Colonialism, as practiced by the Europeans powers, was sometimes, and all too often, atrocious, and, or, grotesquely exploitative. Famously the worst case was Belgian Congo; now the Republic of Congo, managed as personal property of a plutocrat, the king of Belgium. There were “incontestable crimes” in many other places. In Algeria (where half of my family is from) the part of the population which was both Native and Muslim, didn’t have access to the same educational level as those of Jewish or French descent. That was clearly a violation of basic human rights, and a stupidity (although it started from a concession to leave Muslims alone!) In India, the English applied a vicious and deadly salt tax, while importing food from a subcontinent which was partially starving. And so on.
President Macron of France, camped in front of the Faso, French and European flags, just said that he belonged to a generation which had not known “colonial” Africa (whatever “colonial” meant; it varied considerably: French colonial America was in most ways the opposite of English colonial America, for example). Macron spoke bold, new and direct (and for three hours, nearly half of it answering questions!) The French language has become more African than French, he correctly observed. Macron added that “Africa was engraved in the memory, culture and identity of France” (as a child brought up in Africa I am pleasantly surprised that this is said at last: long time coming; the reciprocal is also true, hence the massive attempted illegal emigration from Africa to France; I will argue here that it should neither be necessary, nor illegal… The way it used to be under the so-called “colonial” regime).
Macron’s visit was rather courageous: a grenade was launched against a French military vehicle shortly before his arrival, wounding bystanders, among other unpleasantness. Macon said there was “no more African policy of France”, but just a desire to look at a “continent of 54 countries… where the past and traumatisms vary”. The “past must passed”. Macron insisted that “his generation” was not giving lessons, or telling what Africa should do but, instead simply encouraged those who want “liberty and emancipation” (the usual neoliberal lecture). Macron correctly identified Africa as the place where all challenges of the world collide. A tipping point of climate and economy.
What does Macron proposes to Africans trying desperately to get to Europe? To return them where they come from. That won’t do. Macron brandishes globalization (“mondialisation”) as this great church, forum, market and future we have together. But, as it is, globalization can’t work, since it is globally lawless. Yes, being ruled by globalization is being ruled by a state of lawlessness. No great civilization ever survived, let alone, rose, through lawlessness. Quite the opposite. As we will see below, such is the lesson of all the civilizations forebears to the present one (in other words, such is the lesson given by the most successful civilizations).
However decried, “colonization” knew also many successes, as revealed in comparison with what is going on today, in all too many countries. Surely the Cambodian holocaust, when 25% of the population was murdered by its crazed leadership, would not have happened if France has remained the overlord of Cambodia (similarly for Rwanda, if Belgium had stayed in power). Empire and military force have their merits: the Cambodian genocide ended when the Republic of Vietnam’s experienced military invaded, and re-established civilization throughout Cambodia, by executing or arresting the savages (known for their human liver soup).
When Mauritanie was controlled by the French, even after independence, the respect of law didn’t differ significantly from that of the French Republic (I knew the desert as a child there; the giant land was perfectly peaceful and safe, even far out in the wildest wastes). However in 1985, Islam was declared state religion and sharia, the grotesque set of rules from Qur’an and Hadith, was declared law of the land of the Islamist “Republic” of Mauritania. Conclusion? 5% to 20% of the population is enslaved, and sharia is used to terrorize critics into submission.
Ideally, some imperial masters would come, and tell the Mauritanian leadership that they have to enforce UN law, effective promptly, or they would be dismissed. But then the next problem would be that the economy of Mauretania would be destroyed: slaves would have to be employed, ex-masters would have to learn to work. More money would also have to get through the country, namely it would have to be integrated to the world economy.
Baobab forest, Senegal. It used to be that the understory below Baobabs was thick, green, rich with life. Now, no more: the increased drought and heat from the greenhouse is desiccating the land.
Once Republican law is added to a vast economy, one has an empire. We have a vast world economy, we need a vast world empire; it even exists, to a great extent, and is called the United Nations. It’s just an insufficient extent. These ruminations were fostered by a comment from Eugen R [after some English corrections and enumerated remarks from PA]. Here is Eugen R’s comment:
“I just spent few weeks in Eastern Africa, touring villages, as well as the bush. The villagers live according to their ancient customs selling girls at their fourteenth birthday even if educated in schools managed by missionaries, for 6-10 cows, to give birth to children. [[1]] They live out of nature, or what it produces, while destroying it [[2]].
The village headmasters have dictatorial authority. For example they decide who will get land to build houses in the village and who do not. The alternative is to leave for the cities, directly to the slums, where the unemployment is close to 100%. [[3]]
The only positive development is, that the villagers understand how important for them is conservation of wildlife, that brings tourists, who are the only source of cash money for them, even if most of the income from tourists is collected by the white or Indian lounge owners. [[4]]
In 1970’s when Mugabe took over the power, Zimbabwe’s population was about 6 million, now it is close to 17. [[5]] The economy grew zero so the problems grew three times. This is an example of decolonisation in one African country. But the others, with less violent governments, are not doing much better. This is what I call the cultural trap [[6]]. On one hand it is romantic, fashionable and valuable to try to preserve the unique cultures, on the other hand it is not sustainable, and Europe will pay for the necessary expected collapse, either by mass immigration or by extreme nationalistic regimes. I don’t know what is worse.”
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An enlightening comment. Here are my remarks:
[[1]] Selling and buying girls should be strictly outlawed, and terminated by imposing extremely severe penalties (many years of prison for the buyers, and even for the sellers, while their families would get some government support while they are meditating in incarceration). Among other benefits, it would be to diminish the birthrate. (Otherwise, the population will be diminished, holocaust style, as happened in Rwanda when it was Africa’s most densely populated country).
[[2]] Where there is access to the sea, factory fleets from distant countries (say Korea) have ravaged the African fisheries. That should be repressed and the perpetrators should do prison and hard labor for a very long time, and their boats should be confiscated. In other places, dams have ruined the environment by preventing seasonal flooding on dozens of thousands of square kilometers or more. Senegal is an unfortunate example for both. Although Senegal gets some help from French military aviation to detect illegal high sea fishing, the repression should be considerably augmented. (There is evidence that Korean factory fleets were allowed to hug the Senegalese coastline while, and because the son of pseudo-socialist president was busy becoming a billionaire; lack of international law, order and discovery has prevented Senegalese justice to recover all the stolen money.)
In many places in Africa, natives are not aware that cutting trees dessicate the land. Something that girls who study much longer should be made aware of.
[[3]] Ideally, an imperial organization, under UN supervision, would be re-installed: once Africans get to cities, work would be provided to them by European companies (and also American firms, secondarily, especially in the Anglosphere). Thus, instead of doing nothing, and being incarcerated in their own cities, Africans would get to partake in the construction of the world. That would cut mass illegal desperate immigration to basically zero.
As the Europeans and Africans would mix more freely on African territory, more natural relations, less master to slave would develop. Because of the presence of an “imperial” administration (itself under close democratic watch), corruption would collapse, and European investors, now protected by strong laws which would be extensions of European laws, would invest massively (as they used to… in the colonial era).
[[4]]. I detest “trickle down economy”… except when the alternative is no economy at all. As is all too much the case, in all too much of Africa. No economy at all means, actually, obscurantism, war, holocaust, even cannibalism. As observed.
[[5]] The Maoists were perfectly conscious of the problem of overpopulation. So they instituted the one child policy (with exception for minorities, such as Tibetans). Thus China has now *only* 1.38 billion people (with a slowly increasing population. India’s population is increasing at a fast linear clip and will soon pass China (give or take nuclear war). if Mao and his able underlings and successors had not instituted the one child policy, China would have four billion people, and would be desperately poor, deprived, invaded, at war, and lawless, as much of Africa is. Instead, the People Republic of China is becoming one of the planet’s guiding lights, on a trajectory to become quickly the world’s richest country, and already one of the smartest.
Overpopulation is a disaster for Africa, but it’s not PC to say this. It’s even less PC to observe that overpopulation is an invitation to destruction, war and abomination.
Many African countries Kenya’s population was 8 million in 1960, now it’s 48 million (600% augmentation). Niger went from 3 million to 21 million, more than 71% of the population can’t read. However, women have more than seven children in Niger, and parents there want always more. The planet can’t take it, and Niger should be forced to cut its population explosion. Niger population is expected to be 42 million within 17 years: should they all come to France? Except for the south and a big river, most of the country is Sahara desert).
Africa is not alone. This is one world, one planet. Africa’s problems are our problems, even if we live in Kamchatka, or Bolivia. Work is a human right. Having hundreds of millions of Africans without work is a violation of human rights worse than some forms of slavery (history show many types of slavery; slavery in Babylon, 4,000 years ago, was not slavery in the USA, in 1850, or traditional slavery in Mauritania in 2017).
New technology has brought new crimes, thus necessitates new laws, indeed!
The attempted illegal massive African immigration into Europe is the symptom of massive human rights violation, which forces the refugees to take life threatening risks, so desperate they are. Europe cannot say it didn’t create the problem. It did, as much as it did create colonialism. Under colonialism, this problem didn’t exist (subsaharan Africans have been coming to Europe for millennia, records and archeology show). Solution? Send, work, investment to Africa, but that can happen only if imperium, imperium of the LAW is extended there. It’s not a question of giving Africans lessons.
The state of Qin became supreme in China within a few generations of having adopted as official policy “LEGALISM” (also called “rationalism”). This was no coincidence: the rise of the most famous states of civilization are a direct consequence to their being “STATES OF LAW”: Egypt, Sumer Cities, Babylon, Sparta, Athens, the Roman Republic, Qin, and the Frankish Empire>>Europe>>”Renovated Roman Empire”>>European Middle Ages>>USA + United Nations + European Union, are examples of the power of legalism.
Indeed the Republic of China is, philosophically speaking, a direct descendant from the “LEGALIST” state of Qin. Qin in official pan-Chinese imperial form, led by Shi Huangdi, lasted only a decade. However Qin was already supreme before the birth of Shi Huangdi. Moreover, Qin was succeeded by the Han dynasty, which adopted the “legalist” system of Qin. “Legalist” may sound like an obscure concept, but it was highly practical. Legalism was opposed to the systems of fiefs, land grants given to mighty plutocrats, which had festered before under the Zhou dynasty (for 8 centuries!), and which brought the notorious Warring States period (to which the Qin empire put an end, through direct conquest).
Instead of land granting to mighty plutocrats, Qin guo used state officials to administer regions… This is the exact same system which was adopted by the Carolingian Franks to “renovate the Roman Empire”… 11 centuries after Qin. Charlemagne covered the Renovated Roman empire with 300 “counties” headed by nominated officials (those would degenerate two centuries into fiefs, launching the messy plutocracy known as the feudal system)
We now need to renovate the world, and it includes Africa, under the command (imperium) of law. Yes, an empire of law, not just a globalization of feudalism. That, of course is not just something that France alone can impose. When France, helped by her vast empire, opposed Nazism in the 1930s, alone, she ended invaded in May-June 1940 (while US plutocrats, who had fueled, fed and helped Hitler in all ways, laughed).
A sense of history, and civilization, is not enough. One has to have the means.
And this brings me to the “cultural trap” Eugen R spoke of above. [[6]] Cultures are nice, but there is only one law. The one and only law compatible with human nature. In particular the “obscurantism” Macron talked about is incompatible with human nature. Enlightenment is not a modern thing: it is the nature of humanity.
However, when Macron claims that “religious extremism” is not religion, he understood nothing to superstitious religions. (Not to say he didn’t have to say that to the primitives!) Admiring local cultures should never extend to admire local superstitions (including various Christianisms and Islamisms).
It is rare that I approve of a president’s discourse (I approved of roughly none of my friend’s Obama’s discourse, and especially not his ridiculous discourse on Islam in Cairo). It actually never happened. I have also called Macon a Trojan Rothschild Horse, or the like. However, Macron’s discourse in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, was very courageous, and nearly perfect. Africa found a president.
Now it remains for France to find the means, and that means financement, and that, in turns, means submitting plutocrats to the imperium of law, and pay taxes, instead of evading them, thanks to small criminal states such as Malta, Luxembourg, ireland, etc. Yes, when Ireland refuses to let Apple pay tax, it is criminal, and yes, it’s killing Africa.
When Ireland supported Hitler (under the guise of “neutrality”, like Switzerland) during World War Two, it was already catastrophic: the small neutral states were crucial in the defeat of France in May-June 1940 (hence Auschwitz). Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, all of them “neutral” in 1939, and early in 1940, all made the (momentary, but very bloody) defeat of civilization possible.
We have the same situation now: the plutocratic order is the real world government we have now. To switch to a “legalist” system as Rome (26 centuries ago) and Qin (around 350 BCE) did, is what the planet needs. Now.
Immigration to rich countries is a form of colonialism: nothing wrong with it, as long as it enriches all, overall. However, it shouldn’t turn, as it has, into an exploitation of misery. To reduce the misery, investments have to go the other way. But not just financial investments (as Macron sing-songs). Ideological, legal investments too. The trade of ideas is the most important trade.
Yes, Macron, we are orphan of a common imaginary. Not that some of this imaginary was always correct: some African students accused Macron and France to incite the catastrophic, illegal immigration across the Mediterranean. Macron retorted that :”Who are the traffickers [of human beings]. But they are Africans, my friend! They are Africans! Ask yourself also that question! It’s not French people who are doing human trafficking in Libya! It’s Africans! We must all seize our responsibilities! We have started to dismantle the networks. But stop this discourse which consists in saying:’the problem it’s the other!’ You are incredible!”
Here Macron, correctly came close to one of the great lies of the Politically Correct: the slavery of Africans is organized by Africans. What Macron didn’t say explicitly, but may have meant implicitly, is that African slavery was organized by Africans, even way back when (contrarily to the lies of the PC). I have argued that slavery out of Africa actually saved African lives (the evidence is overwhelming; however it’s also overwhelmingly suppressed, because it’s so un-PC; an Indian friend begged on her knees that I removed that essay, claiming it would destroy my reputation… Instead i put the title in capital letters, emphasizing importance!) It’s pretty clear that millions of Africans who try to emigrate to Europe right now believe that emigration may well save their lives, or may make them worth living.
In a sense, colonization of Africa didn’t really, durably happen: with the exception of South Africa, where a few million descendants of Europeans cling, where are the Europeans? Colonization of America (or Australia) did happen: Europeans are all over, the Natives were mostly wiped out, notwithstanding parodies such as the tall blonde ex-Harvard professor, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who claimed to be an American Native to get prestigious teaching position.
What we need now is to counterbalance immigration of Africa to Europe by an immigration of Europe to Africa. And don’t decry those colons, one way, or the other. Yes, it all has to be made legal.
We are orphan from the best of a common imaginary we need to recover, while, and for the same reason, we need to destroy the worst of same said common imaginary. Building a better world starts with building a better truth.
Patrice Ayme’
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