‘For the last hundred years, Western colonialism has had a bad name.’ So began Professor Bruce Gilley’s watershed academic article ‘The Case for Colonialism’ of 2017. The article sparked a global furor. Critics and defenders of Gilley’s argument battled it out in the court of public opinion. The Times of London described Gilley as ‘probably the academic most likely to be no-platformed in Britain.’ The New York Times called him one of the ‘panicky white bros’ who ‘proclaim ever more rowdily that the (white) West was, and is, best’ and are ‘busy recyclers of Western supremacism.’ In this book, Gilley responds to the critics and elaborates on the case for colonialism. The critics have no evidence for their claims, he asserts. The case for colonialism is robust no matter which colonizer or colonized area one examines. Patient, empirical, humorous, and not a little exasperated by anti-colonial ideologues, Gilley here sets a challenge for the next generation of scholars of colonialism. ‘It is time to make the case for colonialism again, ‘ he writes.
Зміст
Contents
Foreword by Tendai Ruben Mbofana ix
Introduction 11
PART I: The Article and Its Aftermath 37
1 – The Case for Colonialism 39
2 – How the Hate Mob Tried to Cancel Me 59
3 – A Lecture 68
4 – A Response to My Critics 82
5 – Is It Shameful to Defend Colonialism? 122
PART II: Episodes of Colonialism 133
6 – African Civilization and The Premature Termination of
Colonialism 135
7 – The Case for Colonialism in the Middle East 145
8 – Why European Colonialism Was Right 163
9 – In Defense of King Léopold’s Congo 191
10 – Malaya and the Low Point of Colonial History Writing 214
11 – Colonial Yemen, Post-Colonial Yemen 225
PART III: Colonialism in the United States 235
12 – The Good Fortune of Being Enslaved in America 237
13 – Erasing White Settlers with Fake Indian Rocks 248
14 – Defending the British Empire on the Canadian Prairies 263
PART IV: Voices of the Colonized 273
15 – Africa’s Chinua Achebe on the Positive Legacies of
Colonialism275
16 – India’s V.S. Naipaul and the Reckoning With Empire294
Conclusion: Elegy for a Colonial Perspective309
Про автора
Bruce Gilley is a professor of political science at Portland State University and a member of the board of the National Association of Scholars. His previous books on colonialism are ‘The Last Imperialist’ and ‘In Defense of German Colonialism.’