Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 1: The Great Work of Subjugation and Conquest Segment 7/12
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Centralized state power dedicated to private privilege and authority, and the rational and organized use of savage violence, are two of the enduring features of the European conquest. Others are the domestic colonization by which the poor subsidize the rich, and the contempt for democracy and freedom. Yet another enduring theme is the self-righteousness in which plunder, slaughter, and oppression are clothed.

A leading liberal figure lecturing at Oxford in 1840, with the spectacle of Bengal and the rest of India before him, lauded the "British policy of colonial enlightenment," which "stands in contrast to that of our ancestors," who kept their colonies "in subjection in order to derive certain supposed commercial advantages from them," whereas we "give them commercial advantages, and tax ourselves for their benefit, in order to given them an interest in remaining under our supremacy, that we may have the pleasure of governing them." We "govern them by sheer weight of character and without use of force," the virtual ruler of Egypt from 1883 to 1906, Lord Cromer, explained: this we can do because the British "possess in a very high degree the power of acquiring the sympathy and confidence of any primitive races with which they are brought into contact." His colleague Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, proclaimed that "In the Empire we have found not merely the key to glory and wealth, but the call to duty, and the means of service to mankind." The early Dutch conquerors were sure that traders of all nations would flock to the VOC because "the good old free manner of our nation is highly praised." The Seal of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in 1629 depicts an Indian pleading "Come over and help us." The record to this day is replete with appeals to the divine will, civilizing missions, partnerships in beneficence, noble causes, and the like. Heaven must be full to overflowing, if the masters of self-adulation are to be taken at their word.21

Their labors are not unavailing. Among the educated classes, fairy tales of righteous mission and benevolence have long risen to the level of doctrinal truths, and much of the general public seems to believe them as well. In 1989, half the US public believed that foreign aid is the largest element in the federal budget of the country that had, by then, sunk to last place among the industrial countries, with foreign aid barely detectable in the budget and a niggardly 0.21 percent of GNP. Those who harken to their tutors may even believe that the next highest item is Cadillacs for welfare mothers.22

The subject peoples find odd ways to express their gratitude. To the leading figure of modern Indian nationalism, "the only possible parallel" to the Viceroy "would be that of Hitler." The ideology of British rule "was that of the herrenvolk and the master race," an idea "inherent in imperialism" that "was proclaimed in unambiguous language by those in authority" and manifested in practice, as Indians "were subjected to insult, humiliation, and contemptuous treatment." Writing from a British prison in 1944, Nehru was not unmindful of the benevolent intent of the rulers:

The solicitude which British industrialists and economists have shown for the Indian peasant has been truly gratifying. In view of this, as well as of the tender care lavished upon him by the British Government in India, one can only conclude that some all-powerful and malign fate, some supernatural agency, has countered their intentions and measures and made that peasant one of the poorest and most miserable beings on earth.23

Nehru was something of an Anglophile. Others have been less genteel about the matter, though Western culture, having the guns and wealth, remains largely immune.

It would not be fair to charge that atrocities pass unmentioned. One of the most notorious slaughterers was King Leopold of Belgium, responsible for the death of perhaps 10 million people in the Congo. His contributions and defects were duly recorded in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which describes the "enormous fortune" that he gained by "exploitation of this vast territory." The last line of the lengthy entry reads: "but he had a hard heart towards the natives of his distant possession." Half a century later, Alfred Cobban, in his History of Modern France, castigates Louis XVI for failing to protect France's interests in the West Indies. The slave trade on which these interests rested merits a parenthetical comment: "its morality as yet is barely the subject of discussion." True enough.24

Illustrations are not hard to find.


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21 Herman Merivale, cited by Clairmonte, Economic Liberalism, 92. Cromer, Curzon, cited by de Schweinitz, Rise and Fall, 16. Dutch Governor-General J. P. Coen cited by Tracy, in Tracy, Merchant Empires, 10-11. Seal, Jenning, Invasion, 228.

22 David Gergen, Foreign Affairs, America and the World, 1991-92.

23 Nehru, Discovery, 293, 326, 301.

24 Britannica, 9th edition, 1910; Cobban's 1963 History (vol. 1, 74), cited by Edward Herman, Z magazine, April 1992.