#91 The Old Colonies: Development and Underdevelopment in the 21st Century

The USA’s relations with the southern countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America have been to treat them, in principle, in a similar manner in which the Soviet Union was treated after 1991. That is, like those under the old colonial regimes.

By the end of the second decade of the 21st century, many countries of the South remained mired in deep poverty, despite 60 or 70 years of independence from colonial rule. People worldwide wanted the wealth they could see on their screens in the West. The hope and excitement that had developed in the old colonies as they obtained their independence in the 1960s had all but dissipated 50 years later. For some 20 or 30 years after, they did believe their future was their own. Each new generation of young people wished to choose their own development path. The new digital world had brought knowledge of the world closer together.

The key question remains: why is systematic poverty still so widespread across Africa, South America, the Middle East, and parts of Asia? China, Vietnam and Cuba, the three communist states had managed to free themselves; all three were growing very rapidly. Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea had also managed to industrialise. The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia had created urban wealthy societies from oil revenues. The rest of the South had failed to industrialise.

Why Has Industrialisation in the South Not Succeeded?

Many of the individuals in what were new governments in the 1960s had become personally wealthy; a few had a small middle class. Why should the majority of the world’s people be so mired in poverty? Many of the societies had been through intense struggles for their independence and all had been freed from the yoke of colonial bondage. So why have so many large societies, many with wealthy indigenous minerals and other resources, been unable to industrialise like Japan or China?

Between 1945 and the middle 1960s, the old colonial societies were freed from the yoke that had been around their necks since they were invaded. For many, freedom and independence had been fought for, in these periods:

• Indonesia, 1945-49

• South Africa, 1948-94

• Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 1965-80

• Angola, 1961-74

• Mozambique, 1964-74

• Kenya, 1952-60

• Algeria, 1954-62

• China, 1949

• Cuba, 1959

• Vietnam, 1975

They had all fought bitter civil and colonial wars for their liberation. In Vietnam, France attempted to maintain its colonial ownership after 1945. The USA had continued the war, after France had been defeated at the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu, due to fear of communism. In the settler societies listed above, the white Europeans had been given free land and were willing to go to war to maintain their ownership and control of the society. In each case, the people rose up in rebellion. The civil wars that followed were bloody and violent. They were even more violent than might have been expected, as white settlers attempted to maintain their ascendancy, adding a powerful racial element to the violence of the civil war. In every case, the European colonial power that had originally set up the settlers was sympathetic to the settlers’ cause:

• The Netherlands and Britain supported South Africa

• Britain Supported the Rhodesian settlers

• Portugal had long colonised Angola and Mozambique; South African military support was close by

• Britain supported the settlers in Kenya

• France supported the settlers in Algeria

And in every case, the local people set up 'liberation movements' intending to fight as guerrilla movements. In response, the settler governments used repressed the people using torture and extreme levels of violence. The level of violence was so great that at the end many colonial authorities attempted to destroy the evidence. Each civil war had its differences according to its particular circumstances; in one case in Angola, South African troops invaded from the south and the Cuban military entered the war from the north. Despite western support, all these settler societies eventually lost their civil wars, and local people won their independence. Each struggle has been documented at considerable length and depth. Equally, much of the archive material has been intentionally lost as the old colonial societies wished to hide the settler-based barbarities that had been used to tame the insurgencies.

These were wars for independence from colonial rule where the sitting government was overthrown. These were exactly the type of conditions, as we saw in earlier blogs, that were necessary to prepare the people for the huge task of industrialisation and transforming their societies. To this date, 60 years later, industrialisation has not begun. Over these 60 years, each of these societies has experienced huge increases in population and rapid urbanisation. But none of them - except for the countries mentioned above - has attempted to industrialise, and poverty has remained.

Rich in Mineral Resources: Extracting the Surplus

The colonised peoples won their struggles, and gained freedom from their occupiers, but lost the peace. South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Algeria have large mineral resources. But they have not been able to utilise the mineral profits for industrial development. An important part of each peace agreement was that the economy remained unaltered; the oil or gold mines would stay in the ownership of Western-owned corporations, and profits would be exported for the benefit of shareholders. This arrangement was in line with the global policy of IMF and the leaders in the USA. The key surpluses remained in the hands of foreigners.

In the rest of the newly created nation-states between 1945 and the early 1960s, the transitions to independence occurred peacefully. India and Pakistan were major exceptions; this struggle needs to be dealt with separately. Levels of mass poverty experienced under the colonial regimes continued in the newly independent nations.

South Africa, the Congo, Angola, and Algeria were mineral-rich at the time of independence. Since minerals have been discovered in Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. The possibility of using the surpluses for industrial development did not occur. Very often the very poorest peoples live in mineral-rich countries. The 'oil curse' reflected peoples where oil has benefited a tiny elite of leaders. The local population remains in urban poverty everywhere. Whether it is oil or other minerals, the same imbalance between overt wealth and great poverty has occurred. To illustrate this, we shall examine Nigeria and the Congo in more detail in our next blog.

Suggested Reading

Development and underdevelopment:

The issues around this topic have been followed for years by the author. The subject used to be a key project for development studies. Early writers on the subject are:

Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil, Monthly Review Press, 1967.

Dan Nabudere, The Political Economy of Imperialism: It theoretical and Polemical Treatment from Mercantilism to Multilateral Imperialism, Zed Press, 1980.

Basil Davidson, Africa in Modern History, Penguin, 1979.

Michael Barratt Brown, After Imperialism and The Economics of Imperialism, Penguin, 1974.

Andre Gunder Frank, The Development of Underdevelopment, and Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, Monthly Review Press, 2009.

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