Bermuda College symposium on the legacy of colonialism: Colonialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries. It is the political-economic phenomenon whereby entire continents were divided and re-divided; entire populations were subjugated; entire civilisations obliterated; millions and millions of people transported from one part of the globe to another against their will; millions and millions of tons of resources taken from one group of people for the benefit of others.

So totally embracing was its impact that any description of the political-economic system in any part of the world today can be characterised in terms of colonialism's legacy.

So infrequently is it accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders that the Bermuda College deserves special credit for making it the subject of this series of lectures. Perhaps one day we will see it as a part of the college curriculum.

It has been so universal that any particular description of its impact will not suit every situation. For example the legacy of colonialism for Bermuda is not the same as that legacy for the United States which rid itself of the system over two hundred years ago. While Bermuda is still a colony, the United States may now be described by some as a colonial power.

The word colonialism is usually used to describe a relationship of dominance by one country over another in which that domination is recognised in law.

Domination of course may well occur without the legal system giving recognition to the political state of affairs, so perhaps the word neo-colonialism or imperialism or neo-imperialism is more suited to describe the essential characteristic of domination. I shall use the words interchangeably.

When the subject is not ignored it is often sanitised, particularly by those who have been the beneficiaries of the system. Because of the relationship of domination, the sanitisation has persuaded and confused those who have been the victims of the system. Empires become "Commonwealths'', and colonies become "territories'' or "dominions'' (or, as in the case of Bermuda "an overseas territory'').

However as with most issues of life, at its root there are personal moral questions. The answer to moral questions invites approval or condemnation; condemnation invites blame; blame invites retaliation; retaliation invites danger, to which no-one wishes to be exposed so the whole matter is swept under the carpet.

The moral question is whether or not a nation or people or an individual has the right to take away the right of another to make their own choices, or what amounts to the same thing, decides to retaliate against anyone who makes a choice of which the dominant power disapproves. So insofar as the moral question is concerned, it doesn't matter whether it is the Foreign Secretary in Britain's House of Parliament or a member of a local church or club who attempts to use their influence to ride roughshod over the wishes of another.

The same moral choice has been made.

During the recent American elections, I found it most interesting that most reporters characterised the conflict as being one between Bush and Gore. Only a very few saw it as a question of whether or not the people of Florida would have the opportunity to express their view. When I recognised that the counties that were in dispute were heavily populated by blacks, given the history of the United States, I would have been very surprised if the votes were indeed counted.

What is true of individuals is true of nations. It may be the ancient Israelites put in slavery by the Egyptians: the Roman conquest of the Middle East and Europe; Ghengis Khan sweeping across Asia or the Nations of Europe expanding into the rest of the world.

But even when we think of European colonialism we must remember that the earliest victims of European imperialism were other Europeans. Some 800 years ago, Ireland became the first colony of what later became known as the British empire. A part of Ireland still remains under British occupation. Other early Caucasian victims included the Eastern Europeans. The people Charlemagne worked to death in his mines in the early part of the ninth century were Slavs. So frequent and prolonged was the enslavement of Eastern Europeans that "Slav'' became synonymous with servitude. And indeed, the word "slave'' derives from "Slav''.

As a schoolboy I learned that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Various European nations were "discovered'', conquered, settled and exploited the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Most of the nations of Europe participated in the process. England, France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy -- they all had a hand in the process.

The barbarism of the system was so revolting that even the perpetrators began to turn away. First they abolished the slave trade and then slavery itself.

But the system was so profitable it was hard for any nation to resist the exploitation. The United States Constitution is one of the most beautiful pieces of prose ever written on the dignity of man, but while the authors were framing that Constitution they themselves held slaves.

THE LEGACY Well, all of that is a thing of the past. Bolivar in South America, Maceo in Cuba, Mahatama Ghandi in India, Sukarno in Indonesia, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Nkrumah in Ghana. They all led their countries to freedom. They changed their clothes and showed up at the United Nations which condemned the whole colonial system. Decolonisation affected the entire world. Shock waves went through the African diaspora. Malcolm X changed his name; Martin Luther King went to the mountain top, and Pauula Kamarakafego got the vote for Bermudians. This is a new world order. Globalization and Free Trade; cell phones and computers.

But did the dashiki, and the army fatigues, the Nehru jacket and the Afro really make a difference? What is the legacy of colonialism? The preponderant thrust of the European, North American, and Japanese imperial powers was directed against Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By the 19th Century, they saw the Third World as not only a source of raw materials and slaves but a market for manufactured goods. By the 20th Century, the industrial nations were exporting not only goods but capital, in the form of machinery, technology, investments and loans.

But to say that we have entered the stage of capital export and investment is not to imply that the plunder of natural resources has ceased. If anything, the despoliation may very well have accelerated.

Of the various notions about colonialism circulating today, the dominant view is that it does not exist. Imperialism is not recognised as a legitimate concept, certainly not in regard to the leaders of the New World Order. One may speak of "Soviet imperialism'' or "nineteenth-century British imperialism''; But imperialism is not associated with Tony Blair's Britain or the United States or post-Nazi Germany. Asia, Africa and Latin America are now free. They have their own leaders now; dark skinned white men with their cars, their three piece suits, their body guards, their elaborate houses built at the people's expense and their private planes.

The powerful decision makers of yesterday were interested in plunder and tribute, gold and glory. Corporations today differ from these earlier forms of colonialism in the way they systematically accumulate capital and penetrate overseas markets. Modern day conquistadors invest in other countries, transforming and dominating their economies, cultures, and political life, integrating their financial and productive structures into an international system of capital accumulation.

North American, Japanese and European corporations have acquired control of more than three-fourths of the known mineral resources of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But the pursuit of natural resources is not the only reason for overseas expansion. There is the additional need to cut production costs and maximise profits by investing in countries with cheaper labour markets. US corporate foreign investment grew 84 percent from 1985 to 1990, the most dramatic increase being in cheap-labour countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Spain, and Singapore.

There are low wages, low taxes, nonexistent work benefits, weak labour unions, and nonexistent occupational and environmental protections. Corporate profit rates in the Third World are 50 percent greater than in developed countries.

COLONIAL APOLOGISTS Colonialists have never been without their apologists. Whether it was yesterday's conquistador bringing Christianity and civilisation to the savages or today's corporate giants bringing investment, jobs and McDonald hamburgers to the Third World.

What cultural supremacy could really be claimed by the Europeans of yore? From the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries Europe was "ahead'' in a variety of things, such as the number of hangings, murders, and other violent crimes; instances of venereal disease, smallpox, typhoid, tuberculosis, plagues, and other bodily afflictions; social inequality and poverty (both urban and rural); mistreatment of women and children; and frequency of famines, slavery, prostitution, piracy, religious massacres and inquisitional torture. Those who claim the West has been the most advanced civilisation should keep such "achievements'' in mind.

More seriously, we might note that Europe enjoyed a telling advantage in navigation and armaments. Muskets and cannon, Gatling guns and gunboats, and today, missiles, helicopter gunships and fighter bombers which have been the deciding factors when West meets East and North meets South. Superior firepower, not superior culture, has brought the Europeans and Euro-North Americans to positions of supremacy that today are still maintained by force, though not by force alone.

Other theories enjoy wide currency. We hear that Third World poverty is due to overpopulation, too many people having too many children to feed. Actually, over the last several centuries, many Third World lands have been less densely populated than certain parts of Europe. India has fewer people per acre -- but more poverty -- than Holland, Wales, England, Japan, Italy, and a few other industrial countries. Furthermore, it is the industrialised nations of the First World, not the poor ones of the Third, that devour some 80 percent of the world's resources and pose the greatest threat to the planet's ecology.

This is not to deny that overpopulation is a real problem for the planet's ecosphere. Limiting population growth in all nations would help the global environment but it would not solve the problems of the poor -- because overpopulation in itself is not the cause of poverty but one of its effects.

The poor tend to have large families because children are a source of family labour and income and a support during old age.

THE REAL CAUSE OF POVERTY Much of the poverty of the Third World has been artificially created although it is treated by most Western observers as an original historic condition. We are asked to believe that it always existed, that poor countries are poor because their lands have always been infertile or their people unproductive.

In fact, the lands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have long produced great treasures of foods, minerals and other natural resources. That is why the Europeans went through all the trouble to steal and plunder them. One does not go to poor places for self-enrichment. The Third World is rich. Only its people are poor -- and it is because of the pillage they have endured.

What is called "underdevelopment'' is a set of social relations that has been forcefully imposed on countries. With the advent of the Western colonizers, the peoples of the Third World were actually set back in their development sometimes for centuries.

Similar bleeding processes occurred throughout the Third World.

The enormous wealth extracted should remind us that there originally were few really poor nations. Countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, Bolivia, Zaire, Mexico, Malaysia, and the Philippines were and sometimes still are rich in resources. Some lands have been so thoroughly plundered as to be desolate in all respects. However, most of the Third World is not "underdeveloped'' but overexploited. Western colonisation and investments have created a lower rather than a higher living standard.

The Mayan Indians in Guatemala had a more nutritious and varied diet and better conditions of health in the early 16th century before the Europeans arrived than they have today. They had more craftspeople, architects, artisans, and horticulturists than today. What is called underdevelopment is not an original historical condition but a product of imperialism's superexploitation. Underdevelopment is itself a development.

DEVELOPMENT THEORY When we say a country is "underdeveloped'', we are implying that it is backward and retarded in some way, that its people have shown little capacity to achieve and evolve. The negative connotations of "underdeveloped'' has caused the United Nations, the Wall Street Journal, and parties of various political persuasion to refer to Third World countries as "developing'' nations, a term somewhat less insulting than "underdeveloped'' but equally misleading. "Developing'' is a euphemistic way of saying "underdeveloped but belatedly starting to do something about it''. It still implies that poverty was an original historic condition and not something imposed by the imperialists. It also falsely suggests that these countries are developing when actually their economic conditions are usually worsening.

The dominant theory of the last half century maintains that it is up to the rich nations of the North to help uplift the "backward'' nations of the South, bringing them technology and teaching them proper work habits. This is an updated version of "the white man's burden'', which was a favourite imperialist fantasy. And unfortunately it still enjoys wide currency among black people.

According to the development scenario, with the introduction of Western investments, the backward economic sectors of the poor nations will release their workers, who then will find more productive employment in the modern sector at higher wages. As capital accumulates, business will reinvest its profits, thus creating still more products, jobs, buying power, and markets.

Eventually a more prosperous economy evolves.

This "development theory'' or "modernisation theory'', as it is sometimes called, bears little relation to reality. What has emerged in the Third World is an intensely exploitive form of a dependent economy. Economic conditions have worsened drastically with the growth of trans-national corporate investment. The problem is not poor lands or unproductive populations but foreign exploitation and inequality. Investors go into a country not to uplift it but to enrich themselves.

ARE THERE SOLUTIONS? This means that every person present tonight has the opportunity to make a contribution to the betterment of mankind. It also means that if all present tonight make the right moral choices we together have the opportunity of showing love for our neighbour. If we in Bermuda as a Country make the right moral choices we will contribute to a better world.

The achievement of independence does not guarantee freedom. But neoimperialism carries risks. The forms of self rule incite a desire for the fruits of self rule. Sometimes a national leader emerges who is a patriot and reformer rather than a comprador collaborator.

Arthur Hodgson