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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (112553)	8/24/2003 1:48:56 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"nation building", "nation controlling", it amounts to the same thing: the Strong bullying the Weak, and claiming the highest motives, convincing themselves of their own purest disinterested morality. There was a vast literature, really an entire intellectual genre, during the 19th Century, to explain imperialism to Europeans. For instance, the Brits always claimed they didn't really like colonies, and didn't ever intend on controlling far-away lands and peoples. Rather, their main motive was to end slavery, and protect Christian missionaries. Gaining colonies (and getting rich off them) sort of happened by accident, as an incidental byproduct of European idealism. A missionaries' wife would get raped somewhere in central Africa, and the British soldiers would have to go "restore order" and "stop abuses". And then stay permanently, to make sure it didn't happen again. Some tribes would be trading slaves, somewhere, anywhere, so the Brits had to establish forts and keep fleets off the coastline, to suppress it. All the current talk about bringing freedom and democracy and ending despotism in the Middle East, it's all the same kind of nonsense, 19th Century Myths recycled for the 21st Century.