Some of my readers may have read Bruce Gilley’s book, “The Case for Colonialism”. It is an excellent work of scholarship and deserves the attention of anyone interested in the history of colonialism and its impact or lack thereof on the post-colonial world. It has been universally repudiated by leftist scholars, meaning all academics in our institutions of higher learning, which is a clear sign that Gilley may be on to something.
Stated simply, Gilley argues colonialism brought order, development, and governance. The colonizer transferred modernity to people incapable of improving their own fortune. Moreover, in their absence many former colonies have reverted to their former dysfunctional state and would benefit from renewed colonial oversight.
I agree with Gilley on most points; however, I have no appetite for reinstituting colonialism. It did not provide the benefit to the colonizers that leftist academics often assert. In reality, colonialism was a mixed bag. In some regions it proved profitable, but in many others it was an economic drain on the colonizer. When proponents of colonial ventures could not make a convincing economic case for the huge investment it would take to bring an undeveloped region into the modern economy, they would often make the case that it was their duty to bring civilization to a backward people. I have never possessed such a missionary spirit.
What Gilley has said is preface to a discussion of Trump bringing to the world’s attention the plight of the beleaguered Afrikaner population in South Africa. The Afrikaners, or Boers, are similar to the American pioneers who forged a path west in cover wagons through hostile Indian territory. In the case of the Boers, they trekked east from the Cape settlement into Transvaal and the Orange Free State, encountering Zulu warriors along the way who were expanding their empire from the opposite direction.
Today, the beleaguered Boer population is all that remains of a colonial presence in Africa. The process of African independence that started in the Congo in the 1950s, erupting in South Rhodesia in the 1970s, is finally getting around to driving the Boers out of their ancestral homeland. If the recent past is any judge, South Africa will revert to a complete state of tribalism and kleptocracy, just as the Congo and South Rhodesia have done.
True to form, the mainstream media is attacking Trump for pointing out that a modern-day Kristallnacht is taking place against the Boers. Heaven forbid that Trump point out to the press that their dream of a multicultural rainbow society in South Africa is nothing more than another African hellscape. So let the Afrikaners make their way to America. Trump is welcoming these productive, mostly farming folks. When in a few years, the South African agrarian economy collapses, like it did in South Rhodesia after its white farmers fled, and South Africa needs to import most of its food, the mainstream media will feel content that those nasty, racist Boers got their comeuppance.
Image: Public domain.