All around the world, from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, the violent legacy of colonialism
author: Ytzhak
 e-mail: monfu65@hotmail.com
While the native peoples of Australia, drunk and demoralised, survive in
shanty towns or reservations, those in Palestine have had some capacity
to struggle against such a fate, organising a lasting resistance to the
settlers, inspired by their own ancient religion and sustained by the
support of a vast Arab hinterland. The Australian settlers suffer from
little more than a guilty conscience - if that- while the Israelis face
a permanent and ineradicable threat.
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All around the world, from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, the violent legacy
of colonialism can still be witnessed
Richard Gott
Saturday July 22, 2006
The Guardian
Many of the present conflicts in the world take place in the former
colonial territories that Britain abandoned, exhausted and impoverished,
in the years after the second world war. This disastrous imperial legacy
is still highly visible, and it is one of the reasons why the British
empire continues to provoke such harsh debate. If Britain made such a
success of its colonies, why are so many in an unholy mess half a
century later, major sources of violence and unrest?
Top of the list is Palestine, a settler colony that Britain abandoned in
1947 after barely 30 years, having imposed a population of mostly
European settlers on the indigenous people - one of the typical
characteristics of imperial rule. Unfortunately for the settlers,
arriving during the imperial sunset, they had insufficient time to
achieve the scale of defeat of the local people, amounting to
extermination and genocide, that characterised the British conquest and
settlement of Australia.
While the native peoples of Australia, drunk and demoralised, survive in
shanty towns or reservations, those in Palestine have had some capacity
to struggle against such a fate, organising a lasting resistance to the
settlers, inspired by their own ancient religion and sustained by the
support of a vast Arab hinterland. The Australian settlers suffer from
little more than a guilty conscience - if that- while the Israelis face
a permanent and ineradicable threat. Like the medieval crusaders, whose
ruined castles dominate the landscape of the eastern Mediterranean, they
will be lucky if their state lasts more than a century. Many will surely
abandon ship in despair.
A similar imperial trouble spot is Sierra Leone, another settler colony
where the British imposed an alien, largely Christian, black population
from Britain and Canada on to a congeries of native peoples already in
thrall to Islam. The original colony dates back to the 18th century, but
much of the country was secured through military conquest at the end of
the 19th, to which there was energetic resistance. The recurrence of
civil war, though suffocated recently by a return of British troops,
remains a permanent probability.
Other victims of settler colonialism where unresolved problems survive
from the time of empire include South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, and of
course the tragic statelet of Northern Ireland. In these countries the
settlers are all now on the back foot, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred,
yet the baneful legacy of the colonial regime - in social customs, and
in the forms of government designed to protect settler society - lives
on. Much unfinished business remains. Settler colonies of a marginally
different kind were established in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Fiji, the
victims of continuing trouble. In both islands workers from India were
imported in the 19th century for the white-owned plantations, creating
the basis for an endless civil war that can never be resolved. Here, as
elsewhere, endemic violence and conflict have proved to be the lasting
legacy of empire.
In India itself Britain's speedy and disastrous scuttle in 1947 led to
partition and the creation of the "moth-eaten" Muslim state of Pakistan
(and eventually of Bangladesh), making nonsense of two centuries of
British dominion designed to maintain the unity of the subcontinent.
Abandoning India without a clear and agreed decision on the future of
the princely state of Kashmir has created a scenario of disaster that
has lasted from that day to this.
One troubled imperial outpost, often forgotten and now brought to life
as a temporary haven for refugees from Lebanon, is Cyprus, miserably
divided like India as a result of imperial misrule, and still under
British military surveillance today from two "sovereign" bases.
Others are Nigeria and Somalia, the first unnaturally cobbled together
in a unitary state for imperial convenience, the second occupied and
abandoned for purely strategic reasons. Both are currently simmering on
the stove.
Finally come Iraq and Afghanistan, two modern disasters that have their
roots in the experience of empire. Iraq was last in and first out of the
British empire, though British military bases were not finally removed
until the 1950s. Fifty years later the British are back, British
soldiers replacing the Indian sepoys who invaded the country on
Britain's behalf during the first world war. The British left in a hurry
in the 1930s, and they will doubtless do so again.
Although nominally independent, Afghanistan was effectively within the
imperial sphere for most of the 19th century, though successfully
fighting three wars of resistance against the British. The fourth
Anglo-Afghan war is now in progress, to be followed as before by an
Afghan triumph.
It seems that the story of the empire is being re-enacted over much of
the globe, bringing violence and destruction on a scale barely envisaged
in the imperial era. How fortunate we would be to have a government in
Britain that would help to bind up the wounds of the past, by at least
recognising what really happened, rather than to have one that endlessly
pours petrol on the flames.
ยท Richard Gott is author of Cuba: A New History, and is writing a book
about imperial resistance  Rwgott@aol.com
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1826361,00.html
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