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Colonialism,
Independence,
and the Construction
of Nation-States
Forrest D. Colburn
Colonialism, Independence, and the Construction
of Nation-States
“Why have some poor countries remained “underdeveloped,” or even “failed,”

while others have become richer and stronger? In the successful group, have
a few—notably China—enhanced methods long used by European imperialists
to extract national resources from weaker countries? Has solidarity among poor
countries ended? What does the future hold for poor countries? For compelling
answers to these questions, read Colburn’s Colonialism, Independence, and the
Construction of Nation-States.”
—Lynn T. White III, Professor, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA
“Colburn’s Colonialism, Independence, and the Construction of Nation-States is

both an enlightening and enjoyable read. It is wide-ranging yet enlivened by
telling examples.”
—Michael Doyle, Professor, Columbia University, New York, USA
“Forrest Colburn’s Colonialism, Independence, and the Construction of Nation-

States is in part, and most significantly, a welcome attempt to revisit the history of
basic ideas from the past, that should not have been shelved. Development, Third
World, colonialism, North-South, are notions that surfaced in the sixties and
seventies, and faded under the influence of excessive enthusiasm for “emerging
markets” in the new century. Colburn explains splendidly why the history of these
notions, and their content, is more relevant than ever.”
—Jorge Castañeda, Former Foreign Minister of Mexico, and Professor, New York
University, New York, USA
Forrest D. Colburn
Colonialism,
Independence,
and the Construction
of Nation-States
Forrest D. Colburn
City University of New York (CUNY)
New York, NY, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-54715-8 ISBN 978-3-030-54716-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54716-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Contents
Introduction 1
A Tumultuous Transition 11
European Imperialism and the Remaking of the World 25
Emancipation and the Quest for “Development” 39
Good-Bye to the “Third World” 55
Asia Looms Over Latin America, Africa, and the Middle

East 73
Captive to Commodities 85
Nicaragua as a Sobering Illustration 97
Seeking a New Compass 115
Plates 129
Bibliography 147
v
List of Plates
Fig. 1 Delagoa Bay, Mozambique. Photographer unknown. Circa

1880s. Delagoa Bay was an outlet for ivory and slaves,
and as a way station for Indian Ocean trade. Ownership
was contested by the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and
Boers, until by arbitration it was awarded to Portugal.
Mozambique did not become free from Portuguese
colonialism until 1975 130
Fig. 2 The harbor of Hong Kong. Photographer unknown.
Circa 1870s. Throckmorton Fine Art, New York. Hong
Kong became a colony of the British Empire in 1842. A
negotiated settlement led Hong Kong being returned to
China in 1997 131
Fig. 3 The harbor of Ho Chi Minh City, also known by its
former name of Saigon. Paul Gastaldy. Circa 1930s. The
French began trading in Vietnam in 1615. In 1862 the
southern third of Vietnam became the French colony of
Cochinchina. By 1884, the entire country had come under
French rule. The French did not leave Vietnam until being
militarily ousted in 1954 132
Fig. 4 A Chinese peasant in a fish pond. Photographer unknown.
Circa 1920s. In the 1920s, over 95% of Chinese lived in
rural areas. Beginning in 2012, China had more urban
dwellers than rural residents. A wide gap of per capita
income remains between rural residents and their more
prosperous urban brethren 133
vii
viii LIST OF PLATES
Fig. 5 Drying coffee beans in Mexico. C. A. Lesher. 1925.

Coffee is native to Ethiopia. Coffee cultivation was spread
throughout the world, from Indonesia to Brazil, by
Europeans. The cultivation of coffee in Mexico began at
the end of the eighteenth century 134
Fig. 6 Installations of the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation, La
Oroya, Peru. Photographer unknown. 1936. The mine at
Cerro de Pasco, Peru once funneled silver to the Spanish
Crown. In 1903, the world’s highest railroad completed
its 200-mile cut into the Andes. It brought Americans of
the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, which bought and ran
the mine. Copper dominated, but silver was still found.
Investors included J. P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, and
members of the Vanderbilt family. In the 1950s, copper
gave way to zinc and lead, with most now shipped to
China. Peru derives one-sixth of its gross domestic product
(GDP) from minerals 135
Fig. 7 Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel. Margaret
Bourke-White. 1946. Throckmorton Fine Art, New York 136
Fig. 8 Mao Zedong. Hou Bo. Circa 1960. Throckmorton Fine
Art, New York 137
Fig. 9 Sukarno. Photographer unknown. Circa 1960s. Sukarno
was the leader of Indonesia’s struggle for independence
from the Dutch, and he served as Indonesia’s first president.
The Dutch did not recognize Indonesia’s independence
until 1949 138
Fig. 10 Vietnamese independence fighters. Photographer unknown.
Circa 1950s. There was almost continuous fighting in
Vietnam from the Japanese invasion of the country in 1940
to the unification of the country in 1975 139
Fig. 11 Algerian independence fighters. Photographer unknown.
Circa 1960. The French began their invasion of Algeria in
1830, but the country was not completely conquered until
1875. A combination of violence and disease caused the
indigenous population to decline by one third during this
45-year period. The Algerian struggle for independence
stretched from 1954 to 1962 140
Fig. 12 The Cuban revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos receiving
weapons after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on
January 1, 1959. Photographer unknown. 1959 141
LIST OF PLATES ix
Fig. 13 Fallen statue of the hero of Ghana’s independence, Kwame

Nkrumah. Photographer unknown. 1967. Ghana became
independent in 1957, with Nkrumah being the first
head-of-state. He was deposed in a coup d’état in 1967 142
Fig. 14 An Ethiopian at a celebration. Photographer unknown.
Circa 1960s. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa not
to have been colonized by Europeans (though it was
invaded and briefly occupied by the Italians). In 1974, the
Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in a coup d’état, and
the military regime that took power attempted a radical
transformation of the country, one of the poorest in the
world. Guiding principles of the Ethiopian Revolution
came from Marxism-Leninism 143
Fig. 15 Scene from a demonstration in Angola. Photographer
unknown. Circa 1970. Angola was long a Portuguese
colony, dating back to the sixteenth century with the
establishment of coastal settlements and trading posts. After
a protracted struggle, independence was achieved in 1975,
but the country was convulsed by a civil war that lasted
until 2002 144
Fig. 16 Nicaraguan peasant at the Hacienda la Reforma, Carazo,
Nicaragua. Celeste González. 1984. The era of the
“Third World” can be said to have begun with India’s
independence in 1947 and the Chinese Revolution of
1949, and to have ended with the Iranian Revolution and
the Nicaraguan Revolution, both taking place in 1979 145
Introduction
Abstract This extended essay is a meditation on the evolution of the

status of the many poorer countries of the world and, just as importantly,
on how they are best understood as a collective entity. What gives the
countries of the world with low per capita incomes a commonality is not
just a similar material status, but above all a shared history: these many
countries were assaulted, overrun, and sometimes even formed by Euro-
pean colonialism, which began in the fifteenth century and extended until
World War II. All corners of the world were dragged into a global system
of production and distribution but with a peripheral status. Colonies
were not just poorer—a relative term—in comparison with the European
nation-states, but they were subordinate, too.
Keywords poor countries · independence · development · poverty ·

nation-building · state-building
This extended essay is a meditation on the evolution of the status of the

many poorer countries of the world and, just as importantly, on how they
are best understood as a collective entity. What gives the countries of the
world with low per capita incomes a commonality is not just a similar
material status, but above all a shared history: these many countries were
assaulted, overrun, and sometimes even formed by European colonialism,
© The Author(s) 2021 1

F. D. Colburn, Colonialism, Independence,
and the Construction of Nation-States,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54716-5_1
2 F. D. COLBURN
which began in the fifteenth century and extended until World War II. All
corners of the world were dragged into a global system of production and
distribution but with a peripheral status. Colonies were not just poorer—
a relative term—in comparison with the European nation-states, but they
were subordinate, too.
Most European rule in the Americas ended in the late latter eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, the wave of accessions
to legal independence in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa between the
end of World War II, 1945, and 1965 was broader, more extensive, and
so of extraordinary importance. Membership in the United Nations more
than doubled in these two decades. The context of this establishment of
independence was the “Cold War”: a frosty, threatening confrontation
between two powerful blocs, one led by the United States, committed to
the institutions of democracy and capitalism, with the second bloc led by
the Soviet Union, devoted to the socialist organization of economies and
governance. Most newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, and
peers in the Middle East, strove to distance and differentiate themselves
from these two blocs, and so becoming known as the “Third World.” In
time, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean joined, loosely,
the fold.
The former colonies of Europe perceived themselves in solidarity with
one another, of having a political and economic kinship, and a shared
mission. Rising aspirations were both domestic and international. The
former colonies were inevitably poor, sometimes desperately so, and often
“backward,” steeped in traditions perceived as being inimical to processes
necessary for the generation of wealth, such as, prominently, industrializa-
tion. Leaders felt their populations needed to be mobilized and educated,
and that states built. A key concept, used across geographical regions
and cultures, was “development.” The rush was to move from being
“underdeveloped” to “developed”: to achieve economic parity, which
seemingly was equated with political—and even cultural and moral—
parity with the wealthier countries of the world. There was an intoxicating
confidence and determination—a sense that everything was possible,
above all with the right political convictions and organization.
In the international arena, there were widespread desires among the
leaders of the newly independent states to foment solidarity among the
poorer countries and to redirect international debates—and resources—
from the “Cold War” to a discussion of what came to be called
“North-South.” (Wealthier countries were concentrated in the Northern
INTRODUCTION 3
Hemisphere; poorer countries were concentrated in the Southern Hemi-

sphere.)
Intellectuals and policy-makers in the wealthier countries joined the
chorus, helping, ironically perhaps, to solidify—or even coin—terms,
concepts, and even public policies. Enormous amounts of resources, intel-
lectual as well as material, were vested in the bid to promote the devel-
opment of the poorer countries of the world. At times, the motivation
was strategic, but in other instances there was an academic engagement or
even genuine empathy. Among educated elites, throughout the world, the
status of the poorer countries was frequently a charged, even emotional,
political issue.
A half-century later, the world looks different. The “Third World”
is a term still used, but without evoking pride, solidarity, or militancy.
Interest, intellectual and otherwise, in spurring development, of ending
poverty and backwardness, has faded. Concerted efforts to establish a
“new international order” have withered. Concerns are elsewhere. There
is today a different worldview, a distinct mentalité. This change is preva-
lent everywhere, from Washington to Havana to Brasília to Paris to Accra
to Cairo to New Delhi to Beijing to Manila.
The poorer countries of the world have made uneven progress. Many
countries in Asia, above all China, have made striking gains, with strong
states, coherent national identities, advances in social welfare, clusters of
industrial strength, and a strong presence in international trade. Still,
some states in Asia, ranging from Afghanistan to Bangladesh to Laos,
have not fared well. In most of Latin America, there has also been envi-
able progress, although in fits-and-starts. However, the region remains
overly dependent on the export of raw materials, with many destined
now for Asia. In Africa, home to fifty-four sovereign states, progress has
been uneven and largely disappointing. Some countries, ranging from
Ghana to Botswana to Kenya, are faring reasonable well, but other coun-
tries on the continent are so weak, unstable, and poor that they are
judged “failed states.” Countries in this group include Sierra Leone, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and Somalia. Even
relatively successful African countries, though, have not been able to
escape dependence on the export of raw materials; broad-based economic
development has been elusive. Many countries of the Middle East have
been overwhelmed by wars and sectarian conflict. The region stays afloat
chiefly by drawing on its large petroleum reserves, a considerable share
of which is now destined for export to Asia. Thus, there has been a
4 F. D. COLBURN
considerable diversity of outcomes among the poorer countries of the

world in what was once a shared bid to engage in nation and state
construction, and to promote economic development. There was always
considerable heterogeneity among the poorer countries of the world, but
the heterogeneity has become more pronounced and obvious in the last
half-century. Relationships among the poorer countries, particularly with
China, have become complicated.
The disparate fortunes of the poorer countries of the world in their
efforts to pull themselves up to some kind of parity with the wealthier
countries have undercut solidarity and also even an interest in studying
and directing development as a shared enterprise. The poorer countries
of the world, like their wealthier counterparts, are today atomistic. There
has been a surprising resurgence in nationalism. Moreover, faith has with-
ered in the possibility of stimulating development with the right ideas and
policies. There are doubts—or at least confusion—about how to steer the
direction of a poor country. There is seemingly a widespread sense of a
pre-ordained fate: that some countries will progress, while others stagnate,
and still others will implode. If in the poorer countries of the world the
dominant mentalité was previously a benign socialism, today it is fatalism
or even nihilism. The poorer countries of the world, certainly at least
among those which have been less successful, have lost their confidence
in how to progress, and even whether they can progress. Their compass
is shattered. And they are alone.
In the richer countries of the world, interest in the poorer countries
of the world and in their welfare has largely evaporated, and so has
any sense of responsibility or obligation to those less fortunate. Moral
clarity is missing. Instead, there is a laissez-faire attitude—or even a
sense of competition for markets (which has links to employment). Iron-
ically, perhaps, compassion for the poor of the world has weakened with
increased trade, international tourism, and migration. The poor of the
world are no longer so distant—and that has generated unease in the
more prosperous countries of the world.
Concomitantly, intellectuals—in both the richer and poorer coun-
tries—have largely abandoned the study of development. Its place as
a subject has been largely subsumed by the study of “politics” (which
nonetheless invokes little passion). Previous efforts at studying devel-
opment—as a “social science” project—are now looked at as “quaint,”
“misguided,” hopelessly naïve, or even something akin to nineteenth-
century missionary work. There continues to be useful work done on
INTRODUCTION 5
specific problems of poverty, including notably on health care and agricul-

tural productivity, but sweeping inquiries into nation- and state-building,
and of economic development, have all but disappeared. All the heady
books, studies, and reports earlier written with such earnestness about
development are ignored, even seen by some as embarrassing.
This intellectual morass has been more damming because the poorer
countries of the world have largely failed in building durable political
institutions to mobilize and channel public participation in nation- and
state-building. Labor unions, civic organizations, and political parties,
often so important in the struggle for independence from colonialism,
have come and gone. Absent nearly everywhere has been a capacity for
rejuvenation. In many of the poorer countries of the world, the initial
period of independence was accompanied by both charismatic, talented,
and morally responsible leadership and widespread political mobiliza-
tion. Sometimes inspiring leaders held on to power and slowly became
self-important and self-indulgent. More frequently, second- and third-
generation leaders have neither been as inspiring nor as responsible.
Organizations offering a voice to the public have been allowed to ossify or
have deliberately been dismantled. The poorer countries of the world like-
wise proved unable to construct enduring international institutions of any
import. The lack of leadership and institutions (other than those of state
bureaucracies performing specific tasks) has made the ideological void of
the era even more pernicious.
There clearly is a dialectical relationship between passionate convic-
tions and dreams, and the building and nurturing of public organizations,
including prominently political parties. In the absence of faith, there is
often only petty self-interest. The lack of an ideological compass in the
poorer countries of the world goes hand-and-hand with the withering of
organizations to channel public mobilization. Likewise, the absence of an
inspiring ideological construct retards—or derails—noble leadership.
Without an inspiring set of aspirations to provide orientation, the
governments of the poorer countries of the world are disparate. Some
countries have well-meaning leaders, who strive to do the best they can on
many fronts, from promoting economic growth to ameliorating poverty.
Others, though, foment nationalism or even ethnic chauvinism to mask
shortcomings in solving trenchant problems. Others resort to populism,
and a few are just naked opportunists, monopolizing political power to
further their own narrow interests. Members of the polity, who should
be “citizens” (in the nineteenth-century definition of the term), are left
6 F. D. COLBURN
to fend for themselves as best they can; there is today—throughout large

swarths of the world—little faith in states solving what are, in fact, collec-
tive problems of the nation. Instead, there is commonly a resort to
individual solutions—prominently migration and immersion in religion.
Just as this is an era of atomized states, so it is an era where the indi-
vidual alone is responsible for solving his or her problems, even if it entails
abandoning one’s nation-state.
In sum, the world has evolved rapidly in the last fifty years. There are
still rich countries and poor countries, but, again, the poorer countries of
the world are more heterogeneous, more atomized, less sure of how to
progress, less able to mobilize and channel resources, and less likely to
receive support, intellectual or material, from the wealthier countries of
the world (who are preoccupied with their own problems). As the director
of an international organization funding programs to help the less fortu-
nate quipped, “If you are a poor country today, you may be in the news,
but no one is coming to help you.” Imperialism has largely (though not
completely) faded, but still the world seems more competitive, meaner
than anticipated at the dawn of the independence era, and, furthermore,
the poorer countries of the world have less inspiration and direction. It is
an era of circumspect political imagination. The redemptive possibilities
of politics are now seen as limited.
The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the infectious
disease COVID-19, put in stark relief that while the many countries
of the world are more than ever intimately linked economically, they
remain independent political units. The novel coronavirus emerged in
China in late 2019. In March 2020, the World Health Organization
(WHO) declared it to be a pandemic. It was alarming how quickly, and
destructively, it spread throughout the world. Yet the desperate responses
to subdue the novel coronavirus were at the national level, with every
country doing the best it could on its own. Foreign assistance from
wealthy countries to the poorer countries of the world was negligible,
practically non-existent. The many poor countries of the world were
left to fend for themselves, not even being able to count on the coop-
eration of neighboring, similarly impoverished, countries. Cooperation,
even nominal solidarity, was elusive. There was a common problem in
the world, but not a common or shared solution. This sad state-of-
affairs should stimulate discussion about the role and responsibilities of
nation-states in the international arena. Such discussions cannot evade
INTRODUCTION 7
the schism between wealthy and poor countries—and the myriad of

challenges confronting economically less prosperous nation-states.
It is a formidable, and risky, challenge to unsettle long-held assump-
tions about the poorer countries of the world and to advance propositions
about their evolution. The safest tack is to eschew identifying patterns
and just to assert that all of the countries of the world are heterogeneous.
There is a saying in Spanish: “Cada cabeza es un mundo” (Every person
is a world). Countries are enigmatic; no two countries are alike, just as
no two individuals are the same. That approach, though, is facile and
not useful. With all of the risks acknowledged, I proceed in this study to
delineate consequential ways in which the poorer countries—as a loose
collective category—have evolved over the past half-century and what are
their defining characteristics today.
Just when the writing of a book begins is always unclear. This work
clearly had a long gestation, one out of proportion to its length. A
pensive colleague told me that scholars are forever marked by their first
project. This quip is certainly true in my case. I began my study of
politics with an examination of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.
Post-revolutionary Nicaragua offered a window into the possibilities and
difficulties of effecting change in a poor country, but it also provided,
too, an example of how fashionable ideas, or perhaps better put, a
murky mentalité, shaped political decisions, ones that nonetheless had to
confront painful constraints. I then embarked on a study of revolutions
throughout the “Third World,” published as The Vogue of Revolution
in Poor Countries (Princeton University Press, 1994). That study was
enriched by time spent in Cuba, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Burma, as well
as by my prolonged residence in Nicaragua. Subsequently, most of my
work has been in Latin America, including prominently in the five Central
American countries, plus Ecuador and Peru. This work in Latin America
over the years has been facilitated through a long-standing tie to the
management school INCAE (previously an acronym but now the formal
name of the institution). I have also benefited from consulting work
carried out over many years in the region offered to me by the offices
of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in San José, Costa Rica,
and Lima, Peru.
I have read widely, too, facilitated by academic appointments at
Princeton University and the City University of New York (CUNY). I
use libraries, and the university libraries of the United States are without
parallel. Still, my understanding of the status and dynamics into the
8 F. D. COLBURN
welfare of the poorer countries of the world is indelibly refracted by the

considerable time I have spent in Latin America.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have spent a sabbatical as a
member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton. I participated in a seminar titled “The ‘Third World’
Now.” The Algerian diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi, joined our discussions
and his insights and views were most enlightening and encouraging.
The outline of this study took form at the Institute. Helpful comments
on earlier drafts of the work were provided by: Anne Carayon, Martha
Sofia Cifuentes, Arturo Cruz, Colombe de Nicolay, Murray Grigor, John
Ickis, Philip Johnson, Atul Kohli, Federico Manfredi, A. James McAdams,
Nick Micinski, Stephen Oduori, Andrea Prado, José Luis Renique, Julette
Sánchez, Xavier Totti, Alberto Trejos, and Norman Uphoff.
The writing of the book was interrupted by my desire to test the claim
that the commodity boom which began sometime around 2002 would
not end, and that the economic growth in China, India, and other Asian
countries had led to a permanent resettling of prices for commodities
widely exported by Latin American, African, and Middle Eastern coun-
tries. This boom led to economic growth in many of the poorer countries
of the world, and even a sense that some of them, such as Brazil, had
“turned the corner.” However, as I anticipated, commodity prices ulti-
mately fell, beginning in 2012, revealing the continuing fragility of the
economies of many of the world’s poorer countries. The end of the long
commodity boom, now called the “super cycle,” also exposed the vacuum
in thinking about how the poor countries can progress, both in absolute
terms and relative to the wealthier countries of the world.
The need for economic, social, and political development—of different
kinds of progress—in the poorer countries of the world remains pressing,
even urgent.
It is necessary to find another compass to guide the poorer coun-
tries of the world. Existing ideological constructs—the “left” and the
“right”—have become so overworked, so hackneyed, that they are no
longer useful. Likewise, the emphasis on “formats” or “institutions,” such
as elections, contracts, and markets, has also become stale. Indeed, a new
vocabulary is needed to reimagine possibilities, as well as strategies for
achieving desired outcomes. Recent political protests in poorer countries,
from Tunisia to Indonesia to Guatemala, suggest that in the absence of
any compelling ideology demands are for basic values: protection of rights
and of dignity, for fairness, and of governors working responsibly and with
INTRODUCTION 9
a public accounting. These protests have been notable for the presence of
youth, determined to break free from established institutions and norms,
and “to do something.” It is, perhaps, a tentative effort to find a new
compass.
A Tumultuous Transition
Abstract The story of the transition from empire to nation-state in

the twentieth century can be told with the emblematic case of India,
one of the earliest centers of civilization, the second most populous
country in the world, and the world’s largest democracy. The figure
of Mahatma Gandhi (known throughout the world just as Gandhi)
became—and remains—symbolic of the struggle for independence and
self-determination of oppressed people. The evolution of India since inde-
pendence from Great Britain in 1947, though, is equally compelling as
an illustrative narrative of how the poorer countries of the world have
undergone remarkable but quiet change in how they see themselves and
the larger world. Today, India is personified by its larger-than-life prime
minister, Narendra Modi. First elected to the position of prime minister
in 2014, his landslide reelection in 2019 is a national endorsement of his
conception of the nation-state. Modi built his victory on a strong appeal
to Hindu nationalists in contrast to the secularism of Gandhi. And the
dream of an egalitarian post-imperialist world, underpinned by solidarity
and faith in socialism, has given way to an aggressive market-oriented
vision promoted by Modi of a “New India.”
Keywords India · independence · nation · state · economic reforms ·

Narendra Modi

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54716-5_2
12 F. D. COLBURN
The story of the transition from empire to nation-state in the twen-

tieth century can be told with the emblematic case of India, one of the
earliest centers of civilization, the second most populous country in the
world, and the world’s largest democracy. The figure of Mahatma Gandhi
(known throughout the world just as Gandhi) became—and remains—
symbolic of the struggle for independence and self-determination of
oppressed people. The evolution of India since independence from Great
Britain in 1947, though, is equally compelling as an illustrative narrative
of how the poorer countries of the world have undergone remarkable but
quiet change in how they see themselves and the larger world. Today,
India is personified by its larger-than-life prime minister, Narendra Modi.
First elected to the position of prime minister in 2014, his landslide
reelection in 2019 is a national endorsement of his conception of the
nation-state. Modi built his victory on a strong appeal to Hindu nation-
alists in contrast to the secularism of Gandhi. And the dream of an
egalitarian post-imperialist world, underpinned by solidarity and faith in
socialism, has given way to an aggressive market-oriented vision promoted
by Modi of a “New India.”
Modi has comparable counterparts in many erstwhile poor countries,
from Turkey to Brazil to China to the Philippines. The resounding
triumph of European imperialism is the universalization of the nation-
state. Rebels in the colonies achieved a narrow self-determination; they
got their own country. What failed, though, were ambitions for feder-
ations, for solidarity, for cosmopolitanism, and for a “new international
economic order.” Solidarity and cosmopolitanism have given way to
resurgence in nationalism, and sometimes even of ethnic chauvinism.
Democracy, of some sort, is in favor, but it is not necessarily a “liberal”
democracy, where elections to select leaders coexist with a respect for
individual liberalism. Populism is common and so is a benign authoritar-
ianism, often accompanied by a hell-bent effort to gain an advantage in
the international economy. The structure of the international economy
is taken now as a given and not subject to remaking. The concept of
“development” has been replaced by the crass concept of “competitive-
ness.” These trends can be seen vividly in India, but what has transpired in
India is representative of what is happening in many of the poorer coun-
tries of the world, including prominently in India’s behemoth neighbor,
China.
India was one of the largest and poorest of the many countries created
by the ebb of European empire after the end of World War II. British
A TUMULTUOUS TRANSITION 13
India, though, was divided, partitioned, into two countries: India and
Pakistan. Partition meant that everything had to be apportioned between
the successor states, assets and responsibilities, as well as people and terri-
tory. Decisive in establishing borders, though, was “faith,” religion, as
if it was the defining characteristic of a nation, a people. Muslims would
populate Pakistan. Hindus would be Indians. Yet neither nation, although
defined by their faith, would build states in conformity with their reli-
gion—if it even could be imagined what such states would look like.
European colonizers certainly did not beget a conceptual model of a
religious-bound form of government.
With a thin, almost emaciated, body, dominated by a bespectacled
face radiating calmness, Mahatma Gandhi was the most recognizable
symbol of anti-colonial protest. He was modest, wearing the simple and
unadorned dress of Indian peasants, but he had a commanding pres-
ence. Still, Gandhi was old and frail when independence—for both India
and Pakistan—came in August 1947. (Gandhi would be assassinated five
months later by a young Brahman angry at the leader’s over-conciliatory
attitude toward Muslims, despite the terrible massacres that had preceded
and followed the partition of British India.) Leadership of the newly
independent nation-state fell to Jawaharlal Nehru, educated at one of
England’s most prestigious schools, Harrow, and at Trinity College,
Cambridge University.
After three years of consultation and debate, India’s constitution was
adopted in January 1950. India was to have a federal structure, but one
weighed heavily in favor of the center. There was a Westminster style of
government with first-past-the-post elections, an upper and lower house
(the latter directly elected), a council of ministers, an inner cabinet, and
an independent judiciary. Independent authority was given to constituent
provinces, known as states. These states elected assemblies. Each state
assembly could appoint a state government, to which were reserved
local revenue-raising powers, a share of central revenues, and a range of
responsibilities. There were, though, various ways in which the central
government could influence or even overrule state governments. The
constitution was written in English. (The constitution recognized sixteen
major languages and acknowledged several hundred others.) The debt to
European political philosophy and political practice was unmistakable.
Even before the constitution was enacted, Nehru embarked on an
ambitious program of social, political, and economic reforms. India,
under his leadership, was to be sovereign and democratic, but also secular
14 F. D. COLBURN
and socialist. Nehru embraced state planning and intervention in the

economy. John Keay offers a summary:
Following the then admired Soviet model of development, the prerequisite

for creating such a modern economy was taken to be the establishment of
heavy industries, machine-tool foundries, mammoth infrastructural projects
and top-class technical and scientific institutions…. State planners would
set the targets and the state itself would be a major player; but in India
private sector enterprise was not to be excluded or nationalized…. It was to
be a genuinely mixed economy, albeit with a Kafkaesque system of licens-
ing… that would discourage the import of all but essential raw materials
and ensure for the government an effective regulation role—plus a rich
source of patronage.
Nehru’s India was awash with inspirational plans, feats of construc-

tion, and sensational production forecast, all overseen by a lumbering
bureaucracy.
Nehru perceived that India’s emancipation from European colonial
rule as marking, at least potentially, the dawn of a new era in interna-
tional relations. Nehru embraced other anti-colonial struggles, including
Indonesia’s struggle against Dutch rule. Nehru championed the idea of
a third bloc of countries, “unaligned” to either side of the Cold War:
neither with the United States nor with the Soviet Union. Nehru was a
driving force in the formulation of the charter of the Non-Aligned Move-
ment at the Bandung (in Indonesia) conference of Afro-Asian states in
1955. Although linked to the Soviet Union through a treaty of “friend-
ship, alliance, and mutual assistance,” representatives of China attended
the meeting. Nehru was said to be enraptured with the prospect of Asia’s
two largest countries working together for a new world order, one where
the wealthier countries of the world would have to interact with the
poorer countries of the world in a respectful, egalitarian manner.
Economic growth, though, in newly independent India was paltry.
It was an era of hubris and heady optimism, but also of scarcity and
drab austerity. Significantly, although three-quarters of the population
labored in agriculture, India was heavily dependent on food imports,
most coming from the United States. Efforts at land redistribution
were ineffective, either not enforced or circumvented when proprietors
simply parceled out their estates to children and other relatives. While
the government proudly proclaimed self-reliance through a policy of
“import substitution,” poverty—and dependence on the international

economy—persisted.
In 1962, China invaded India, flouting the principles of non-
alignment. Nehru felt betrayed and his health suffered. He died in
May 1964. A year later, India’s borders were again challenged, by
Pakistan. The war solved nothing, including the all-important status of
the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir (the only Muslim-majority
state in India). Sectarian differences within India were a continual plague,
too. (Even with the partition Muslims account for thirteen percent of the
population of India, and tensions remain between Hindus and Muslims.)
There were demands for succession. Fomenting a sense of shared destiny,
a commitment to the idea of India, was a Herculean challenge. After a
prime minister died of a heart attack, political leadership of the country
passed to Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi. Her succession was laced
with symbolism: she was born a Nehru (and having accompanied her
father on numerous diplomatic missions), patriotically named Indira,
educated in Switzerland, married to a man called Gandhi (though he was
unrelated to Mahatma), and long-involved in the country’s hegemonic
party, Congress. Her first serious challenge was another partition, that of
“East Pakistan” becoming Bangladesh. (Thus, British India became three
countries: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.)
Gandhi sought to move her father’s socialism in a populist direction,
committing the Indian state to alleviating poverty. She mobilized the
poor, centralizing power around her office—and persona. Predictably, the
opposition coalesced around her, and she was defeated electorally. The
opposition could not provide stable government, and Gandhi returned
to power. However, the economy of the country throughout the 1970s
continued to perform in a lackluster fashion, with unimpressive growth
rates. Moreover, Gandhi’s rhetorical commitment to the poor was not
accompanied by effective public policies able to offer meaningful allevia-
tion of poverty. Thus, from independence in 1949 to 1980 the economy
of India was “sluggish,” plodding along, but with no “take-off” into high-
octane economic growth and no significant dent, either, in the country’s
staggering ranks of those toiling in a grinding poverty.
What can be said to be a success, at least, was the survival and even
construction of a European-style “nation-state”: the country of India, the
world’s largest democracy. Sunil Khilnani states:
16 F. D. COLBURN
For all its magnificent antiquity and historical depth, contemporary India
is unequivocally a creation of the modern world. The fundamental agen-
cies and ideas of modernity—European colonial expansion, the state,
nationalism, democracy, economic development—all have shaped it. The
possibility that India could be united into a single political community
was the wager of India’s modern, educated, urban elite, whose intellectual
horizons were extended by these modern ideas and whose sphere of action
was expanded by these modern agencies. It was a wager on an idea: the
idea of India.
In some sense, though, when Khilnani says “modern ideas,” he is using

the expression as a euphemism for “European ideas.”
A similar perspective, from a memoir by Gurcharan Das, also employs
prominently the word “modern”:
At the time of our independence—despite Gandhi’s hesitations—there was

a consensus among educated Indians that we had to become a modern
society in order to succeed. We had to build a strong nation-state and
have a competent bureaucracy to administer it; we had to raise the lower
castes in order to promote social democracy. We had to be socialist in
order to have equality; we had to be democratic with universal franchise
so that there could be true liberty. To make all this happen, the values of
modernity were enshrined in our Constitution in 1950.
For all of their fervent nationalism, Indians are inescapably indebted to

European political philosophy and practice, including, above all, for the
concept of the nation-state: a people with a shared and unique identity
who have their own institutions of government (including boundaries
demarcating their country from other countries).
India’s beginning as a modern nation-state is emblematic of what
happened throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. European gover-
nors were ousted, either through negotiations or a fight, and an ensuing
effort was made to construct a European-style nation-state. After inde-
pendence, there were two grand projects: nation-building (defined as
creating a “people”) and state-building (defined as constructing the insti-
tutions of government). Both tasks were daunting. The aspiration was to
usher in broad-based economic development—to achieve economic—and
so political—parity with the “developed” countries, including promi-
nently the Europeans countries that had previously lorded over such
a sweeping part of the world. Indigenous cultural practices, including
religion, were respected, but overwhelmingly the leadership of newly

independent countries, like in India, was secular and at least somewhat
captivated by the central tenants of socialism (Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
and Vladimir Lenin were hostile to both religion and ethnic chauvinism).
Even in North Africa and the Middle East, countries such as Algeria
under the leadership of the National Liberation Front (NLF) and Egypt
under the reign of Gamal Nasser had a secular, socialist orientation. In
Latin America and the Caribbean during this era, there was an endorse-
ment of this vague mentalité, which was judged by governing elites to be
“modern” and “progressive.”
In 1980, though, there was a “sea-change” in India, unheralded but
still transcendental. Socialist rhetoric and public policies were discarded
for a greater emphasis on the market, for what some call “pro-business”
policies and others naked capitalism. Economic reforms were slow in
coming, with some, in fact, saying they did not really have vigor until
1991. In any case, the economy has since grown rapidly. Indeed, it has
grown so rapidly that India is now widely judged to be a significant
economic actor in the international economy. The merits of this new
economic paradigm are debated, as suggested by the titles of such books
as Atul Kohli’s, Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India and Jagdish Bhag-
wati and Arvind Panagariya’s Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth
in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries.
The economic reforms in India have a haunting parallel to the
economic reforms in China in 1978, under the leadership of Premier
Deng Xiaoping. Mao Zedong was the founding father of the People’s
Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist
Party of China until his death in 1976. Mao governed with Zhou Enlai,
the first Premier of China until his death, also in 1976. Both leaders
were unrepentant communists. Deng, despite his advanced age, was the
pre-eminent figure of the “second-generation” of Chinese leadership and
considered “the architect” of the pragmatic adoption of market economy
practices—which have ushered in remarkable economic growth. However,
it is not clear if the change in economic paradigms can be traced just
to political leadership. Indeed, in India it is not possible to identify an
“architect” for the country’s economic reforms. James Scott has argued
that the economic reforms in China originated in the foot-dragging
and other “weapons of the weak” by millions of Chinese peasants who
had an aversion to collective agriculture. It is exceedingly difficult to
18 F. D. COLBURN
discern how Chinese political leaders—and Indian political leaders, too—

“understood” their country’s economic performance. Tracing the origin
of economic reforms in China and India—and elsewhere—is frustrating:
conclusions are elusive.
Ironically, similar shifts in economic policy in other, smaller countries
in the poorer parts of the world, especially in Africa and in Latin America,
can be traced in part to one of the successes of efforts at cooperation—
solidarity—among poorer countries pushing back at the exercise of power
exerted by multinational corporations based in the richer countries of
the world. In September 1960, representatives of the governments of
Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela met in Baghdad. The
agenda was to discuss ways to increase the price of crude oil produced by
their respective countries and to curtail the power of the multinational oil
corporations who controlled oil operations within the host countries. Out
of this meeting emerged the Organization of Petroleum Export Coun-
tries (OPEC). In the 1970s, OPEC began to gain influence. In response
to the United States providing aid to Israel during the brief war in the
Middle East in October 1973, OPEC steeply raised prices. This increase
wrecked havoc in Western Europe and the United States, but it also upset
the fragile economies of the poorer countries of the world that were also
dependent on imported oil. Foreign exchange deficits were covered by
borrowing abroad. These deficits became unsustainable, above all when
the United States raised interest rates to counter inflation (the underlying
cause of which was in part from the cost of the Vietnam conflict as well
as the oil price increase).
In another irony, it was Mexico, a major producer and exporter of oil,
which heralded the economic crisis of the 1980s, of what became known,
at least in Latin America, as the “lost decade.” Mexico used its oil produc-
tion—and reserves—to borrow money abroad. In August 1982, Mexico
announced it could not “service” its foreign debt. Other Latin Amer-
ican countries followed suit, and the entire region fell into a prolonged
recession, one that unseated political regimes—and also the dominant
economic regime of a state-led development strategy, one that focused on
a milder version of what Nehru had pursued in India. Some relief from
the economic crisis came from international financial organizations like
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Inter-
American Development Bank (BID), but with the aid came “advice”: to
remove market distortions and to embrace free markets.
There was pressure to embrace free markets, but the suggestion—often

accompanied by detailed policy prescriptions—was accepted by political
and even intellectual elites. Evidence had long accumulated that the state-
led development model was inefficient and fostered corruption. One of
the many anecdotes from the era was of a Cuban émigré in Honduras who
persuaded the authorities to raise tariffs on imported bicycles to protect
a nascent local bicycle-manufacturing firm—his own. However, all of the
parts of the “Honduran” bicycle except the leather seat were imported.
The bicycle was judged of poor quality and expensive. The endeavor was
perceived to be farcical. There were many such examples from throughout
the region, including of the national airline in Uruguay that had one plane
and one thousand public employees.
In Africa, there was also a region-wide economic crisis, but one that
was seemingly more diffuse, reflecting, surely the disparity—and even the
relative isolation from each other—of the countries of the huge conti-
nent. Again, though, foreign aid came with demands for a change in
development strategy, of removing market distortions, primarily exerted
by the state, and embracing free markets. A damning indictment of the
state of affairs came from two influential publications. The first was a
World Bank report written by Elliot Berg: Accelerated Development in
Sub-Sahara Africa: An Agenda for Action. The second was a book written
by Robert Bates titled Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Polit-
ical Basis of Agricultural Policies. Berg and Bates had a similar argument.
They asserted that while African countries were largely dependent on
their agriculture sector, they pursued agrarian policies that had a polit-
ical logic but deleterious economic consequences. To garner revenue,
governments employed state monopsonies for export crops like cotton
and cocoa. They likewise controlled food prices to protect politically
important urban consumers. In some countries, governments siphoned
off half of the value of export crops, undermining incentives to produce.
Similarly, price controls on crops destined for local consumption, such as
maize and millet, exacerbated rural misery and weakened the incentives of
farmers. The policy recommendations were blunt: end state intervention
in markets; “get prices right.”
There is no doubt that the poorer countries of the world other than
India and China were prompted to move away from a quasi-socialist,
state-led development model in part from prodding and pressure by the
international financial organizations dominated by the richer countries of
the world, prominently by the United States. There is not much evidence
20 F. D. COLBURN
that this shift in orientation was influenced by India and China, two
brethren that, while respected, were not well studied or understood.
There are other possible factors that might have contributed to the
murky shift in the dominant mentalité of the poorer countries. The
political profile—and rhetoric—of two of the most powerful rich coun-
tries of the world, the United States and the United Kingdom, shifted
under the respective leadership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
They both aggressively belittled state intervention in the economy and
advocated the efficiency and so desirability of unfettered markets. Their
views both captured something of the tenor of the era and sharpened
it, pushing it further and deeper. Likewise, the academy in the United
States and Western Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, slowly and
quietly but surely moved away from both grandiose proposals for spurring
development and radical critiques of international capitalism.
Assisting both transitions was the increasing evidence that the alter-
native paradigm of state-led, socialist, or quasi-socialist economic models
did not work well. In addition to local examples, the elites in poor coun-
tries were able to learn about, sometimes from such media outlets as the
British Broadcasting Company (BBC), the Economist, and the Interna-
tional Herald Tribune, of the economic problems in what was called at the
time “real, existing” socialist states. Labor strife beginning in 1980 in the
People’s Republic of Poland received prominent and continual coverage.
The collapse in 1989 of all of the Eastern European socialist regimes was a
striking event, and even more so was the implosion in 1991 of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Much celebrated counterexamples to insular, state-led development
models came from four small East Asian states: Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taiwan, and South Korea. They came to be known as the “Four Asian
Tigers,” the “Little Dragons,” and the “Asian Miracle.” Between the
early 1960s (mid-1950s for Hong Kong) and the 1990s these countries
achieved high growth rates of seven percent or better by plunging head-
first into the international economy, competing successfully with services
and select industrial products. Though, in fact, these countries had strong
states, the lesson learned by elites in other countries was that international
trade, including with the wealthier countries of the world, was not neces-
sarily pernicious. For success, though, you needed to be “competitive.”
Competitiveness was enhanced by maintaining a stable macroeconomic
environment: avoiding budget deficits and external debt, and embracing
market established exchange rates. Sobriety and innovation, not political
intoxication, led to economic success. International financial organiza-

tions, prominently the World Bank, widely touted the success of the
“Four Asian Tigers.”
By the beginning of the twenty-first century the heady enthusiasm for
solidarity among the poorer countries of the world had withered. And so
had the conviction that radical change could usher in dramatic progress.
Yet, while market reforms were widely, if unevenly, adopted in poor coun-
tries, they were not met with enthusiasm. The pitch for democracy was
met by even more hesitation and skepticism, at least by governing elites.
There was a suspicion that market reforms were a ruse for wealthier coun-
tries to open up previously closed export markets, and that the push
for democracy was conflated with the prompt holding of elections, well
before the building of meaningful institutions such as political parties
and, above all the rule of law. Still, after the headiness of the indepen-
dence era, and the grueling decades that followed, poor countries were
marked by political uncertainty and even weariness. As the twenty-first
century began, though, there was a widespread realization that some new,
still-to-be-defined era had begun.
In an interview in 2007, Lakhdar Brahimi, who over his long career
as a diplomat has spoken with everyone from Ernesto “Che” Guevara to
Julius Nyerere to Nassar to Nehru to Sukarno, reported:
There is such a schism, a gap, between what we thought we could and

would accomplish, and what we have, in fact, accomplished…. What is
disappointing, what has proved elusive, are the widely-held aspirations
within individual countries for good government and for social equality and
inclusiveness—and for solidarity amongst the former colonies of Europe,
and, especially, for some sort of moral and political parity with the coun-
tries of Western Europe and other “developed” countries like the United
States, Canada, and Japan. Here we have failed.
Brahimi deplores the poor intellectual and moral leadership in the coun-
tries of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and even Latin America, since
the “founding fathers” of independence. He is disappointed, too, with
economic elites.
Brahimi adds:
The difficulty of solidarity, of building a true community among the poorer

countries of the world, has been further complicated by the acceleration of
differences in economic development…. As a result, it has become harder
22 F. D. COLBURN
to find a common denominator amongst ourselves…. Indeed, some in

the “South” are graduating into the “North.” South Korea today is more
comfortable sitting at a table with Japan than with Malaysia. And at the
table the discussion is about prices and markets—these are the pressing
issues for everyone. The market may not have triumphed, but it certainly
dominates everything. Even India today is more interested in a dialogue
with the United States—about markets—than searching discussions with
its brethren in Asia.
Brahimi was frank—and prescient.

In May 2014, Narendra Modi became India’s fourteenth prime
minister, and the first to be born after independence from the United
Kingdom. Upon assuming office, he moved quickly to liberalize foreign
direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in numerous
industries. In September 2014, Modi introduced the “Make in India”
initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in
India, with the goal of turning India into a global manufacturing hub. By
September 2015, India was revealed to be, at that moment in time, the
world’s top foreign direct investment destination, overtaking China and
the United States. During a visit to Silicon Valley, California, that same
month, Modi said he wanted to make India, “the best place to do busi-
ness.” Indeed, from 2014 to 2018, India was the world’s fastest growing
major economy. Economic growth, though, slowed in 2019. In 2020, a
nationwide curfew designed to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus
threw the economy into a tailspin. India faced the prospect of its worst
economic performance in four decades.
India’s curfew was abruptly decided by Modi. He gave no warning
of the impending lockdown, exacerbating hardship and costs. India was
already in tumult when, at the end of 2019, Modi’s Hindu-nationalist
government passed its Citizenship Amendment Act which gave immi-
grants from three neighboring countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh) a path to citizenship on one condition: that they were not
Muslim. Despite the long-standing commitment to secularism, a religious
test had been enacted. Being Indian seemingly now means accepting
Hindu dominance and actively eschewing Indian Muslims.
Modi, and his leadership of India, seems emblematic of how governors
of the poorer countries of the world see themselves today. Even Modi’s
personal style is revealing. In 2015, when receiving President Barack
Obama on a state visit, Modi wore a pinstripe suit with his name embroi-
dered repeatedly in the pinstripes. Nehru—and Gandhi—truly would be
bewildered.
Still, the nation-state built by Gandhi and Nehru continues—and it is
a remarkable achievement. The 2019 elections in India were the largest
democratic elections in history: nine hundred million eligible voters cast
ballots over thirty-nine days at a million polling stations. (Each phase
lasted a single day, with the date varying by location.) When Modi led his
Bharatiya Janata Party to victory in India’s 2014 election, it was seen by
some as an exceptional event, stemming from anger with the incumbent
Congress Party. However, after Modi’s landslide win in 2019, it was clear
to all that there was a fundamental change in India—nothing less than a
reordering of India’s political landscape and imagination. Despite many
daunting challenges, India has survived. But it is a vastly different place
than what it was conceived to be by those who ushered in its indepen-
dence. Modi’s singular power, as head of India’s government, is unlikely
to have been anticipated by those who valiantly struggled against British
colonialism, seeking India’s “liberation.”
China has changed, too. China’s economy is now eighty percent
private-sector owned, versus fifty percent in the late 1990s and zero
percent before it began the reforms of 1978. China now boasts many
billionaires—and it, of all places, is now the most important market for
Swiss luxury watches. China’s counterpart to Modi, Xi Jinping, is also
imperious (and he, too, indulges in sartorial symbolism). Mao would be
as bewildered as Gandhi at the nature and pace of change. India and
China together account for a third of humanity. As India and China have
evolved, so have, loosely and imperfectly, the other poor nation-states
of the world, including prominently the many countries born from the
midcentury collapse of European empires.
European Imperialism and the Remaking
of the World
Abstract Imperialism has its root in imperial: of an empire. Imperialism

is the extension of a country’s power by acquisition—usually through
force—of dependencies. Every epoch, every geographical region, every
race, has witnessed—and engaged in—imperialism. However, no region
has practiced imperialism with such dramatic consequences as a handful of
Western European countries, sometimes called the Atlantic states (because
they all faced the Atlantic), in the period stretching roughly from the
1450s to the end of World War II. During this four hundred-year period,
all corners of the world were visited—and often assaulted. Colonies were
established, given at least crude boundaries and some sort of administra-
tive structure. More often than not, they were also encouraged or cajoled
into participating in a desired economic activity, producing something of
interest to their European masters and receiving goods in trade.
Keywords Imperialism · Europe · colonies · Americas · Africa · Asia ·

the Middle East · independence · nation-states
Imperialism has its root in imperial: of an empire. Imperialism is the

extension of a country’s power by acquisition—usually through force—
of dependencies. Every epoch, every geographical region, every race,
has witnessed—and engaged in—imperialism. However, no region has

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54716-5_3
26 F. D. COLBURN
practiced imperialism with such dramatic consequences as a handful of

Western European countries, sometimes called the Atlantic states (because
they all faced the Atlantic), in the period stretching roughly from the
1450s to the end of World War II. During this four hundred-year period,
all corners of the world were visited—and often assaulted. Colonies were
established, given at least crude boundaries and some sort of administra-
tive structure. More often than not, they were also encouraged or cajoled
into participating in a desired economic activity, producing something of
interest to their European masters and receiving goods in trade.
It was European imperialism that united the world. J. H. Elliott is
trenchant:
These Europeans who moved out across the world… trading, settling,
evangelizing, and—all too often—killing, tended to see themselves as
superior beings, providentially enjoying, and where possible, diffusing,
the supreme blessings of Christianity and civility. To the non-European
peoples, on the other hand, into whose world they had trespassed, they
naturally appeared in a very different light… like strange, and often sinister,
intruders, unpleasantly prone to seize what was not rightfully theirs.
Though, Elliott asserts, the Europeans at the time were unaware that they
were breaking down the barriers of separation, geographic and otherwise,
and so linking together all the peoples of the world, they were imperious.
Embarking all unaware of a process that would lead to the creation of one
world, they gave every impression of wanting to mold that world in the
image of themselves. An early sixteenth-century Spanish humanist said as
much when he wrote of Columbus that he “sailed from Spain… to mix
the world together and give to those strange lands the form of our own.”
There would prove to be severe limits to the aspirations of the Europeans

to remake the world in their image, but unite the world, this they did.
The Western European countries that participated in this far-reaching
bout of imperialism can be named: Portugal, Spain, France, the Nether-
lands, and Great Britain. Later they would be joined by Belgium,
Denmark, Germany, and Italy. These European countries unwittingly
bequeathed to the rest of the world their own basic organizational struc-
ture, that of a country. A country is built by joining a nation, defined
as a people, and a state, defined as the institutions of government,
including borders. A hyphen often links the two concepts: a nation-state.
EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM AND THE REMAKING OF THE WORLD 27
And a nation-state is synonymous with a country. When European colo-

nialism ended, as it mostly did between 1945 and 1965, what remained,
seemingly without exception, was the European political concept of the
nation-state. The entire world today is organized into European-style
countries. Each country has a people, a nation (problematic as it may
be), and a state, some form of government.
What also has endured is participation in the international economy.
Before the seaborne empires of the Atlantic states of Europe, most of the
world was self-reliant, a pattern that would be irrevocably altered. As J.
M. Roberts suggests:
In 1500, hundreds of more or less self-sufficient economies had existed

round the world, some almost side-by-side. Trade sometimes went on
between them, but over very long distances commercial ties were few and
often intermittent. The Americas and Africa were still almost unknown to
Europe; Australia was entirely so. The change in the next three centuries
was immense. A worldwide network of exchange came into being.
Over time, the variety and volume of goods traded increased exponen-
tially. There was a consistent pattern of Europe importing raw materials
and exporting manufactured goods. Likewise, European imperialism
forged monetary and financial integration, but at terms usually dictated
by Europeans. When colonialism ended, participation in the international
economy continued. Changing the structure and terms of this participa-
tion was—and remains—a daunting aspiration, but what is not challenged
is having a niche in the world economy.
Land-based empires are those that grew by expansion “overland,”
expanding directly outwards from original frontiers. These land-based
empires date back to the earliest recorded history and have been created
by varied nations. Examples range from the kingdom of Alexander the
Great, to the Ottoman Empire, to the Inca civilization. Moreover, certain
countries were established by the building of land-based empires, with
prominent examples including Ethiopia, China, and Russia. (Dissidents
referred to Russia as the “Czar’s prison of nations.”)
A different kind of empire, one more powerful and dynamic, was based
on “sea power,” the ability with ships and navigation skill to explore—
and often conquer—faraway lands and nations. The presence of ships and
navigation skills alone did not lead to imperialism; the Chinese had larger
ships and more capable navigators than the Europeans in the fifteenth
28 F. D. COLBURN
century. Also needed was a sense of inquisitiveness, a compulsion, an

audacity, and greed.
The European empires that came to span the oceans, and even the
entire globe, began with the two countries of the Iberian Peninsula,
Portugal and Spain. These two countries were marked by the invasion
of earlier imperialists: the Moors, Berbers from North Africans and some
Arabs from the Middle East, who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the
seventh century as part of the spectacular spread of Islam. The battles
for the “re-conquest” are said to have begun almost immediately, finally
concluding in 1492. The fight against the Moors developed a sense of
a nation in both Portugal and Spain, and also helped build the unified,
centralized states that were necessary to wage war. Battling invaders, “for-
eigners,” created a sense of “us” against “them,” but one where the
“other” was deemed to be worthy of nothing but death by the sword.
The Christianity that was such an important part of a budding national
identity in Portugal and Spain was a warring Christianity.
Ironically, perhaps, the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors
contributed in other ways to Portuguese and Spanish imperialism. There
was practice in warfare, there was an exposure to other cultures and goods
(including sugar), there were lessons learned about medicine, math, and
navigation, and, maybe too, there was just the example of exploring,
conquering, spreading one’s faith, and profiting from taxation and trade.
Many cherished goods brought by the Moors to the Iberian Peninsula
came from the mysterious “East,” but the direct passage to the lands of
the Orient was blocked to Christians by the Muslims of North Africa and
the Middle East. (Merchants in Venice managed to trade with Muslims,
bringing to Europe in limited quantities coveted goods, including spices,
from the Middle East and Asia.)
Portugal freed itself from the Moors in 1249, almost two hundred
and fifty years before Spain, and thus, perhaps, it is not a surprise that
it was Portuguese sailors who began exploring the coast of West Africa
and the Atlantic archipelagoes in 1418–1419. They were hoping to find
a sea route to the source of the lucrative spice trade. Over the following
decades, Portuguese sailors continued to extend their reach, establishing
forts and trading posts as they pushed south. Along the coast of Africa, the
Portuguese engaged profitably in the trade in gold and slaves. In 1488,
the Cape of Good Hope was rounded, and Portuguese sailors sailed up
the coast of East Africa, in time reaching India, China, Indonesia, and
Japan.
While the Portuguese first captured slaves in raids, most slaves were
purchased from Africans who had enslaved Africans from other tribal
groups. Recent scholarship has suggested that there was a long history of
slavery in Africa. Slavery was indigenous on the continent, and before the
arrival of Europeans slaves had been taken for centuries to North Africa
and the Middle East, with some African slaves even having been taken
by Arab traders as far afield as India. When the Europeans arrived on the
coasts of Africa, they did not have the military power to force Africans to
participate in trade—including in slaves—against their will. Still, there is
no doubt that the European demand for slavery exacerbated warfare and
slavery in Africa. The Portuguese also acquired slaves in China and Japan,
often children, and took them back to Europe.
It was Portugal’s dominance of the “southern” (or African) route to
Asia that encouraged the Spanish crown, upon the ousting of the Moors
in 1492, to support Christopher Columbus’s western foray to Asia. His
discovery of the Americas began the most extraordinary chapter of Euro-
pean colonialism. In 1500, either by an accidental landfall or by secret
design, the Portuguese sailor Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered what would
become Brazil on the South American coast. For a considerable period of
time, these two European countries, which in 1580 began a sixty-year
union, would long dominate the Americas. Spain, though, concentrated
its resources on the conquest and exploitation of the Americas, begin-
ning in the Caribbean, while Portugal focused on developing a string of
outposts along the coasts of Africa (West and East), the Middle East,
India, and South Asia.
The first Spanish outpost in the Americas was on the western
side of the island in the Caribbean Hispaniola (a corruption of Isla
Española—Spanish Island). It was the most populous of the islands in
the Caribbean—and there was gold. Efforts focused on extracting wealth
in the form of gold. The gold of the indigenous people was seized and
they were forced to mine additional gold for the Spanish. When the gold
of Hispaniola was exhausted, the Spaniards turned their attention to two
other islands of the Greater Antilles, of what became known as Puerto
Rico and Cuba (the fourth island of the Greater Antilles, named Santiago
by the Spanish, had no gold and so was all but abandoned, facilitating its
seizure later by the British who renamed it Jamaica). The lesser islands
of the Caribbean were named the Islas Inútiles—the Useless Islands—
because they had no gold. Still, the indigenous people were rounded up
and taken on ships elsewhere to work, as slaves, in gold mines.
30 F. D. COLBURN
The cruelty of the Spaniards toward the indigenous people of Hispan-

iola was documented by one of their own, the priest Bartolomé de
las Casas. In his book, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account,
published in 1552, he reported:
The Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out
massacres and strange cruelties…. They took infants from their mothers’
breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the
crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring
with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you
offspring of the devil…. They made some low wide gallows on which the
hanged victims almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in
lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles.
Even more devastating to the indigenous peoples of the Americas were

the diseases the Spaniards unwittingly brought with them, which led to
widespread epidemics. Still, the callousness and cruelty of these Spaniards
would become a hallmark of European colonialism throughout the world.
From the Caribbean, the Spaniards moved to the “mainland,” to
Mexico, where the Aztec empire was conquered, and then to Central
America, and finally to South America. The largest civilization in the
Americas, the Inca centered in present-day Peru, was conquered in
1552. The leader of the expedition was Francisco Pizzaro, who had
been nothing more than an illiterate “swine-herder” in Spain. Every-
where the Spaniards moved quickly, always focusing on the easiest form
of extracting wealth—seizing precious metals from the indigenous popu-
lation. Remarkably, all of the major cities of the Spanish empire in the
Americas were founded by 1550.
Early on the Spaniards made use of African slaves in the Americas;
the first enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. African slaves
were brought to Cuba in 1512, only a year after its settlement. In
1526, the Portuguese completed the first trans-Atlantic voyage devoted
to transporting slaves from Africa to the Americas.
The Northern European countries of France, Netherlands, and Great
Britain looked upon Portugal, and above all, Spain with envy. The three
countries began to engage in officially sanctioned piracy, attacking Spanish
ships as they carried looted gold and silver from the Americas back to
the Iberian Peninsula. Only later would the three northern European
countries seek colonies of their own in the Americas. Spain and Portugal
claimed all of the Americas for themselves, but the French, Dutch, and
British began to nibble at the “soft underbelly” of the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies, moving into unsettled territory. The most conse-
quential efforts were in North America, in what would become the
United States and Canada. (Spain was not interested in North America
with its forbidding climate.) Initial efforts also focused on extracting
wealth. A British colony in Virginia, for example, was charged with finding
gold. No gold was found, but a lucrative product was exploited—tobacco.
In time, North America became the site of a very different kind of
enterprise: settler colonies. Here the desire was not just to extract wealth,
but instead to recreate a corner of European life for European settlers,
perhaps with some improvement, of government or religious toleration.
Still, the process of seizing the land and resources of others was the same.
And the indigenous population received no consideration. These kinds of
settler colonies would later emerge elsewhere, including in what is now
Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, all parts of the
world with the temperate climate of Europe.
In what became known as Latin America, a kind of hybrid colonialism
emerged. The decimation of the indigenous population was pronounced.
It is estimated that ninety percent of the indigenous population of the
Americas was dead within the first hundred years of the arrival of the
Americas. A near vacuum was created, one that was not only demo-
graphic, but also social, political, religious, and economic. Europeans,
who sometimes mixed with the surviving indigenous peoples (but if so
only in a manner that preserved the Europeans’ social and economic
status), filled the void. African slaves augmented the population, too. It
is estimated that somewhere around ten million Africans were brought
against their will to the Americas. (In the context of the populations of
the period this number is huge. Great Britain at the time of Adam Smith’s
publication of the Wealth of Nations, in 1776, had a population of only
seven million.)
The Europeans imposed their languages, religion, social structure, and
established an economic system that facilitated the enrichment of Euro-
pean immigrants and their offspring, often through the production of
goods for sale in Europe. An irony would emerge: the United States,
Canada, and the countries of Latin America would be the first European
colonies to become independent nation-states, mostly from a period of
32 F. D. COLBURN
1776 to 1820, but of all the regions of the world overrun by the vora-
cious Europeans, it would be the countries of the Americas that most
resembled—and still today resemble—their European colonizers.
As competition for overseas wealth increased, European states revised
their calculations on the sources of national power. As Gerald Graham
states:
In the past, territorial expansion, founded on military land force, had been
the principal issue of European rivalry. In the new age of the sailing ship,
the search for empires across the oceans gradually became an important
supplementary pursuit…. A new element, scarcely perceptible at first, was
about to tilt the scales of the European balance—sea power.
Portugal and Spain had the advantage of a head start, but the two coun-
tries failed to develop the administrative capacity to exploit the power
provided by overseas resources. Nonetheless, despite the decline of the
two countries, their holdings in the Americas remained secure for a
surprisingly long time. For Spain, remoteness from the main theaters
of imperial rivalry in North America and Asia was the key to immunity.
Portugal’s immense colony of Brazil was largely safe (though the British,
French, and Dutch burrowed into the northern reaches of the colony;
hence Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana), but Portugal’s presence
in Africa and above Asia would be challenged.
The defeat by the British of the Spanish Armada in 1588 further
emboldened the northern European countries of France, the Netherlands,
and Great Britain to contest Portugal’s interests in Africa and Asia. In
the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the Dutch and the British
began establishing trading posts and forts along the coast of India. The
Portuguese were largely pushed out of India. Similarly, in the seas of
Indonesia, the Dutch ousted the weakened Portuguese and took over the
greater part of their empire. The French, too, increased their presence
along the coasts of Africa and throughout Asia, ultimately establishing a
notable presence in Southeast Asia. The British pushed further afield, into
the South Pacific.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Africa remained to Euro-
peans little more than a series of coastlines. It was important—and
useful—as a source of slaves, but otherwise it was little more than a step-
pingstone to Asia. However, in the middle of the nineteenth century
European countries underwent a new phase of expansion, and much
of their attention focused on Africa. The massive continent, the second

largest in the world, roughly three times the size of Europe, was rapidly
divided up in what has been called “the scramble for Africa.” Stephen
Howe suggests that there were initially limits to European penetration
and control:
Much of this “new imperialism,” however, existed at first only on paper,

with really effective occupation taking much longer to establish. French
administrators in West Africa, as late as the First World War, commented
ruefully that they only really controlled the roads—and only so long as
their soldiers marched on them.
Still, at least in time, Europeans came to exert significant control of terri-

tory, often violently displacing populations and reorganizing the economy
to meet the needs of Europeans for natural resources.
The example of Algeria, the largest country in Africa, is illustrative. In
1830, the French invaded and captured the city of Algiers. The conquest
of all of Algeria took until 1870. The combination of violence and
epidemics (tied to the disorder of the forty-year conflict) resulted in the
death of a third of the indigenous population of the territory. The French
government confiscated the land best suited for agriculture and awarded it
to European settlers. The French viewed Algeria as “theirs.” To the east,
in Egypt, a French company built the Suez Canal in the 1860s, giving
them considerable influence in Egypt. In 1881, the French seized Tunisia.
Further south, from their scattered posts on the west coast, the French
pushed inland, creating a huge African empire from the Gulf of Guinea to
Lake Chad, which was contiguous with their territories in North Africa.
The French also had control, after bitter fighting, of Madagascar.
As late as 1806, the British had only minor trading posts in Africa.
However, in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, the British acquired the
Dutch colony at the “Cape.” Rivalry between the Dutch settlers and the
British administrators and settlers was a major factor in shaping the history
of South Africa. European settlers constantly pushed deeper in the lands
of African peoples, instigating conflict. George Alexander Lensen outlines
British advances in southern Africa:
There was no master plan of conquest, worked out in London. Local

individuals led, almost shoved, a reluctant government on the road to
empire. Perhaps foremost among these was Cecil Rhodes… who dreamed
34 F. D. COLBURN
of English world domination. Step by step the British advanced…. Out of

the rich tablelands to the north, they carved Rhodesia, and before the end
of the century they added British Central Africa.
On the west coast of Africa, initial footholds in places like the Gold Coast
(which would become Ghana), Nigeria, and Sierra Leone were expanded.
The British also penetrated into North Africa, with the Suez Canal falling
under British control. The British exerted control over Egypt, and their
presence there led them southward into the Sudan. On the east coast of
Africa, the British took control of what would become Kenya.
Portuguese presence in Africa was reduced to three colonies:
Portuguese Guinea (what would become Guinea Bissau), Angola, and
Mozambique. Three newly established European countries joined the race
for colonies in Africa: Belgium, which was established in 1830 (when
it seceded from the Netherlands), Italy, unified in 1861, and Germany,
unified in 1871. These three countries seized large tracts of land, with
an utter indifference to the inhabitants of the territories. Especially noto-
rious was the behavior of the Belgians in the Congo, where the extraction
of natural resources, including minerals and rubber, was accomplished
through forced labor, with those refusing being subject to mutilation
or even death. The only part of Africa to escape European colonization
was the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, relatively inaccessible given its loca-
tion and mountainous terrain. The Italians, who seized Libya, did try to
conquer the kingdom, but they were militarily defeated. Emperor Haile
Selassie complained bitterly to the League of Nations about European
incursions into Ethiopia but, revealingly, he was ignored (despite a certain
European fascination with him). The European conquest and coloniza-
tion of virtually all of Africa, sealed with statesmen in Europe drawing
lines across inaccurate maps, was an extraordinary event with calamitous
consequences.
European conquest and domination was less extensive in Asia. Part of
the explanation was, as J. M. Roberts, succinctly puts it, “There were a
great many Asians and very few Europeans.” However, there were also
empires in Asia with respectable military resources (including firearms
and cannon), and these empires also had cultural and artistic achieve-
ments that intimidated Europeans. Still, Europeans pushed aggressively
into Asia, taking advantage of regions weakened by disunity and disorder.
India, for example, was not a country, but a subcontinent roughly the size
of Europe minus Russia, marked by geographical regions and differences
in ethnicity. The subcontinent’s religious antagonism and political division

and strife facilitated foreign encroachment. Pushing out their Portuguese
and French rivals, British influence and authority spread over the country
with surprising rapidity. Force was crucial, though, with Lord Warren
Hastings marshaling an army that at its height had one hundred and thir-
teen thousand men and three hundred cannon. India became the prized
jewel of the “British Empire.” The British also invaded Burma, encamped
in Malaysia, and colonized, with settlers, Australia and New Zealand.
The Dutch ensconced themselves in Indonesia, an archipelago of
seventeen thousand, five hundred islands. The Dutch were ruthless,
treating the local population harshly. Craig Lockard quotes a secretary
to a Sultan who wrote, “Listen, sir, to my advice; never make friends with
the Dutch. No country can call itself safe when they are around.” The
Dutch introduced the cultivation of coffee to Indonesia, forcing peas-
ants in Java and Sumatra to grow the crop through a system of quotas.
(Coffee is originally from Ethiopia.) Coffee was exported, and the profits
financed much of the industrialization of the Netherlands in the 1800s.
(Similarly, the Portuguese planted Chinese and Indian varieties of tea in
Mozambique.)
The French first came to Vietnam in 1615. In the late 1850s, the
French began a long, bloody campaign of conquest. In a quarter century
of conflict, the French first conquered the south and then moved north.
By 1897, the French had created their Federation of Indochina, an
administrative entity, linking Vietnam (separated into three territories)
with newly conquered Cambodia and Laos. The city Saigon became
known, to Europeans, as the “Paris of the Orient.” In the countryside,
plantations were established, producing goods, like tea, for export to
Europe.
The Philippine Islands remained under control of the Spanish, who had
established Spanish Manila in 1571, making it the first hub linking Asia
to the Americas, with their galleons that crossed the Pacific Ocean. Much
of the goods from Asia were paid for with silver extracted, brutally, from
the Americas. This American silver, in the hands of either the Spaniards
or other Europeans who traded with the Spanish, increased production in
Asia of many goods coveted by Europe.
The largest nation-state in Asia, China, remained independent.
However, China was constantly badgered by Europeans, beginning with
the Portuguese. Canton was originally the only port where Europeans
were allowed to disembark and trade. But after 1840, China was forced
36 F. D. COLBURN
to open other ports, such as Shanghai and Tientsin, and to grant conces-
sions to British, French, and German traders and investors. Among these
concessions was the fixing of an import-export tariff rate, the tolera-
tion of Christian missionaries, and the granting of “extraterritoriality,” by
which foreigners were immune from Chinese jurisdiction in China. Also,
China was forced to cede territory, including the island of Hong Kong
to Great Britain. Europeans repeatedly infringed on Chinese sovereignty
and humiliated the government. (American merchants were quick to sign
agreements embodying the concessions extorted by English and French
guns, labeled a “me-too policy.”)
Much of the Middle East was long part of the Ottoman Empire, an
empire whose fortunes waxed and waned for over four hundred years.
Turkey’s alliance with Germany in World War I was fatal. The Empire’s
defeat resulted in the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were
divided between the United Kingdom and France. The British received
(or took for themselves) Palestine and Iraq, and the territory of what
would become Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The French absorbed into
their own empire Lebanon and Syria. A large swath of the Arabian Penin-
sula, which was barren and poor, became the independent country of
Saudi Arabia. (Yemen was ruled as part of British India until 1937, when
it became a separate British colony.) The Middle East, thus, had a limited
experience with European rule, though it was Europeans who largely
drew the borders of the countries of the region and who also helped
organize their incipient state institutions. Still, the long reign of hostility
between the Christians of Europe and the Muslims of the Middle East,
punctuated by the Crusades, created a depth of suspicion and hostility to
European countries equal or greater to regions of the world that were
long ruled by Europeans.
As monumental as European imperialism was, it is important to
remember that all regions of the world had histories, recorded or not,
before the arrival of ships from Europe. The Indonesian journalist and
novelist, Mochtar Lubis, has written of his difficulty of maintaining his
“Indonesian optic,” of not seeing his country from only “the deck of the
ship, the ramparts of the fortress, the high gallery of the trading-house.”
Indeed, regional histories abound with other instances of imperialism,
some of which wrecked such havoc that they inadvertently facilitated
European imperialism. Prominent examples include the Mughal dynasty
in India and the Manchu government in China. Still, European imperi-
alism was not only ubiquitous, or nearly ubiquitous, but it bequeathed
to the entire world the concept and practice of government by the

nation-state, and pushed—or dragged—every corner of the globe into
an international economy, one that was unequal by design.
A twist came when an Asian country, Japan, attempted to build a
European-type seaborne empire in an intense and briefly successful form
between 1937 and 1945. This bid coincided with Adolf Hitler’s effort
to build a German empire in the heart of Europe itself. The result was
World War II, a ruinous war that made it impossible for the Atlantic
states to hold on to their colonies. The political decolonization of the
European empires took place with astonished rapidity, largely between
the end of World War II and the 1960s. There had been earlier waves
of decolonization, most prominently in the Americas in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries. There were also later cases of
independence, including Portugal’s colonies in Africa, and the settle-
ment countries of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. British
dominion over Hong Kong ended only in 1997. Still, the wave of acces-
sions to independence in the two decades of 1945–1965 was without
precedent or parallel. At times independence came peacefully and in
other times only through violent struggle. Eventually, over a hundred
new sovereign, European-style states were created. It was a profound
transformation of the world and was emotionally discussed and debated.
The audacity of the Europeans was extraordinary. Tiny Portugal,
home today to a population of less than eleven million, is said to be at
least partly behind the creation of sixty different nation-states, including
Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest country by both
area and population (and only half of one percent of this population
are indigenous peoples). Britain, at the height of its empire, is said to
have controlled one-fifth of the area of the world and one-fourth of
the population. Yet, the historical record reveals little embarrassment or
even self-awareness on the part of Europeans about the enormity of the
changes they were unfurling or of the ethical questions surrounding their
behavior. It was an extended era of unconscious arrogance and moral
blindness.
Indeed, there is at times a striking banality to colonialism. For example,
a monograph on the British colony of Sierra Leone in Western Africa,
written by J. J. Crooks, and published in 1903, reads like a pedestrian
annual report of a firm, even listing the receipts of the postal department.
Seemingly most important is not the welfare or interests of the popula-
tion, but instead: “The principal articles of export were palm kernels, kola
38 F. D. COLBURN
nuts, rubber, palm oil, gum copal, ginger, benni seed, and cotton.” Euro-
peans looked to the rest of the world for individual profit and national
gains. Colonialism ended, though. What has not ended is its wake.
European colonialism had a strong role in the creation of a rela-
tively uniform form of government by sovereign nation-states—coun-
tries—throughout the world. And European imperialism contributed
to increased economic interaction among these countries. One notable
consequence of a now shared political form of organization, and increased
economic links, is that discussion and debates have been facilitated among
at least intellectuals and political leaders from all corners of the world.
Indeed, membership in the United Nations tripled between 1945 and
1990, rising from fifty-one to one hundred, fifty-nine. A central topic
of discussion is differences in material well-being. Why are the countries
of Europe, and their settler colony brethren, such as the United States,
wealthy? Why are other colonies, with rare exceptions like Singapore,
poor? A corollary question, one that would be so consuming with inde-
pendence for the colonies: How can the poor, former colonies “catch-up”
and also be prosperous? It has been a rather hard question to answer.
Emancipation and the Quest
for “Development”
Abstract With independence, leaders of the struggle to end colonialism

were vaulted into positions of authority, often assuming control of
nascent governments. These leaders became—and are still—“fathers of
the country.” From Southeast Asia to North Africa to West Africa, these
leaders commonly shared a number of views: (1) a moral certitude or righ-
teousness, tied to a faith that “history was on their side,” (2) a passionate
distaste for colonialism and a desire to see it overthrown elsewhere,
(3) a conviction that the popular and well-intentioned mobilization to
oust colonialism could be channeled into modernizing or developing
their countries, (4) a belief in the merits of socialism for organizing and
managing their economies, and (5) a suspicion that the international
economy was profoundly unjust and needed—somehow—to be recast. As
the leadership of the newly independent countries settled into governing,
they devoted considerable resources—including their time—to interna-
tional relations, despite the often Herculean obstacles to governing that
they faced domestically.
Keywords Colonialism · independence · socialism · planned economy ·

development

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54716-5_4
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Er tauchte ein zweites Stück Zucker in das Kännchen, mit zierlich
gespreizten Fingern.
Karla sah ihm mit großen Augen zu. Was hatte sie eigentlich
erwartet von dem zierlichen, genäschigen alten Herrn? ... Rat? ...
Unterstützung ihres Wunsches? Mitleid? Sie wußte jetzt ganz genau,
daß er ihr nicht geben konnte, wonach sie verlangte. Nur um es
gesagt zu haben, murmelte sie:
„Du warst doch drüben in Amerika. Da wollte ich dich fragen, ob
ich nicht Schmerzchen mitnehmen könnte? ...“
„Wen mitnehmen?“
Der Papa blinzelte verständnislos mit den Augen.
„Wen — — —?“
„Nun, mein Kind — Schmerzchen!“
Der Papa pirouettierte auf seinem Absatz, hüpfte dann wie ein
Ball in die Luft und machte einen Entrechat.
„Schmerzchen! Entzückend! Also — Schmerzchen soll mit nach
Amerika? Sage mal, wie bist du auf den Namen gekommen?“
„Aus meinen Schmerzen heraus ... so.“
Karla warf ihr Täschchen auf den Tisch und fing wieder an zu
weinen.
„Ta ta ta ... Nur kein Drama, bitte, Karla ... Du weißt, ich kann
Tränen nicht leiden ... ich ...“
Er tupfte ihr ziemlich ratlos mit dem Tuch über die Wangen.
„Ich habe ja nichts gegen den Namen. Originell! Ich liebe, was
originell ist. Schmerzchen — scharmant. Ich schicke Schmerzchen
heute noch Schokolade. Zu jung — wie? Tja ... schwer, den
Geschmack so kleiner Damen zu treffen .... Aber nach Amerika?
Wahnsinn! Kunst und Kind — haben nur den ersten Buchstaben
gemeinsam. Tja ... liebes Kind ... Künstlerin ... das ist ... das muß ein
Wesen sein so zwischen Weib und Göttin. Nichts Irdisches ... sonst
wird nichts draus. Haus ... Küche ... Windeln ... sehr ehrenwert,
gewiß ... aber puah! Schon der Gatte zuviel ... viel zuviel .... Aber
nicht unüberwindlich. Den elendesten Geliebten akzeptiert man eher
als den trefflichsten Gatten! Das ist so! Eine Künstlerin ist
Allgemeingut! Ein jeder muß glauben können, daß er sie für sich
gewinnen kann. Das schafft Konkurrenz um sie herum, das gibt ihr
Erfolg. So war es immer, und so wird es bleiben! Und wer’s nicht
glaubt, der spürt’s am eigenen Leibe! Für den Anfang ist Altmann
ganz gut. Netter, anständiger Kerl. Sieht gut aus. Ein bißchen
Holzfigur — macht nichts. Zieh’ nur los mit ihm ... aber nachher —
Vorsicht! ... Und Schmerzchen ... die hat ja ein paar Tanten ...
vortrefflich. Die sollen sich nur um sie kümmern. Dazu sind Tanten
da. Sei froh, daß du meine Einzige bist. Du kommst nicht in
Verlegenheit, Tante zu werden! ...“
Er tätschelte ihre Wange und lachte mit seiner harten tenoralen
Stimme vor sich hin.
„Jetzt muß ich aber zu meinen Schülern. Also ... pa, Kleine ....
Wann fahrt ihr? Laßt mich’s wissen — ich komme dann zur Bahn ....
Du, ich höre Pauline, die kommt vom Markt.“
Er tänzelte zur Tür.
„Was bringen Sie mir Schönes, Pauline, he?“
Karla sah durch die offene Tür, wie der Papa neugierig in der
Markttasche herumstöberte; aber Pauline schubste ihn beiseite, als
sie Karla erblickte.
„Die junge Frau ... das ist aber schön! Was macht denn unser
Schmerzchen? ...“
Der Papa verschwand hinter der Saaltür, und gleich darauf
ertönte eine Gavotte am Klavier und die scharfen, nasalen
Kommandorufe des Papas, der mit einem langen dünnen Stock die
Fußstellungen korrigierte, während er sich mit dem Oberkörper
graziös hin und her wiegte. — — —
Schmerzchen blieb in Berlin. Selbst Pauline hatte zugeraten. Und
sie hatte den Ausschlag gegeben. Altmann nahm einen
Hundertmarkschein und drückte ihn Adele „fürs erste“ in die Hand.
„Wenn du auch sonst etwas brauchst ... ich bitte dich, halte nicht
zurück damit. Ich werde dir ohnehin nie vergelten können, was du
tust.“
Er kaufte ihr eine Winterjacke, da die ihre alt und recht schäbig
geworden war. Luise bekam eine dunkelrote seidene Bluse. Auch für
die Kinder fiel etwas ab: ein Tanzstundenkleid für Vicki und für Fritz
ein Einsegnungsanzug. Wieder kamen zweihundert Mark
zusammen. Karlas Ausstattung, die Anschaffung von Schiffskoffern,
etlichen neuen Westen und Krawatten für ihn selbst — seine Anzüge
fand er noch tadellos — das alles zusammen, mit einigen
Ausgängen und einer Brosche für Pauline aus leichtem Gold, fraß
doch ziemlich zwölfhundert Mark auf.
„Ach was,“ sagte Karla, „der Amerikaner hat eine offene Hand.
Dem ziehe ich einen neuen Vorschuß wie nichts aus den Händen.“
Sie war, wenn nicht gerade die Verzweiflung über die
bevorstehende Trennung von Schmerzchen sie packte, lustig und
guter Dinge. Vicki begleitete sie oft zu den Schneiderinnen, und ihre
Augen weiteten sich vor Staunen und Neid, wenn es auch nur recht
bescheidene Stoffe und Zutaten waren. Aber die leuchtenden
Farben, das Gleißen der billigen Seide und das Schillern der
glitzernden Überwürfe raubten ihr fast den Verstand, weckten alle
ihre schlummernden Begierden.
Karla hatte nicht viel eigenen Geschmack. Aber ihrer molligen
Jugend und ihrer jetzt wieder frischen Gesichtsfarbe stand alles gut.
Auf dem Heimwege trat sie mit Vicki in eine Konditorei ein und
ließ Vicki „aussuchen“.
„Tante, du bist himmlisch! ...“
Die Zeiten hatten sich geändert. Und Karla durchlebte die neuen
mit frohem Genießen, ohne viel nachzugrübeln. Wenn Vicki vor
Entzücken zerfloß beim Anblick eines Bandes oder eines Gürtels,
dann kaufte Karla es ihr.
„Sei nur recht gut zu Schmerzchen, Vicki, wenn ich nicht da bin.“
Und Vicki lachte nicht mehr über den Namen, sondern nannte ihn
auch. Meist ging Altmann mit Karla aus. Schon, damit sie nicht zuviel
„verläpperte“. Aber im Grunde war sie keine Verschwenderin. Jetzt,
da ihr bescheidener Luxushunger gestillt war, blieb ihr nur eine
kleine Genäschigkeit: Mohrenköpfe und Windbeutel verschwanden
in großen Mengen in ihrem Magen, und es kam nicht selten vor, daß
sie sich ein viertel Pfund Konfekt oder Schokolade kaufte und
heimlich aus der Tüte naschte.
Das hatte sie wohl von ihrem Vater.
Ihre frohe Stimmung hielt selten lange in der Culmstraße an.
Immerhin machte sie Adele gern diese oder jene Freude. Mehr um
sich der Dankesschuld zu entledigen, als um Dankbarkeit zu
beweisen. Wie ein Schulmädchen aber freute sie sich, Luisens
strenger Aufsicht zu entfliehen. Mit dem alternden Mädchen verband
sie noch weniger Gemeinsames als mit Adele. Vielleicht war es das
Antikünstlerische dieser zwei kleinbürgerlichen Frauennaturen,
wodurch sie ihr unbewußt immer fremd blieben.
Pauline war die einzige.
Aber Adele hatte erklärt, Pauline wäre ja sehr nett, doch
immerhin ein Dienstbote. Wenn „der Papa“ es gestattete, daß sie mit
am Tische saß ... so konnte das doch nicht maßgebend für eine Frau
Dr. Maurer sein!
Abends sang Karla, und Altmann begleitete sie. Adele hatte noch
allerlei in der Wirtschaft zu tun, Dr. Maurer aber saß in einem Sessel
und ließ Karlas Stimme über sich hinfluten. Manchmal brannte sie
ihn wie Feuer, dann wieder erfrischte sie ihn wie eine kühle Brise.
Wenn sie aufhörte, fragte er: „Willst du nicht weitersingen?“
Sie hörte die Bitte heraus und lächelte. So ein guter Kerl war der
Alwin — so ein dummer, guter Kerl!
Ihm zu Liebe sang sie sogar Schubert. Aber dann meinte sie
jedesmal:
„Mir ist, als ob ich ein ausgewachsenes Kleid anhätte, wenn ich
Lieder singe.“
Dr. Maurer lächelte ein bißchen traurig. Er hatte jede Kritik
verloren.
„Du singst auch Lieder schön!“
Manchmal träumte er sich an Altmanns Stelle.
Wenn Karla seine Frau wäre! Wenn er jetzt mit ihr so in die weite
Welt hinausfahren dürfte ...! Er stand auf und legte seine Hände auf
ihre Schultern.
„Ihr habt’s gut, ihr zwei!“ ...
Seine weiche, mollige Hand war heiß, und Karla spürte ihr
Brennen durch das Kleid. Sie machte sich frei — ein bißchen
verlegen und gutmütig.
„Komm auch mit, Alwin ...“
Sie dachte sich gar nichts dabei. Aber ihm floß das schwere Blut
langsam aus den Wangen.
„Ja, das wäre was ... mitkommen ... und all den Krempel
schießen lassen!“
„Was redest du für dummes Zeug, Karla“, unterbrach Altmann
streng.
Er kannte jetzt seinen Schwager. Der war rasch umnebelt! Hatte
ihn, wer wollte. Der Augenblick war alles bei ihm.
Dr. Maurer mochte wohl dasselbe denken. Und er spürte wieder
den Brodem der Kaffeegemütlichkeit, die ihn eingefangen, den
herben Glanz seines kurzen geistigen Aufstieges, den Rausch, den
er vom grünen Rasen mitgebracht — alles versunken im trüben
Alltag; nichts Helles, Befreiendes war in seinem Leben mehr. Eine
abgearbeitete Frau, zwei Kinder, die ihm noch wenig Freude
machten, eine enge Häuslichkeit und Stöße von Heften, die er mit
Strömen roter Tinte durchzog — ein Jahr ums andere.
Es kam vor, was sonst nie geschehen war, daß er, selbst wenn er
den Abend zu Hause verbracht hatte, das Schlafzimmer erst
aufsuchte, wenn Adele fest schlief. Er saß in der Wohnstube und las
und rauchte.
Wenn aber Karla gesungen hatte, dann ging er leise in sein
Zimmer, blendete die Lampe ab, damit sie Fritz nicht wecke, der
seinen schweren Jugendschlaf schlief — und setzte sich an den
Schreibtisch.
Er tauchte auch die Feder ein und schrieb. Schrieb eine Seite,
die zweite. Dann strich er alles wieder durch oder zerriß es ... ganz
leise — in heimlicher, verbissener Wut, die keinen Ausweg
wußte. — —
Am Vorabend der Reise hatte Adele eine von Altmann gestiftete
Ananas zur Bowle aufgesetzt. Die Kinder hatten aufbleiben dürfen,
und Karla lief in einem alten Fähnchen herum, denn die neuen
Kleider lagen schon in den offenen Koffern, und das Reisekleid aus
dunklem Braun, mit hübschen, hellen Lederklappen sollte erst
morgen eingeweiht werden.
Schmerzchen schlummerte tief und ahnungslos in ihrem Wagen,
die Flasche im Arm. Adele dachte an ihre Nachtruhe und hatte Karla
strengstens untersagt, das Kind noch einmal herauszunehmen.
„Nein, nein“, versprach Karla und ballte ihr nasses Taschentuch
zusammen.
„Ich tu’ ja nichts ... nur ansehen muß ich es ... ansehen ...“
Luise legte streng mahnend den Arm um sie.
„Man soll Kinder nicht ansehen, wenn sie schlafen ... davon
wachen sie auf. Komm — sing’ uns was zu guter Letzt.“
„Ich bin gerade in der Stimmung!“
Dr. Maurer blickte auf die Schwestern, die Kinder und schwieg.
Aber Karla sah ihn an in diesem Augenblick — und er tat ihr leid.
Adele brachte die Bowle, das Dienstmädchen folgte mit einem
Berg kleiner Kuchen, die Luise mitgebracht hatte.
„Ich bin wie zerschlagen“, sagte Adele und fiel aufs Sofa.
„Du Gute ... Liebe.“
Altmann hätte sich in diesem Augenblick für die Schwester
vierteilen lassen. Luise Altmann schenkte die Gläser voll.
„Könnt ihr nicht warten, bis die Großen genommen haben“,
herrschte sie die Kinder an, die ihre Hände verdächtig dem
Kuchenteller näherten.
Man stieß an. Alwin Maurer sagte was von froher Reise,
glücklicher Wiederkehr — von viel Lorbeeren ...
„Und viel Geld“, flickte Adele ein.
Das war doch wirklich der einzig gültige Grund, um übers Wasser
zu gehen. So recht gefallen wollte den Schwestern die Sache
überhaupt nicht. Was konnte inzwischen mit dem Kinde passieren?
Und dann überhaupt — gab es nicht in Deutschland große Bühnen
genug? Wenn schon durchaus Theater gespielt werden mußte! Und
als was begleitete eigentlich Ernst seine Frau? Er hatte undeutlich
gemurmelt: „Ich werde dem Direktor zur Hand gehen.“
„Also stellvertretender Direktor?“ hatte Luise gefragt.
„Nicht ganz. Mehr gelegentlich ... wenn er meiner gerade bedarf.“
Das Ehrgefühl der Schwestern litt. Und sie fragten nicht mehr.
Jetzt stießen sie mit den Gläsern an und dachten sich ihr Teil. Sie
hatten etwas gegen Karla. Es kam sie bitter an, daß Karla einem
gewissen Glanz entgegenging, während ihr Bruder taten- und
ruhmlos im Schatten blieb.
„Na, vertragt euch nur immer“, sagte Luise.
„Und spart“, ergänzte Adele.
Draußen läutete es. Und da es bald halb zehn war, so blickten
alle befremdet auf. Das Mädchen meldete, eine Frau wäre draußen
und frage nach der jungen Frau Altmann.
Karla schlug in die Hände. Pauline — das war Pauline! Sie zog
sie ins Speisezimmer, wo jetzt nur eine kleine Lampe brannte.
Pauline brachte was Selbstgebackenes für die erste Reise. Karla
umarmte sie.
„Ach, Pauline, wenn ich Schmerzchen bei Ihnen lassen könnte,
wenn ....“
Pauline schüttelte kummervoll den Kopf.
„Tja ... nun ist aber doch der Herr Papa so ...“
„Ja ... das ist er — —“
Aber der Papa hatte Pauline ein kleines Uhrchen zum Anstecken
für Karla mitgegeben. Ein entzückendes kleines Uhrchen, mit einem
Bajazzo in roter Emaille darauf, der auf einer Perlenstange
balancierte. Und auf der Innenseite hatte er eingravieren lassen:
„Zur Ausreise meiner Kleinen ins Leben mit der Bitte, das
Gleichgewicht zu behalten.“
So klein waren die Buchstaben, daß Karla sie kaum entziffern
konnte.
„Der Herr Papa hat Augen wie ein Adler; hat gleich bemerkt, daß
ein Komma fehlt.“
Pauline sagte das mit einem gewissen Stolz.
Nun führte Karla sie an Schmerzchens Wagen. Es gab wieder ein
paar Tränen, heiße Bitten und feierliche Versprechungen.
„Kommst du nicht, Karla?“ rief Luise.
„Ja ... ja ... gleich!“
Sie hätte Pauline zu gerne ein Glas Bowle angeboten, aber nun
waren doch die Schwägerinnen so komisch ...
„Ich schreibe Ihnen, Pauline. Meine erste Karte aus Amerika, die
kriegen Sie ...“
„Laß sehen“, sagte Adele, als Karla mit dem hoch in der Hand
blinkendem Uhrchen wieder eintrat. „Sehr hübsch. Dein Papa
scheint viel Geld zu verdienen.“
„Ich hoffe doch“, entgegnete Karla spitz.
Die Kinder wollten nun auch die Uhr sehen. Sie schrien und
lachten.
Altmann mußte sehr laut sprechen, um sich verständlich zu
machen.
„Wie? Was ...? Ich verstehe nicht ... Kinder seid doch ruhig ....“
Alwin Maurer stand auf. Sollte das der letzte Abend sein? Würde
er an diesen Höllenlärm denken müssen, wenn er sich Karlas Bild
zurückrief?
„Wollen wir nicht doch noch etwas Musik machen?“
Es klang fast bittend.
„Ja .. das ist recht ... ich will Luise inzwischen Karlas Sachen
zeigen, die heute noch gekommen sind ....“
„Ich geh’ mit ....“
Vicki schoß als erste durch die Tür. Die Schwestern folgten. Fritz
lümmelte sich am Ofen herum.
„Na — und du ... in die Klappe, was?“ ...
„Nöö ... ich bleibe noch.“
Fritz blieb immer, solange es noch etwas auf den Schüsseln gab.
Karla sang — jubelnd und tief ergreifend. So war ihr
Abschiednehmen. Sie stand auf der Schwelle eines neuen Lebens,
und die Bängnis, der sie sich in manchen Stunden nicht erwehren
konnte, gab ihrer Stimme manchmal eine wehe, zarte Süßigkeit.
Als sie endete, kreuzte sie die Hände unter dem Kinn und atmete
tief auf.
„Danke, Karla ... von ganzem Herzen danke ich dir ....“
Alwin Maurer schüttelte immer wieder ihre Hand — so
krampfhaft, daß sie bald aufgeschrien hätte. Aber das Lächeln blieb
wie eingefroren um ihre Lippen. Wie furchtbar mußte das für den
guten Alwin sein, daß er ihre Stimme so lange nicht mehr hören
würde ... so sehr lange nicht ...! Sie hätte weinen mögen um ihn ...
fast so sehr wie um Schmerzchen.
Dr. Maurer schluckte ein paarmal hintereinander. Die Schüler
kannten das an ihm, wenn ihn etwas stark erregte. Schluckte, ließ
Karlas Hand los und trat zurück. Dabei stolperte er über Fritzens
vorgestreckte, unförmige Füße.
„Zum Donnerwetter, Bengel ... paß doch auf ...“
Er brach ab.
Fritz blickte mit glänzenden, starren Augen auf Karla. Als wollte
er sie verschlingen, und doch ehrfürchtig, wie auf ein Wunder.
„Na, was ist los, Junge ... was ist los?“
„Wie die singt ...“
Es klang lächerlich häßlich, wie das so hervorgestoßen wurde in
der knabenhaft plumpen Art und mit der zum ersten Male
mutierenden Stimme.
Aber Karla lachte nicht. Und Dr. Maurer sagte — weicher, als er
sonst zu Fritz sprach:
„Mach’ Schluß, Junge. Was Besseres kommt nicht nach.“
Altmann sammelte das Letzte von Karlas Noten
zusammen. — — —
Bildhübsch sah Karla am nächsten Morgen aus, als sie ihren
Kopf mit dem langen, braunen Schleier zum Abteilfenster vorbeugte.
Ihre Lider waren zwar geschwollen, und ihre Finger spielten
aufgeregt mit der Kante ihres Taschentuches. Es traf sich, daß es
ein Sonntag war, und die ganze „Culmstraße“ war vollzählig auf der
Bahn.
„Küßt mir Schmerzchen.“ Sie brachte es kaum noch über die
heißen, roten Lippen. Gleich darauf flatterte ihr Tüchlein.
„Der Papa kommt noch ... der liebe Papa!“ ...
Er kam — elastisch, elegant, in seinem auf Taille gearbeiteten
Überzieher. Er hielt ein paar Teerosen in der Hand und vollführte mit
ihnen zierliche Figuren in der Luft. Dann warf er sie Karla ins Fenster
— graziös und sicher, und begrüßte die Familie mit einem
mehrfachen kurzen, höflichen Neigen des Zylinders.
„Du, Kleine ... im Dezember findet in New York ein großes
Schachturnier statt. Wenn du gerade da bist, grüße Tschigorin von
mir. Nicht vergessen! Schreibe ihm. Er wird schon kommen. Sage,
ich erwarte ihn bei mir im April. Tschi—go—rin ... Herrgott, Kleine,
den kennt doch jedes Kind! ... Nicht weinen ... ta ta ta ... Unsinn —
Paa — Paa!“
Der Papa war ganz allein da. Er sah niemanden und kümmerte
sich um niemanden. Hinter ihm flatterten Tücher auf, flogen Hüte in
die Luft. Er lachte, er schickte Kußhände.
Altmann stand hinter Karla. Er sah älter aus als sonst. Im übrigen
war sein Gesicht unbeweglich wie immer. Vielleicht noch etwas
starrer. Er haßte Rührszenen auf offener Straße. Und es ging ihm
um mehr als nur um einen Reiseabschied.
arla packte. Es war gar nicht leicht, die langen Schleppkleider
in den schmalen Koffern kunstgerecht zusammenzulegen. Die
Nordeni reiste nie anders als mit einer Zofe. Nordeni ... zum
Lachen! Das „i“ hatte sie sich angehängt wie einen Similistein. John
Russel hätte es gern gesehen, wenn sie selbst sich King statt König
genannt hätte. Aber sie dachte nicht daran.
Hochrot im Gesicht, mit offener, weißer Morgenjacke lief sie zur
Tür des Nebenraumes: „Schreibst du noch lange?“
„Ich bin gleich fertig. Soll ich etwas Besonderes bestellen?“
„Weiß nichts. Grüße nur.“
Adele zog in eine neue Wohnung. Hauptsächlich Schmerzchens
wegen. Natürlich. Und es war nur billig, daß Ernst einen
Umzugsbeitrag schickte. Vor drei Monaten war Vicki an verspätetem
Scharlach erkrankt. Karla kabelte jeden Tag in die Culmstraße, wie
es Schmerzchen ginge. Und immer dieselbe Mahnung: „Nicht
sparen. Kind isolieren.“ Vickis Krankheit kostete sie sehr viel Geld —
und dann die Erholung an der See! Aber davon hatte dann auch
Schmerzchen was gehabt, hatte mit bloßen Füßchen im warmen
Dünensand herumgepaddelt. „Das Körperchen wird schon ganz
braun“, schrieb Adele.
„Die Ruhe und die gute Luft tun Adele auch gut“, sagte Altmann.
Karla fragte nicht, was an Geld draufging. Nur, als sie von der
Zofe der Nordeni sprach, hatte Altmann gemeint: „Vernünftig sein,
Karla ... wir brauchen ohnehin eine Unmenge.“
Sie nickte. Ja ... das mochte wohl stimmen. Bei John Russel war
sie mächtig im Vorschuß, und es war ihr beinahe unheimlich, wie
leicht er ihr jede verlangte Summe gewährte.
Freilich verlangte er Toiletten. Hatte nur kalt aufgelacht, als sie
ihre mitgebrachten Schätze gezeigt hatte, damit er das Kleid für ein
Konzert wähle, in dem sie mitwirken sollte. Ganz wütend war sie
über die Geringschätzung gewesen. Altmann übernahm es, mit
Russel zu sprechen. Karla war ja schließlich nicht als „Salondame“
für französische Ehebruchskomödien engagiert, sondern als
dramatische Sängerin. Auf die Stimme kam es an, und wenn sie in
großen Linien der Mode folgte, so durfte niemand mehr von ihr
verlangen!
„Verlange ich auch nicht, Herr ... Herr ...“
Es wurde John Russel noch immer schwer, sich Altmanns
Namen zu merken.
„Siehst Du“, sagte Altmann sehr selbstsicher und zufrieden von
dem Ergebnis seiner Unterredung.
Karla freute sich auf das Konzert, das in dem Hause eines
Milliardärs stattfinden sollte und zu dem die Spitzen der Gesellschaft
ihr Erscheinen zugesagt hatten. Sie konnte kaum essen und
schlafen vor Aufregung. Aber als sie John Russel fragte, für welche
Stunde sie sich bereithalten sollte, sah er sie kalt an und warf ihr die
Antwort hin:
„Sie singen ja gar nicht, sondern die Nordeni.“
„Siehst du ... siehst du“, rief sie zu Hause und trommelte auf den
Tisch.
Die Tränen saßen locker bei ihr und überfluteten ihre Wangen.
Altmann suchte sie zu beruhigen.
„Lächerlich, Karla ... Sei froh, daß du einen Tag Ruhe hast. Wir
gehen ins Deutsche Theater und verbringen einen netten,
gemütlichen Abend.“
„Ich hätte aber hundert Dollar für das Konzert bekommen“,
schluchzte Karla.
Die Nordeni renommierte haarsträubend. Der Hausherr hätte ihr
die Hand geküßt, die Damen hätten sich um ihr Taschentuch
gerissen, das sie auf dem Flügel hatte liegen lassen ... Karla konnte
das alles schwarz auf weiß in einem der amerikanischen
Klatschblätter lesen. Und dazu noch, daß die „Künstlerin außer
einem fürstlichen Honorar ein Armband, mit Rubinen und Brillanten
besetzt, als Geschenk erhalten hatte“. Folgte die Beschreibung der
Toilette.
Am nächsten Morgen ging Karla, ohne ihrem Manne etwas zu
sagen, in die Office von John Russel.
John Russel saß in Hemdsärmeln vor seiner Schreibmaschine,
die er bei Karlas Eintreten durch einen Druck auf einen Knopf in
einer Versenkung verschwinden ließ, worauf sich die Tischplatte
selbsttätig zusammenschloß.
„Well ... Karla König ... what is the matter?“
Karla wußte eigentlich nicht recht, wie sie ihre Bitte um Vorschuß
einkleiden sollte. Er hatte schon mehrfach gegeben; aber es waren
doch immer kleinere Summen gewesen. Sie druckste ein bißchen
herum.
„Sie brauchen Geld — wie? ... Genieren Sie sich doch nicht.
Wieviel? ... Tausend Dollar? Lächerlich ... ich gebe Ihnen gern zwei.
Da können Sie was anfangen.“
„O nein“, wehrte Karla erschreckt ab. „Mein Mann ..“
„Ihr Mann geht mich gar nichts an. Ich habe nicht Ihren Mann
engagiert. Ihr Mann macht eine Glucke aus Ihnen! Hätte ich das
gewußt —“
Karla blickte ihn furchtsam an.
„Aber ich bin doch ganz unerfahren. Mein Mann sorgt für mich.“
„Ja, und Sie verdienen für ihn. Das heißt, Sie verdienen nicht.
Weil er Sie am Rock festhält, wenn Sie mal losgehen wollen.
Vielleicht bitten Sie ihn auch um Erlaubnis, wenn Sie sich ein Paar
Handschuhe kaufen wollen? ... Sie laufen herum, angezogen wie
eine Gouvernante. Wissen Sie nicht, daß Ihr Beruf Ihnen Pflichten
auferlegt? Glauben Sie, die Amerikaner zahlen ihr Geld, um eine
kleine governess zu sehen?“
„Und meine Stimme?“
Er zuckte die Achseln.
„Stimme ... Stimme! Die ist doch erst etwas wert, wenn ich was
aus ihr mache. Haben Sie das noch nicht verstanden? Nein? Dann
können Sie mir leid tun!“
„Mein Mann ...“
„Kommen Sie mir nicht immer mit Ihrem Mann. So ein Mann, der
nichts ist als ‚Mann‘ — macht mich nervös. Sagen Sie ihm lieber, er
solle sich einen anständigen Frack machen lassen; er sieht auch aus
wie ein Schulmeister in seinem Hochzeitsanzug, mit den
altmodischen Schößen. Darin passen Sie gut zusammen! Oder,
sagen Sie mal ... er ist doch Schauspieler! Ich kenne den Direktor
vom Deutschen Theater hier. Wenn ich dem ein paar Worte sage ...
bring’ ich ihn dort unter. Da kann er seine ältesten Lumpen
auftragen, wenn er will. Überlegen Sie sich’s. Und da sind
zweitausend Dollar. Und hier ... die Adresse von einem Modesalon.
Zehn Prozent Rabatt, wenn Sie von John Russel kommen. Die
wissen dort schon, was ich liebe. Da ist auch noch die Karte von
meinem Schneider ... warten Sie ... hier! Da kann Ihr Mann
hingehen.“
Karla wechselte immerfort die Farbe. Es war alles so schrecklich
demütigend und häßlich.
„Wir haben ein Kind, wir müssen sparen!“
Russel lachte kurz vor sich hin. Sie war eine Gans, diese König.
Schade, daß er sich mit ihr beschwert hatte ...
„Sparen heißt verdienen, aber nicht: nichts ausgeben! Wenn Sie
nichts ausgeben, kommen Sie auch nicht zum Verdienen. Das ist
meine Meinung. Im übrigen machen Sie, was Sie wollen. Aber wenn
nichts aus Ihnen wird, dann bedanken Sie sich bei Ihrem Manne.
Nur schade um die Stimme! ...“
Karla zupfte an ihren Handschuhen, drehte ihren Schirm wie
einen Quirl in der Hand und steckte den Scheck schließlich in ihr
Täschchen. Sie unterschrieb mit großen, dicken Buchstaben „Karla
König“, ohne „Altmann“.
„Ist nicht nötig“, hatte John Russel gesagt.
Abscheulich war dieser Russel — gemein! Sie hätte ihn am
liebsten ins Gesicht geschlagen.
Und sie war dann immer doppelt zärtlich zu ihrem Manne. Aber
diesmal ... ihr schien es, als hätte Russel nicht so unrecht. Sie waren
eben beide aus kleinen Verhältnissen — Altmann und sie — und
hatten den weiten Blick nicht.
Sie löste den Scheck ein und bestellte ihre Kleider. Sie zitterte
vor dem Augenblick, da sie Altmann diesen Vorschuß beichten
mußte.
Ganz kalt sah er sie an und sagte mit eingezogenen
Mundwinkeln: „Es ist ja dein Geld. Du kannst natürlich damit tun,
was du willst.“
Sie wagte es nicht mehr, von einem neuen Frack zu sprechen.
Bevor sie New York verließen, durfte sie auch in einer ihrer
neuen Toiletten bei Astrong singen. Entweder die Nordeni hatte
haarsträubend gelogen, oder die Milliardäre waren verschieden wie
Tag und Nacht. Die Künstler waren von der Gesellschaft durch eine
rote Samtschnur mit goldenen Quasten abgegrenzt. Die Damen
wandelten um die Schnur herum und musterten die Künstler halb
dreist, halb gelangweilt durch ihre edelsteinbesetzten Lorgnetten und
tauschten mit ihren befrackten Begleitern Bemerkungen aus. Karla
fühlte, wie die Füße ihr brannten in den kleinen Goldschuhen, auf die
die Blicke der märchenhaft reich gekleideten Frauen fielen. Die
Geigerin flüsterte ihr zu: „Man trägt in diesem Jahr keine Goldschuhe
mehr.“
„So“ ...
Karla setzte sich auf einen kleinen seidenen Hocker und zog die
Füße ein. Ihre weißbehandschuhten Hände (man trug in diesem
Jahre auch keine weißen, sondern nur schwarze, lange
Handschuhe) nestelten aufgeregt an den Notenblättern. Wenn die
Leute sie noch lange so anstarrten, dann ... dann riß sie die
Handschuhe ab und warf sie ihnen ins Gesicht oder streckte ihnen
die Zunge aus! Aber die Gäste verliefen sich allmählich, und nach
einigen Minuten begann das Konzert. Die Künstler wurden von
einem befrackten Herrn einzeln hinter der Schnur hervorgeholt und
nach ihrer Nummer wieder hinter die Schnur zurückgebracht.
Karla zitterte vor Wut. Als sie aber auf das Podium trat, das mit
hellblauem Samt ausgeschlagen war, wurde sie ganz blaß, da sie
die Pracht erblickte, die sich vor ihr ausbreitete. In der ersten Reihe
saß eine blonde Frau in schwarzem Schleiertüll, dessen feines
Rankenmuster mit echten kleinen Brillanten eingefaßt war;
erbsengroße Diamantknöpfe schlossen die Spangen der
schwarzseidenen Schuhe und eine lange Kette flach gefaßter
Brillanten fiel in doppelter Reihe von dem schlanken Halse herab bis
zu den Knieen. Neben ihr saß eine üppige Brünette, deren
lichtblaues, langschleppendes Unterkleid von einem Netz aus
Goldfäden überdeckt war, das mit langen Gehängen aus echten
Perlen um die Schleppe, die kurzen Ärmel und die Brust verziert war.
Hinter den Sesseln dieser zwei Damen standen unbeweglich je zwei
Diener, deren Amt es offenbar war, darauf zu achten, daß sich nicht
etwa einer der kostbaren Edelsteine von dem Kleide löste und in
dem Gefältel fremder Schleppen verlor.
Die in die Wände eingelassenen und mit Gold abgesetzten,
geschliffenen Spiegel gaben das Funkeln der Edelsteine, das
Gleißen der wundervollen, gold- und silberschimmernden Stoffe
hundertfach wieder. Das Licht aus zahlreichen goldenen
Blumensträußen, die an der Decke angebracht waren, sprühte über
die tief ausgeschnittenen elfenbeinstumpfen und rosig
schimmernden Nacken, die scheinbar kunstlosen, in weiten Wellen
gesteckten glänzenden roten, braunen und blonden Haare. Da, wo
die Reihen der hellblauen Sessel mit geschnörkelten Goldlehnen
endeten, erhoben sich in einförmigem Schwarz und Weiß die
Gestalten der Männer. Bartlos wie Schauspieler waren sie alle.
Hatten scheinbar gutmütige, ein bischen schwammige Züge. Nur
das fast allen gemeinsame, vorgeschobene Kinn und der
verschleierte schwere Blick gab ihren Gesichtern bei näherem
Zusehen einen Zug neronischer Gefühllosigkeit. Ihre Hände konnten
trotz aller Pflege nicht immer ihre Herkunft verbergen. Sie protzten
weder mit Ringen, noch mit Orden. Die Größe ihres Reichtums
zeigten ihre Frauen zur Genüge auf ihren Schultern an; ihre Stellung
aber war durch ihre Anwesenheit in einem solchen Hause
klargestellt. Zwischendurch gab es auch junge Leute, deren
Gesichtszüge der Reichtum des Vaters veredelt hatte. Ihre Stirnen
waren breit und nichtssagend, ihre Augen hatten die Schwermut des
freudlosen Genießens, aber unter ihren Frackärmeln zeichneten sich
die Muskeln von Berufsathleten ab. Sie besuchten diese Salons, in
denen sie sich langweilten, um eine französische Prinzessin zu
fischen oder einer Tingeltangelöse auszuweichen, die sie überall hin
verfolgte, um ihnen zum mindesten ein Eheversprechen abzulisten,
das sie zu Geld machen konnte.
All diesen Männern war der Frack die Abenduniform. Wo sie sie
spazieren führten, innerhalb ihres Kreises, war ihnen gleichgültig,
ebenso wie ihnen gleichgültig war, was sie über sich ergehen lassen
mußten. Die Patti, Jean de Reczke hatten den Vätern einige
Emotionen bereitet, als sie anfangen durften, an „Kunst“ zu denken
— die jungen Leute hatten die Bewunderungen der Väter
übernommen und noch nichts Neues entdeckt. Das war dort
übrigens Frauensache. Aber auch die Frauen übernahmen gern
geprägte Werte und ließen es sich erst sagen, für wen sie sich zu
erwärmen hatten.
Der Geigerin ging ein recht guter Ruf voraus. Sie war eine
mollige Blondine, und der Salon ihres Mannes, der in Paris ein
berühmter Klavierspieler war, vereinigte die beste Gesellschaft.
Einige junge Damen aus den upper Vierhundert hatten
Geigenunterricht bei ihr in Paris genommen ... sehr nett .... Man
hatte ihr lebhaft mit den Fingerspitzen zugeklatscht.
Aber — Karla König? ... Ein unbeschriebenes Blatt.
Man hörte nicht viel hin, unterhielt sich leise — durchaus höflich,
legte wohl auch mit mahnendem Lächeln den beringten Finger an
den Mund — es war gerade die Mode aufgekommen, die Ringe über
den Handschuhen zu tragen — und es sah auch wirklich sehr
hübsch aus, wenn die Frauen so dasaßen, die steifen Hände wie
glitzernde Blumen im Schoß. Die Tochter eines Multimillionärs hatte
es sogar gewagt, sich einen kleinen funkelnden Rubin in den
milchweißen Augenzahn einsetzen zu lassen. Sie lächelte sehr viel,
weil sie heute zum erstenmal die Wirkung dieser Neuheit
ausprobierte. Und eigentlich war der Zahn von Miß Evelin Steafford
heute der „Clou!“, gegen den auch die beste Nummer des Konzerts
schwer aufkommen konnte. Denn die Wirkung des Rubins mußte bei
allen Wendungen von Miß Evelins hübschem Kopf und jeder Art
ihres reizenden Lächelns genau beobachtet werden.
Karla sang. Die Noten zitterten in ihren Händen. Sie fühlte, daß
sie ins Leere sang. Dann sah sie, wie ein paar Damen wieder ihre
Schuhe lorgnettierten. Sie wurde immer unsicherer.
„Was machen Sie denn?“ flüsterte ihr der Begleiter zu.
Sie hatte einen Takt ausgelassen. Wie durch ein Wunder kamen
sie nicht auseinander. Als sie zu Ende war, rührte sich keine Hand.
Sie griff nach dem Klavier. Tiefe Schatten legten sich unter ihre
Augen. Die blonde Dame mit dem goldenen Netz schlug kaum
merklich auf die Lehne ihres Sessels und unterdrückte ein Gähnen.
Das war nun schon das vierte Hauskonzert in dieser Woche ... es
war Zeit, daß man auf etwas anderes kam. Sie würde sich eine
Bühne bauen lassen — in der Art wie sie die Patti hatte. Natürlich in
ganz anderer Ausführung .... Musik war ja ganz nett, aber man
mußte auch was fürs Auge haben ...
Na — was war denn das plötzlich?
Die Dame in Blau und die Dame in Schwarz beugten sich
zueinander ... und alle schimmernden Frauenköpfe neigten sich
nach rechts und links, wie sturmbewegte Blumen. Eine große Stille
lag über dem glitzernden, funkensprühenden, lichtumfluteten Saal ....
Was war denn geschehen? ... Die da oben sang ja plötzlich nicht
mehr? Ein paar Herren reckten ihre Hälse ... nicht viele. Die meisten
waren froh, daß es aus war.
Karla wankte am Arm des Begleiters die paar Stufen des
Podiums herunter.
Der Herr, der die Künstler hinter der Schnur hervorholte wie
Schafe, die zur Schlachtbank geführt werden, sprang auf die
Erhöhung und meldete, Miß König wäre plötzlich von einem
Unwohlsein befallen worden ... Dann schubste er den Sänger hinauf,
den er schon in Bereitschaft gehalten.
Karla mußte in der Umzäunung bleiben, bis das Konzert zu Ende
war. Irgend jemand von den Künstlern besorgte ihr ein Glas Wasser.
Aber sie hatte die Zähne fest aneinandergepreßt, und die Geigerin
nahm schließlich ihr Taschentuch und kühlte ihr den Nacken. Da
öffnete Karla die Augen.
„Ich will nach Hause ... nach Hause“, murmelte sie auf Englisch.
Die Geigerin fuhr ihr gutmütig über die Wange:
„Jetzt müssen Sie noch ein bißchen warten — bis das Konzert
aus ist. Unsere Wagen sind noch nicht da. Aber ich hoffe, daß Sie
noch vor der Abfütterung fortkommen.“
„Wie denn ...“
„Tja ... darling ... wir bekommen noch ein großes supper ...
natürlich extra serviert. Und auf dem Teller findet jeder sein Honorar
unter Briefumschlag ... manchmal sogar noch ein kleines Geschenk
... nichts sehr Wertvolles ... es ist ja nur ein Andenken ... etwa das
verschlungene Monogramm des Hausherrn in Gold oder so ...“
„Aber ich will kein Honorar, kein Monogramm ...“
Der Sänger kam zurück, dicke Schweißperlen auf der Stirn;
irgendein Fräulein, das als Baby angezogen war und eine
Riesenpuppe im Arm trug, hüpfte an der Hand des Herrn hinaus in
den Konzertsaal. Ihre Spezialität waren naive Kinderliedchen, die
eine schamlose, doppelsinnige Pointe hatten. Die Damen wollten
immer nicht verstehen, warum sich die Herren bei den harmlosen
Vorträgen der kleinen Person so gut unterhielten. Jedenfalls
verdiente sie sehr viel Geld mit ihren „babysongs“. Der Sänger — er
gehörte seit einigen Jahren zu John Russels Gesellschaft — warf
seine Noten ärgerlich auf den Tisch.
„Wenn die kleine Kröte noch einmal auf demselben Programm
mit mir figuriert, dann sage ich ab. Aber daß Sie, kleine Frau, sich
derartig würden ins Bockshorn jagen lassen von der Gesellschaft,
das hätte ich nicht geglaubt.“
Karla biß in ihr Taschentuch hinein.
„Sie müssen sich doch nur immer vergegenwärtigen, vor wem
Sie stehen. Die Dame in Blau und Gold ist die Frau des Hauses; ihr
Schwiegervater hat noch ein Schlächtergeschäft betrieben in New

Colonialism Independence and The Construction of Nation States 1St Ed Edition Forrest D Colburn Full Chapter

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Colonialism Independence and The Construction of Nation States 1St Ed Edition Forrest D Colburn Full Chapter

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Colonialism, Independence, and the

Construction of Nation-States 1st ed.

“Why have some poor countries remained “underdeveloped,” or even “failed,”

“Colburn’s Colonialism, Independence, and the Construction of Nation-States is

“Forrest Colburn’s Colonialism, Independence, and the Construction of Nation-

ISBN 978-3-030-54715-8 ISBN 978-3-030-54716-5 (eBook)

Cover illustration: © Harvey Loake

European Imperialism and the Remaking of the World 25

Emancipation and the Quest for “Development” 39

Good-Bye to the “Third World” 55

Asia Looms Over Latin America, Africa, and the Middle

Nicaragua as a Sobering Illustration 97

Seeking a New Compass 115

Fig. 1 Delagoa Bay, Mozambique. Photographer unknown. Circa

Fig. 5 Drying coffee beans in Mexico. C. A. Lesher. 1925.

Fig. 13 Fallen statue of the hero of Ghana’s independence, Kwame

Abstract This extended essay is a meditation on the evolution of the

Keywords poor countries · independence · development · poverty ·

This extended essay is a meditation on the evolution of the status of the

© The Author(s) 2021 1

Hemisphere; poorer countries were concentrated in the Southern Hemi-

considerable diversity of outcomes among the poorer countries of the

specific problems of poverty, including notably on health care and agricul-

to fend for themselves as best they can; there is today—throughout large

the schism between wealthy and poor countries—and the myriad of

welfare of the poorer countries of the world is indelibly refracted by the

Abstract The story of the transition from empire to nation-state in

Keywords India · independence · nation · state · economic reforms ·

© The Author(s) 2021 11

The story of the transition from empire to nation-state in the twen-

and socialist. Nehru embraced state planning and intervention in the

Following the then admired Soviet model of development, the prerequisite

Nehru’s India was awash with inspirational plans, feats of construc-

“import substitution,” poverty—and dependence on the international

In some sense, though, when Khilnani says “modern ideas,” he is using

At the time of our independence—despite Gandhi’s hesitations—there was

For all of their fervent nationalism, Indians are inescapably indebted to

religion, were respected, but overwhelmingly the leadership of newly

discern how Chinese political leaders—and Indian political leaders, too—

There was pressure to embrace free markets, but the suggestion—often

intoxication, led to economic success. International financial organiza-

There is such a schism, a gap, between what we thought we could and

The difficulty of solidarity, of building a true community among the poorer

to find a common denominator amongst ourselves…. Indeed, some in

Brahimi was frank—and prescient.

Abstract Imperialism has its root in imperial: of an empire. Imperialism

Keywords Imperialism · Europe · colonies · Americas · Africa · Asia ·

Imperialism has its root in imperial: of an empire. Imperialism is the

© The Author(s) 2021 25

practiced imperialism with such dramatic consequences as a handful of

There would prove to be severe limits to the aspirations of the Europeans

And a nation-state is synonymous with a country. When European colo-

In 1500, hundreds of more or less self-sufficient economies had existed

century. Also needed was a sense of inquisitiveness, a compulsion, an

The cruelty of the Spaniards toward the indigenous people of Hispan-

Even more devastating to the indigenous peoples of the Americas were

of their attention focused on Africa. The massive continent, the second

Much of this “new imperialism,” however, existed at first only on paper,

Still, at least in time, Europeans came to exert significant control of terri-

There was no master plan of conquest, worked out in London. Local

of English world domination. Step by step the British advanced…. Out of

in ethnicity. The subcontinent’s religious antagonism and political division

to the entire world the concept and practice of government by the