Empire and Colonialism

 I found an interesting article on what a Chinese superpower might look like. The main premise of the article wasn't that illuminating - it was fairly lightweight and quite childlike. What I found interesting however were the comments that betrayed a common worldview here at home:

"China has never colonised any overseas territories. Overseas empires were a European speciality,"

"Europe, I would argue, has historically been an extremely aggressive and expansionist continent."

"Military might, the projection of power around the world, and the desire if necessary by force to impose our way of life on others, have been fundamental to the European story."

"China won't be like this. It is not in its DNA."

"Instead the quintessential forms of Chinese power will be economic and cultural."

I have often been baffled by the odd views of Empire and Colonialism that have become so fashionable among the left. Basically the narrative goes: White Europeans and Americans were racist, exploitative and sought to conquer brown and black people. You get the impression when reading views linked to this narrative (especially on forums and comments pages) that it was the white West that invented Imperialism, Colonialism and exploitation. Indeed, a parallel is often drawn between whites exploiting coloured people, and western industry raping the planet. Capitalism, rather than being a mere form of market exchange, is instead elevated to being an extension of white imperialism. And it's all our fault.

Never having been fashionable, I've long had a hard time swallowing this mickey mouse cartoon version of history, and I remain astonished that people better educated than me glibly believe it. Maybe I'm just a bit thick, because when I look at history itself, I just can't see this strange narrative. As a soft left liberal myself, or at least someone who fits the profile, I find this view absurd.

 Let's get a few facts out of the way first. Conquering and exploiting others is not a European invention. China may never have had overseas colonies, but it does indeed have a history of aggressive, military expansion. It's no accident that China is the size it is today, you know. Ask the Vietnamese what they think of the Chinese occupation that they fought against for centuries. Ask the Tibetans. The Mongols expanded (and contracted) a massive overland empire over the world's biggest land mass, ruling China and reaching the boundaries of Europe. The Islamic Empire conquered all of the Middle-East, North Africa, Spain and the Caucasus, finally stopping short of Vienna. And it expanded down the east coast of Africa and would have expanded further into the interior if the Tsetse fly hadn't killed their horses. Having laid the boundaries of Islam, they then set up a vast slave trade in Africa, long before the arrival of the Portugese. The Mughal empire expanded out of Afghanistan and made half of Indians its subjects before Queen Victoria was even born. The Aztecs expanded throughout Central America, conquering and enslaving every tribe it came across - the only reason the conquistadores were able to defeat the Aztecs was because the local tribes allied with them in order to topple their hated overlords.

Colonies are a way of establishing a presence somewhere. If you are the country right next door, then you don't need colonies. The threat of invasion will do just fine, and the subject nation will pay its tribute or give up its mineral wealth to you and not your rivals. If India had been on the Isle of Wight, and if it wasn't threatened by rivals looking to exploit it as well, then Britain wouldn't have had colonies in India at all. There would have been no need to rule it - a puppet ruler, as is traditional, would have done fine.

Prior to Europe's expansion, shipbuilding technology was still poorly developed. Zheng He's fleet, about which we know very little of, was created during the Ming Dynasty's declining years. The ships, we think, may have been impressive. They would certainly have been very expensive. Yet they stuck to conservative routes. And the Chinese Empire, wealthy already from its trade links with the Persian, Mughal and Islamic Empires, saw no benefit in exploring further. It had no need.

Portugal, blocked from the East by the Islamic Empire, had nothing to lose in trying to sail around the tip of Africa. They were attracted to the East by China's wealth. They wanted to trade with it. Their ships were used to the wild Atlantic, and so were tough. It was from there that Spain, Britain and the Netherlands, also facing the Atlantic and perched on what was seen as the 'edge of the world', also developed their maritime links and shipbuilding techniques.

If China had been in Ireland, they too would have done the same.

It was an accident of history that allowed Europeans to take advantage of long range maritime links, just as the technology to do so was emerging. The long distances involved and the lack of communications technology also meant that they had to rely first on garrisoned 'factories' (trading centres), then (when the Mughal empire imploded) on ruling areas that hitherto had been ruled by others. And that's it. It wasn't racism or militarism that produced Europe's domination of much of the world - just the usual human habits combined with lucky timing.

And they are human habits. It's fashionable, for instance, to blame the US's western expansion across America on some arrogant notion of 'Manifest Destiny'. But Manifest Destiny is just a made-up phrase, and nobody seems to know who said it first. Did Russians need that phrase in order to sweep across Siberia, Russia's 'Wild East'? No. They just did it. What the US did against Native Americans (taking their land, for gain, and killing them if they got in the way) was what all growing nations tended to do. The larger American Indian Nations did the same, eradicating smaller tribes as they expanded, and warring against those they couldn't destroy outright.

Will China, if it becomes a superpower, try to base itself overseas? Take a look at the furious row in the South China sea, where China, Japan and South Korea have been rattling sabres over a few uninhabited islands. With modern communications, ships and planes, such places suddenly assume strategic significance (as they did in WW2). This is why, for instance, America has an empire of bases, rather than colonies. Technology has shrunk distances further, so colonies are no longer needed (which is why 17th century European colonies looked obsolete in the 20th century). In the 15th Century, with China at the height of its power, occupying those islands would have made no sense. There was nothing there, they could not dominate the surrounding seas without the invention of radar, artillery or missiles, and a garrison stationed there would have starved to death. Now however, it is a different story, and again, not because of correct or incorrect attitudes, but because of circumstance.

If Chinese strategists see a real need to occupy a piece of land anywhere on this earth, they will pragmatically weigh up the costs and benefits, and if it was to their advantage - and they could get away with it - they would do it. They would not wring their hands in anguish, saying 'but we are not Europeans, it is not in our DNA'.

Chinese people are human people, and humans have always acted in this way, regardless of their skin colour, religion or ideology. To fail to see this is to succomb to the idiotic racialist theories that abounded in the last century - that, somehow, it is race that dictates a people's behaviour.

It is not.

It is circumstance that dictates a people's behaviour.