[lbo-talk] Kees van der Pijl

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Jun 27 14:46:12 PDT 2003



>
> Sure, but it's still better not to be colonized by Europe and/or the
> USA at all, though. Japan has done better economically than all
> other Asian nations, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East,
> because it never became a Euro/American colony and was subject to the
> fewest malign foreign interventions in the age of colonialism.
> --
> Yoshie

Again, it depnds on socio-historical circumstances. US colonialism had generally beneficial effects on the colonised countries where it faced Communist challenge and where the colonised countries were already developed (cf. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, West Germany) but not so well where that challenge was for the most part insignificant (cf. Latin America). However, I would still argue that US colonialism in these countries was an important but not the decisive factor - the decisive factor was that the Asian countries were able to institute a land reform and crush their land owning class, whereas the Latin American ones were not. The US influence was played mainly through this factor - it did not intervene to, say stop the Chang Jai Shek gov't t get rid of the old landed class in taiwan (perhaps fearing that undermining Chang Kai Shek would strenghthen communist influences) - but it was more active in suppressing Latin American rebellions aiming to depose the landlords.

I would argue that the effects of US colonialism are mixed - some good and some bad, some inetendend some unintended, and some quite inconsequential.

Wojtek



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