In Defense of Empire
O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.
In Defense of Empire Imperialism and the Anti-Imperialist Mind By Lewis Feuer Prometheus. 265 pp. $22.95. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history, Rutgers; author, "A Better World:...
...But he was also a man who made a cult of war and violence, who boasted to a friend that he had used his revolver to kill a Spaniard in Cuba "like a rabbit...
...He demolishes the critics of progressive imperialism with both his logic and the hard evidence he presents...
...The neo-Marxist contention is not only inconsistent with its own classical precursor...
...He notes, for example, that whereas imperialism used to be blamed by Marxian theorists for retarding colonial population growth, it is now held responsible for overpopulation in former colonies...
...Citing Great Britain as a paradigmatic practitioner of the species of imperialism he wishes to justify, Feuer underscores how its former colonies benefited from the legacy of institutions left in the wake of the British Empire...
...As the foregoing suggests, one can take issue with Feuer on this or that point...
...Feuer might have saved it for a future volume that would call upon the United States to fight the Cold War more aggressively...
...The successes of imperialism (and Feuer adduces many besides India) are taken to demonstrate that domination by a more advanced nation was a necessary, possibly critical, stage in the development of many territories...
...it defies experience to boot...
...Today, the problem in many Third World countries is not the presence of foreign capital but its absence...
...A philosopher by training, Lewis Feuer is also a keen student of sociology, history and psychology...
...In any event, the chapter in which it is unveiled seems tacked on, ill-fitting...
...What he has given us in Imperialism and the Anti-Imperialist Mind is a vigorous, intelligent defense of progressive imperialism as a historical phenomenon...
...History clearly shows that capitalists did not confine their investment in underdeveloped territories to mines and plantations...
...His own examination of personality and character stands the received opinion on its head: Anti-imperialists are tainted by considerable bigotry and shabby motivation, he finds, while his progressive imperialists emerge relatively clean on these counts...
...That is quite enough for one book...
...Where the author is not so persuasive is in the final chapter, a sort of postscript that insists the United States has a present duty to counteract Soviet "regressive" imperialism by assembling its own imperial domain...
...To be sure, the American empire Feuer envisages would be a "participatory" one—that is, it would extend full rights of citizenship to all peoples within its ambit...
...Indeed, throughout the book historical excursions add depth and color to Feuer's arguments...
...author, "A Better World: The Great Schism—Stalinism and the American Intellectuals" The author of this book needs no introduction here—he has been a distinguished contributor to The New Leader for almost 30 years...
...Feuer cannot explain this very well, nor can he get around it, but to his credit he does not try to bend the facts...
...yet according to classical Marxism, imperialism is driven by the possibility of extracting surplus value from poorly paid colonial workers in all varieties of enterpriseincluding manufacturing: Thus it ought to have promoted, not held back, the industrialization of colonial territories...
...Perhaps the most sweeping critique of imperialism has been framed by disciples of Karl Marx...
...in fact, as Feuer observes, much of the capital for the railroads and mills so critical to the United States during its own developing period came from the nations of Europe...
...Hyde or Neanderthal man within us...
...Although he may be guilty of overkill—the notion does not really merit so much attention—the reader is treated to a wealth of information about some fascinating figures...
...was not capable of defending it— a judgment borne out in 1942...
...Feuer is always at his best when exposing the fallacies and contradictions of Marxist thought, and this volume is no exception...
...Intheprocess, he urges Americans not to feel guilty when accused of being imperialists—because, to his regret, we are not...
...And where it is lacking, obstructive behavior on the part of post-colonial governments is more likely to blame than the allegedly exploitative designs of capitalists...
...The bulk of the text is devoted to a history and analysis of what he calls "progressive imperialism...
...As a young district officer in Ceylon, Woolf was a willing part of the imperial edifice and wrote positively of his fellow officers as a whole...
...To discredit this view, Feuer combs the annals of imperialism and turns up numerous empire builders who do not fit the personality profile it posits...
...Having fatally impugned the various radical economic critiques of imperialism, Feuer moves on to the quasi-psychological one that diagnoses it as "an elaborate projection of an anxiety arising from the repression of the Negro savagewithin ourselves, away of hiding from the Mr...
...The present book, though briefer, is similarly deep in erudition, impressive in breadth and daring in argument...
...Roosevelt, moreover, was by no means an unreserved exponent of imperialism: He more than anyone else was responsible for the acquisition of the Philippines, but he later decided that keeping it was a mistake because the U.S...
...Nonetheless, overall his book moves convincingly along...
...On the other side of the equation, some of the author's noble empire builders are more complex individuals than he suggests...
...As one might guess from his choice of label, the thrust of Feuer's argument is against the current: Imperialism, he avers, has in its better manifestations been a genuine boon to the political and economic advancement of the non-Western world...
...Progressive imperialism's failure to do precisely this, he maintains, led to the displacement of empire loyalty by nationalistic sentiments and the consequent destruction of the old colonial system...
...Feuer's moral argument could have been strengthened somewhat by a lengthier consideration of American crusaders against imperialism, many of whom were racists and did not want to see Old Glory flying over any more brown bodies...
...Take a special favorite of his, Theodore Roosevelt...
...After returning to England and marrying Virginia Stephen, however, he became an exceptionally shrewd and persistent anti-imperialist...
...The author's proposal, even if desirable (and t hat is a very big " if'), is hardly likely to be actcd upon anytime soonthere is no demand for an American empire and no plan for creating one...
...For instance, there would certainly be no Indian democracy today had it not been for the Raj...
...Often he draws upon several of these disciplines in combination, as in his best known work, The Con flict of Generations (1969...
...The toughest man for him to handle is Leonard Woolf...
...more likely there would be no India at all, merely a host of quarreling states...
...He was at once America's foremost progressive imperialist, a champion of cultivation and civilized values, and a deserving recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (for arbitrating an end to the Russo-Japanese War...
...Again, the neo-Marxist "dependency" theory declares that Third World nations remain underdeveloped because the West finds it profitable to keep them in a primitive economic condition...
...Its failures, on the other hand, Feuer sees as evidence that the colonial phase in some cases did not last long enough—witness sub-Saharan Africa, where most peoples were materially more prosperous and personally more secure as colonials than they have been since as independents...
Vol. 69 • September 1986 • No. 13
