When thinking about the ‘neocolonialist criticism’, I think it’s worth taking some time to critically evaluate the ideological power structures that lead to people talking about ‘neocolonialism’.
Because what I think is quite clear ‘neocolonialism’ doesn’t really make sense from a truth-seeking perspective. To run very quickly through the post, we start with a definition of ‘colonialism’ which should raise some red flags:
Colonialism, as defined by political philosophers, is the reduction of one people’s sovereignty by another, typically through direct political and military domination.
What I think immediately jumps out here is… the absence of any mention of colonists? According to this definition, Icelandic colonization of Greenland was… not colonialism. But the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945 was colonialism?
But then it gets worse. We two different, incredibly vague definitions, neither of which are equivalent to each other:
Neocolonialism, by contrast, operates after formal independence. It sustains the same power dynamics through economic control, international institutions, and cultural influence. As philosopher Oseni Taiwo Afisi writes, neocolonialism refers to “the actions and effects of certain remnant features and agents of the colonial era in a given society.” It’s colonialism without conquest.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these definitions, except to note they also don’t really make sense—are Roman roads and Catholic churches in England, a remnant feature of Roman Imperialism, neocolonialism?
We then jump to an allegation that poverty in Africa is due to colonialism (and, perhaps, also neocolonialism):
This framing matters. Sub-Saharan Africa, the region where EA often focuses its efforts, continues to bear the scars of colonialism.
But the chart attached doesn’t show this at all. It shows there is a higher fraction of people in poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere. But there is no reason to think this is because of colonialism—after all, throughout history people all over the world have been repeatedly had their sovereignty reduced through military and political domination, it’s not unique to sub-Saharan Africa. Even if you for some reason ignored all non-European colonialism, Sub-Saharan Africa was actually colonized for a much shorter period of time than many other parts of the world because of Malaria—Canada is rich and Ethiopia is poor, but Canada is a deeply colonial country in a way that Ethiopia is not.
So why do people like to use such a vague and misleading concept? I think the answer is it serves a very convenient ideological purpose.
In the aftermath of the second world war, a lot of people wanted to claim that the reason Africa was poor compared to other parts of the world was because of imperialism. Unfortunately, their predictions that Africa would rapidly develop once granted their independence were falsified, and most of the standard explanations for this were not congruent with nationalist or leftist ideology. As such, neocolonialism becomes a very convenient god-of-the-gaps—it allows them to explain why Africa is poor because Europeans are extracting resources and directly administering territory and why Africa is poor because Europeans are giving foreign aid after giving independence.
Importantly, no measure of degree is required for allegations of neocolonialism. Any sensible accounting would show that the degree of European control over sub-Saharan Africa has fallen dramatically post independence, and the continuing interactions (e.g. as export markets, or as providers of advanced technologies and foreign aid) have little in common with the behaviours that motivated opposition to colonialism in the first place.
What does this mean from an EA perspective? Arguments about whether EA should ‘listen to poor people’ more are a sensible thing to discuss. But framing this in terms of as fundamentally flawed a concept as ‘neocolonialism’ casts more shadow than light over the issue.
When thinking about the ‘neocolonialist criticism’, I think it’s worth taking some time to critically evaluate the ideological power structures that lead to people talking about ‘neocolonialism’.
Because what I think is quite clear ‘neocolonialism’ doesn’t really make sense from a truth-seeking perspective. To run very quickly through the post, we start with a definition of ‘colonialism’ which should raise some red flags:
What I think immediately jumps out here is… the absence of any mention of colonists? According to this definition, Icelandic colonization of Greenland was… not colonialism. But the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945 was colonialism?
But then it gets worse. We two different, incredibly vague definitions, neither of which are equivalent to each other:
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these definitions, except to note they also don’t really make sense—are Roman roads and Catholic churches in England, a remnant feature of Roman Imperialism, neocolonialism?
We then jump to an allegation that poverty in Africa is due to colonialism (and, perhaps, also neocolonialism):
But the chart attached doesn’t show this at all. It shows there is a higher fraction of people in poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere. But there is no reason to think this is because of colonialism—after all, throughout history people all over the world have been repeatedly had their sovereignty reduced through military and political domination, it’s not unique to sub-Saharan Africa. Even if you for some reason ignored all non-European colonialism, Sub-Saharan Africa was actually colonized for a much shorter period of time than many other parts of the world because of Malaria—Canada is rich and Ethiopia is poor, but Canada is a deeply colonial country in a way that Ethiopia is not.
So why do people like to use such a vague and misleading concept? I think the answer is it serves a very convenient ideological purpose.
In the aftermath of the second world war, a lot of people wanted to claim that the reason Africa was poor compared to other parts of the world was because of imperialism. Unfortunately, their predictions that Africa would rapidly develop once granted their independence were falsified, and most of the standard explanations for this were not congruent with nationalist or leftist ideology. As such, neocolonialism becomes a very convenient god-of-the-gaps—it allows them to explain why Africa is poor because Europeans are extracting resources and directly administering territory and why Africa is poor because Europeans are giving foreign aid after giving independence.
Importantly, no measure of degree is required for allegations of neocolonialism. Any sensible accounting would show that the degree of European control over sub-Saharan Africa has fallen dramatically post independence, and the continuing interactions (e.g. as export markets, or as providers of advanced technologies and foreign aid) have little in common with the behaviours that motivated opposition to colonialism in the first place.
What does this mean from an EA perspective? Arguments about whether EA should ‘listen to poor people’ more are a sensible thing to discuss. But framing this in terms of as fundamentally flawed a concept as ‘neocolonialism’ casts more shadow than light over the issue.