Neocolonialism Is Dead: Long Live Neocolonialism [36]

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Neocolonialism Is Dead Long Live Neocolonialism Godfrey N. Uzoigwe

During the 1950s, in what is today called the Global South—­to some, a misnomer—­a new concept, neocolonialism, was added to the lexicon of political thought. By the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, it had become a controversial political phenomenon. Predictably, most politicians and scholars in the West rejected the concept. By the close of the twentieth century, neocolonialism no longer occupied center stage in nationalist and scholarly discourses about the problems developing nations faced. Perspectives on this inevitable historical phenomenon came to mirror opponents’ ideas on imperialism and colonialism. Those who regarded them as a bad thing were alarmed at their continued existence through the back door after independence and vociferously denounced them as predatory and nefarious, but those who regarded them as essentially a good thing equally stoutly denied the existence of neocolonialism, regarding the intentions of the industrialized West in the new nations as essentially Christian, benevolent, and beneficial. Because of the renewed scholarly interest in the subject since the 1980s, especially the widening perspectives on the concept, this article revisits the phenomenon of neocolonialism and discusses its enduring manifestations, concluding that because of its very nature, neocolonialism has all along been alive and well. The political leaders of both the developed nations and the Global South are urged, therefore, to confront the phenomenon, not as superior and inferior or G. N. Uzoigwe is Professor Emeritus of History, Mississippi State University. He can be reached at gnuzoigwe@gmail​­.com.

© 2019 Association of Global South Studies, Inc. All rights reserved. Journal of Global South Studies Vol. 36, No. 1, 2019, pp. 59–87. ISSN 2476-­1397.

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as colonizer and colonized but as partners in the pursuit of global peace, security, and prosperity. The conclusions are drawn from a study of a complex array of relevant sources from the 1950s to contemporary times.

Introduction Although neocolonialism was a major political phenomenon in the newly independent countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa in the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, most politicians and scholars in the West rejected the concept, dismissing it offhandedly as the self-­righteous ebullition of nationalist politicians and radical scholars who were confronted with a new age of change that they found uncomfortable, brought about by benevolent westernizers and exacerbated by the realities of independence. Some of the realities that were then regarded as the birth pangs of new nationhood included ethnic conflicts (popularly called “tribalism”), military coups and countercoups, religious differences, a lack of social amenities, nepotism, pervasive corruption, and most important, chronic economic backwardness. All of these were perceived as fatal to national unity and socioeconomic and political development. In the eyes of most of the practical political leaders of the new nations, therefore, these postcolonial traumas were of a more immediate concern than the occasionally erudite dissertations on neocolonialism of academics. The angry and sometimes uncouth fulminations of quasi-­intellectuals and some socialist radicals on the same subject also did not help matters. Far from facilitating the much-­needed practical and immediate solutions to the complicated problems of nation building, some of the haughty progressives became a source of anxiety and fear for the politicians. Deep down, too, these politicians were painfully aware that they could not demonize their departed colonizers and at the same time ask them for assistance. Some also knew that they needed their former rulers to remain in power. They were also aware of the terrible end of some of their compatriots who had boldly challenged the West. Thus, finding themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea, self-­preservation and self-­aggrandizement became their major concerns. The result was a general hostility to the academics and the arrest and imprisonment of the most vocal intellectuals on trumped-­up charges. The unlucky ones perished under mysterious circumstances. Some lucky ones fled to Europe and America, where, paradoxically, they were free to express themselves under the protection of the law, and others simply decided to stay at home,

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swallowed their pride, and served the very politicians they had pilloried in the past, thus becoming compromised and corrupted by them. It was no surprise, therefore, that by the 1980s scholarly and political interest in neocolonialism was on the wane. Thus, by the close of the twentieth century, neocolonialism no longer occupied center stage in scholarly discourses about the problems developing nations faced. Nevertheless, its salient features—­ back-­door economic, political, sociocultural, and military manifestations and so forth—­continued to impact, in various guises, developments in the Global South. However, the different perspectives on this inevitable historical phenomenon of its proponents and its opponents alike, especially among scholars during the heat of the debate, essentially mirrored their perspectives on imperialism and colonialism. Those who regarded colonialism as a bad thing were alarmed at its continued existence through the back door after independence and vociferously denounced the phenomenon as nefarious and predatory, but those who regarded it as essentially a good thing equally stoutly denied the existence of neocolonialism and sometimes mocked their opponents as advanced radicals and nationalist scholars desperately in search of nations that never existed. But clear-­eyed students of colonialism always knew that the exuberant optimism generated by the winning of independence of the colonized countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa would not endure for long and that negative reactions to colonialism would follow. Right from the start, as anticipated, these countries faced one crisis after another—­some arising from what they inherited and some of their own making—­that inevitably threatened their sovereign existence. While some saw these crises as a temporary aftermath of colonization, others continued to see in them the nefarious intentions of the departed colonial powers; and yet, others blamed the poor leadership of the new nations. The fact is that, looked at historically, a single explanation of this phenomenon cannot be sustained. And yet some postcolonial scholarship, particularly of the Marxist and nationalist persuasions, tend to attempt to do so. In contrast, some of their opponents tend to see the proceedings of the ex-­colonial rulers in their former colonies as essentially Christian, benevolent, and beneficial. The truth, I believe, lies between these extreme positions. Because of growing scholarly interest in the subject, especially the widening perspectives on the concept, using the historical method and a broad variety of sources dating from the 1950s to contemporary times, this article discusses how neocolonialism has impacted developing nations, and the future dangers it may

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pose. Aware that discourses on the subject are characterized by ideological rigidity (and, sometimes, academic tribalism) and semantic confusion, I have made a deliberate effort has been made not to engage in an argument that seems to be going around in circles. The article concludes by positing that the idea of neocolonialism (including its practical operation), far from being dead, is alive and well and that if politicians sweep the subject under the carpet, dire consequences may follow. It is too important a phenomenon to be left to scholars and radical intellectuals. That being the case, the political leaders of both the developed nations and the Global South have an obligation to confront the phenomenon, not as superior or inferior partners or as colonizer and colonized but as partners in the pursuit of global peace, security, and prosperity. This is a goal that twenty-­first-­century progressive scholarship on the subject perhaps needs to pay more attention to. The emphasis scholars place on issues such as “coloniality” and “decoloniality,” on abandoning the ideas of neocolonialism and “postcolonialism,” and, for some, on substituting “Orientalism” as analytical concepts, is interesting for what these ideas may be worth, but the new wisdom has not demonstrated how it contributes to the betterment of future relations between the new nations and their former colonizers.

What Exactly Is Neocolonialism? Essentially, what is broadly called neocolonialism is the nature of relations after independence between European powers and their former colonies of the non-­ European world. Thus, it is misleading to see current Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian proceedings in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East as neocolonial. Such activities are important and deserve to be studied on their own terms and within their historical context. However, the word “neocolonialism,” as far as I know, was first used internationally on April 19, 1958, when Ghana’s foreign minister, Alex Quaison-­Sackey, said in a speech at the UN General Assembly: “By neocolonialism we mean the practice of granting a sort of independence with the concealed intention of making the liberated country a client-­ state, and controlling it effectively by means other than political ones.”1 Thereafter, there have been various emotive definitions of neocolonialism, often indicating what Europeans and non-­Europeans think of the intentions of each other. A notable example of these definitions is one offered by Kwame Nkrumah, under whose administration Quaison-­Sackey served. He postulated that the

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“neocolonialism” of his day (1950s–­1970s) “represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage.” For him, its “essence is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”2 But for Nkrumah, without doubt, and very importantly, “neocolonialism is also the worst form of imperialism” because “those who practice it” exercise “power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.” He noted further that during “old-­fashioned colonialism,” the administrators of overseas colonial estates “had at least to explain and justify at home” their actions toward their overseas dependencies and the colonized “could at least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neocolonialism, neither is the case.”3 Opponents of neocolonialism have largely accepted Quaison-­Sackey’s simple definition, which arose from Ghana’s experience after about one year of independence. During the 1950s, scant attention seems to have been paid to the concerns of Ghana in this respect. But by the early 1960s, when the newly independent countries, especially in Africa, began to experience what Ghana was complaining about, they took up the matter at the Third All-­African Conference held in Cairo, Egypt, in March 1961. They stated bluntly that the “greatest threat to Africa” and the “Third World” generally was “neocolonialism.” Their worry was that the independence granted to the new nations was practically meaningless because colonialism still existed after independence by changing its tactics.4 Thus, some African countries led by Ghana and Egypt (under Gamal Abdul Nasser) began to fight to eliminate it from the continent because it had become a real threat to their independence. The founding of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) in 1963 was, in part, a first step in dealing with this danger because it was believed that a united front was absolutely needed to deal with it. At last, the ex-­colonial rulers began to take notice. In a speech at the UN General Assembly on October 1, 1963, British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-­Home sneered at the concept of neocolonialism, saying that it was “at best a synthetic grievance, and at worst it is deadly dangerous because it encourages poverty and racialism. . . . ​I hope that we shall hear less of neocolonialism.”5 The next year, he confidently asserted that it had “no place in Britain’s political dictionary [because] we quite simply do not know its meaning.”6 But his hope was a forlorn one and the despised word became a common feature in global political discourse.

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Furthermore, the issue of racialism that he introduced is strange since it was not then the main concern of the advocates of neocolonialism. Indeed, as far as Tom Mboya, a co-­founder of the Kenya African National Union, was concerned: “The object of neocolonialism is to ensure that power is handed to men who are moderate and easily controlled, political stooges. Everything is done that the accredited heirs of colonial interests capture power.”7 No serious student of postcolonial African history will contest Mboya’s observation. He was no red-­eyed communist but a serious Kenyan nationalist, admittedly with ­progressive ideas. Neocolonialism was likewise a topic of discussion at the Tri-­Continental—­Asia, Africa, and Latin America—­Conference held in Havana, Cuba (December 1965–­January 1966). The conference passed a resolution that dealt with the characteristics of neocolonialism, stressing the necessity of confronting the problem. Clearly, neocolonialism had become a major issue in the early postcolonial period. Mboya’s idea of indigenous “political stooges”—­those prefabricated local collaborators with the West and even with the Soviets—­was also a common theme of those who worried about what seemed to them to be the rapacious and predatory intentions of neocolonialists and the sinister impact of neocolonialism on Africa in the 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s. They dismissed these newly independent countries as merely rentier states ruled by scoundrels and “running dogs” and “stooges” who did their masters’ bidding and who, in turn, were sustained in power by their foreign masters who were up to no good. This was no new, revolutionary idea introduced by Africans but rather their own way of expressing an idea long popularized in Latin America (and, to some extent, Asia) notably by Paul Baran and Eduardo Galeano.8 Known as the dependency theory, it was expressed in Africa notably by Colin Leys, Jean Suret-­Canale, Samir Amin, Chinweizu, and Douglas A. Yates.9 One thing all these writers seem to have in common is their inability to see that neocolonialism was not always motivated by bad intentions. On the other hand, the trouble with their detractors is a readiness to believe that the neocolonialists’ intentions were always honorable. From the 1980s to the present, earlier concerns about neocolonialism based primarily on economic, political, and military issues have been expanded to include issues of slavery and the slave trade, geopolitics, psychology, class struggle, national liberation, Pan-­Africanism, tourism, petroleum products, neoliberalism, structural adjustment, religious missions and theology, education, literacy, and

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the path toward peace in the future. This is a subject that should be of interest to all politicians, neo-­Marxist revolutionaries, journalists, and western academics. Although the history of colonialism has thus come full circle and what may be called the new neocolonialism seems to cover every aspect of postcolonial developments in the developing countries, this new scholarship does not seem to attract the serious attention of these countries’ political leaders or of those of the West, the former Eastern bloc countries, Japan, or China. Is neocolonialism then dead as a relevant issue in their development? What is clear is that neocolonialism has demonstrated an enduring resiliency and will continue to do so until all concerned deal seriously and satisfactorily as equals with the problems of national sovereignty, democracy, political stability, class, race, and economic prosperity in developing nations. Interestingly, scholarship in the West has recently taken up that challenge and is once more leading the way. But in the Global South, the prevailing concern, as we saw, relates to the redefinition of the idea of neocolonialism.10

Enduring Manifestations of Neocolonialism Colin Leys believed in the 1970s that neocolonialism was “temporary and transitional.”11 He was wrong. So was Jack Woddis, who dismissed it as “a temporary tactic of declining imperialism—­a dying animal [that] can be vicious and dangerous.”12 These sentiments were expressed in the 1960s, when progressive scholars believed, optimistically but rather naively, that “neocolonialism creates its own new grave-­diggers” because the mighty force of international communism would consume it and snuff it out.13 But today, in the first half of the twenty-­first century, hopefully we are wiser. It is more appropriate to proclaim with more sobriety and humility, based on better evidence than was available in the postcolonial era: Neocolonialism is dead. Long live neocolonialism! Dispassionately viewed, the unavoidable conclusion is that the more things tend to change, as the saying goes, the more they tend to remain the same. Neocolonialism, far from being dead, is alive and well and still impacts the Global South diffusely for both good and ill. The difference between the old and new neocolonialism is that while the former was more transparent, the latter is more sophisticated and devious and, indeed, more dangerous. It “is so pervasive,” writes Thomas Gladwin, “that it intrudes not only into all the institutions and policies of the countries it affects but also into the minds of the people who

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govern and lead these countries. Its effects are both widespread and interrelated, and thus reinforce each other in a complex of forces such that such countries become tied hand and foot, helpless to help themselves.”14 Unlike Gladwin, however, we should acknowledge that neocolonialism has also been beneficial in some respects. Let us now broadly examine the various manifestations of neocolonialism—­noting both the negative and positive aspects—­under the  following broad categories: political and geopolitical, economic, and sociocultural.

Political and Geopolitical Neocolonialism For modes of government, let fools contend That which is best administered is best. —­Alexander Pope

Neocolonialism arose from a death, the supposed death of classical European colonialism of the post-­eighteenth-­century period that varied in intensity in both time and space, depending on the circumstances on the ground. It will not be possible, or even useful, to go into any serious details to discuss the political and geopolitical operations of neocolonialism. However, a few well-­known examples may illuminate the issues being raised. These will be discussed as follows: administrative strategy; political behavior, ideology, and geopolitics. Western, and largely British, colonial rule in India, for example, may be said to have started with the decline of Mughal overrule, a Muslim dynasty that had collapsed by the middle of the eighteenth century.15 British overrule lasted until August 15, 1947. The legacy both the Mughals and the British left dictated the character of India’s Independence Act of 1947, which drew heavily from the colonial India Act of 1935. The 1947 document is particularly noteworthy for two reasons: 1) it created a federal structure with strong centers, like the original US constitution; and 2) it partitioned the country, resulting in the creation of West Pakistan and East Pakistan. These two entities are separated by Kashmir, a vast territory that was forced to remain in India, but many of its people are proud of their largely Aryan ancestry that distinguishes them from other Indians. Although the partition made no geographic sense and thus created an administrative nightmare for the new Pakistani government, it was dictated not by neocolonial considerations per se, but by the fear that Muslim Pakistanis

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would be marginalized in a largely Hindu Indian commonwealth in which they would constitute an insignificant minority. The mess thus created was left for the indigenous rulers of the two countries to clean up. The problem still endures to some degree today. To be fair, although the push for federalism and partition did not emanate from Britain or from the Hindus, it was the nature of the conquest and colonization of India that created the problems in the first instance. After independence was secured, Britain was naturally determined to continue to maintain some sort of influence in the new nation that would ensure that its enormous economic and political investments in the country over the centuries were safeguarded by working through the old and trusted, prefabricated, indigenous, collaborating elite groups who had helped colonialism to survive. Thus, the stage was set for confrontation with a new group of Indian nationalists who were determined to make the independence of their country a reality. Neocolonialism, as does direct colonialism, thrives beautifully in such a situation by adopting the time-­tested principle of divide and rule. The Indian model was applied in the other newly independent countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America with various degrees of success and failure. Other European colonizers followed the British model, adjusting it where necessary to suit the situation on the ground. The old contrast, therefore, between indirect and direct rule is essentially bogus because the colonizer was, in the final analysis, the alpha and the omega in policy matters. There are a few examples that do not fit this model, however—­China, territories that had significant and dominant European settler groups, and the poorer European nations that had (and still have) some of the characteristics of the Global South. I will not treat countries such as these in this article. However, I will point out that although China was never a European colony, that fact did not prevent Europeans from lusting after its resources because China exhibited many of the characteristics of Europe’s overseas colonial estates for most of the period I am reviewing. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution were policies animated, in part, by a determination to prevent any undesirable external economic and political influences in his country’s internal affairs. The series of humiliating and sobering military defeats that China suffered at the hands of the Europeans from 1839 to 1899 and the consequences of such defeats impacted the essential character of the Chinese revolution of 1911 and its aftermath.16 The neocolonial states also inherited western so-­called liberal democracy, itself a brilliant fraud because of the impossibility of practicing real democratic

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government in a colonial setting. A colonial government that practiced such a system rendered its government illegitimate and inevitably faced the reality of a popularly elected legislature by an overwhelming majority vote, presenting it with an ultimatum to pack up and go home. If the ultimatum was naturally rejected and the legislature was dissolved and the legislators were imprisoned or killed, the so-­called democracy would be exposed as the fraud that it really was. Predictably, none responded in this way. And yet the neocolonial state, most of whose population was poorly educated, is somehow expected to be ruled democratically by individuals who themselves had not properly imbibed democratic ideals. Democracy is a complex system of governance that took the West centuries of civil wars and other upheavals to get used to. Some, even today, are still struggling to master it, the claim of some of them to be true democracies notwithstanding. It was not surprising, therefore, that the indigenous successor political rulers that emerged, usually individuals the departing colonial power had handpicked, faced many complex political problems at independence that overwhelmed them. Some were forced to devise their own types of “democracy” that were sometimes alien to the lexicon of political theory and soon rendered their governments and their state institutions illegitimate. The growing force of Soviet Russia and its satellite states after World War II added to their difficulty and confusion. Factions soon began to develop among indigenous political leaders. Some saw themselves as western-­type liberal democracies, while some claimed to be Soviet-­style peoples’ democratic republics or Maoists or practiced the wishy-­washy socialism of the earlier days of Jawaharlal Nehru or the pragmatic socialism of Lee Kuan Yew (nicknamed “Harry Lee”) or the violent socialism of Latin America or the utopian socialism of the Kwame Nkrumah type or the African socialism of Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa or subscribed to Kenneth Kaunda’s African humanism that has little socialist content or to the cynical socialism of Milton Obote’s “move to the left” that seemed to be a ploy to hang on to power. The Global South thus became a cacophonic museum of ideological isms, all claiming to be working in the interests of the masses of the people, another bogus fraud that did not take long to be exposed as the totalitarianism of either the Right or the Left that they were, usually operating as one-­party or no-­party states. The confusion soon gave rise to election malpractice and all sorts of fraud, sometimes of ingenious innovation, resulting in political violence and illegitimacy, political instability, coups and countercoups, social upheavals,

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economic stagnation, intensified ethnic rivalries, terrible sufferings for everyone (especially the masses), brain drain, and capital flight. Some of the defeated intellectuals, politicians, and soldiers fled, mostly to the West, from where, under the rule of settled laws that protected their civil rights and freedom of expression, some organized to return to power eventually, while others preferred to pursue their personal interests quietly. Neocolonial powers operate best in such situations, as direct colonialism had done, by deftly manipulating peoples by offering carrots to friendly states and sticks to enemies. Gradually, they became experts in factions and client-­making. The West, in ­self-­righteous indignation, began to lecture the rulers of the Global South on their failure to serve their peoples’ interests because of their hunger for power, corruption, incompetence, “tribal” identity, and inability to operate a democratic government—­the supposed cure for all their problems—­as if the West had had no hand in creating the prevailing terrible situations and in participating in some of them.17 A well-­known example is the tragedy of Ghana. Although Nkrumah was a critic of the West, he initially was the African darling to whom western banks lent so much money, to be repaid from the export of cocoa that was enjoying a boom period. But for reasons that will be treated later, his country soon went virtually bankrupt and thus became a pawn of the international bankers. Anthony Sampson commented appropriately: “But the blame for the tragedy lay on both sides: it has been caused by corruption and carelessness from Western adventurers, as much as by Ghanaians.”18 To the informed observer, such lectures must appear hypocritical and cynical, since the same evils are prevalent in the West but in more sophisticated forms, sometimes masked under different names. The West must have succeeded in their enterprise because, as Alec Douglas-­Home wished, today we “hear less of neocolonialism.” Regarding the origin of “tribalism,” one of these evils, Colin Leys stands the conventional wisdom on its head. He writes, “To explain the ‘colonial’ character of a post-­colonial independent regime in terms of a ‘legacy’ of tribalism is thus to reverse cause and effect. It would be truer to say that tribalism is a product of colonialism and that what colonialism produces, neocolonialism reproduces.”19 At the geopolitical level, the impact of neocolonialism is also abundantly manifest. Geopolitics, a word Rudolf Kjelle of Sweden coined in 1899, as ambiguous as it is popularly used today, has come to be associated with the diplomacy of imperialism, global strategy, realpolitik, balance-­of-­power concepts of

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nineteenth-­century European imperial powers, and with what some now call grand strategy, a euphemism for the good old European diplomatic history that has somehow fallen out of favor. However, its etymology can be traced as far back as Ancient Greece and Rome, meaning essentially the belief of superpowers that they have the right to play demigod with states they consider to be their inferior in power in pursuit of their national interests. Today in Africa, as elsewhere, it has worked to shape political ideology and behavior in foreign policy by pushing client states to adopt policies that suit those of the West and has given rise to what may be called the diplomacy of neocolonialism.20 This diplomacy is defended, in part, because “a sense of internationalism has become a necessary ingredient of sound national policies.”21 This policy of internationalism was already in play by the second half of the twentieth century. The fear of radicals and progressives was that the Cold War would eventually lead newly independent nations to choose sides in the conflict, as indeed they did. The efforts of these nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955 to adhere to what they called “positive neutrality” was frankly unsuccessful because of a matrix of historical forces, despite Nkrumah’s warning that “the greatest danger at present facing Africa [and indeed the Global South] is neocolonialism and its major instrument—­balkanization.”22 Defensive mechanisms such as the Pan-­African, Pan-­Asian, and Pan–­South American organizations, continental and regional unity groupings, have been checkmated by western leaders, who have deftly used their overwhelming economic, military, political and social power to achieve their desired ends. Clearly, examples include popular but divisive terminologies such as “Middle East,” “Sub-­Sahara Africa,” “Eura-­Africa,” “Pivot to Asia,” “tribalism,” and so forth, in which are embedded the classic principle of divide and conquer.23 Should we then conclude, as some do, that political and geopolitical neocolonialism constitutes an unmitigated evil? It would be historically indefensible to accept such an assessment. Neocolonialism has, for example, led to the development and ongoing refinement of democratic institutions, political constitutions, political practice and behavior; a deeper awareness of civil rights and obligations; limitations on governmental power; the sanctity of electoral votes; the strengths and weaknesses of national, regional, and international organizations; and the complexities of international diplomacy in the Global South. Perhaps it may also be worthwhile for us to give some consideration to the advice Pope gave in the quote that opens this section of the article.

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Economic Neocolonialism If there’s one thing worse than being exploited by multinational corporations, it’s not being exploited. —­Anonymous Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of us all. —­attributed to John Maynard Keynes24

Politics and economics are like twin brothers joined at the hip, but economists choose to ally themselves with the natural sciences, perhaps because today the natural sciences rule the academic roost, its practitioners having arrogated to themselves the ability to make predictions. Whatever may be the case, for our immediate purpose, economic interests also occupy center stage in all discourses pertaining to the underdevelopment of the Global South. Proponents of economic neocolonialism view the phenomenon as essentially exploitative without any redeeming features. Regarding Africa, Guy Martin, for example, writes in a provocative passage: The ideology of Eurafrica, based on two key concepts “complementarity” and “interdependence”, appears as a convenient justification for colonialism, and also  helps to explain various contractual arrangements between Africa and Europe since independence, notably the Conventions of Yaounde1(1964–­9), Yauonde11(1969–­75), Lome1(1975–­89), and Lome11(1980–­85). In the final analysis, this ideology appears as nothing but the rationalization of the neoclassical theory of international development, and of the contemporary division of labor.25

Martin is concerned to inquire into “the continued state of underdevelopment and dependency of Africa in spite of its enormous wealth and tremendous economic potential” and concludes that the ideology is useless for solving the problems of development on the continent.26 Martin’s concern is one that has perplexed all those interested in African studies, most of whom share his conclusion, some with differing emphases. Colin Leys, for example, emphasizes the real “harmony of interest between foreign capital, the local auxiliary bourgeoisie

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and the various political petit-­bourgeoisie strata [whose] interests also conflicted, and a government based on an alliance between them” that “had to be capable of arbitrating between them.” Leys sees this as a major constraint to development because a neocolonial state is a government that has the capacity to deal with the masses if it becomes necessary, sometimes with the support of the neocolonial power.27 But why must this be so? Why did the early African political rulers not resist the neocolonialists and deconstruct the administrative neocolonial state to suit their needs? Because, Chinweizu answers, “The heir apparent does not dynamite the throne.”28 It seems that the seamless transition from colonialism to neocolonialism, using various institutional devices, has made this almost impossible. Examples abound of the unfortunate fate of progressive leaders who attempted to resist their former colonizers, or were accused of attempting to do so. The very few who managed to stay in power after all efforts to overthrow them failed, largely through the support of the Soviet Union—­thanks to the Cold War—­faced internal and external hurdles that frustrated their policies and rendered them ineffectual.29 Thus, Nkrumah bemoaned quite early the neocolonialist forces that “endeavor to achieve their ends not merely by military means, but by economic domination, psychological infiltration, and subversive activities even to the point of inspiring assassination and civil strife.”30 Without doubt, in the views of Nkrumah, Jack Woddis, Colin Leys, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Chinweizu, Suret-­Canale, Douglass Yates, and so on, neocolonialism is at the very root of Africa’s economic underdevelopment and is closely tied to Africa’s inability to develop economically and politically.31 In Latin America and parts of Asia, similar worries are prevalent. Most scholars stress the failure of capitalism to help developing nations achieve sustained economic growth, the result being perpetual dependency that seems to doom them to economic backwardness and political dependency. They conclude, therefore, that the poverty of the Global South has a direct link to the wealth of the Global North but seem to be at a loss to suggest a tenable alternative to the detested authoritarian, market-­oriented economy that they regard as the cause of their woes—­but that most in the West regard as economic gospel—­that their former colonizers have foisted on them. They have also not explained satisfactorily the recent economic success stories of the so-­called Asian Tigers that have adopted that sort of economic theory and they cannot point to any economic successes of former colonies that are ruled by indigenous, dictatorial

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regimes, with perhaps the exception of such states as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, which clearly seem to be a temporary aberration.32 The very popular Open Veins of Latin America has described eloquently and with authority how western capitalism underdeveloped Latin America and how its type of authoritarian, bureaucratic, market-­oriented economics has continued to influence the direction of the region’s economic and political policies. The argument is that the West, having used its technological and military superiority to ruthlessly and ferociously plunder the region’s economic resources to enrich itself, has put many Global South countries in an economic quagmire. “As lung needs air,” Eduard Galeano wrote, pivoting to the United States particularly, “so the U.S. economy needs Latin American minerals.” This has created an economic domination that has lasted five centuries. The result is neocolonialism that has visited disastrous consequences on the region.33 However, Mark Gasiorowski’s more recent study, while noting the United States’ domination of Latin American countries in the pursuit of its own national interests—­especially because of the proximity between them—­argued that the focus should be more on the impact of this dominance on Latin American domestic and foreign policies than on the “economic forces focused on by dependency theories.”34 So where does Gasiorowski draw the line between politics and economics? Unable to do so, he was forced to admit that the US support for “friendly” states has created such “cliency relationships” that some of these countries’ governments “could not exist without US assistance; others could undeniably survive but would be forced to pursue very different domestic policies.”35 However, he failed to debunk Galeano’s assertion with historical evidence and to show how the United States would react if these policies were perceived to threaten its national interests. Fukuyama, for instance, has noted a weakness in James Schumpeter’s conventional wisdom—­which has fascinated generations of western scholars—­that “a market-­oriented authoritarian state should do better economically than a democratic one.” Fukuyama responds that “while voters in democratic countries may affirm free-­market principles in the abstract, they are all too ready to abandon them when their own short-­term economic interest is at stake. There is no presumption, in other words, that democratic publics will make economically rational choices, or that economic losers will not use their political power to protect their positions.”36 The West has been forthcoming with solutions for the economic ills of the Global South (admittedly not always for nefarious reasons) that have proved to

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be unmitigated disasters. It must be noted that these are solutions western countries had not used in the past during the developing stages of their respective economies. Arthur Schlesinger, a historian and President John F. Kennedy’s special assistant, made this admirably perspicacious observation: As for Washington’s insistence on fiscal parity, this was perhaps a little trifle unseemly on the part of a nation which had financed so much of its own development by inflation, wild-­cat paper money and bonds sold to foreign investors and subsequently repudiated. If the criteria of the International Monetary Fund had governed the United States in the nineteenth century, our own economic development would have taken a good deal longer. In preaching fiscal orthodoxy to developing nations, we were somewhat in the position of the prostitute who, having retired on her earnings, believes that public virtue requires the closing of the red-­light district.37

The Bretton Woods institutions (the pillars of which are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), which undertook to cure the economic ills of the developing countries in the twentieth century, prescribed such shock treatments, notably “structural adjustment,” “conditionalities,” and “special drawing rights,” deliberate obfuscations or “Bank-­speak” that were then strange to the lexicon of economic studies and that naturally befuddled and irritated ordinary, intelligent mortals. They also confused the leaders of the developing nations, at times driving some of them close to tears and desperation. Anthony Sampson has provided us with a remarkable portrait of these money mandarins in his very interesting book The Money Lenders (1982). The picture is that of a self-­opinionated club of rich white men, mean, serene, arrogant, taciturn, looking awfully clever and satiated as they surveyed the foolish inanity and shallowness of power-­hungry politicians and fame-­seeking academics. As governments fell and rose in the developing nations, due in part, to the disastrous impact of their economic prescriptions, they never seriously questioned the validity and suitability of these prescriptions but rather chose to behave as if they had nothing to do with the catastrophes that were happening before their eyes. No wonder they attracted the hatred and derision of some of the progressive intellectuals and politicians worldwide. But aware that their power was unassailable, they minded little that they were hated so long as they were feared.38 Indeed, feared they were as financially strapped politicians went to them, cap

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in hand, seeking to draw from the special drawing rights, a soft loan which the rich countries created to help developing countries without consulting their leaders. Some ambitious scholars wrote proposals to them to finance more in-­ depth investigations or to bring more clarity to their pet research projects, which were spiced with the irritating, obscurantist lingo. This is interesting because the money that was being lent or appropriated for researchers turned out to be petrodollars that rich Arab countries had deposited in western banks for safety and profit. As Paul Erdman put it: “What the Arabs cleverly have done [or thought that they have done] is to put the New York banks in the front row of risk. In other words, if Zaire goes kaput, Chase Manhattan is in trouble.”39 But so would the rich Arab countries because they would also incur a lot of losses, since to fight the bank and, by implication, the United States, their so-­called friend, would be inadvisable. As the banks assessed the situation, they were confident that the Arab “countries have no leverage on us at all, because [their] money has nowhere to go [even if they were able to retrieve their deposits, an impossibility because], all they have is an IOU in a bank account which can be frozen at any time in the United States or in Germany or where it is.”40 The chickens came home to roost finally when the oil crisis began in October 1973. It culminated in the bank crashes of 1974 and the collapse of the “stock markets in all the capitals of the OECD countries . . . ​like nine pins. That was the moment of truth. The world was, all of a sudden, seen and felt as one interdependent world,” as Lee Kuan Yew appropriately put it.41 Thus, it was not only Zaire that almost went broke, but also (spectacularly) Ghana, New York City, Brazil, Peru, Indonesia, Turkey, Columbia, and other developing countries. But because of the concept of “sovereign risk,” it soon became clear that a nation could not go bankrupt—­Idi Amin was, at least for once, right—­unlike an ordinary commercial enterprise or a domestic corporation, such as New York City. They all somehow managed to survive, albeit tattered and bruised. It was not only the Arabs who were too clever by half but also the great Chase that was saddled with bad debts and a greatly tarnished reputation. Meanwhile, the commercial banks had a field day lending money to helpless, poor developing countries at outrageous interest rates without remorse. One of them boasted: “Round here, it’s Jakarta that pays the check.”42 To prevent the debtor countries from defaulting, western financial institutions persuaded them to sign agreements mandating them to enforce drastic economic reforms at home that made life miserable for their peoples. These measures, far from resulting in

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economic growth, produced the opposite result, thus leading to disastrous socioeconomic disruptions, riots, coups and countercoups, and political instability. Somehow, the International Monetary Fund, finding itself sidelined, managed to acquire supervisory authority over the commercial banks that empowered it to approve or reject their loan arrangements, thus putting itself in the driver’s seat. Soon it began to make its own loans to desperately poor countries on terms not too different from those of the commercial banks. Gradually, Yew’s one interdependent world was reduced to a world of the heavily indebted, suffering, poor nations of the South and the affluent, rich, donor ones of the North, who seem not to care about the suffering and the negative impact of their loan practices on the poor countries. Many indeed seemed quite comfortable to let the subordinate condition of the poor countries remain so, so long as their governments, through one mechanism or the other, could sustain the status quo and ensure that their loans were repaid when due. But how long this dangerous situation can be sustained without blowing up in our faces is another matter. It remains to be seen how far the debt forgiveness policy, in part or in whole, of the donor countries will alleviate the problem. Does the bleak picture thus painted mean that the contact between the South and the North brought no benefits whatsoever to the South? Once more, it would be incorrect to reach such a conclusion. Confronted with this dilemma, Sampson commented, tongue in cheek, about “the truth of the saying” that “if there’s one thing worse than being exploited by the multinational corporations, it’s not being exploited” at all.43 This simple, but rather cruel, witticism illustrates the dilemma of the poor developing countries. For them, it is a matter of choice which poison you prefer. Neo-­Marxist or progressive scholars may believe that this is a clincher for their conviction that neocolonialism ­operates on the principle of all give (the poor nations) and all take (the rich nations). However, as the great Lord Acton put it, the function of the good historian is “to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his.”44 Should the poor nations follow the examples of Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, which seem to have successfully “plugged in to the world grid of industrial powerhouses,”45 or should they adopt the system of government the western democracies practice? Since countries such as China and Russia have been developing without being liberal democracies, it might perhaps do no harm to reflect more seriously on Alexander Pope’s advice.

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There is another emotive and contentious question, namely whether the Agency for International Development (AID) is an agent of development or an agent of neocolonial exploitation. AID, an American invention, superseded the  International Development Act (IDA) that Congress signed into law in 1950. The IDA had provided some financial assistance to some poor developing countries as they achieved independence in order to lure them away from any alliance with the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. Its major interest was primarily to protect the national interest of the United States and it was mostly concerned initially with Latin America. The Soviet Union, too, formed what it called COMECON, a trading system that provided economic aid to members of the communist bloc in Eastern Europe, Cuba, and communist China and to the newly independent nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Its major intention was also to protect Russia’s national interests. These poor nations, sensing political domination by both sides from the back door, signed the Bandung Treaty, which proved to be a failure. President Kennedy reorganized the IDA and replaced it with the AID in 1960 for altruistic reasons, he claimed, but his eyes were fastened on Russia’s activities, particularly in Cuba. He warned that if AID assistance was given “in the wrong spirit or for the wrong reasons, or in the wrong way, then any and all financial measures will be in vain.”46 Aid, therefore, was to be divorced from military assistance, and he believed it was imperative to demonstrate that “economic growth and political democracy can develop hand in hand.”47 The 1960 act that created the AID also established the Peace Corps. Kennedy’s infectious optimism and the support of the World Council of Churches persuaded the United Nations to pass a resolution in 1960 mandating the rich nations to spend not less than 1 percent, and if possible more than that, of their annual national income on concessional loans or aid to the developing countries.48 Since then, the history of economic loans and aid to the developing nations and how faithfully and altruistically they have been applied has become contentious at best. The general belief seems to be that they have done more harm than good but that both the donor countries and the debtor countries must share the blame. Some see the “structural adjustment” policy associated with them as a one-­sided solution, in effect a “subtle recolonization of Africa.” For example, Daniel Tetteh Osabu-­kle argues that because of the continent’s “lack of collective steadfastness,” its leaders “surrendered their sovereignty to the Bretton Woods organizations and gained very little” and that since the West

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created the economic mess in Africa in the first instance through financial coercion, it is their duty to clean it up.49 E. Osei Kwadwo Prempeh, although he does not support the neoliberal economic solution to the continent’s economic woes, chided Osabu-­kle for ignoring the role that lack of good governance in Africa played in creating the problem.50 Using South Africa and Zambia as case studies, Margaret Hanson and James J. Hentz, too, seem to support the African complicity idea. They found, inter alia, that “the evidence of neocolonialism backed by financial coercion is mixed.” But they argued that because between the 1980s and 1990s, some twenty-­nine African countries, driven by economic distress, embraced the wave of neoliberal economic ideas of development characterized by structural adjustments and conditionalities that did not work, they should not be exempted from the “rhetoric of neocolonialism.”51 Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa was thus confronted with the following question in 2005: “With the sunset on colonialism in Africa, the average income in Sub-­Saharan Africa was twice that of South and East Asia. Asia was the continent of poverty and huge population. Today the reverse is the case. Africa is the only continent in the world that is stagnating. Why has Africa fallen so far behind?” The commission blamed the “inability of government and public services to create the right economic, social and legal framework which will encourage economic growth and allow people to participate in it.”52 There is no evidence that African countries took the commission’s view seriously. Whatever the case, many would agree with Watson: “I argue . . . ​that evidence of development as a form of neocolonialism may be etched right into the ‘colonial bodies’ of many of today’s aid workers.”53

Sociocultural Neocolonialism Racism sums up and symbolizes the fundamental relations which unites colonialist and colonized. —­Albert Memmi No matter whether the cat is black or white, if it catches mice, it’s a good cat. —­Deng Xiaoping (Lin Piao)

Sociocultural neocolonialism was not much emphasized in the early postindependence period but has been receiving considerable emphasis since the 1980s.

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What has become clear is that although the economic aspect of neocolonialism is generally accepted as fundamental, its racial aspect is no less so. The colonialist, writes Albert Memmi, “is a privileged being and an illegitimately privileged one; that is, a usurper. Furthermore, this is so, not only in the eyes of the colonized but in his own eyes as well.” However, his “values are sovereign.”54 To which Jean-­Paul Sartre added: “Racism is ingrained in actions, institutions, and in the nature of the colonialist methods of production and exchange. Political and social regulations reinforce one another.”55 The good white person in a colonial setting was one who, like Deng Xiaoping’s good cat, did their job by keeping the conventional social distance between them and the indigenous peoples. The implication is that this essentially racist relationship did not vanish with independence. On the contrary, it has persisted, although in a less overt fashion. Thus, “the psychological subversion” of European colonialism continued into “exploitative neocolonialism.”56 It is not surprising, therefore, that the earlier Negritude ideology began to reassert itself in this period as the authenticité ideology of such countries as Zaire, Togo, and Gabon.57 Also, the ethical issues in European racist portrayals of non-­European peoples that were generally accepted in the West during the colonial period have continued, to some extent, in the postcolonial period. Thus, Cathy Rakowski, drawing from her experiences of sociological research in Latin America, observed: “Many sociologists are uneasy discussing issues of ethics, social utility, or neocolonialism. Examples presented reveal ways in which neocolonialism operates, sources of perceived neocolonialism, and the continued need to increase awareness of pressures that encourage neocolonial relations.” She was particularly worried that although the “exploitation of research subjects for professional gain are—­ elusive,” they exist.58 Such issues were swept under the rug in the earlier period. It is also true that the racism of the colonial era was so rampant that the Christian missionaries, who are generally much admired even today by non-­ European Christians, were not free from its taint even after formal colonization ended. Indeed, Joerg Rieger postulates “the historical connection between colonialism and mission, and between neocolonialism and mission, in the present situation of globalization.” He notes that unfortunately, most people today do “not always see the subtle connection between mission and neocolonialism, even though” many have “recognized and renounced the former colonialism.” He concludes, however, that although white missionaries’ “attitudes in some respects have been positive . . . ​they can easily be tainted with neocolonial

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attitudes.”59 Kim Nami, drawing from his studies of the activities of the global Christian churches in South Korea and Afghanistan, emphatically supports this view. He affirms that the “churches . . . ​are imbricated with neocolonialism, especially U.S. neocolonialism underpinned by its military hegemony.”60 A final example of the enduring life of neocolonialism comes from a study of the “Geography of Tourism in the Indian Himalaya.” Matthew A. Hartwell found that colonial hill stations in this region, “enclaves for European leisure-­seekers and outposts of power, hegemony, and territorial ambition”—­have continued today “to attract independent foreign tourists . . . ​fixated on discovering new ‘off the beaten path’ places [who] replicate colonial patterns and processes and thus contribute in a kind of modern-­day ‘neocolonialism.’” He concludes that although “there is evidence of neocolonialism to be found,” this must be “understood in a broader frame of reference than neocolonialism proper and the historical focus on state action.”61 Without a doubt, education was the greatest instrument colonialists deployed to impact the world view of the colonized. It proved to be a double-­edged sword, however: while on the one hand, it brought about immense opportunities and benefits, on the other, it was the type of education that, ab initio, was intended to westernize the colonized by demonstrating to indigenous peoples the superiority of western culture, the quintessential “civilizing mission.” Because, for the most part, the colonized either failed to absorb western culture fully or to shed their culture fully, they became mired in a morass of cultural and intellectual disequilibrium. Education, therefore, is the most enduring manifestation of neocolonialism, for good or ill. It is also crucial for cultural, scientific, and technological development.62 The central discussion at a seminar held at the University of Ife—­which I attended and contributed to—­was the allowable extent of cultural borrowing a society could make without completely losing its identity. Culture is not static and even the so-­called ascendant western culture borrowed quite extensively from the cultural traditions of Western Asia and pre-­ Arab northern Africa. For our purpose, neocolonialism is only a sustainer of what colonialism implanted, but the problem with westerners, really, is their lack of humility and their failure to recognize that overemphasizing their cultural superiority has not only become tiresome but can also mask a sort of inferiority complex. A real elephant has no need whatsoever to always wield the huge weight of its “elephantness,” as if to push everyone else around. The end of formal colonialism, unfortunately, did not curb this haughtiness. The result is

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that it has made the West unnecessary enemies, especially in some of the Asian and Arab countries.63 The West, led by the United States, has also been accused of supporting dictatorial regimes in Africa that have violated human rights in their effort to counteract China’s diplomacy on the continent because of neocolonial considerations.64

Conclusion There is no doubt that neocolonialism, warts and all, has led to some economic progress and especially to infrastructural development in the Global South. To suggest that because of this fact neocolonialism is a phantom of radical writers’ imagination would be patently fallacious. Roads, railroads, airports, economic growth, and other amenities, especially in the countries whose leaders are less corrupt, have been financed by the detested loans and economic aid from rich nations. It would not have been possible for these countries to exploit and develop their natural resources as fully or to develop the type of indigenous manpower that now exists or, indeed, grow the current nouveau-­riche population—­flawed as some of its members might be—­who have helped build industries that have employed millions of people, established schools and colleges, offered thousands of scholarships for study at home or abroad, and thus have helped raise the standard of living of millions of individuals. They have also built hotels, some of which are of world-­class standard, that have attracted tourists and facilitated business. The list of their achievements is impressive. Admittedly, many of these tycoons were, and still are, scoundrels and shady characters, lackeys of capitalism who made their money by associating with similar characters as themselves in developed countries. It must also be noted that there are also perhaps many more individuals who made their money quietly in the right way by working with counterparts of integrity in developed countries. The propensity of some writers, therefore, to paint with the broad brush needs to be checked, since we are all yoked together, like it or not, in this dangerous, competitive world, in which groups and individuals are obliged to play with the best cards they have, provided by either inheritance or fate. In the final analysis, since there are very few saints to be found in the study of relations between the Global North and the Global South, what is important is for both sides to create modalities for cohabiting respectfully in the interests of global peace and survival.

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Hopefully, this article demonstrates that neocolonialism is inevitable, given the structure of colonial institutions that were intended to foster dependency, a reality that undermines the sovereignty of the states concerned ab initio; that neocolonialism is resilient because of its ability to change its tactics to achieve its ends; that neocolonialism cannot operate effectively without the cooperation of the indigenous leaders; and that its proponents and opponents alike tend to adopt extreme positions. Economically, although neocolonialism, like capitalism, is by its nature exploitative, if it is properly managed it has the potential to lead to economic growth and development. Unfortunately, indigenous corruption (which cannot thrive without foreign support), ethnic issues, and nepotism often impede the realization of these goals. Politically and geopolitically, neocolonialism influences indigenous political behavior, using it to achieve its ends. It supported, and still supports in some cases, coups d’état, assassinations, and unilateral action to remove governments not to its liking, but it also fosters democracy and good governance. Geopolitically, it has been used primarily to achieve foreign interests, for example through the divisive western concepts that Balkanize regions and entire continents such as “sub-­ Saharan Africa” and “Middle East”. Socio-­culturally, the worry has been that neocolonialism subtly preserves colonial attitudes that are considered racist, bigoted, and condescending, especially in attitudes about education and religion. Finally, the current western conventional and popular use of the word “tribe,” another deliberate misnomer that somehow does not apply to ethnic divisions among western countries, serves only to preserve the West’s self-­image as a civilized, superior race whose pride in their own exceptionalism is not in doubt. This unabashed ebullition of racial megalothymia has inevitably led to another sin, hubris, the euthanasia of past nations and civilizations. It is unfortunate that the Chinese and the Japanese also exhibit this palpable racial jingoism that bodes ill for good neighborliness and world peace. It is anybody’s guess how the next generations of other nonwestern peoples will react to these issues. In the interests of global peace, security, and progress, our own generation should, at least, revisit these issues seriously and apply corrective measures. It is, indeed, imperative that the BRIC countries should also not forget their own past relations with the western colonial powers regarding what is seen by many as their predatory exploits in the Global South.

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NOTES 1. Quoted in Colin Legum, Pan-­Africanism: A Short Political Guide (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962), 118. 2. Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-­Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, 6th ed. (New York: International Publishers, 1976), ix. 3. Ibid., xi. 4. Quoted in Yolamu R. Barango, Neocolonialism and African Politics: A Survey of the Impact of Neocolonialism on African Political Behavior (New York: Vintage Press, 1980), 3. 5. Quoted in Legum, Pan-­Africanism, 12. 6. The Times, March 21, 1964, quoted in Legum, Pan-­Africanism, 12. 7. Quoted in Oginga Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru (London: Heinemann, 1967), 257. See also Tom Mboya, Freedom and After (London: Deutsch, 1963), 178. The later interesting concepts of “coloniality” and “decoloniality” associated with the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano (died August 2018) and with such other scholars as Ramon Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-­Torres, and Walter Mignolo are concerned essentially with epistemological differences in Latin American colonization and decolonization. 8. See Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, translated by Cedric Belfrage, foreword by Isabel Allende (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967). 9. Colin Leys, Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neocolonialism, 1964–­ 1971 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Samir Amin, Neocolonialism in West Africa, translated by Frances McDonough (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Jean Suret-­Canale, Essays on African History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism, preface by Basil Davidson, translated by Christopher Hurst (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988); Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite (New York: Vintage Books, 1975); Douglas A. Yates, The Rentier State in Africa: Oil Rent Dependency and Neocolonialism in the Republic of Gabon (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996). See also Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi (New York: Stein and Day, 2000), 19; and B. N. Pandey, Nehru (New York: Stein and Day, 1976). 10. See, for example, Osman Antwi-­Boateng, “New World Order Neocolonialism: A Contextual Comparison of Contemporary China and European Colonization in Africa,” Africology: The Journal of Pan-­African Studies 10, no. 2 (2017): 177–­195; S. Zhao, “A Neocolonialist Predator or Development Partner? China’s Engagement and Rebalance in

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11. Leys, Underdevelopment in Kenya, 27. 12. Jack Woddis, Introduction to Neocolonialism: The New Imperialism in Asia, Africa, & Latin America (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 58. 13. Ibid., 120, 122–­126. 14. Thomas Gladwin with the collaboration of Ahmed Saidin, Slaves of the White Myth: The Psychology of Neocolonialism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980), 128. 15. The decline of Mughal India was a slow and prolonged process that had a large residual impact, some of which the British profited from. It may also be noted, strictly speaking, that official British rule in India began in 1813, when Parliament officially declared Britain’s sovereignty over the country. Thus came to an end the rule of the East India Company (popularly called the Company Bahadur) that was used after Clive’s military victory at Plassey in June 1757 to rule India as a sort of “sponsored state.” 16. The First Opium War (1839–­1842), for example, led to the acquisition of the island of Hong Kong from China and other consequences. The Second Opium War (1856–­1857) resulted in Britain’s acquisition of the “treaty ports” that soon attracted the interest of France, Russia, the United States, Italy, Austria-­Hungary, which scrambled to get involved in what they described as the “treaty system” but what the Chinese regarded as unequal treaties. In addition, the French victory over the Chinese in 1883–­1885 added to their embarrassment. Clearly all was not well with China and something desperately needed to be done. 17. Two recent books that have received rave reviews in the West typify this position, perhaps because of their belief in the primacy of western democracy over other forms of governance. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992); and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (New York: Random House, 2012). 18. Anthony Sampson, The Money Lenders: The People and Politics of the World Banking Crisis (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), 114. 19. Leys, Underdevelopment in Kenya, 252. 20. Yolamu R. Barango, Neocolonialism and African Politics: A Survey of the Impact of Neocolonialism on African Political Behavior (New York: Vantage Press, 1980). 21. Maurice Strong, “Reforming the United Nations,” The Futurist 35 (September–­ October 2001): 20. 22. Cited in Barango, Neocolonialism and African Politics, 1. This is a huge subject; those interested in pursuing it further should consult G. N. Uzoigwe, “The Geopolitics of the

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Pan-­African Movement, 1900–­2000,” in Pan-­Africanism, Citizenship and Identity, edited by Toyin Falola and Kwame Essien (New York: Routledge, 2014), 215–­245; G. N. Uzoigwe, “African Power Politics: A Historical Perspective,” Orbis, Summer 2005, 503–­516; Adam Garfinkle, “Geopolitics: Middle Eastern Notes and Anticipations,” Orbis 47, no. 2 (2003): 1–­13; Ali A. Mazrui, “Between the Crescent and the Star Spangled Banner: American Muslims and U.S. Foreign Policy,” International Affairs 72, no. 1 (1996): 493–­506; Tukumbi Lumumba-­Kasongo, “Rethinking Pan-­Africanism in the Search for Social Progress,” Global Dialogue 6, nos. 3–­4 (2004): 3–­12. 23. See Elenga M’buyinga, Pan-­Africanism or Neocolonialism?: The Bankruptcy of the O.A.U., translated by Michael Palles (London: Zed Press, 1982); Tunde Adeleke, “Africa and Pan-­ Africanism: Betrayal of a Historical Cause,” Western Journal of Black Studies 21, no. 2 (1997): 106–­116; Chen Chimutengwende, “Pan-­Africanism and the Second Liberation of Africa,” Race and Class 38, no. 3 (1992): 26–­33; and G. N. Uzoigwe, “A Matter of Identity: Africa and Its Diaspora in America since 1900,” Journal of African and Asian Studies 7, no. 2–­3 (2008): 259–­288; Guy Martin, “Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica: Neocolonialism or Pan-­Africanism,” Journal of Modern African Studies 20, no. 2 (1982): 221–­238. 24. See Louis Turner, Multinational Companies and the Third World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1973), 3. 25. Martin, “Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica,” 238. 26. Ibid., 221–­238. 27. Leys, Underdevelopment in Kenya, 207. 28. Cited in Gladwin, Slaves of the White Myth, 63. 29. Notable examples include Abdul Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Fidel Castro. 30. Nkrumah quote in Legum, Pan-­Africanism, 119. 31. Nkrumah, Neocolonialism; Woddis, Introduction to Neocolonialism; Leys, Neocolonialism in Kenya; Amin, Neocolonialism in West Africa; Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us; Jean Suret-­Canale, Essays on African History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism, preface by Basil Davidson, translated by Christopher Hurst (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988); Yates, Rentier State in Africa. 32. In 1981, Anthony Sampson observed: “Of all the oil powers [the Saudis] are by far the richest, but in the world’s financial pack they are always the joker.” Sampson, The Money Lenders, 26. 33. Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America, 134. See also Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967).

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34. See Mark J. Gasiorowski, “Dependency and Cliency in Latin America,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 28, no. 3 (1986): 47. 35. Ibid., 48. 36. See Fukuyama, End of History, 123. 37. Schlesinger quoted in Sampson, The Money Lenders, 127–­128. 38. For an interesting portrayal of these mandarins, see ibid., 121–­136. 39. Erdman quoted in ibid., 148. 40. Erdman quoted in ibid., 159–­160, 173. 41. See ibid., 161. 42. Ibid., 182. 43. Ibid., 401. 44. See his “Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History,” Cambridge University, 1895. Admittedly, what Acton asked for placed a heavy burden on historians and it is not surprising that the canon is not always observed. Even Acton seemed to have forgotten his own advice when he convinced himself that it was possible to produce ultimate history, a sort of history to end all histories, that would be based on European history; the much older histories of Africa and Asia were apparently not part of the reckoning. Writing history is much harder than some people may think. But the historian really has no other choice if history is to maintain its integrity. 45. Sampson, Money Lenders, 401. 46. Ibid., 114–­115. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Daniel Tetteh Osabu-­kle, “The Politics of One-­Sided Economic Adjustment in Africa,” Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 4 (2000): 515–­533. 50. See E. Osei Kwadwo Prempeh, “The Politics of One-­Sided Adjustment in Africa,” Journal of Black Studies 31, no. 5 (May 2001): 563–­580. Acemoglu and Robinson supported this position in Why Nations Fail. 51. Margaret Henson and James J. Hentz, “Neocolonialism and Neoliberalism in South Africa and Zambia,” Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 3 (1999): 479–­502. 52. See Bill Houston, “The Paradox of Impoverished Africa,” Ogbomosho Journal of Theology 14 (2009): 1–­15. 53. Marcus D. Watson, “The Colonial Gesture of Development: The Interpersonal as a Promising Site for Rethinking Aid to Africa,” Africa Today 59, no. 3 (2013): 3–­28. 54. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 9, 12. 55. Ibid., xxiv.

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56. Gladwin, Slaves of the White Myth, iv; see also Legum, Pan-­Africanism, 119. 57. For details, see Georges Nzongola-­Ntalaja, Class Struggles and National Liberation in Africa: Essays on the Political Economy of Neocolonialism (Nyangue, Zaire: Omenan, 1982). See also Tomas Profant, “French Geopolitics in Africa: From Neocolonialism to Identity,” Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2010): 41–­59. 58. Cathy A. Rakowski, “The Ugly Scholar: Neocolonialism and Ethical Issues in International Research,” The American Sociologist 24, nos. 3–­4 (1993): 83. 59. For this interesting piece, see Joerg Rieger, “Theology and Mission between Neocolonialism and Postcolonialism,” Mission Studies 21, no. 2 (2004): 201–­226. 60. Kim Nami, “A Mission to the ‘Graveyard of Empires’? Neocolonialism and the Contemporary Evangelical Missions of the Global Church,” Mission Studies 27, no. 1 (2010): 3–­23. 61. See Matthew A. Hartwell, “From Colonialism to Neocolonialism: Geography of Tourism in the Indian Himalaya” (MA thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 2008). 62. This was the subject of a seminar at the University of Ife, Nigeria, August 26–­27, 1985. See Ernest N. Emenyonu et al., eds., Education, Culture, and Development in Africa: Proceedings of the First Seminar of the PWPA of English Speaking West Africa (New York: Professors World Peace Academy Publication, 1985). 63. See Corinne M. Wickens and Jennifer A. Sandlin, “Literacy for What? Literacy for Whom? The Politics of Literacy Education and Neocolonialism in UNESCO—­and World Bank—­ Sponsored Programs,” Adult Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2007): 275–­292; Phuong-­Mai Nguyen, Julian G. Elliott, Cees Terlouw, and Albert Pilot, “Neocolonialism in Education: Cooperative Learning in an Asian Context,” Comparative Education 45, no. 1 (2009): 109–­130; Kevin J. Ayotte and Mary E. Hussain, “Securing Afghan Women: Neocolonialism, Epistemic Violence, and the Rhetoric of the Veil,” NWSA Journal 17, no. 3 (2005): 112–­133; Michael Welch, “Ordering Iraq: Reflections on Power, Discourse, & Neocolonialism,” Critical Criminology 16, no. 4 (2008): 257–­269. 64. See Ian Taylor, “China’s Oil Diplomacy in Africa,” International Affairs 82, no. 5 (2006): 937–­959.