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> I believe one of the worst outcomes of colonization is that these countries lost their monarchies and lacked a natural progression to diplomacy I think this

> I believe one of the worst outcomes of colonization is that these countries lost their monarchies and lacked a natural progression to diplomacy I think this is a very loaded and fraught perspective that ignores a large amount of context. Colonial powers generally co-opt local heirarchies and utilise the pre-existing state machinery to expediate the process of resource extraction and pacification since doing it from scratch is usually too costly and prone to instability. In many cases this may inflame pre-existing class confict and further entrench social division. It is rarely the case that pre-colonial power structures simply just vanish and are replaced by the colonial force, and furthermore they don't simply vanish post-colonisation leaving behind a template-less society. Ex-colonies don't exist in a vacuum. Every society on the face of the earth is embedded in a complex global web of economic and political influence. Post-colonial nations can still be implicitly, and sometimes covertly, subjugated through asymmetric trade agreements, power projection, and a whole range of other processes. It is naive to assign blame of a corrupt or floundering region to a simple moral decay in an isolated system of people that just never figured out how to govern themselves. The answer is found when one instead considers the given region's place in the continuum of economic and historic processes that are far too complex to simplify into an narrative independent of context. And finally, how does a monarchy naturally progress to "diplomacy"? To my knowledge there doesn't exists a single theory that can describe a universal archetype of a how a given human society is supposed to "naturally" develop. Even in western countries, the process of economic development from a feudal mode of production to the current capitalist parliamentary-democracy, is an extremely complicated and poorly understood topic that covers an area of research far larger than the scope any single historian or political theorist. Everything we see indicates that there is absolutely no fixed model of social development, especially not one that isn't contigent on an unimaginable number of nonlinear factors. I think it's reasonable to say that the development of any given society is completely unique to itself, and is the result of it's own unique position in relation to the outside world, and to history.

JaDogg 3y ago
Apologies, I agree with everything you mentioned in your comment. I realize now that I made a significant mistake in my previous sentence. I understand a different perspective on how someone could interpret and understand it, and I appreciate you enlightening me. In any case, what I was attempting to convey is that it is preferable to learn from your own rights and wrongs rather than dealing with the aftermath of a mess left by a third party.
- monadINtop 3y ago
  No worries man
atleastoptimal 3y ago
It's still possible to compare former colonies and evaluate the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of their governments. Singapore is a former colony and fares very well compared to its neighbors in forming its own government.
- monadINtop 3y ago
  Right, and I'd further argue that one of the most significant deciding factor in such cases is the relation of those former colonies to the hegemonic power (either in the region or globally). For example places like Singapore and South Korea have had positive and close relations with the United States, both diplomatically and economically, and specifically in the case of South Korea, have been the recipient of an immense amout of US foreign aid in the context of the Cold War. On the contrary, places like Cuba and North Korea who favoured political self-determination, and economic policies that focused on bolstering the local population over trade with the US, have very quickly turned into advesarial relationships. In both these cases they ended up aligning themselves with the alternate superpower. This uneasy situation proved tolerable for a few decades (for example, North Korea's economy actually recovered quicker - intitially - than South Korea after the Korean War despite sustaining far greater damage from the bombing campaign), but once the USSR collapsed, Cuba and North Korea entered into the sad state they are today being completely isolated, economically and politically. And then there's also the issue of governance. Both South Korea and North Korea were brutal dictatorships for decades, but eventually South Korea liberalised their political system, whilst on the other hand North Korea is, well, North Korea. (The same is true, to some degree, of Cuba as well but I would like to qualify this by saying that the depiction of the despotism of Cuba's government in western media tends to be unfairly exaggerated - due to obvious reasons - compared to other regimes of similar or worse nature such as Saudi Arabia). But this can't be soley due to a difference in ideology, since most of the countries the US supported during the 20th century where infamous for the brutality of the regimes (Park Chung-hee, Samoza, Noriega, House of Saud, Ferdinand Marcos, Pinochet, Papa Doc, Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco and so on). Or even more covert campaigns of support and influence such as Operation Gladio in post-war Europe, the Free Albania National Comitee, Iran-Contra, et cetera. However this is a far more controversial topic and it's not my intention to start an argument around politics and ideology. I simply want to make the point that the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of a given government has far more to do with historical and economic context than the merit of any particular policy or competency of a governing state. Of course this is still a very valid and important topic, just one that I feel is given undue weight relative to other factors. All of this is of course a huge over simplification and doesn't do any of the numerous topics I've skimmed over any justice.
alwa 3y ago
Thank you for this incredibly perspicacious comment. It’s not my area of expertise, but I just read Dingxin Zhao, writing for Noēma, observing many of the same shortcomings of considering social development through a teleological lens [0]. I’m still considering what to make of the “Daoist perspective of history” that he recommends as an alternative, but his prescription of humility sure resonated for me! [0] https://www.noemamag.com/the-modern-wisdom-of-daoist-history/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-modern-wisdom-of-daoist-history...

JaDogg 3y ago

Apologies, I agree with everything you mentioned in your comment. I realize now that I made a significant mistake in my previous sentence. I understand a different perspective on how someone could interpret and understand it, and I appreciate you enlightening me. In any case, what I was attempting to convey is that it is preferable to learn from your own rights and wrongs rather than dealing with the aftermath of a mess left by a third party.

monadINtop 3y ago
No worries man

atleastoptimal 3y ago

It's still possible to compare former colonies and evaluate the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of their governments. Singapore is a former colony and fares very well compared to its neighbors in forming its own government.

monadINtop 3y ago
Right, and I'd further argue that one of the most significant deciding factor in such cases is the relation of those former colonies to the hegemonic power (either in the region or globally). For example places like Singapore and South Korea have had positive and close relations with the United States, both diplomatically and economically, and specifically in the case of South Korea, have been the recipient of an immense amout of US foreign aid in the context of the Cold War. On the contrary, places like Cuba and North Korea who favoured political self-determination, and economic policies that focused on bolstering the local population over trade with the US, have very quickly turned into advesarial relationships. In both these cases they ended up aligning themselves with the alternate superpower. This uneasy situation proved tolerable for a few decades (for example, North Korea's economy actually recovered quicker - intitially - than South Korea after the Korean War despite sustaining far greater damage from the bombing campaign), but once the USSR collapsed, Cuba and North Korea entered into the sad state they are today being completely isolated, economically and politically. And then there's also the issue of governance. Both South Korea and North Korea were brutal dictatorships for decades, but eventually South Korea liberalised their political system, whilst on the other hand North Korea is, well, North Korea. (The same is true, to some degree, of Cuba as well but I would like to qualify this by saying that the depiction of the despotism of Cuba's government in western media tends to be unfairly exaggerated - due to obvious reasons - compared to other regimes of similar or worse nature such as Saudi Arabia). But this can't be soley due to a difference in ideology, since most of the countries the US supported during the 20th century where infamous for the brutality of the regimes (Park Chung-hee, Samoza, Noriega, House of Saud, Ferdinand Marcos, Pinochet, Papa Doc, Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco and so on). Or even more covert campaigns of support and influence such as Operation Gladio in post-war Europe, the Free Albania National Comitee, Iran-Contra, et cetera. However this is a far more controversial topic and it's not my intention to start an argument around politics and ideology. I simply want to make the point that the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of a given government has far more to do with historical and economic context than the merit of any particular policy or competency of a governing state. Of course this is still a very valid and important topic, just one that I feel is given undue weight relative to other factors. All of this is of course a huge over simplification and doesn't do any of the numerous topics I've skimmed over any justice.

alwa 3y ago

Thank you for this incredibly perspicacious comment. It’s not my area of expertise, but I just read Dingxin Zhao, writing for Noēma, observing many of the same shortcomings of considering social development through a teleological lens [0]. I’m still considering what to make of the “Daoist perspective of history” that he recommends as an alternative, but his prescription of humility sure resonated for me! [0] https://www.noemamag.com/the-modern-wisdom-of-daoist-history/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-modern-wisdom-of-daoist-history...