Gallowglass

Mr Burke’s criticism of my forefathers nation-building efforts appears to concentrate on sub-Saharan Africa. Are their successes elsewhere of no import? Granted, a complex civilisation existed in India. But the world’s largest democracy is the gift of British imperialism, and pretty damned impressive it is.

As for Africa, Mr Burke is making the sweeping assumption, unsupported by evidence, that it is capable of sustaining modern, liberal societies? Well, I would like to see Burke argue that Britain and not Mugabe is responsible for the destruction of what should be a prosperous Zimbabwe. Perhaps, though, the acid test will be South Africa. At the moment the signs are far from propitious with the economy nosediving, basic services in collapse, black mayhem uncontrollable and whites steadily leaving the country.

Africa is very capable of sustaining modern liberal democracies, I believe. It’s just that this is precisely not the kind of governments nor the kinds of states that the British and French built in Africa in the 20th Century. Liberal democracies will have to be made from the foundation stones up by Africans themselves, because their imperial experience gave them no real models to speak of.

South Africa is indeed an interesting test, and it proves my point nicely: if it sustains a democratic society, it will be because of a deeper, richer, more complex history of democratic opposition and on-the-ground pluralism, because of an organic civil society built out of the turnings of history, not because of nation was built by military occupiers. Ask yourself whether we’d have the interesting nation-state full of potential, the hard-won constitution, the important political precedents established by Mandela’s conduct in office in South Africa today if the US or the UN had sent a huge invasion force in 1981. It was precisely because the ANC finally had to sit down at the table with the National Party and because a constitutional process had to be hammered out in plain view with many participants that you got a result that has some real potential to it.

India is an interesting counter-example. I tend to think that it has survived as a liberal democracy in spite of some British tutelage rather than because of it, but the other complexity here has to do with length of imperial engagement. It seems to me that the consequences of European power in non-Western societies where European sovereignity was first meaningfully exercised before 1800 is very different than the places where it was exercised first in the great imperial land-rush of the late 19th Century.

So if from that you want to draw the conclusions that 300 years worth of imperial involvement might be a way to produce a deep intermingling of local values and Western visions of liberal democracy, go ahead. I’d actually enjoy hearing President Bush get up and lay out a timeframe for building a liberal democracy in Iraq that ends American control somewhere around 2300: I couldn’t imagine a better demonstration of my critique, that nation-building isn’t something that you can just do because you’ve decided to do it.

Timothy, you missed the fact that the Raj was operated in the most subtle, “behind the scenes” way. The British left the ruling class in situe and achieved thereby a natural order in the running of the country. They didn’t have too many other options, mind you. Naked military control would have engendered failure.

What impresses most about the transition from British rule is the growth of political organs in a country with not a trace of democracy in its blood. I am not forgetting partition after the event. But the story to the south was remarkable and bespeaks a high civilisational ability among the people.

I suspect that sub-Saharan Africans generally lack this vital quality. You praise Mandela but he had the fairest of winds and an economy that was flying after the lifting of sanctions. It has not sustained, of course, and Mbeki is already simply another national leader. It is the way of the world that if he does not raise the country the condemnation from abroad will be all the quicker in coming.

The white South Africans that I know, both here and in SA, do not agree on the prospects. They have reacted personally to black violence in different ways. The question for the ones who remain is whether violence is a disturbance from the recent past that will slowly ebb away or whether it is something more permanent and worrying.

Either way, this will be the most public examination of Africa’s progress, if such it is, into the modern world.

>>But the world’s largest democracy is the gift of British imperialism, and pretty damned impressive it is.

Funny that this ‘gift’ was fought for by Indians and resisted by the British every step of the way. On the contrary, I’d say that the world’s largest democracy was the gift of Indian anti-imperialism to the Indian nation. As for “Naked military control would have engendered failure,” all I have to say is 1857.

>>in a country with not a trace of democracy in its blood.

Oh, at least a trace, I think. There have been numerous democratic communities through out Indian history, whether republics with popular assemblies of elites, sanghas with universal franchise, village panchayats, etc.

>>Liberal democracies will have to be made from the foundation stones up by Africans themselves

Indeed, and they have been. A comparison between Somalia, which was invaded, and Somaliland, which was not, is particularly instructive.

>>All the more impressive coming from someone who’s harshly criticized the left’s attitude towards warmaking in the past.

I don’t see why. On the contrary, while I’m glad that Mr.Burke is right on this issue, I’d find it much more credible if he were right more often. ; )

Drapetomaniac,

You have understood nothing here. The whole point is that neither I nor Timothy Burke can say which is right. It is history in the shape of the development first of SA and thence of Africa that will answer for us both - unless, of course, you already know the otcome!

Hi Drapetomaniac

I’ve a weakness for people who don’t toe the party line, and are a little contrary towards others on “their” side - probably because I’m an academic, and more interested (sad to say) in good argument than in praxis.

>>I’ve a weakness for people who don’t toe the party line, and are a little contrary towards others on “their” side

With all due respect, I find this quite high school. And I’d say the same if you had said you prefer people who do toe the party line etc.

I enjoy a good argument myself, but I think the arguments of quite a number of people, including Mr. Burke and Mr. Christopher Hitchens, are marred by their desire to be endlessly contrary. There was a quite good review in the LRB on this pose of Mr.Hitchens’. And of course there is that remark of Prof. Healy’s that I find irresistibly quotable.

>>It is history in the shape of the development first of SA and thence of Africa

Not thence, I think. Namibia foreshadowed SA, for one thing. And there are many other democracies in Africa to consider, Somaliland I mentioned above. So, yes, I think there are a few outcomes I know from reading the papers, as well as Alex de Waal and Mahmood Mamdani.

Hi Drapetomaniac

I think you’re slightly misunderstanding what I’m saying - there’s an enormous difference between good argument (which is what I say I like), and a good argument which is a different thing altogether, or so it seems to me. Good argument is about intelligently debating points and ideas, and acknowledging the weaknesses as well as strengths in your own case. In other words, it’s not doctrinaire as a general rule, but it doesn’t seek out controversy for its own sake. “A good argument” is battering down your opponents for the fun of it - which is entertaining but not usually edifying. Hitchens used to be capable of the former, once upon a time, but now confines himself to the latter - he’s a controversialist rather than a thinker. I’m not an admirer.

Very interesting post

Perceptions do not limit reality.