries representing over half the world's population, led to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.

Although the US had first opposed itself to colonial powers, in particular during the 1956 Suez crisis between Egypt, France, the UK and Israel, the Cold War quickly incited it to downplay its advocacy of colonized countries and of popular sovereignty. France thus had a free hand in the First Indochina War (1946-1954) and in the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), where torture techniques were heavily employed (the Algerian war would become a military model of counter-insurgency tactics, and has been studied ever since in military schools through-out the world). Furthermore, attempts such as Mossadegh's nationalisation of the petroil in Iran were blocked by the US, who supported a coup in 1953 order to impose the Shah (the covert operation was named Operation Ajax). The next year, when Guatemala's president Arbenz tried to nationalise the United Fruit company — one of the main firms who participated in so-called "corporate colonialism", an expression which tends to accredit the thesis that "state colonialism" would be different from "corporate colonialism", although clearly "state colonialism" has been spearheaded by "corporate colonialism" and that economic motives were the most important factors pushing European powers in the New Imperialist period, a fact which is accepted as well by liberal Hannah Arendt as by Marxist thinkers of "imperialism" — the CIA overthrew him and replaced him by a military junta in Operation PBSuccess.

In spite of these interferences in other states, decolonization itself was a seemingly unstoppable process. In 1960, after several wars of national liberation, the UN had reached 99 members states: the decolonization of Africa was almost complete. In 1980, the UN had 154 member states, and in 1990, after Namibia's independence, 159 states But what could be seen retrospectively as a gigantic and quiet wave representing the Zeitgeist ("Spirit of Times") overthrowing the domination of European colonialist powers was in fact the product of the struggle of the colonized people, whom many payed it with their lives.

In effect, although the anticolonialist struggle didn't lead in all cases to wars such as the Algerian War (1954-62), it was nevertheless bloody. Many anticolonialist leaders were assassinated in more or less obscure circumstances in the 1960s, whether by foreign powers or internal enemies, sometimes supported by foreign powers who more or less openly supported dictatorships (for example, France and its ties with the Françafrique). A non-exhaustive list of assassinated leaders would start, for example, by Barthélemy Boganda, leader of a nationalist Central African Republic movement, who died in a plane-crash eight days before the last elections of the colonial era. Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was assassinated on January 17, 1961. Burundi nationalist Louis Rwagasore was assassinated on October 13, 1961, while Pierre Ngendandumwe, Burundi's first Hutu prime minister, was also murdered on January 15, 1965. Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of Togo, was assassinated on January 13, 1963. Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of the Moroccan National Union of Popular Forces (UNPF) and of the Tricontinental Conference, which was supposed to prepare in 1966 in La Habana its first meeting gathering national liberation movements from all continents — related to the Non-Aligned Movement — was "disappeared" in Paris in 1965. Nigerian leader Ahmadu Bello was assassinated in January 1966. Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of FRELIMO and the father of Mozambiquan independence, was assassinated in 1969, allegedly by Aginter Press, the Portuguese branch of Gladio . Pan-Africanist Tom Mboya was killed on July 5, 1969. Abeid Karume, first president of Zanzibar, was assassinated in April 1972. Amílcar Cabral was murdered on January 20, 1973. Outel Bono, Chadian opponent of François Tombalbaye, was assassinated on August 26, 1973, making yet another example of the existence of the Françafrique, designing by this term post-independent neocolonial ties between France and its former colonies. Herbert Chitepo, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), was assassinated on March 18, 1975. Finally, Dulcie September, leader of the African National Congress (ANC), who was investigation on arms trade between France and South Africa, was murdered in Paris on March 29, 1988, a few years before the end of the apartheid regime. Many of these assassinations are still unsolved cases as of 2006, but foreign power interference is undeniable in many of these cases. To take only one case, the investigation concerning Mehdi Ben Barka is continuing to this day, and both France and the US have refused to declassify files they acknowledge having in their possession

The fall of the Soviet Union

The USSR were a main support of decolonization movements. While the Non-Aligned Movement, created in 1961 following the Bandung 1955 Conference, was supposedly neutral, the "Third World" being opposed to both the "First" and the "Second" Worlds, geopolitical concerns, as well as the refusal of the US to support decolonization movements against its NATO European allies, led the national liberation movements to look increasingly toward the East. However, China's appearance on the world scene, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, created a rupture between the Soviet Union and independentists movements. Globally, the non-aligned movement, led by Nehru (India), Tito (Yugoslavia) and Nasser (Egypt) tried to create a block of nations powerful enough to be dependent on neither the US nor the Soviet Union, but finally tilted towards the URSS, while smaller liberation movements, both by strategic necessity and ideological choice, were supported either by Moscow or by Peking. Fidel Castro's Cuba, who was at first neutral before turning itself towards Moscow, also sponsored liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique. Few liberation movements were totally independent from foreign aid. However, after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, new separatist tensions were observed in the former Soviet Union, which some didn't hesitate to call an "Empire". One war in particular has been raging since, and may be doubtlessly included in anti-colonialist movements: the First and the Second Chechen Wars. On April 21, 1996, Dzhokhar Dudaev, the first separatist president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, was assassinated. On March 8, 2005, moderate separatist Aslan Maskhadov, who had also been president of the Chechen Republic, was also murdered by the FSB. The last moderate Chechen separatist was thus eliminated, leaving the way to Islamists: Sheikh Abdul Halim replaced Aslan Maskhadov, a move endorsed by Shamil Basayev, thus allowing Moscow to claim its imperialist war was in fact wholly part of the George W. Bush administration's "War on Terror" triggered in 2001.

Neocolonialism

Main article: Neocolonialism

Despite the decolonization in the 1960s-70s, former colonies still are today for the most part under strong Western influence (although new imperialism have appeared on stage, namely China in Africa). Critics of this continued Occidental influence talk of neocolonialism. The exception to this rule being in particular the East Asian Tigers (mainly Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan), and the emerging Indian and Chinese powers. However, even in this case colonialism has left scars, apparent in India with the 1984 Bhopal disaster, in which a pesticide plant released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC), injuring between 150,000 to 600,000 people, at least 15,000 of whom later died. The plant was controlled by the US firm Union Carbide, and didn't benefit from the same protections as in the US. On the other hand, because of the Cold War, which led Moscow and Peking to support anti-imperialist movements, the US (as well as other NATO countries) interfered in various countries, for example by issuing embargo against Cuba after the 1959 Cuban Revolution &mdash which started on February 7, 1962 — and supporting various covert operations (the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, The Cuban Project, etc.) The US, as well as France for that matter, preferred supporting dictatorships in Third World countries rather than having democracies which always presented the risk of having the people choose being supported by the Second World rather than the so-called "Free World". Thus, in South America, the US began by supporting Pinochet's September 11, 1973 coup against democratically elected socialist leader Salvador Allende, and continued by giving at least tacit support to the "dirty war" &mdash including Operation Condor, in which 50,000 persons were murdered and 30,000 "disappeared" (aka "desaparecidos"). On March 6, 2001, the New York Times revealed a 1978 cable which proved that chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America" . In Indonesia, it supported Suharto's New Order dictatorship, etc. This interference, in particular in South and Central American countries, recalled the 19th century Monroe doctrine and the Big stick diplomacy codified by US president Theodore Roosevelt. France wasn't inactive either: it supported dictatorships in the former colonies in Africa, leading to the expression Françafrique, coined by François-Xavier Verschave, a member of the anti-colonialist Survie NGO anti-neocolonialist, which criticized the way development aid was given to post-colonial countries, claiming it only supported neo-colonialism, interior corruption and arms-trade.

Post-colonialism

Main article: Post-colonialism

Post-colonialism (also known as post-colonial theory) refers to a set of theories in philosophy and literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. As a literary theory or critical approach it deals with literature produced in countries that were once, or are now, colonies of other countries. It may also deal with literature written in or by citizens of colonizing countries that takes colonies or their peoples as its subject matter. Postcolonial theory became part of the critical toolbox in the 1970s, and many practitioners take Edward Said's book Orientalism (1978) to be the theory's founding work.

See also

• Anticolonialism
• American Empire
  • American exceptionalism
  • History of United States continental expansion
  • History of United States overseas expansion
  • British Empire and Commonwealth Museum
• Chartered companies
• Colonial
• Colonial cinema
• List of Colonial Territories by country
• Colonial Exhibitions
• Colonization
  • • Arab colonization of North Africa
    • Bantu colonization of Eastern and Southern Africa
  • Colonization of Europe
    • Roman colonization of Europe
    • Arab colonization of Spain
    • Soviet colonization of eastern Poland and southern Finland
    • Osmanic colonization of the Balkans
    • Plantations of Ireland - British colonisation of Ireland
    • German colonization of Eastern Europe
  • European colonization of the Americas
    • British colonization of the Americas
    • Danish colonization of the Americas
    • Dutch colonization of the Americas
    • New Netherland
    • French colonization of the Americas
      • New France
    • Portuguese colonization of the Americas
    • Russian colonization of the Americas
    • Spanish colonization of the Americas
      • Spanish Conquest of Yucatan
      • Conquistador
      • Spanish missions in California
      • New Spain
    • Swedish colonization of the Americas
• Corporate colonialism
• Darién scheme
  • Dutch colonization of the Americas
  • Lieutenant governor
  • Viceroy of India
  • Crown colony
  • Dominion
  • Imperial Conferences
  • Balfour Declaration 1926
  • Statute of Westminster 1931
  • Commonwealth of Nations
    • Commonwealth Realm
    • Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
    • Commonwealth Games
• Global Empire
• Independence
  • Cultural imperialism
  • Culture of capitalism
  • Media Imperialism
  • Imperialism in Asia
• Indonesian colonization of East Timor
• List of extinct countries, empires, etc.
• Mercantilism
  • New Netherland
  • Portugal in the period of discoveries
  • Portuguese colonization of the Americas
• Protectorate
• Israeli occupied territories Israeli settlement/colonies
• Biopiracy / Bioprospecting

Bibliography

• Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) (second chapter on Imperialism examines ties between colonialism and totalitarianism)

External links

• Liberal opposition to colonialism, imperialism and empire (pdf) - by professor Daniel Klein