We hear a lot about ‘decolonisation’ these days, even though practically all countries that were colonised by the European powers gained their independence decades ago. In contemporary parlance, ‘decolonisation’ means adding non-white authors to university reading lists and ensuring that ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ are reflected in the curriculum.
What’s more, there’s a whole academic field called ‘post-colonial studies’, which seeks to critically analyse Western colonialism. And while there’s nothing wrong with this in principle (we should analyse Western colonialism from a critical standpoint), many post-colonial scholars are less impartial critics than anti-Western activists.
They refuse to accept there was anything positive about Western colonialism. And when dissidents like Bruce Gilley or Nigel Biggar point out that there were positive aspects, those dissidents find themselves on the receiving end of censorious petitions signed by hundreds of their colleagues.
Such activism stifles intellectual debate and gives the false impression that Western colonialism was “a litany of racism, exploitation and massively murderous violence” – to quote Biggar.
One indication that the legacy of colonialism is far more mixed than most post-colonial scholars will admit comes from a recent study published in the British Journal of Political Science.
Andy Baker and David Cupery combined data from several cross-national surveys in which respondents in different countries were asked for their opinion about certain named foreign countries. The exact question varied from survey to survey. In one case, respondents were asked for their opinion “with zero expressing a very unfavorable opinion” and “100 expressing a very favorable opinion”. In another case, they were asked if they have a “have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion”. Baker and Cuprey combined the various surveys using a technique called factor analysis.
They were then able to calculate, for each country in their dataset that was a former colony, the average favourability toward that country’s coloniser minus the average favourability toward all other countries respondents were asked about. They call this quantity the ‘former-coloniser gap’.
Interestingly, they found that this gap was positive for a large majority of the former colonies in their dataset (47 out of 64). In other words, most former colonies have a more favourable opinion of their coloniser than they have of other countries. Results are shown in the chart below.
Looking at the left-hand side of the chart, we can see that Poles have an unfavourable view of Russia, Greeks have an unfavourable view of Turkey, and Iraqis have an unfavourable view of Britain. None of which is particularly surprising. What is surprising, though, is that these are exceptions. Most former colonies have a favourable view of their coloniser.
Further analysis revealed that the tendency for ‘former-coloniser gaps’ to be positive, rather than negative, could be explained by three main factors: colonisers tend to be democratic; they tend to have large economies; and they tend to trade more with their former colonies.
The authors interpret their findings in line with an ‘admiration hypothesis’, whereby former colonies’ views of their colonisers are characterised more by admiration than by animosity and resentment.
Add this study to all the post-colonial reading lists.
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