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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 14,
2002
Colonialism Has a 'Horrific'
Record of Oppression and Exploitation
To the Editor:
Now that you have published, as The Review's cover piece,
Dinesh D'Souza's "Two Cheers
for Colonialism" (The Review, May 10), one is
prompted to ask: What's next for The Review, essays
featuring Holocaust denial? The horrific historical record
of genocide, murder, rape, slavery, the wholesale
destruction of cultures, and the extended strategic denial
of the most basic human rights that occurred during each
colonial project ... is not a matter of debate.
The now-familiar, ... feeble attempt at justification
rehearsed again by D'Souza ("The descendants of
colonialism are better off than they would be if colonialism
had never happened.") is an obscenity in the face of
the human toll exacted during and in the wake of the
colonial period. Your publication is diminished by printing
it.
James P. Rice
Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, Pa.
***
To the Editor:
Astonishingly, The Chronicle has been criticized in
its online Colloquy
(excerpted in "The Lingering Aftereffects of
Colonialism," The Review, May 31) for providing a forum
for a dissenting voice that subverts the dominant power!
Whether I agree or disagree with Dinesh D'Souza's views is
irrelevant. ...
Before the Colloquy with Mr. D'Souza, I wondered if any
heretical opinions ... existed among those who publish in
the field of postcolonial studies. The Chronicle
should be thanked for providing a fascinating conversation
that ... brings some diversity of thought to the dialogue.
...
Robert J. Wilson
Suffern, N.Y.
***
To the Editor:
I do not agree with Dinesh D'Souza on several counts. ...
Both reparations and terrorism, in my opinion, sidestep the
issue. ...
There is no question of "relieving" the third
world of responsibility for its state today. Insofar as the
colonized countries failed to resist European invasions and
subsequent subjugation, they have to share the blame. To
paraphrase Gandhi, the British ruled India because the
Indians allowed them to. ...
Let us examine the true reasons for the West's prosperity --
according to Mr. D'Souza, its invention of "science,
democracy, and capitalism." ...
Commonly, when we talk of the achievements of modern
science, we include modern technology. And it is possible to
argue that the nature of modern technology (mainly ... its
conflict with nature) is a result of its development in the
colonial period. During this period, less attention needed
to be paid to the availability of resources because they
were often available in plenty, and cheaply, from the
colonies. ... It was therefore possible to underestimate the
true costs (human as well as environmental) of the new
technology, because someone else, somewhere else, was paying
them.
For capitalism, once again, the trick lies in hidden costs.
... The consumers in colonizing countries did not have to
pay the true costs of the goods they were buying. ... With
slave labor (an institution coexisting with colonialism), a
one-time capital investment is almost all that needs to be
paid for a lifetime of labor, thereby vastly reducing the
price of products reaching the consumer. ...
In short, I don't think it is valid to infer a simple
cause-and-effect relationship between colonialism and the
success of Western civilization. ... The development of
science and capitalism probably received much help from the
colonial system, and the colonial system in turn was
maintained through the fruits of science.
At this point, Mr. D'Souza gets into the question of how
colonialism has benefited the descendants of the colonized.
In India, for example, the descendants of the educated class
created by the British to help them maintain the empire
have, of course, benefited from colonialism. But this
benefit depends on a systematic exploitation of many
millions of their countrymen who suffered during and after
colonialism. ...
It is time to move beyond the question of whether
colonialism was a good thing. Is more Westernization today a
good thing? ... Our big responsibility now is showing that
viable alternatives can be created and sustained.
Amit Basole
Ph.D. Candidate in Neurobiology
Medical Center
Duke University
Durham, N.C.
***
To the Editor:
Dinesh D'Souza makes his living by proposing outrageous
claims designed to provoke rather than to prove true.
"Two Cheers for Colonialism" is only the latest
outrage. All three claims he attributes to contemporary
critics of modern colonialism ring hollow. No respectable
critic would be so silly as to think that modern colonialism
had no classical precedents -- certainly not Frantz Fanon or
Walter Rodney, Edward Said or Gayatri Spivak.
Second, Mr. D'Souza denies the causal relation between the
enrichment of Western colonizers and the impoverishment of
colonies. The reason the West became so affluent, he claims,
is that it invented "science, democracy, and
capitalism." Leaving aside the questionable pedigree of
invention, the insistence that colonialism and imperialism
are not the cause but the product of Western inventive
prowess is sheer historical inversion.
Western empires certainly preceded by some centuries any
government in the West that one could properly call
democratic (universal adult suffrage, to take the least
controversial marker of democracy, was not instituted in any
state before the 20th century). And capitalism, as we have
come to experience it in all its complex effects, emerged in
interaction with the experience of colonialism, not as
unilinearly giving rise to it. Science, too, was such an
interactive product. The mining of colonial minerals, to
take a crucial resource that Mr. D'Souza curiously fails to
consider, fueled the wealth of the West. ...
Finally, Mr. D'Souza insists that the descendants of
colonialism, such as himself, are better off as a result of
the colonial experience than they would have been but for
colonialism. African societies in particular, he thinks,
suffer significantly today because European colonialism in
Africa was restricted to "a mere half-century."
Which half-century is never made clear, but there is no
reference to Portuguese or Spanish colonial adventurism in
Africa from the late 15th century on, or British land grabs
from the late 17th century. ...
The likes of Mr. D'Souza may be better off as a result of
the undeniable contributions of colonizing populations, but
tell that to the millions of ghosts of the Congo Free State
and the Middle Passage. ...
David Theo Goldberg
Director
Humanities Research Institute
University of California
Irvine, Calif.
***
To the Editor:
I am surprised that The Chronicle provided Dinesh
D'Souza with a forum for ventilation of his ideological
views on the ostensible long-term benefits of colonialism.
... He is clearly not at all interested in launching an
agenda of serious scholarly research into the results of
colonialism. Indeed, he appears to think that there could be
no valid empirical investigation into the questions he
raises, saying that his own ... experience is sufficient to
justify a serious programmatic response such as denying
compensation in the form of aid to former colonies. ...
While he is correct that it is always difficult to
investigate what might have happened if history had turned
out differently, it is not so difficult to study what did
indeed happen and whether the results were beneficial or
detrimental -- and for whom. If D'Souza were advancing a
serious agenda for research, or political action, or even
for intellectual debate, that is the position he would take.
Instead, his flippant responses in The Chronicle's
online Colloquy lead me to believe that he is more
interested in goading the academic left than in seriously
addressing the topic of when and under what circumstances
... reparations and foreign aid would be justified.
The Chronicle defended its decision to provide
D'Souza this forum by saying that it had provided similar
opportunities to others ... , such as Martha Nussbaum. It is
a disservice to readers to confuse the serious scholarly
work of people like Amartya Sen and Nussbaum on foreign aid
with this sort of crackpot provocation.
Michele Landis Dauber
Assistant Professor of Law and Sociology
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
***
To the Editor:
I read Dinesh D'Souza's treatment of colonialism with great
interest and appreciation. His attempt to impart balance and
nuance through historical and personal perspectives was a
welcome advancement to a charged, sensitive, and easily
oversimplified issue.
The qualification I would introduce, however, is twofold.
First, D'Souza recognizes that most ... Indians of his
generation do not approach the level of benefit he received
from colonialism's legacy. The singularity of his experience
cannot be overemphasized.
Second, the eventual rewards that the Raj provided D'Souza
were not characteristic of other times and places in the
British colonial empire. There is little parallel between
the Raj and the British record in Africa. ... More
generally, France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, and the
Netherlands had colonial records considerably different from
Great Britain's. Plainly, science, democracy, and capitalism
were not uniform in their availability or application under
various colonial masters.
This is not to deny a measure of colonialism's positive
contributions. Over time, however, one cheer, and that not
loudly voiced, might be more appropriate.
Jay D. Allen
Upper School Faculty Member
Department of Social Studies
Calverton School
Huntingtowne, Md.
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