Imperialism in Perspective
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
Where the Belgians failed, the British have proved the creative values of colonialism IMPERIALISM IN PERSPECTIVE By Reinhold Niebuhr THE TRAGIC HISTORY of the Congo Republic, set free before it...
...But even these well-prepared new nations...
...Every imperial power must therefore prepare its colonies for self-government as quickly as possible, particularly in the 20th century and particularly in an Africa aroused by the twin political passions of pan-Africanism and nationalism...
...The new nation promptly fell apart...
...In Nigeria, the colonial masterpiece of the late Lord Luggard...
...The Belgians, having failed in the task of cultural and political tutelage, thus launched a nation on the perilous path of self-government and confronted the world with a politically premature birth...
...All relations of strength to weakness are partly exploitative: even the relation of parents to their children, though informed by love, may become exploitative...
...In Ghana the redoubtable Kwame Nkrumah, while paying lip service to the constitutional forms and parliamentary urbanities of his British tutors, has created a one-party state, probably under the force of necessity, for only the urban population of the former Gold Coast is thoroughly imbued with patriotism...
...Would they be asked to give an inordinate amount of their wealth to the poorer regions...
...Resentment against the white man's arrogance motivated this nationalism more than resentment against economic exploitation...
...national unity against regional and tribal loyalties...
...But the Congolese also profited from the mines, which they could not have worked by themselves...
...One of the most disturbing features of Khrushchev's irresponsible tirades at the United Nations was that in his resentment against this Russian set-back in the Congo, he proved willing to wreck the United Nations itself...
...is not purely exploitative...
...Of course, the copper interests in Belgium profited from the colony...
...In more recent history the missionary motive has expressed itself in the impulse to bestow both the benefits of democratic political forms, and competent management of a technical and industrial economy (which the new-nations desire almost as much as political freedom...
...The astute Dag Hammarskj old used all the powers of the United Nations to arrest the chaos in the Congo and to prevent Lumumba from using Russian weapons to establish his authority, bereft as it was of every aspect of implicit consent and having only a shred of constitutional legitimacy...
...He said he would not want to "remove a single jewel from His Majesty's crown...
...The advanced nations can help them solve their problems, though the days of explicit tutelage are over, but they really have their own destiny in their own hands...
...They gave them technical education for manning their rich copper mines and other tasks of modern industry, but they did not educate doctors, nurses or any administrative personnel necessary to man the political machine...
...The economic motive, which I mention last not because it must be regarded the least powerful motive, but because it is not as powerful as the anti-imperialists believed...
...The Belgians prided themselves on giving the Congolese the highest living standards in Africa...
...But the fires of nationalism, fanning over Africa, disturbed the tempo of this timetable...
...But if one compares the Congo with Ghana and Nigeria, the lesson is that good imperialism represents tutelage in the arts of self-government...
...The Congolese colony was governed by the trinity of the copper interests, the colonial office and the church...
...It is easy to criticize the Belgians for their precipitate flight from the colony once political passions had been aroused...
...Traditions, habits of loyalty and of justice answer these anxious questions rather than hurriedly written constitutions...
...He was the head of a small party, which believed—wisely, as it turned out—in a federation of the various regions, but he was defeated by the Premier, the ineffable Patrice Lumumba, who was against federation and in favor of a strong central government...
...Perhaps it is Utopian to expect any-thing else of a Communist boss, when events have proved that the issue of "imperialism" against the Western nations is the most popular of Communist gambits...
...The Belgian Parliament took over direction of the African colony from the King as a result of the reactions in the democratic world...
...Their resentment against the colonial powers is prompted not so much by economic exploitation, as the Communists believe, but by the racial arrogance characteristic of the imperial masters...
...They ran the whole colony with a Belgian bureaucracy, and tried to settle the race problem by not allowing Belgians to gain property in the Congo...
...The Catholic church was the most liberal of these three governing bodies...
...Tribalism, nationalism and pan-Africanism will weave their complex patterns of history on the African continent for centuries to come...
...Ghana and Nigeria, will have problems of preserving stability and justice and...
...But the Belgians miscalculated in regarding the Congolese as children who, if they ate well, would not desire independence for decades to come...
...Take the Congo tragedy...
...Their history is not likely to be less dramatic, confused and complex than was the history of the European nations from the 16th to the 19th centuries...
...Meanwhile the greatest midwife of new nations, Great Britain, having given Ghana its independence three years ago...
...Was there any reason why they could not claim to be a nation for themselves...
...Luckily, the Conservative party was defeated by the Labor party just soon enough to grant India its independence...
...above all...
...These two former African colonies prove that the missionary motive, or at least the creative function, of imperialism is not illusory...
...They also asked the proper questions about "self-determination...
...They would have to be trained first as technicians and then finally as mature, politically competent members of a self-governing nation...
...The political motive, the desire for "power and glory...
...Where the Belgians failed, the British have proved the creative values of colonialism IMPERIALISM IN PERSPECTIVE By Reinhold Niebuhr THE TRAGIC HISTORY of the Congo Republic, set free before it was ripe for self-government, is a reminder to both the free and the Communist world that modern imperialism, or in fact imperialism as we have known it throughout human history...
...The chaos which followed withdrawal of Belgian power proves how" much an imperial frame of order is necessary in a culture which has political loyalties no higher than the tribal level and is incapable of furnishing its own cement of political cohesion...
...The two other regions are party Christian and partly cultural and religiously primitive...
...the three regional Governments are not thoroughly cemented...
...It has its exploitative features...
...But imperialism usually has three motives: • The missionary motive, the desire to confer the benefits of civilization on a backward culture...
...Both Ghana and Nigeria have a higher culture and competence than Liberia, that old independent African nation, in which some ex-slaves from America have preserved an uncreative oligarchy under constitutional forms for over a century without much progress...
...The new "constitution" did not work, for constitutions are not self-supporting...
...Winston Churchill's type of imperialism was dominated by the political motive...
...These three imperial motives are variously mixed in all imperial ventures...
...Above all, the Belgians gave the Congolese no practical experience in self-government...
...The Congo had only a handful of university graduates on the day of independence compared with the thousands in Nigeria...
...That has always been the relation of a technically advanced nation to a backward people...
...The northern region is both backward and socially integrated under its Islamic Emirs...
...The Congo was once the private domain of the King of Belgium and the older ones of us will remember the shocked reactions of the world to Congo atrocities...
...He was the constitutional Premier but there was no habit of loyalty to any such office...
...It had an uneasy conscience about imperialism, and therefore printed nationalist pamphlets on its presses, and it also realized that it would take time to prepare these primitive people for self-government...
...He is certainly not prepared to deal with the colonial problem as the common burden and responsibility of the great nations...
...Anti-imperialists regard it as a telling revelation of exploitation...
...All the new nations desire national independence with an almost universal yearning...
...has now launched the potentially greatest nation of Africa...
...warning the Belgians about their miscalculations...
...Tribal and regional conflicts spread chaos and bloodshed in the once peaceful region...
...What was the "authority" of the new President Joseph Kasa-vubu...
...Their mistake was not so much in their flight—for you cannot mine copper any more than coal with bayonets—but in the arrogance which prompted their timetable for independence...
...Nigeria, on the sea of national liberty...
...It also reveals that all foreign domination, however necessary, is grievous to the dominated...
...Riots broke out...
...Churchill, though the greatest statesman of our age, had a romantic preoccupation with the glory of empire and was reluctant to give independence to India...
...But the strong central government could not command the loyalh of either the Army or the provinces—particularly copper-rich Katanga Province—which preferred to have order with the help of the Belgians rather than be immersed in the chaos of an incompetent political leadership...
Vol. 43 • November 1960 • No. 44
