What does colonialism mean?
well like any term of
About human affairs it covers a vast range. There's all kinds of colonialism
[I] mean the worst kind of colonialism is what's called settler colonialism?
like the United States or Australia or
Israel now through lesser extent a settler Colonialism like the United States and Australia
Means You exterminate the indigenous population
Maybe not [100%] but you know pretty close, so that's a worst kind of colonialism. That's us
There's other kinds of colonialism. Which are less extreme
So take we were talking before [about] Wilson and Haiti and Clinton and haiti as a form of colonialism in which you
effectively
Take over the country for your own benefit get as much as you can out of it and [drive] the population and to
Destroy the agricultural system drives the population in the cities all for the most benign reasons you know of great economic
Progressive reasons and you end up with the
Say the
Earthquake that just happened nothing of the kind of colonialism
other kinds are there's many other kinds and
so you know say take take the us and philippines which happen to be an innovation in
imperial history
The u.s. Invaded the Philippines in about a century ago
It killed a couple hundred thousand people
It was vicious racism none of these guys
unbelievable racism people here weren't even sure whether the filipinos were humans, or apes they were exhibited in the
international Affairs, and that's sort of
I'm going to just over in this when you look back at it
Of course all for the most noble reasons were uplifting them christianizing them you know giving them civilization the usual stuff
There were scattered
Opponents people are not unknown people like mark twain
He wrote very sardonic and cutting
[anti-imperialist] essays he wasn't hanged, he didn't have his brains blown out, but they were suppressed
The in fact I think [that] finally came [out] around
20 years ago in some scholarly edition that nobody ever read Syracuse university press
But they were there was an anti-imperialist league, but it just... What happened after you conquered it
That was at the innovation. It has just been studied in a really
magisterial book great book by Alfred McCoy whose
historian the Philippines among other achievements
He's the first person to have studied in detail how they dealt with the population after they more or less
still haven't totally conquered them, still going on but
Pretty much sort of pacified the country well it turns out there was a major innovation
In imperial history which had a lot of consequences right till today in the philippines and everywhere else
[what] was instituted was a
very sophisticated
High-Tech
Control and surveillance system now the technology of then was not the technology of [now], but it existed
Telegraph radio other surveillance techniques. Every technique was [used] that was [available] to try to control,
monitor, subdue
the
population
there were also pretty sophisticated techniques of
Undermining resistance that were used, so co-optation of elites
Spreading rumors you know using every device you had to try to undermine
the
nationalists
Done very well and of course there's a metal fist and the background is the philippine constabulary
the
Something that happens every in colonial imperial system. You have a you know kind of a power military force of
Collaborators
which should do what you tell them and they usually trained killers, so
and you can set it up, so let's say you pick people from one tribe to kill another tribe
You know use a rural population to smash the urban population. It's done in various ways
in fact we do it right now
This minute that's the way the u.s. Is hoping to run the occupied
Palestinian territories, there's a US run army that's supposed to subdue them
And it's highly praised by Obama and Kerry and the liberals and so on
Anyway this array of techniques was worked out with quite impressive detail
And applied in a very sophisticated fashion
[it] still applies, Philippines is still pretty much under this system, the
[Philippines] which remains a kind of a quasi colony is the only part of
[Eastern] Southeast Asia that has not been part of the so-called economic miracle, you know
take a look at
Taiwan, South Korea
Even indonesia, and so on has been a lot of economic [development], not the philippines, but pretty much under this system
It's the one part of the region that we still run and there was an immediate blowback
Wilson and the British during the first world war used a lot of these techniques domestically
Consciously it could apply them at home too. Now. It's extreme. So you go to Britain. It's a surveillance society
Now cameras on every street corner, you know the allegedly anti-terror devices. Here too
the Patriot Act, and the u.s.
applied them in other countries right away, so Haiti, Dominican Republic. You know Nicaragua. Well, that's another kind of Colonialism and
very
It makes a lot more sense than occupying the country it works much better. It's cheaper
It can work [very] effectively in the philippines, its 100 years
And it applies back it develops techniques to apply back home for controlling and subduing
Populations and breaking them up and so on, well that's another kind of colonialism. In any event, to get back to your question,
there's no answer to what is colonialism. It's just one form in which
Powerful systems subdue others, and they subdue their own population
There's nothing new about that
I mean, that was pointed out by Adam Smith
like
He's not a fool, I mean what he pointed out and what the international affairs specialists don't seem to understand
Is that, you want to understand how a country works you cannot ignore the domestic distribution of power
And when he said is pointed out in the wealth of nations, you want to understand England which is his concern
you have to recognize that the architects of policy are merchants and manufacturers and
they
set policy up so that their interests are very
Well dealt with even though the impact on the people of England may be grievous and of course elsewhere
it's even worse, what's called the savage injustice of the Europeans is horrible, and it's basically a
truism, enduring truth about the
power systems [Empire in india, the cost of...]
There was a cost to the British Empire by the
Population there and by the populations of England, who were also kind of colonized
Yeah, so it's a class war
[ok] that's it's true, and it's true
For just about every imperial conquest, and as I say the most extreme form it's just extermination like settler colonialism
