Empire and Identity

Vera 06

Empire & Identity

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

DREAMS OF AVARICE Imperial Ambitions

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SEARCHING FOR SHADOWS The Multiplicity of Meaning

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DARKENED UPLANDS Recurring Nightmares

VERA Issue No. #1

“Empire & Identity” February 2016 Cover Art Toby Elwes Inside Art Aurelius Noble

Contributors: Editor Aurelius Noble Assistant Editors Arthur Scott-Geddes Eleanor Chambers Joshua Alston

Contributors Arthur Scott-Geddes Aurelius Noble Eleanor Chambers Joshua Alston Meg Dyson

Artists Toby Elwes

To contribute to Vera magazine please contact: editorveramag@gmail.com

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EDITOR’S NOTE

D

ear Reader,

Welcome to the first edition of Vera magazine, over the next few months we aim to provide an affable forum for the discussion of the arts and humanities; with topics ranging from history, politics and philosophy, to literature, art and film. Attending to relevant and important issues, we hope to provide undergraduates with an opportunity to discuss these issues and bring new, fresh perspectives to them.

The theme of this issue, albeit tenuous at times, is that of Empire and Identity, with a variety of articles ranging from descriptive to polemic. These articles discuss reconciliation with empire and post-colonial identity, both as a response to transgressions in the past and as the result of post-modern morality. Furthermore, beyond responding to historical imperialism, some articles offer a critique of the more subtle forms of imperialism still present today, tracing historical commonalties to show the dangers that lie ahead and the continued costs inflicted by imperialism.

In the first section, Dreams of Avarice, we trace the rise and fall of a variety of empires as they struggled with grandiose ambitions. There is a common thread among these articles surrounding the folly of these ambitions and the inevitable failings of imperial ideology and consequent reconciliation with a troubled past. Searching for Shadows is a far more broad-reaching section, exploring issues of identity and subjective reality, it details notions of morality in a post-colonial world and underlines the importance of denouncing constructed truths and objective realities or identities. Charting a decline in meaning, yet the simultaneous importance of not succumbing to singular interpretations, this section poses questions we are, unfortunately, incapable of answering; but that are hopefully interesting nonetheless.

Finally, Darkened Uplands deals with the continuation of imperialism to the present day, examining the ways in which countries and multi-national corporations continue to use their power exploitatively. Offering a dark picture of post-WWII imperialistic practices, it suggests that our dreams of empire remain dangerously unfinished.

-Aurelius Editor

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Contents Dreams of Avarice 7 / AN EMPIRE IN ECLIPSE

The tale of triumph and trauma in Japan, as it contested Western dominance in East Asia.

15 / A WANING MOON

The use of economic coercion by Western powers to cement the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

21 / THE CIVILISING MISSION

Orientalism and the transformation of India under the British East India Company.

39 / BLANK SPACES

An examination of race and identity as a broader critique of British colonialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

43 / JACK’S SMIRKING REVENGE Nihilism in the light of meaningless consumerism; modernity and identity in David Fincher’s Fight Club.

Darkened Uplands 51 / THE LOST WAR

The inevitability of failure in the war that no one won, nationalism and anti-colonialism in Vietnam.

By successfully contesting Western hegemony for the first time the rise of the Japanese Empire represented a new era in Asian history, yet its rise was mired with traumas which Japan still struggles to reconcile with.

27 / THE LIMITS OF

Topic EMPIRE

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editorveramag @gmail.com

The Golden Age of the Roman Empire and the dangers of a militaristic imperial ideology.

Searching for Shadows 33 / A TWISTED FAIRYTALE

The subjectivity of intepretation, an analysis of Pan’s Labyrinth as a critique of fascist thought.

57 / THERE WILL BE BLOOD

The neo-colonial impact of the mining and oil industries in a local and national context.

63 / LONE STAR STATE

Bloody civil war in Liberia - modern imperialism and the legacy of American attempts to limit the spread of Communism in Africa.

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Dreams of Avarice AMBITION, ATROCITY AND THE PURSUIT OF POWER

AN EMPIRE IN ECLIPSE

As one of the first eastern states to industrialise, the tale of Japanese dealings with Empire, others and its own, is one of glory and tragedy. Reconcialiation with this troublesome past still plays a central role in regional politics and collective memory.

By Aurelius Noble

O

ff some distant shore, searching for the promise of a rising sun, four Black Ships rode atop whitecapped waves, leaving a trail of steam - a promise of days yet to come. The arrival of Commodore Perry’s naval squadron in Edo Bay on the 8th July 1853 signalled the end of an era of isolation, eventually resulting in the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate. While the Shogunate had previously engaged in limited trade relations with the Dutch, the spectre of the Opium War to the west and the American threat forced the Japanese into a series of ‘unequal treaties’, fermenting political conflict between pro-imperial and Shogunate forces.

the town of Uraga and ordering the Japanese to enter into negotiations or face military repercussions. A compromise was reached on the 31st March 1854 with the Treaty of Kanagawa, which maintained prohibitions on trade, but allowed the Americans to base their ships in Shimoda and Hakodate. Thus began a period of rapid modernisation, with the construction of new port defenses, the establishment of the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre and the acquisition of steam warships from the Dutch with the purchase of the Kankō Maru in 1855 as the Shogunate desperately tried to maintain military and political hegemony.

this reluctant acceptance of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Japan shortly followed with the signing of the Ansei Treaties with Great Britain, France, Russia and the Netherlands.

Yet Japan’s troubles were hardly at an end, anti-foreign sentiment was on the rise, fermenting widespread dissent. Murders of foreigners and collaborators quickly followed the signing of the treaty. Indeed, the Japanese Prime Minister Li Naosuke, who had signed the Harris Treaty and tried to eliminate anti-foreign sentiment with the Ansei Purge, was himself murdered in March 1860 in the Sakuradamon Incident. Thus began a period of These attempts were, inevitably, acute conflict between shogunate inadequate. While the Convention and pro-imperial forces, with Em“The steam-powered ships of Kanagawa had advanced Amer- peror Komei proclaiming his “order break the halcyon slumber ican aims, it was extremely limit- to expel barbarians” in March and of the Pacific; ed in its scope - as the Shogunate April 1863, contrary to the coma mere four boats are enough tried to balance pro-Western (kai- mands of the Shogunate governkoku) and anti-Western (joi) forc- ment. to make us lose sleep at es. The Americans therefore sent night.” a second delegation in 1858, led While the Emperor had very little Unknown, 1853

by Townsend Harris. Harris was far power, this order provided the opmore demanding than Perry, using portunity for anti-Shogunate forces Though the Americans attempted the reignition of the Opium Wars to rally. In 1863 several clans beto present themselves as a more in October 1856 to emphasise the gan actions to expel foreigners and peaceable, less militaristic force danger posed to the Japanese by the domains of Choshu and Satthan those of the Europeans, there European powers and their need suma broke out into open revolt. was a great degree of military co- to find a peaceable resolution. Ulti- As Western forces rallied behind ercion in the opening of Japan. As mately the Japanese acquiesced to the Shogunate government, with Perry made his way into Edo Bay American demands, opening five the shelling of rebel forces by the he steamed past the lines of Japa- ports to American trade and grant- USS Wyoming in July 1863 and the nese forces, aiming his guns upon ing them extraterritoriality. After Bombardment of Kagoshima by the 8 |

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Dreams of Avarice

British in August 1863, the rebellions worsened - with the eruption of the Mito rebellion on the 2nd May 1864 against the Shogunate in the name of expelling Western “barbarians” and restoring imperial rule. The Choshu Domain remained particularly troublesome throughout this period, attempting to seize Kyoto in the Kinmon Incident of the 20th August 1864. While all these rebellions were eventually put down and punished with punitive expeditions from the Tokugawa government and from Western nations, demonstrating the futility of attempting to expel far more advanced western nations, they went far in illustrating the vast structural weaknesses of the Shogunate.

Ultimately foreign intervention was largely responsible for the collapse of feudal-style rule in Japan, the succeeding Meiji Restoration was a period of hugely accelerated industrialisation and modernisation.

Indeed, it was only in 1868 that the Japanese government established the Tokyo Arsenal, beginning its manufacture of small arms and ammunition, this if anything signalled Japan’s determination to take its destiny back into its own hands.

Over the next twenty years the government institute vast programs of reform, introducing conscription in 1873 as an attempt to match the large standing-armies of the West.

While these reforms were certainly met with resistance, not least from old social elites, Japan had begun Indeed, as the Shogunate redou- to model itself on those states who bled its efforts to suppress dissent had defeated it. In one fell-sweep it became increasingly unable to Japan had not just transformed itcope with more modernised foes. self into an imperial power, but an In 1866, a punitive expedition imperialist one. against the Choshu ended in disaster, as the more disciplined and Rise of the East better equipped Choshu troops were able to defeat the larger Sho- With the establishment of the new gunate force. This defeat led to a Meiji government and the ensuing drastic attempts at modernisation period of modernisation, Japan by the Shogunate, with massive found itself in a stronger position expansion of western-style military diplomatically. Thus, in 1871 the education and large-scale import Iwakura Mission was sent to travof French weaponry. However, ef- el around the world and renegoforts to stem this reversal would tiate the ‘unequal treaties’ Japan prove unsuccessful, with the death had been forced into by Western of Tokugawa Lemochi in 1866 and powers. While the mission was ultiEmperor Komei in 1867 Japan was mately unsuccessful, observations thrown once more into a period of made about these western powers instability. An allegiance between encouraged modernisation back the Satsuma and Choshu in 1866 home. Support for westernisation behind the newly anointed Emper- was widespread across society and or Meiji led to the disestablishment provide a powerful force in the ecoof the Tokugawa Shogunate on the nomic and military development of 9th November 1867 and the effec- Japan, enabling it to become a mative restoration of imperial rule fol- jor power in the east in just forty lowing the Boshin War of 1868 to years.

1869.

Dreams of Avarice

This period of economic modernisation was closely monitored and supported by the Meiji government who encouraged a very mercantilist economic structure. A series of reforms were undertaken, introducing a unified currency as well as stock exchanges and new laws concerning banking, commerce and taxation. Thus, by the 1890s the establishment of a modern economic framework was largely complete, supporting a period of rapid growth.

As Japan underwent this period of rapid industrialisation and modernisation, Japanese nationalism began to take a more concrete form.

In the 1870s and 1880s Japan began its establishment and expansion of a colonial empire, with the seizure of the Bonin, Kurile and Ryukyu islands, in addition to using gunboat diplomacy to force Korea to sign a treaty in 1876 granting extraterritoriality and opening three trade ports. Even prior to the First World War, Japan became involved in a series of territorial disputes, the first of which was the First Sino-Japanese War, which took place between China and Japan from 1894 to 1895. The war largely revolved around the balance of Chinese and Japanese power in Korea, with the Japanese sending troops to Korea after they had requested Chinese troops to help quell a rebellion. In 1895 the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, ceding the Liaodong peninsula and Taiwan to Japan. This reflected the rapid progress of the Japanese military and economy and brought it new levels of prestige while hugely damaging that of the Chinese and fermenting an anti-foreign sentiment that would ultimately result in the Boxer Rebellion and was largely responsible for the collapse of the Qing

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dynasty.

However, this would shortly incite conflict between Russia and Japan, increasing territorial tensions between the nations. While the Treaty of Shimonoseki had promised Port Arthur, on the Liaodong Peninsula, to the Japanese, this clause was overruled by Western Powers who granted the port to the Russian Empire. The war began in 1904 with a surprise attack on the Russian Eastern Fleet stationed in Port Arthur and the Russians suffered heavy losses. Furthermore, they were unable to reinforce the fleet, as the Russian Baltic Fleet was denied passage through the Suez Canal by the British. The forces that were able to escape from Port Arthur were quickly defeated by the Imperial Navy at the Battle of the Yellow Sea and by the time the 10 |

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Baltic Fleet arrived (a year later) it was unable to defeat the superior Japanese forces and was comprehensively destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima. Likewise the ground war went rather poorly for the Russians, culminating in the Battle of Mukden on the 20th February 1905, where the Russians decisively lost, with around 90,000 casualties. The defeat of both the Russian navy and army forced them to negotiate a humiliating peace, culminating in the Treaty of Portsmouth, in which the Russians ceded parts of Sakhalin Island, granted mineral rights in Manchuria and dropped any real opposition to Japan’s desire to annex Korea. As the first major military victory of a Asian power against a Western nation, this defeat caused a great deal of shock around the world and cemented Japan’s new status as a major pow-

er. Even Eastern nations who had previous experience of Japanese aggression were encouraged by this victory, with Sun Yat-sen citing this as a “defeat of the West by the East”, for the first time in centuries a certain regional pride was restored. Yet, despite these early signs of pan-Asian nationalism, the removal of Russian competition would prove detrimental to regional stability and security, with rising tensions in Europe providing an excellent distraction while Japan underwent territorial expansion.

With the outbreak of the First World War in Europe, Japan seized upon the opportunity to expand upon its colonial ambitions in east Asia, declaring war on Germany on the 23rd of August 1914. In coalition with British forces the Japanese quickly moved forwards, Dreams of Avarice

“The man on duty, Standing at the vessel’s helm, Must watch not slumber, Though the winds in zephyrs blow, And the waves lie calm below.”

Emperor Meiji, 1872 seizing German territories in China and German New Guinea and forcing the German forces in east Asia to surrender on the 7th of November 1915. While the war massively advanced Japanese colonial aims, with them retaining many of the German territories after signing a series of treaties in May 1915, Japan’s alliance with western nations was tenuous at best. Indeed, after proposing a clause on racial equality to become part of the charter of the newly formed League of Nations the Japanese found themselves in a position of enforced inferiority with the rejection of the clause by all major western nations. Thus began a period of increased Japanese tensions with Western powers, as they moved away from policies of cooperation towards more nationalistic policies, ending the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1923.

Despite attempts to introduce democratic reforms by Prime Minister Kato Komei, these developments signalled the dawn of a new era of militarist, expansionist politics. As right-wing ideologies became more prevalent, especially under the influence of Sadao Araki, founder of the Army Party, Japan saw a fusion between ancient bushido ideology and the more modern fascist ideals 12 |

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seen in Europe. This manifested in a form of Emperor worship and a “new” Shinto, revolving around this nationalist ideals and culminating in a transformation of the state to serve the army and Emperor. These changes in short order led to open conflict, with the withdrawal of Japan from the League of Nations in March 1933, following from widespread condemnation of Japanese involvement in the Manchurian Incident and the establishment of Manchukuo. While the Chinese government failed to oppose the action military, something that elicited much internal criticism, within the next four years China and Japan were once more brought into conflict.

The history of the succeeding years is well documented, with the complete surrender of Japan following the tragedy of the two atomic bombs dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of August 1945 respectively. The Manchurian region was seized by the Soviets within two weeks of the detonation and by the 15th of August 1945 Emperor Hirohito had officially capitulated, with an official surrender signed on September 2nd 1945, signalling the end of the Second World War. The Japanese

forsook all their colonies and thus began a long period of rehabilitation and reconciliation.

In the Shadow of the Sun With the occupation of Japan by Allied forces from 1945 to 1951 began a new era of pacifism and liberalisation. Central to this was the formation of a new postwar constitution under Allied supervision, which included “Article 9”, renouncing warfare and banning Japan from maintaining any armed forces. While this constitution certainly had foreign influence, it was also driven by internal attempts to avoid ever again rising to become an aggressive militaristic power.

While the occupation was eventually lifted as the Americans tried to meet the threat of Communism in Korea, it had a long-lasting impact and laid the foundation for mutual Japanese-American defence pacts; with the Japanese creating a Self-Defence Force at the behest of the US in 1954 to act as a bulwark against Chinese Communist expansion.

From 1947 onwards American priorities in Japan centered around economic regeneration and political stability. Major economic Dreams of Avarice

“Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.”

restructuring and land reform deals were pushed through by the staff of General Douglas MacArthur in an attempt to build an economically stronger Japan to counter the Soviet threat. The hostilities on the Korean peninsula would lead to even stronger trade ties between the two nations, with US payments worth twenty-seven percent of Japan’s export trade given for “special procurement”. Thus began a period of rapid economic growth, culminating in the 1950s and 1960s with the Japanese post-war economic miracle and by 1960 Japan was the world’s second largest economy. It was around this new industrialised, modern, pacifist centre that many parts of modern Japanese identity began to form.

Japan now began a long period of reconciliation with a troubled past, with various military tribunals taking place to try Japanese war criminals. Many Japanese officials and officers were sentenced to death or imprisonment, and Japanese war crimes still remain a highly contentious issue in the region. Though the issues of biological warfare and experimentation by Unit 731 in Manchuria, the treatment of prisoners of war, the Rape of Nanking and the keeping of so-called “comfort women” have at times been recognised by the Japanese government, explicit apologies have not always been forthcoming and education in particular remains a complex topic.

These controversies are particularly clear in the lawsuit surrounding the textbook New Japanese History by Saburo Ienaga, which questioned public support for the war (and was resultantly rejected by the Ministry of Education), and around recent remarks about the extent of coercion involved in comfort women by Kafka on the Shore, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Haruki Murakami, 2002

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The consequences of Japan’s postwar occupation and its fall from grace are still highly relevant to security in the region, with anti-Japanese sentiment in China used to stoke up nationalist fervour in support of territorial claims in the East China Sea. Likewise, Japan’s relationship with America in balancing the Chinese threat still remains pertinent, the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the US and China maintaining a strong military link between the two nations, with a continued US military presence of around 50,000 men in Japan. Indeed, Article 9, originally encouraged by the US to stop Japan returning to its militaristic ways, now faces much pressure for amendment both from right14 |

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wing parties within Japan and from haps best be summed up by the Japan’s American allies.

Yasukuni shrine, dating back to the 1890s and dedicated to Japan’s war While Japan is by no means the dead. Enshrined here are Japan’s imperial power it once was it still heroes and its monsters, with the struggles to confront its past and bodies of fourteen indicted war find its role in the world. The Asian criminals. Yet visits by conservative, Financial Crisis of 1997 was cata- nationalist politicians have been on strophic for the Japanese economy the rise, inciting not only regional and ever since Japan has found it tensions, but also internal pacifist harder still to consolidate its iden- sentiment. Thus the tale of Japan tity, with the notion of a modern is that of a nation in the shadow of economic great power struggling the sun, unable to escape the trauto fully supplant earlier notions of ma of its imperial past or to form the necessity of military, hard-pow- a identity entirely anew, it is a naer in cementing international sta- tion of inescapable complexity and tus. Issues which had for so long beauty grappling with a highly conlaid dormant, once more rise to the tested history. fore as Shinzo Abe has sought to normalise Japanese defence policy.

The trauma felt by Japan can perDreams of Avarice

A WANING MOON

The imperialist machinations of capitalism - how a banking crisis precipitated the collapse of the Ottoman state and the use of economic coercion in lieu of military force.

By Joshua Alston

F

rom 1876 to 1878 the Ottoman Empire found itself in a crisis which signalled a turning point for imperialism in the Middle East. This crisis primarily arose from of a public debt crisis, ensuing in 1876, which in turn led to the bankruptcy of the Empire and its defeat in wars against Russia and Austria Hungary between 1876 and 1878. The effects of this crisis were far-reaching: it precipitated a political crisis which resulted in a brief constitutional revolution and the execution of the Sultan, causing the loss of control over Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania in addition to the loss of much of the machinery of the state (previously improved by the Tazimat reforms) which was used to benefit its creditors. Furthermore, the Ottoman state gradual lost autonomy over law-making, particularly in terms of the regulation of business and European Christian minorities - while the economy was shaped to the benefit of outside imperial powers.

Behind these crises are some of the most potent strategies used in building empires: economic pressure, military force and the use of divide and rule.

the key source of revenue for the Ottoman state, was the Jizya tax, levied on non-Muslim’s living in the Ottoman Empire, taxes collected by the provincial elite, and customs on the great overland trade routes between the Europe and the Far East.

The State of Affairs It was a largely agrarian economy, The Ottoman Empire had been the with the majority of the population preeminent power in the Middle working as subsistence peasant East and South Eastern Europe for farmers. more than 350 years, since the destruction of the Mamluk Sultanate By the mid-19th Century, the Otin 1517. At its height it ruled over toman Empire did not inspire the a region which spanned from Mo- fear it once had on Christian Eurocco in the West to the borders ropean powers. It was described of Iran in the East, and from the as the ‘sick man of Europe’, losing gates of Vienna to Yemen in the territory to nationalist movements, South. Ottoman government was with Serbia gaining independence split into the Vizierate, responsi- in 1804 and Greece in 1821. Their ble for the primary administrative army was weaker than that of Eutasks of the government and the ropean powers, losing wars with Caliphate, which was the ultimate Russia from 1768 to 1774, 1806 to political and spiritual arbiter. In the 1812 and 1853 to 1856. It strugprovinces, it was ruled by Pashas, gled to compete economically with provincial governors with varying the industrialised and centralised levels of autonomy. Traditionally, states of Western Europe. This trig-

“If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.”

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Dreams of Avarice

-gered a series of Western European inspired reforms to government and society, including the settlement and taxing of nomadic groups in Syria, the abolition of tax farming and its replacement by professional tax collectors, the opening of the Ottoman market to imports from Western Europe and the creation of a new professional army to replace the conscripted Janissary corps.

These reforms vastly increased the power of the previously distant Ottoman state, its ability to generate revenue and control its provinces, but they also left it open to malign economic influences from outside the Empire.

crucial factor, this introduced a new and more expensive army and bureaucracy, which did not immediately produce a sufficiently greater revenue for the state to be able to pay off its debts. The formation of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, a body controlled by Britain and France to administer the economy of the Ottoman Empire can be seen as the result of a process of undermining the Ottoman economy through the purchase of Ottoman debt and the undermining of the Ottoman Economy.

state until its final collapse in 1921.

Balkan Nationalism

The Ottoman public debt crisis represented the culmination of a pattern of exchanging industrially produced goods for Ottoman debt, a pattern similar to the development of the British Raj in India or British control over Egypt (which had split from the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s). The British and French ownership of Ottoman debt partially resulted from the inflation and devaluation of the previously strong Ottoman currency, which was the result of the import of cheap precious metals from their Atlantic Empires.

From 1876 to 1878 the Ottoman Empire was at war over its Balkan kingdoms, losing control of Bosnia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania to Russia, Austria Hungary or self-government under the influence of varied foreign powers. This deprived the Ottoman Empire of some of the most important areas of its Empire. The Balkans were the traditional source of the Ottoman army, as prior to the 1826 Muslims The Ottoman public debt crisis fits could not be conscripted. very much with Lenin’s idea of imperialism as the ‘monopoly stage of capitalism’, with Britain and “All subjects of the empire France, through the export of capare called Ottomans, without ital, gaining a monopoly over the distinction whatever faith functioning of the Ottoman state. It allowed them to control the major they profess; the status of an revenue sources of the Ottoman Ottoman is acquired and lost state, such as the salt monopoly, according to conditions speciand gave them some control over fied by law.” taxation. Furthermore it allowed them to control and invest in the Ottoman Constitution, 1876 major overland trade routes running through the Ottoman Empire As the army was islamised during to India and the far-East. It limited the Tazimat reforms, the Ottoman the expenditure of the Ottoman Empire benefitted financially from state on the types of development the baddal-askar, a tax paid by which would most help the extrac- non-Muslim’s to excuse themselves tion of resources, for example the from conscription. It was one of development of railways and ports. the most densely populated and

Inflation was sufficiently rampant in the mid-19th century that in 1862 they were forced to issue paper money for the first time, although this reform had little impact outside of Istanbul. Another key factor influencing Anglo-French control over the Ottoman debt was Ottoman dependence on Western European industrial produce, particularly in terms of the export of arms and ships. Likewise the expense of the ongoing reform programs was a

Like much of the colonised world the Ottoman economy was redesigned to face outwards, with American, British, German, French and Russian companies given concessions to do business within the Ottoman Empire. The main industry in the Ottoman Empire was tobacco, which was largely exported to Western Europe. Particularly outside of Anatolia the Ottoman Empire was a much reduced force, struggling on in a semi-colonial

Economic Imperialism

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regulated areas of the Empire and therefore tax was easiest to collect.

Territory in the Balkans was seen by the Ottomans as a measure of the success of the Ottoman state, with the height of the Ottoman Empire seen as being during the Siege of Vienna under Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529. The independence or annexation of the vast majority of the Ottoman Empire’s Balkan territory represented a great practical and cultural loss for the Ottoman Empire, further weakening it in the FEBRUARY 2016

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face of the other Great Powers.

The ideological appeal of Europe was a key force in the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkans. This can be described as a policy of divide and rule, largely implemented by the Russian’s on the Ottoman European frontier. They hoped to utilise their common Christian Slavic identity with the European elements of the Ottoman Empire in order to establish client kingdoms in Eastern Europe. This was to the benefit of local elites, who could use the assertion of a Slavic, a Romanian or a Bulgarian national 18 |

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identity to build a power base for themselves, as the liberators and unchallenged rulers of their nation, rather than under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. This can be seen through the enthusiasm of the Romanian royal family in agitating and mobilising for their independence. The mobilisation of local, ethnic identities by imperial powers against the current government or in support of an imperial power was another key feature of many imperial ventures, used by European powers in almost all of their colonies.

The collapse of the European elements of the Ottoman Empire as a result of war with Russia and Austria served to confirm European supremacy. The failure of the Ottoman army in the 1876 to 1878 was partly based on the dire financial situation of the Ottoman state, which limited its ability to raise sufficient troops to be able to adequately resist the combined forces of the Russians and the Austro-Hungarians. Logistical issues, such as the difficulty faced in fighting surrounded by a largely hostile population and problems with moving troops and weaponry to

Dreams of Avarice

“Never a trace or sign of springtide’s beauty doth remain; Fallen amidst the garden lie the leaves, now all their glory vain.”

the front contributed to the loss of the war. The failure of the Ottoman Empire to compete militarily with the other Great Powers allowed them greater control over Ottoman policy, as they could use the threat of bringing more war and destruction to the Empire as a mechanism for extracting concessions. Aside from the territorial concessions in the Balkans and in Armenia, this influence was primarily used to extract the opening of the Dardanelles Straits to all ships, negating the strategic situation of Istanbul.

Defeat in 1878 marked the use of overt military imperialism on the Ottoman Empire, a third major technique of imperial exploitation.

Ottoman Responses The 1876 Revolution was conducted by a group known as the Young Ottoman’s, largely drawn from the ranks of the Ottoman Empire’s new bureaucracy; aimed at providing solutions to the crisis of legitimacy faced by the Ottoman state. This crisis was one which can be traced back to the beginnings of the Tazimat reforms. The reforms led to the gradual increase of the state’s control over the lives of the Ottoman public without a concerted attempt to provide new justifications for this control. The perceived lack of legitimacy suffered by the Ottoman state was compounded by the increasing European financial influence on the Ottoman Empire, which allowed left the Ottoman state as a weak pawn of Britain and France. The Young Ottoman’s saw their program as an attempt to reclaim power from Europe, and reclaim the lost legitimacy of the Ottoman state.

a strong, independent and legitimate Ottoman state was to imitate the successful practices of Western Europe. They were secularists and westernisers, who dreamed of creating a new Ottoman nation, along the lines of Britain and France. Significant within this was the Ottoman constitution, introduced by Sultan Abdulhamid II after the execution of his predecessor, which saw the establishment of a parliament which served to limit the authority of the Caliphate. They saw the Ottoman constitution as a way of creating a class of citizens of the Ottoman nation, rather than as a subjects to the Ottoman state.

Their adoption of explicitly Europe an ideas in the constitution (adapted from the Belgian constitution) the ideological effect of imperialism, causing the Ottoman Empire to seek to imitate the European state.

The Ottoman crisis of 1876 to 1878 marks a turning point in the relations between the Ottoman Empire and the West. The Ottoman Empire had previously been considered a Great Power, a force to be reckoned with in Europe. During this period they lost control of their state and their ability to act independently of other Great Powers. It signals the change between the older more decentralised Empires such as the Ottoman Empire and the newer Western European imperialism which would define the modern world. This crisis displays the parameters of the European imperialism, the military, the economic and political forms of control, and how Ottoman policy was controlled by outside. The crisis shows how the Ottoman Empire fell victim to the imperialism of a group of competing Imperial powers, and their ecoThe Young Ottoman’s believed, nomic and political control.

Baqi, c. 1600 like the Tazimat reformers before them, that the only way to create

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THE CIVILISING MISSION

While the East India Company played a prominent role in the shaping of modern India in many ways its impact was shaped by notions of cultural superiority as well as political and economic pragmatism.

By Eleanor Chambers

‘R

ule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves’… From the beginning of the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, the British East India Company underwent a drastic transformation, from a small group of merchant traders, into a powerful agent of British imperialism in India. The Company’s increasingly aggressive and imperialistic policies were further accelerated by the existing Mughal empire falling into decline throughout the eighteenth century. They reached the peak of power and authority before the mutiny of 1857 where the Company was finally deprived of both political and commercial control, replaced instead by the British Government.

On December 31st, in the year 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to a small Company of Merchants to travel to the East Indies. This gave them a monopoly for 15 years over trade to the East, and their first voyage as the East India Company departed from England in 1601. The nature of the Company business was a fairly radical one. Rather than a family partnership, this was a joint-stock company that could issue tradable shares on the market to any number of investors: a mechanism capable of achieving greater capital.

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in the Bay of Bengal. Significantly, this gave the Company access to spice which was not controlled by Dutch traders, a problem they had encountered in the other so-called ‘Spice-Islands’. This was further secured by the first official treaty with Mughal Emperor Nurudin Salim Jahangir in 1615, giving the Company exclusive rights to continue to reside and build factories in Surat in exchange for European commodities. Their base was now completely protected for trade operations and competition with Dutch or Portuguese merchants.

From here on, the East India Company experienced a dramatic increase in trade, power and influence. By 1668, the Company had established factories in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, and the building of Fort William in 1696 brought Calcutta to the fore as a prominent trading town by the turn of the century. The success of textile trading in particular was such that, in 1697, London weavers, dyers and linen drapers attacked the domestic East India House, protesting that Asian imports were threatening their own industries. Despite an initial ban, market forces overshadowed the cries of the protestors, and Indian cloth and calicoes continued to be hugely popular in Britain. The rise in luxury goods and consumer goods for the new middling classes proved to be a rapidly expanding

market, and the Company reaped the benefits.

It was not until the eighteenth century that there was a real shift in Company fortunes. Through the course of the century, the Company transformed from a mere trading group, albeit a successful one, to an organisation with real political power in areas of India and an expanding empire. The years between 1720 and 1755 were, generally speaking, periods of unprecedented calm and stability in terms of the economic and political atmospheres, but this stability in Company affairs was not to be repeated. In 1757 Robert Clive, Commander-in-Chief in British India, achieved victory at the infamous Battle of Plassey, in which he fought against the weakening Mughal Empire and recaptured Calcutta from the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah. This was, however, arguably won through treachery, forged contracts and bribes between bankers rather than by military prestige. The loot extracted from Bengal put roughly £2.5 million into the Company treasury, and a further £234,000 in Clive’s pockets, making him the richest self-made man in Britain. With new economic security, a further battle was fought at Buxar in 1764, which resulted in what was later named

by British officials the ‘Treaty of Allahabad’. The Mughal Emperor

Dreams of Avarice

Shah Alam was exiled from Delhi and forced into an agreement with the Company, effectively forcing a privatisation. By its terms, the Company received the diwani for the Bengal region: revenue collecting rights in one of India’s richest provinces. Robert Clive became the new Governor of Bengal, and it was at this moment that the East India Company ceased to be a group of spice and silk traders, and became owners of the foundations of an Indian Empire. This transition from trade expansion to military prowess and thus territorial expansion was a turning point for the East India Company, and one from which they could not go back. Within a few years, the Company had locally recruited 20,000 soldiers and had cemented themselves as the effective rulers of Bengal, becoming an increasingly aggressive colonial power. The Company management of the region also resulted in the great Bengal Famine of 1769-70 during which nearly a third of the population starved to death.

ing, and these were directly interlinked with worries about societal shifts and class-hopping that had arisen as a result of fortunes made by ‘new’ men working for the Company. The term ‘nabob’ was created as a satirical and derogatory term for returning Company men who had acquired huge sums of money and riches during their time in India. They were seen as lavish and vulgar, and were depicted in media and contemporary literature with hilarity and hostility. Domestic concerns over their political influences and acquired prestige of these men were widespread, (an estate was needed for a parliamentary seat, and many ‘nabobs’ bought estates on their return to Britain), and despite Company members in parliament never forming a ‘bloc’ or lobbying as a united group, these fears did not diminish. This perhaps explains why almost a century later, the impeachment and trial investigating Company corruption of Warren Hastings in 1773, the Governor General of India, enjoyed so much media attention and public Indeed, The effects of imperialism vilification. Nabobs were targets were felt in Britain too. Domestic for domestic observers, as the vehianxieties and fears over the expand- cle through which they could voice ing Empire in India had been grow- their concerns and anxieties about

Britain’s new position forming an Empire in India. It was less the nabob himself, but what he epitomised, that troubled British observers. Vilification of the nabob was arguably a form of colonial self-examination, and worries arose over the perceived permeable nature of the frontier between Britain and India — their material goods and orientally-styled lifestyle fed fears of a wave of Indian imperialism encroaching upon Britain. The goods they returned with forced domestic audiences to come to terms with the material reality of an expanding Indian Empire. Social, political and economic domestic fears were often scapegoated upon the nabobs, and nabobish culture looked down upon by those born into the upper echelons of society. The nabob encapsulated the concern that the growing Empire in India might leave a footprint in Britain, and change what it meant to be quintessentially British.

The moral crisis of the eighteenth century, otherwise known as the ‘India question’, was epitomised by concerns about what the proper relationship should be between Britain and India. Specifically, there

“Empire always overreaches itself and thus dies by its own hand, victim of its own ambition.”

Rasool Jibraeel Synman

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were widespread fears about the effect an Empire based on conquest would have on Britain, for instance worries that corruption and arbitrary government may be passed to Company servants, acting as corrosive agents on Britain. Cases publicised in the British media, such as that of Warren Hastings and Robert Clive, were seen as evidence of the damaging nature the East had upon Britons. Parallel to this, humanitarian anxieties about the treatment of Indian natives by the Company discussed fears that conquest bred contempt for Indians and their civilisation. It is important to remember, however, that whilst questioning what their proper role in India should be, the British did not resign their power, but instead the nation made ideological and political adjustments to justify its rule in India.

This, of course, resulted in its justification primarily of acting as a civilising mission. Thus, although the concerns triggered by nabobs led 24 |

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to ideas about imperial responsibility, the reaction, certainly by the late 1700s, was that the ‘appropriate goal’ for the British was to rule and ‘civilise’ India.

The justification of imperialism with the civilising mission was arguably also carried out by evangelical and other missionary organisations, who were finally allowed into British India in 1813, by which time British rule was much more stable and secure. Missionary organs tended to emphasise the plight of Indian women, but rarely against the British oppressor. The umbrella-term ‘Hinduism’ was the common enemy of the missionaries, and they worked tirelessly to spread the message of God amongst the Indian populace. However, whether the missionaries cause was simply religious, or just imperialism by other means, was strongly debated. Their Christian message contained strong elements of a Westernised culture,

and the schools and colleges they founded all encompassed strong British values and cultural principles. Despite the provoking argument for their imperialistic mission, in reality the missionaries were actually very isolated from East India Company workings. Company officials and their families tended to stay away from missionaries, who were seen by many at the time as “small detachments of maniacs”.

The Company made very sure to establish its work in India as separate to the work of missionary organs, and it is arguable that where Company campaigns were driven by authority, power and fiscal strategy, missionary campaigns were more convincingly based upon moral reasoning . An example of this is the case of sati, the act of burning a widow on her deceased husband’s funeral pyre. This supposedly voluntary immolation by the widow was strong protested against by the Company and missionary groups,

Dreams of Avarice

until it was finally abolished in 1829. It would not be unfounded to claim that the main desire for its abolition was based upon gaining a higher level of control and authority over the country, and by criminalising this act, it paved the way for more British acts to be passed which too infringed upon Indian traditions or religious practices. For missionary protestors in the lead up to the abolition, however, their condemnations of sati were seemingly based purely on the moral and religious wrongs that this act caused, and driven by concern for the welfare of the widow, as in some cases it seemed highly unlikely that sati was truly a voluntary act. This elucidates how Company imperialism differed from missionary involvement in India. Although both groups ultimately were imperialistic, where the Company was obviously and deliberately so, missionaries’ imperialistic qualities were more indirect.

“Every Empire tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other Empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate”

The legacy of the East India Company can still be seen today in the flourishing old college buildings, copious cricket matches and the Great Indian Railways. However, while this denotes the supposed benefits of the “civilising mission” there is a tangible veneer: but behind this façade remain the less appealing truths, an almost unintentional form of cultural imperialism that eventually manifested itself politically. The British railways, built only a decade after conception in Britain, existed purely to transport Company goods, exploiting local labour and resources. Despite the self-justification for the Indian empire, imperialism remains one of the less-edifying moments in British collective consciousness that Edward W. Said we would rather not remember.

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Dreams of Avarice

THE LIMITS OF EMPIRE

As it reached its climax the Roman Empire found itself in an ever more untenable position, with territorial expansion driven by an imperial ideology that placed military prestige above pragmatic considerations.

By Aurelius Noble

W

ith the significant expansion of the Roman Empire during the second century CE, firstly under Trajan (r. 98-117CE) and then continued to a lesser extent under Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180CE) and Septimius Severus (r. 193-211CE), the Empire gradually required more resources to support it. In some ways this territorial expansion forwarded Roman strategic aims, enhancing the security of the borders by establishing defences along geographical boundary lines. However, in many ways the expansion of Empire was not driven by pragmatic reasons, but instead by ideological ones which caused extensive damage to the structure of the Empire, with Trajan’s wars of expansion making the stability untenable. Rather than as part of a “Grand Strategy”, the expansion of the Roman Empire in the second century, something that would contribute significantly to its decline, was largely driven by an ideology of imperium sine fine (empire without limits). Indeed, the vastly increased scope of warfare that the Empire was involved with in this period suggests that the Empire had exceeded its limits. Rome was no longer able to easily defeat opposition, with the Marcomannic Wars in Germany (166-180CE) lasting over a decade and being resolved inconclusively. Certainly, it would seem that the Empire had exceeded its financial limits, with the greatly increased cost of the 28 |

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army becoming difficult to support and causing vast debasement. Furthermore, an increase in dissent throughout the Empire suggests that this expansion caused a fragmentation of cultural homogeneity.

Though these revolts were eventually put down, the damage they caused demonstrated a growing military deficiency. While some of these issues were the result of political, rather than strategic instability, these political problems largely had the same ideological root.

A Grand Strategy Certainly, the second century expansion has not always been seen in a negative light, with Trajan often being portrayed as one of the most effective Emperor’s in Rome’s “Golden Age”. While the Empire did undergo significant expansion during his reign, it also made efforts to increase defensive infrastructure.

Indeed, while the exact purpose of Hadrian’s Wall and the Africae Fotassum are much debated, they do at the very least suggest a new rigidity to borders. While these projects were not necessarily defensive, they suggest considerable strategic forethought and planning, with Hadrian’s Wall stretching for almost 117 kilometres. This period saw the development of what has been deemed a system of “preclusive defensive”, which was supported not only by these vast projects but also

by an overall rise in the number of small fortifications, particularly in Palaestina Salutaris (the Negev, Sinai and Transjordan area). This is partially the result of a more general shift in Roman political control, away from a system largely based on client states to a system which entailed more direct control. The establishment of Roman borders along natural boundaries offered a greater ability to retain strength and stability – despite the Empire’s growing scale, the establishment of a demarcated eastern frontier along the Tigris River demonstrates the strategic advantages in defining territorial borders.

However, while there were limited attempts to increase defences along the borders, the notion of a centrally-directed “grand strategy” finds little support, the protracted wars of Trajan, Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus held little long-term strategic value. Indeed, there seems to be little evidence that notions of nationhood, as defined by modern political-territorial borders, were existent in antiquity, with forts holding more local aims rather than fulfilling a broader strategic plan. It would have been hard for them to do so, considering the relatively limited state of cartography during this era and the 4,000 miles of Roman frontiers that had to be defended.

Dreams of Avarice

“Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”

Marcus Aurelius

Imperium Sine Fine Instead of strategic considerations, an imperialist ideology can be seen as the main driving factor in Roman expansion and hence decline, with the notion of imperium sine fine supposedly espoused by Romulus himself. Indeed, military success was a vital part of the emperor’s role, and one of the reasons why Hadrian (r. 117-138CE) (who mainly focused on defensive issues) was so unpopular. Pliny the younger had many words of praise for Trajan’s military reforms, exclaiming how wondrous it was that Trajan had “rekindle[d] the dying flame of military discipline”, but it was these notions of military prestige which were largely responsible for incessant warfare throughout the second century. Despite the ultimate failure of Trajan’s Parthian campaign from 113-116CE, these attempts were shortly to be repeated by Septimius Severus from 194-98CE. These conquests were badly miscalculated and expensive, resulting in few strategic gains, with the Parthians invading again in 155CE and 161CE and the outbreak of another major bout of war with them between 162-66CE. Furthermore, Trajan’s fervour for expanDreams of Avarice

sion caused permanent damage to the efficacy of the army, as he increasingly used auxiliary German and Sarmatian irregulars to replace the lost manpower from his campaigns.

The Marcomannic wars of Marcus Aurelius, were perhaps, the most indicative of the damage wrought by over-extension. With attacks starting as early as 161CE, with the Chatti raiding over the limes (limits) in Raetia and Upper Germany, suggesting a weakened frontier on the northern border. The Marcomannic invasion of 166CE would push the Empire to its limits, penetrating deep into Italy and only being repulsed as late as 180CE. The Romans were clearly no longer strong enough to hold their borders against all opposition; with strong criticism from Herodian of Marcus Aurelius’ “bargaining with money” with the German tribes, demonstrating a weakened Empire, but a resolutely militaristic ideology – with Marcus Aurelius maintaining troops across the Upper Danube and planning to expand into the central Germanic region.

The Death of an Era

While the reign of the “Five Good Emperors” has traditionally been written about as a period of relative prosperity, the wars conducted by these emperors led to considerable economic damage to the empire. While some short term gains were made with the construction of the Via Traiana Nova stretching from Bostra to Aqaba, these were vastly outweighed by the huge cost of a newly expanded army. This created a cyclical problem for the Empire as it needed to recruit more labourers to make up for its manpower deficiency, in one fell sweep not only increasing costs but also damaging the infrastructure that supported these costs. This resulted in severe debasement during the reign of Trajan, who reduced the value of denarii to eighty-five percent of their previous value.

Indeed, under Severus the pay for legionaries, auxiliaries and retirement rose from around 643 million sesterces to 1,127 million as it sought not only to support an expanded army, but win the loyalty of auxiliary troops with little reason for allegiance to the Empire. This necessitated further debasement, with the silver content of the denarius dropping to around 55 percent – thus imperial ideals crippled FEBRUARY 2016

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the financial backbone of the state and fermented political unrest.

Though this period can be considered one of relative stability, especially when compared to the “Third Century Crisis” that followed, there was clearly a great deal of social unrest in the provinces. Though there was some degree of cultural uniformity, this was greatly weakened by new territorial acquisitions and the resources required to enforce uniformity were increasingly waning. The impact of the revolts that would follow indicated how reliant the empire was on the lack of ethnic identities within its borders, with the Jewish revolts of 115-117CE and 132-135CE, as well of the Armenian revolts of 116CE and the revolt in Africa from 145150CE indicating the death of any semblance of cultural homogene30 |

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ity of social control that had previously existed. Indeed, the Jewish diaspora revolt of 116CE killed around 220,000 people in Cyrenaica (Libya) and another 240,000 in Cypus before it was supressed.

Likewise the Bar Kochba rebellion of 132CE quickly overcame the two legions under legate Tineius Rufus and eventually took more than four legions to suppress. Clearly the resources of the Empire were stretched to their limits, and the Roman military was unable to exercise the effective control it once had over its provinces.

the Empire led to greatly increased conflict with Parthia, which had never declared an unprovoked offensive war on Rome prior to the annexation of Armenia. While the geographical boundaries along which the Empire was formed may have been improved under Trajan, these conquests were untenable and their abandonment under Hadrian suggests they held little strategic value. The expansionist ideology which encouraged the emperors following Antoninus Pius to resume offensive wars in the east only worsened the problem of overextension, clearly the cost Although the Empire’s boundaries of the military was expanding bedid increasingly resemble defensi- yond the state’s ability to pay for it. ble borders, the end of the second Certainly the ‘stable fabric’ of the century witnessed growing military Empire seemed to have withered problems for the Roman Empire away, with various revolts in the that were largely the result of over- provinces suggesting the subtle, extension. The expanded size of but gradual death of Roman rule.

Dreams of Avarice

Searching for Shadows THE MULTIPLICITY OF MEANING IN STORIES

A TWISTED FAIRYTALE

Set in fascist Spain, Pan’s Labyrinth provides a fascinating insight into the nature of storytelling, the dangers of authoritarian “truths” and how various narratives intertwine to create our own subjective reality. Contains some spoilers.

By Aurelius Noble

P

an’s Labyrinth is as much a fairy tale as it is a story about the nature of fairy tales. Set shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War, it is the tale of a young girl, Ofelia, who travels with her mother to meet her new step-father, the fascist Captain Vidal. Her consequent struggles with and disobedience against the Captain are intertwined with her quest to reclaim her position as the princess of the underworld, after her meeting with an ancient faun deep within his labyrinth. The construction of these two parallel and yet opposite worlds, reality and fantasy, uses symbolism, imagery and metaphor to bring about the conflict between ideas of control and permanence with those of imagination and subjectivity. The film begins focused on Ofelia’s face as she slowly bleeds to death, this is not a typical fairy tale - instead it seeks to break down the very notions of the genre and through doing so demonstrate the importance of disobedience.

Ofelia herself begins her fairytale by recounting the story of a magical blue mountain rose to her yet unborn brother, she talks wistfully of this dying rose atop a mountain surrounded by poisoned thorns.

“Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose

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wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone... forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time.” Notions of permanence and time are central to the film’s themes, with Captain Vidal’s obsession with time denoting a deeper longing for control and order, but also an awareness that in the end all that exists is the emptiness of death, and that fascism in particular merely forces us to accept this.

This rose story is emblematic of the entire conflict between the Spanish rebels and the fascist regime, the blue flower of freedom wilting as men forget about it, as concern with the immediacy of death and pain clouds their visions of the future - hope, like stories, soon dies if forgotten.

The film decries such attempts to create a singular tale, with del Toro passing much of the interpretation and hence storytelling to his audience. While Captain Vidal attempts to write his own singular story, where his truth is “the” truth and “rebels” are murdered on his command, this inevitably misses the complexity of reality (and indeed fantasy) and is in large part responsible for his death. Pan’s Labyrinth removes these limitations by drawing on many different sources of inspiration, rather than relying on just one - it does not give any particular source or interpretation complete control over the narrative, as various intertwined images and inspirations vie for meaning. Indeed, the two parallel stories within the film, that of the mystical quest and Through the use of fairy tales, the political drama, are deeply which in recent years have largely been giving authoritative sources, first through the likes of Charles Perrault, then the Brothers Grimm and now Disney, Guillermo del Toro demonstrates the flaws of following a singular source. In remaining faithful to singular sources, modern adaptations of fairy tales tend to limit themselves to the values and moralities of their authors, in many cases adopting conservative patriarchal values where the prince always comes to save the damsel in 1984, distress.

George Orwell, 1949

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Searching for Shadows

connected, with neither becoming dominant or gaining validity over the other. Although there is eventually a confrontation between reality and fantasy, with Vidal approaching Ofelia but unable to see the faun she is talking to, del Toro does not allow this to simplify the narrative to one story. While Vidal’s perspective would suggest that her quest and this fantasy world are simply a coping mechanism for Ofelia in a world filled with pain and loss; just moments earlier we saw Vidal being drugged, diminishing his reliability as a source and sowing doubt in any singular perspective, diminishing the narrative truth and refusing to obey a desire for an all encompassing explanation.

This theme of disobedience remains highly pertinent throughout the film as a critique of fascist thought, while in typical fairy tales disobedience is the act that sets the tale into motion, in Pan’s Labyrinth it is framed as an essential quality. The disobedience of the rebels keep the “fairy tale” of a democratic Spain alive, while Ofelia’s disobedience to her mother, the Captain and the

faun not only set the story in motion but keep the varied strands of it alive- with Ofelia’s refusal to shed the blood of an innocent, in particular, showing that even the most minute act of betrayal could have terrible consequences. Even within the film itself, there is a level of disobedience, with the exhaustive referencing of varied sources undermining the master narrative of the film and creating a multiplicity in which the film is almost an act of disobedience to the story it is trying to tell. This stands in defiance to Vidal, who like authoritarian regimes or patriarchal fairy tales in general, seek to limit the number of stories that can be told from a set of events to just one.

links with the themes of the rest of the film it allows for free interpretation, with a pile of child’s shoes at the monster’s feet either acting to remind us of the shoes Ofelia will later wear when she enters the mystical realm, or of the piles left at Nazi concentration camps - as the viewer chooses. This collection of references and how the viewer chooses to follow them makes truth a matter of perspective, they bring fairy tales back to an earlier form of myth where varied oral interpretations of stories defied any single narrative. With Ofelia disobeying the orders of the fairies by eating some of the entrancing fruit at the Pale Man’s table, the scene functions as a metaphor to demonstrate that the beauty of these By building up a network of referenc- myths can enchant us, but that relies within the film, del Toro makes ance on a singular interpretation or meaning a matter of choice, a story the appeal of beauty may not be to determined by the interpreter. In our advantage. particular in the scene containing the Pale Man, a child-eating mon- The scene can also be seen as a ster, the film references a broad va- reference to Vidal himself, with the riety of myths and stories, with the Pale Man acting as a metaphor for monster representing various gods both the Captain, who later shoots and demons from Krampus to Kro- a child, and for fascist Spain; which nos. Furthermore, through strong is aimed at preserving the existing

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932

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order through the disempowerment of the young and revolutionary. Yet, criticism is not limited to fascism, but extends beyond this to any form of dogmatic storytelling, such as that seen in religious texts. Varied references to images akin to those in Roman Catholic churches, with paintings of the Pale Man reminiscent of “La Via Crucis” and “Stations of the Cross”, seek to demonstrate the role of religion within a broader mythology and its malleability to a certain strain of truth, despite its insistence of its own principles. Indeed, when Vidal talks of the necessity of killing the rebels at a dinner party, the first to agree with him is a priest who states “God has already saved their souls, what happens to their bodies hardly matters to him.” This echoes the problem of overarching narratives, where the priests interpretation of the story becomes accepted it endangers those who do not share in it.

Throughout the film there remains an obsession with death, marked by Vidal’s fixation on time. He spends much of his time in the film tending to his father’s pocket watch, stopped when it cracked upon the instance of his death. Vidal’s temporal obsession denotes his preoccupation with death, which in turn signals his desire to tell a singular,

“I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”

Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell, 1948

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contained story. In many ways he wants his life to be this solitary story, simplified (like that of his father’s) to a moment of heroism, its ending marked by his death. It seems in many ways then, that Vidal is simply waiting to die, as he climbs a hill in the forest amidst heavy gunfire from the rebels he calmly acknowledges that this would be “the only decent way to die”, and indeed he meets his end with a weary resignation. This mirrors the way authoritarian history is told, the tales of great men, marked by their great deeds and eventual death - with little thought for the complexity of the narrative. The only way to escape these restraints is to disobey, thus near Vidal’s final moments his wish that his son be told the time of his death is disobeyed, breaking the temporal containment of a singular narrative strand. The reversal of time marking both the beginning and the end of the film show that in reality narratives have no set beginning or end, the introduction of this confusion, this chaos, upsets an authoritarian story where a story may simply be told. While fairy tales typically finish with the words “The End” this story has no definitive end, it takes a formulaic genre and defies our expectations, defies the narrative it is supposed to give.

Although the rebels capture and kill Vidal, Spain remains under Fascist rule for another thirty years. Ofelia’s ending is equally ambiguous, although she is murdered, we have known this from the start, and she still manages to finish her mystical quest. There is no singular way the ending can be interpreted, and that is how it was intended: it can be seen as simply a metaphorical, poetic ending to a dark story; a happy ending to a fairy tale; or simply as the story that Ofelia wanted to tell, whether we believe her or not.

These multiple, intertwining narratives reach out beyond the film, with no single story able to contain them all. Myths are not defined by their creator, but instead by those who tell them, over and over - this fairy tale, this myth, allows us to interpret it as we will, to tell our own stories.

“That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories” IQ84, Haruki Murakami, 2009

Searching for Shadows

BLANK SPACES

The disturbing tale of a descent into madness along the Congo River, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness paints a disturbing portrait of colonial Africa and through this canvas demonstrates the broader relations between power, identity and race. Contains spoilers.

By Meg Dyson

B

efore words appear upon the page, before fantasy manifests itself in reality, all that can exist is endless possibility – of triumph and of trauma. This is evidenced most vividly in the indelible, and perhaps under-appreciated words of Taylor Swift: ‘Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane, but I’ve got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name’. While Swift’s hit 2014 single might appear to have little in common with Joseph Conrad’s 1899 ‘Heart of Darkness’ - the tale of British sailor’s journey down the Congo river and concurrent descent into the depths of depravity - certain similarities reveal themselves through this shared strand: the potential of emptiness. Indeed, in a monologue given by Marlow, Conrad’s protagonist, there is clear and familiar recognition of the allure of blankness: ‘Now, when I was a little chap, I had a passion for maps. […] At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map, I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there.’

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geography to reside within, neither Swift’s ‘long list of ex-lovers’ nor the surrounding lines on the map can exist. White spaces rely on the comparison point of dark spaces.

Through his description of maps, Marlow signals the beginnings of a story about race, travel, and colonialism; this reference to blankness and darkness is only the beginning of the analysis of colour and symbolism which permeates the novel.

By examining the co-dependent relationship between opposites, such as black and white, Conrad explores notions of racial identity within empire and through this the symbiotic nature of the identity of oppressed and the oppressor. The reversal of traditional racial imagery, with the space being colonised represented by whiteness and the colonisers represented by black ink and darkness, is used to highlight the limitations and damage caused by the so-called “civilising mission”.

There is a certain beauty to the unknown, but deep within the jungles of the Congo: ‘It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery – a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.’

As the novel progresses Conrad returns to a more traditional conception of blackness and whiteness: ‘the edge of a colossal jungle, so dark green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight,

like a ruled line’. The ‘ruled line’ continues the map metaphor, and the ‘almost black’ ‘colossal jungle’ is juxtaposed with the ‘white surf’, in this there is a clear comparison between the civilised and orderly nature of that which can be seen and understood, and the darkness of the unknown.

However, this contradiction of earlier notions of the blankness of the unknown is by no means unintentional, Conrad later writes: ‘all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; […] whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.’ Here, the water becomes dangerous, savage, and symbolically linked to the ‘dark continent’ through the association with mud and slime; the coast is ‘formless’, with no ruled lines to speak of, but that imagery is unstable. The water ‘invaded the contorted mangoes’ – it moves from defence to attack, and the mangroves themselves, writhing in an ‘impotent despair’, seem connected to the ‘deathlike indifference of unhappy savages’ as Conrad describes the slaves he meets at the start of the novel. This notion of nature as amorphous, with the original ‘white surf’ demarcating the compliancy

Searching for Shadows

of the blank ocean space leading homewards, contrasts strongly not only with the defensive darkness of the jungle, but also of the dangerous waters which border the coast as he approaches – suggesting through this imagery of reactive nature, a certain sense of not belonging. Conrad tells us about a fog which envelops Marlow’s ship: ‘You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf— then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well. […] When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night.’ Again, the symbolic associations of black and white, dark and light, are switched round, as Marlow claims that the ‘white fog’ was ‘more blinding than the night’. Conrad destabilises racial imagery, reversing the positions of the archetypal opposites Searching for Shadows

black and white. Kurtz embodies this disruption of traditional moral and racial signifiers - in Marlow’s words: ‘He had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air.’ Through Kurtz, Conrad begins to prod at the foundations of empire and the idea of an essential superiority. ‘“And this also” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth”’. Marlow’s philosophical monologue about empire at the start of the novel establishes Conrad’s feelings towards empire and identity within it; he compares the English traders and colonisers in Africa to the Roman invasion of Britain, pointing out that the British and European imperialists have not always been so successful: he

says that a Roman might ‘Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery’. The repetition of the loaded term ‘savagery’ seems to foreshadow the novel’s most famous line, uttered

by Kurtz on his deathbed: ‘the horror, the horror’ – the ambiguous horror that Kurtz sees as he slips into darkness is relative, and everywhere; it can be found in the rivers of England as well as the dark waters of the Congo. Criticising the Romans, Marlow says ‘they were conquerors, and for that you only want brute force – nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others’. This is clearly a damning summary of imperialism, differences between the Roman and British empires aside – Conrad suggests that there FEBRUARY 2016

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is ‘nothing to boast of’ in having brute strength over others. He ex plicitly demonstrates that empire is not a stable or inherent right, and that there is no fixed racial superiority, but instead an ‘accident arising from the weakness of others.’

He also makes this point through allusion – the name Marlow can be interpreted as a reference to Christopher Marlowe, whose 16th century play ‘Dr Faustus’ is referenced

by Conrad in the line: ‘I let him run on, this papier-mâché Mephistopheles’, describing a brickmaker. Mephistopheles is the name of the devil’s messenger who grants Faustus magic and in return for his soul: he is a shapeshifter, representing a lack of stable identity, and when asked by Faustus why, as a devil, he is on earth rather than in hell, Mephistopheles famously replies ‘Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.’ The implication is that hell, like empire, darkness, and blank spaces, is relative. Having experienced heaven, everything else is hell to Mephistopheles – hell is defined by what it is not, rather than by any inherent quality. Conrad continues this sense of relativity, portrays empire as a wheel of fortune which gives countries and peoples a moment of glory at the top, before they fall, inevitably and in a spinning haze of

colour, to the bottom of the wheel.

Identity, irrevocably linked to empire in Imperialist literature, follows this wheel of fortune and relies once again on Swift’s blank spaces.

The colonialist characters construct their identities in opposition to what they see as dark, savage, and uncivilised; they have to define the ‘other’ before they can define themselves. Marlow repeatedly emphasises how the ‘savages’ he meets are somehow less than human; he says: ‘they had faces like grotesque masks - these chaps’, and later ‘two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up’. They are not people, only ‘masks’ or ‘bundles’. Marlow also calls them ‘creatures’, ‘phantoms’. They become collections of ideas – darkness, mud, sweat, uncleanliness, savagery - projected onto bodies. The negatives of these ideas – whiteness, cleanliness, civilisation, sophistication – in turn become the basis of the colonisers’ identities within the novel. Yet again, however, Conrad points out that these thought categories of identity are not fixed – Marlow says of Kurtz: ‘There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it.

He had kicked himself loose of the earth’. Kurtz embodies the relativi-

ty of identity; having ruled from the top of the wheel, he falls into corruption and illness, ‘kicking himself loose’ of the categories to which he previously belonged. Marlow finds in him not civility and pureness but darkness itself: Marlow describes, as Kurtz dies, the way that his voice ‘survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart’. Kurtz represents and becomes the darkness - suggested in the title - which haunts the entire book; the supposedly clean, pure, and civilised mission which he undertakes is slowly filled in with darkness and corruption, signalling a reversal of Marlow’s map metaphor and paradigmatically embodying Conrad’s feelings towards empire and its future – Kurtz death is arguably the climax of the novel. In a review of Heart of Darkness for the Telegraph, David Miller wrote: ‘Conrad composed a book where we see ourselves, darkly’. This epitomises Conrad’s exploration of identity; the novel acts as a mirror for both the readers and the characters, who, somewhere along Marlow’s journey down the Congo River, see their own darkness revealed in spaces that appeared blank.

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

John Stuart Mill

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Searching for Shadows

JACK’S SMIRKING REVENGE A deeply dark and troubled examination of a society fuelled by an obsession with material possesions, Fight Club offers a fascinating insight into the problems of relativist and nihilist systems of morality. Contains many spoilers.

By Aurelius Noble

T “There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.”

he essence of David Fincher’s adaptation of Fight Club can perhaps be best surmised in these words - Fight Club is not so much a revolutionary manifesto, as it is an attack on a value system that is essentially based on lies, the foremost of which is that you matter in any way. Chaos, it would seem, is the antithesis of this orderly lie - it is through Tyler Durden’s Project Mayhem that the world begins to resemble something viscerally chaotic, and undeniably honest.

The story of an insomniac worker confronting an increasingly consumerist and meaningless reality, Fight Club documents a decline in meaning through the assumption of an identity based on external perceptions. Through this it denotes a broader critique of notions that there is any objective or cosmic value to our lives, suggesting that it is the responsibility of the individual to find their own raison d’etre. Indeed, in a post Judeo-Christian world, the essence of truth, the base values of the world become untethered.

“First they built churches, now they build offices”, thus spake Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, or at least one can imagine so. With the decline of Christianity has arisen existential decadence and lethargy, Heart of Darkness, in many ways the post-modern Joseph Conrad, 1899 world is necessarily a nihilist one, and it is through the medium of

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anarchy that Fight Club forces a confrontation between notions of nihilism and a modernity characterised by its obsession with consumerism. Abnormally of nihilist critiques of modern values, this is not aimed at typical ethical value systems, but rather at the values which denote personal worth and self-esteem.

The destruction of the narrator’s material possessions and the consequent destruction of his identity imply the folly of entrusting a sense of self-worth in the opinions of others, built upon material values with no objective value (at least not in a metaphysical sense).

The solution then, it would seem, is to “reject the base assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions”, yet the destruction of an existing value system (if it were even possible), does not provide a very satisfactory resolution. In a way this means the premise of Tyler’s ideology is flawed; the notion that destroying debt and equalising everyone economically is remotely relevant contradicts the very notion that material possessions do not matter. Surely if this were the case it would not be equalisation of possessions, but rather utter eradication which is needed, except in the case of needing the barest necessities for survival; which hardly seems the focus

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of Tyler’s largely first world project. Indeed, even in the anarchic post-capitalist order that Tyler attempts to create, there is still an identity system - now based upon notions of masculinity. Though there is an attempt to maintain a complete disinterest in identity, through consistent undermining of personal belief - “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. Not the car you drive. Not the contents of your wallet. Not your flip flops and khakis. You are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” - this seems to stand in stark opposition with why members join Project Mayhem, they want to matter. Thus, throughout Tyler’s endeavour’s Searching for Shadows

there is a twisting of agendas - with something that was initially meant to bring back meaning by instilling the urge to survive in members (the Fight Club) taking on a broader morality that is already inherently conflicted with its earlier critique of baseless values.

The Lost Generation However, as noted earlier that is partially because Fight Club is not, and is not intended to be a revolutionary manifesto - fulfilling the role of an interesting critique without necessarily supplying many of the answers. In many ways the film finds its strengths in providing

a previously absent attack on impotency of the post-modern world and a deep sense of anger. Thus, in many ways Fincher finds his mirror in the earlier works of 1920s authors, with Evelyn Waugh’s work on the decadence of the “Bright Young Things” in London and the sense of impotence outlined in both T.S. Eliot’s Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and in his The Hollow Men. In this sense Fincher’s Fight Club is meant as a generational symbol of revolution, if not a call to arms, then at least a cause for introspection. In some ways history seems to repeat itself, with an ambiguity of purpose and morality fermenting a material obsession that comes close to representing identity when other FEBRUARY 2016

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aspects of identity, such as nationality, cease to matter. The shift in meaning from discipline and martial purpose towards a more economic obsession is well documented, especially in the case of Japan which, since the collapse of its empire and in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, has found an increasingly pervasive “herbivore” identity problem amongst young men - causing a severe demographic problem as large portions of the populace find themselves feeling emasculated and asexual.

“Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.”

The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot, 1925

Similar generational theories have found their way into the academic work of sociologists. The StaussHowe theory chronicles what they saw as a four-stage cycle of social change, moving from an era where post-crisis institutions are strong and individualism is weak, then to a more critical stage where individual identity begins to assert itself and eventually overcome institutions until a crisis is provoked and institutions are rebuilt to constitute the new order. In many ways this is nearly mirrored by Tyler’s disdain for a post-crisis era, “We’re the middle children of history, no purpose, no place. We have no great war, no great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives”. In a society where feel46 |

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ing is so numbed, the only way the participants can find anything that matters to them is through relying on something they can objectively value about their lives, the ability to survive. Fight Club is the story, then, of a generation weighed down by their responsibilities to institutions - who cannot escape from the numbing pressures of an immovable reality without resorting to drastic measures.

Certainly the film has strong anti-theistic themes, but while few would agree that humanity has found its place, what Tyler embraces above all else is the notion that there is no need to find a broader purpose. Though perhaps unrealised by the members of Project Mayhem, the crux of Tyler’s rhetoric isn’t about doing something meaningful, it’s about accepting that we don’t matter. Indeed, one of the few things that can be agreed on, and something which Tyler relishes, is that “you’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else” and that soon enough you and everyone you know will be nothing but a handful of dust. Yet this does some misjustice to Palchuniak’s message, which is not an entirely nihilist one in essence, but a uniquely individual relativist one, in which individual self-worth cannot be measured by possessions, but neither can it measured by objective moral standards; instead we must seek our own path to “premature enlightenment”. Rather than providing a solution to these moral problems, Fight Club focuses on a more basic and more pressing issue - that to escape from our worries is not to solve them, that confrontation with our pain, for instance through the application of lye burns, is the only way to bring reality and existence, in a cosmic

sense, back into our locus of control.

Yet the film is not about glorifying pain, violence or indeed death though there is a finality and purpose given to death, that is somehow lacking in life, the film seeks to distance itself from the insignificance to death given in the book.

Though to the individual, life remains just as pointless as ever, in death a collective relativist meaning can be assigned to a person’s life, even when they are past the point of it mattering. This is clearest in the case of Robert Paulson, a relatively insignificant figure in life, who in death finds the finality of identity lacking from his life by reassuming his name. In the words of the wartime poet Sigfried Sassoon :

“The dead are more real than the living because they are complete.”

Sigfried Sassoon

However this notion of completion falls to the earlier critique of external validation - it only assumes significance upon death, where it thereupon becomes worthless.

Thus rather than providing some notion of posthumous purpose the film uses this to force the narrator to confront a final analysis of his life, indeed with a loaded gun in his mouth the first line the narrator utters is “I can’t think of anything”, the film concludes with same remark, suggesting that through all these pain and trauma he hasn’t found a meaning to his life, but perhaps that isn’t what he was looking for.

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“Ideologies have no heart of their own. They’re the whores and angels of our striving selves.”

John le Carre, Unknown

The Death of Dreams Throughout the film Tyler’s focus remains utterly singular, devoted to himself and his cause, yet the utter lack of empathy and personal connection he feels is not echoed in the narrator. While the film crosses over grand themes of identity, morality and purpose, it is ultimately the story of one man and all the people he connects with. The film begins with the narrator attending support groups in an attempt to connect with other people and throughout this process both the narrator and Tyler seek to forge relationships with those around them, though in different ways.

While Tyler’s objectives remain rooted in an obsession with his own sense of purpose and agenda, this is exhibited in the controlling relationships he maintains with those around him. Yet the film seeks to distance itself from this simplistic ideological interpretation of the world, suggesting that a dogmatic pursuit of singular self-belief can make you lose sight of the things that, illogically, matter to you. In many ways, the narrator’s evolving

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relationship with Marla highlights his own insecurities, but it also showcases that while confronting existential problems is preferred to ignoring them, the same must be said of emotional problems - that ideological pursuits should not and cannot forever override that which matters on a more personal level.

In his final confrontation with Tyler, the narrator’s “eyes are open”, he sees not only the inadequacy of Tyler’s solution but the unnecessary pain it will cause; the problems in this world cannot be solved simply by destroying their foundations and it takes an appreciation for individual worth to find a more pragmatic solution. Though the narrator remains cynical and disillusioned, a realisation of cosmic unimportance and the fallibility of externally based assessments of worth does not mean that subjectively other people cannot matter to you.

This then, is not actually a film about changing the world, it in many ways represents a more personal story about finding meaning in life, though it chronicles many ethical and moral dilemmas, it remains the story of someone who is searching for some meaning or connection, whether that be on a

personal or universal scale. There is no world to be saved, just a churning mass of seven billion people, each with their own problems and worries. These problems remain so entwined and minute on a grand scale, that the best anyone could hope to do is find their own limited meaning in knowing that they are helping. A singular solution to the world’s woes is not what Fight Club is about, that is why it transcends more recent adaptations. The notion that an individual has the power to solve the world, as if it were a puzzle, is merely a temporary distraction from the pain that Fight Club so consistently forces us to confront. While the film illuminates some of the key problems with modern morality and identity, as outlined above, it does not do the audience the disservice of pretending these problems have an immediate solution. The simplistic notion of Tyler’s premise, put forward so simply by his digital era equivalent Elliott Alderson, “I wanted to save the world” highlights the failures of such a simplistic aim - in the rather apt words of Ernest Hemingway “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”.

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Darkened Uplands IMPERIALISM IN A POST-COLONIAL WORLD

THE LOST WAR

A fledgling state, North Vietnam was forced into conflict with two major powers within its first decades - the two Indochina wars, in particular the war with America demonstrates the limits of democratic imperialism in the face of nascent nationalism.

By Aurelius Noble

T

he David and Goliath story of our era, the Second Indochina (or Vietnam) war demonstrates perhaps the earliest culmination of US attempts to act as a global arbiter of conflicts. Though it is difficult to isolate the exact years of US involvement, a period of conflict was existent from 1955, with the US sending non-advisory forces from 1965 onwards, only withdrawing two years before the final capture of Saigon in 1975. Though somewhat limited in scope the Vietnam war played an integral role in the much broader conflict between capitalist and communist forces in the first and second world, as the US sought to pursue a policy of containment. While the US and its South Vietnamese allies relied heavily on air superiority and overwhelming firepower, this would ultimately prove calamitous for them as the continuous losses from guerilla warfare conducted by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army would eventually render public opinion more firmly against the war. Indeed, the North Vietnamese government in many ways saw this not so much as an ideological war as a national war of independence from the grasp of colonial powers.

laration of independence at the end of the Second World War, culminating in a decisive defeat for the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. From as early as 1950, US military advisors began to arrive in French Indochina in an attempt to support the French-backed government of Ngo Dinh Diem, who would form the Republic of Vietnam south of the 17th parallel. During the International Geneva Conference of 1954 the boundaries of South and North Vietnam were set along this parallel with a demilitarised zone in between - yet this was never meant to be a permanent divide, with the Geneva Accords promising to hold US moderated elections in 1956 to determine the government for a united Vietnam. Upon realising that Ho Chi Minh would easily have won this subsequent election, with an estimated eighty percent of the populace voting for him, the US postponed the elections indefinitely - the stage for conflict was set, though the war would take many several decades to play itself out.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

A Farewell to Arms, The American-Vietnamese war folErnest Hemingway, 1929 lowed on from an earlier conflict between Vietnamese and French Though it would send limited numforces, fought between 1946 and bers of troops over during the earli1954 following Ho Chi Minh’s dec- er years, US commitment escalated

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rapidly following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, where an American destroyer clashed with a North Vietnamese vessel, giving President Johnson the pretence to authorise the deployment of regular combat troops from 1965 onwards.

The war rapidly escalated, with US involvement peaking in 1968 - the same year that the Communists launched the Tet Offensive, an unprecedented assault on South Vietnam with over 400,000 troops and 17,000 casualties for the North.

Although the Tet Offensive would fail in its ostensible purpose of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government, it marked a turning point with numerous casualties on both sides helping turn the US populace against the war. As the mood soured the US were forced to begin decreasing troop presence in Vietnam, thus ensued a period of Vietnamisation, as the US tried to transfer the task of fighting the Communists to the South Vietnamese Army. Despite the signing of the Paris Peace Accord in January 1973, fighting continued until the capture of Saigon in 1975, though the US withdrew direct military involvement in August 1973. The war cannot be described as anything other than a tragedy, that is even more so than other wars, yet its failings help illuminate the imperial pretensions of the US and its limitations.

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A Guerilla War US failure in Vietnam was largely due to the tactical focus of the US army, which due to the earlier conflicts of the Second World War (1941-45) and the Korean War (1950-53) was still largely set-up for conducting traditional, big-unit warfare - thus it found itself ill-suited to fighting guerilla warfare on such a large scale. Indeed, this in failed efforts to win “hearts and minds” and an inability to confront a hidden enemy who relied on novel Guerilla tactics, partially derived from Mao Zedong, resulted in a protracted war of attrition that was extremely costly and continually sapped morale, weakening the resolve of a (somewhat) democratically directed war. Eisenhower’s adoption of the strategy of Massive Retaliation in 1954 meant that while the army remained capable of deploying nuclear weapons, it reduced the troop count so much that it lacked the manpower to wage small-unit warfare. This focus on traditional warfare meant that the US could not hold areas from guerilla control for extended periods. In both Operations Circle Pines and Cedar Falls in 1966, despite destroying enemy installations and inflicting higher casualties, these victories were short-lived with Guerillas shortly re-infiltrating the areas. Furthermore, the US could not continue these victories indefinitely, it was rapidly losing a war of attrition with the use of 160,000 artillery shells from August to October 1966 by the US 25th Division killing only a hundred men. The war was costing the US heavily while the North continued to recruit men faster than it lost them, demonstrating a far greater commitment that would result in far higher national morale

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despite far greater loss of life by the North Vietnamese. Indeed, the North continued to receive ample supplies from the USSR and China, with the Soviets sending over 3,000 technicians, and China sending 300,000 troops to maintain supply lines in 1964. By 1967 Vietnam was costing a strained US economy $3.6 billion a year and Pacification was making little progress, as America gradually lost the will to fight.

“You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end you will tire of it first.”

Ho Chi Minh

given precedence in recruitment over the Popular Forces and Regional Forces, which were intended to more soft-handed as a more local, small-unit alternative to traditional armed forces. The folly of this is clear, with the regional forces actually losing manpower between 1956-66 despite accounting for 1230% of Viet Cong deaths in those years and only consuming 2-4% of the war budget. Indeed, alternative attempts by US forces and the National Police were largely unsuccessful, with the County Fair tactics by the US proving hugely costly and meeting with little success in terms of winning over the populace. President Thieu’s Accelerated Pacification program following on from the Tet Offensive was similarly unsuccessful, rather than focusing on winning “hearts and minds” it largely rewarded units by body count produced, leading to an inability to instigate long-term change and in many cases worsening corruption and poor leadership within the army. The US was unable to define its enemy, and in particular US intelligence was unable to combat Viet Cong infrastructure effectively, with the CIA’s Phoenix Program having a very limited impact - largely because US operators did not even understand the language of the Vietnamese. Likewise, the Province and District Intelligence and Operation Coordinating Centres, which were set up to remove Viet Cong cadres, remained extremely ineffective, as despite being Vietnamese run they were crippled with corruption - Communist infrastructure remained strong, while Southern cadres were quickly eliminated.

While the tactic of Pacification, through gaining the trust of the local populace and uprooting local insurgency, had the potential to procure success, it was applied poorly and failed to win over the populace - this allowed insurgency to remain rife and ultimately played a large role in destabilising the Government of South Vietnam. Pacification failed to address political issues and thus support for the North, largely arising from Communist popularity due to helping combat famine during World War Two, remained high. Indeed, the Government of South Vietnam resisted US efforts, through Ambassador Lodge, to instigate social upheaval through rural construction programs and remained highly unpopular, tainted by association with the French and the fervent Catholicism of President Diem. The policy of Pacification was given little credence by the South Vietnamese Government and thus failed to successfully eliminate enemy ap- Although the US played a prevalent paratus, with the more traditional role in the war, they recognised Army of the Republic of Vietnam that their presence could not be

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indefinite and that the crux of the fighting would have to be passed to South Vietnamese forces eventually. Yet these forces remained hampered by poor training and corruption, making the process of Vietnamisation largely destined for failure. Indeed, there are numerous instances where the damage caused by the corruption of the Southern military is clear, with the Battle of Ap Bac on January 2nd 1963 proving a prime example. The much larger force of 1400 South Vietnamese soldiers was decisively defeated by 350 guerillas, who suffered only eighteen losses. Indeed, the battle went so badly that one of the South Vietnamese generals, General Cao, barraged positions held by his own troops in order to increase “enemy” body counts.

Despite several US commanders attempting to limit the corruption of Diem’s troops, few notable steps were taken to remove corrupt officers. By permitting corruption General Harkins severely damaged the capabilities of the South Vietnamese military, fighting against more committed Communist troops. This problem persisted throughout the war, with the practice of officers keeping dead troops on their rosters to receive their pay remaining as high as 20 percent in 1968. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam was ill-trained, corrupt and lacking morale, with desertion rates as high as seventeen percent in 1968, thus it found itself incapable of wearing down the far more effective Northern forces.

The continued focus on body-count and continued measures of traditional success resulted in a severe misestimation of the South Vietnamese position. Not only did they have to defeat the North, but win the support of their own populace.

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The use of techniques like defoliation, which was used on 1,570,113 acres in 1962, while tactical contributing to the war effort worsened the social conditions that exacerbated the problems facing the South Vietnamese Government.

Although the Regional Forces and Popular Forces were intended to be led separately to take a more regional approach, they were later usually led by commanders from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and used in Search and Destroy missions, limiting the ability of the Government of Vietnam to win widespread support. In many cases military success actually damaged the war effort; despite the repulsion of the Tet offensive in 1968 being deemed a victory by military commanders, it led to the creation of 800,000 refugees and hugely exacerbated political problems.

Political Turmoil Clearly the war was not to be won merely on a tactical or strategic level, it would require the establishment of a stable and popular order. However, the US found itself unable to create a sustainable government for the Republic of Vietnam, this was partially due to the societal structure of Vietnam, but also a shared revolutionary history which meant that the regime lacked the support of the people.

The civil service was tainted by its association with the French, indeed Diem himself was Bao Dai’s (the French puppet Emperor) Minister of the Interior in 1933. Dissent was widespread and was ruthlessly suppressed, with 20,000 incarcerations of dissidents by 1956. This lack of support for Diem was most clearly seen during the Buddhist Crisis of 1963, when Diem’s forces arrested and attacked hundreds

of students and Buddhists. By August of 1963 17,000 Buddhists were demonstrating in Saigon and Diem had to declare martial law, his government was on the verge of collapse. Yet, this problem of instability was exacerbated by the US who encouraged Diem’s downfall.

On the 1st November 1963 fighting erupted between various South Vietnamese factions and a junta headed by General Minh forced Diem out of power, but quickly proved inept and was displaced yet again by General Khanh shortly afterwards. The Government of the Republic of Vietnam was propped up by the US and thus was incapable of autonomy, its economy had been ruined by eight years of war with the North and was only able to stave off collapse because the US pumped $127 million dollars into its economy between 1955 and 1959, inequitably contributing to the standard of living and exacerbating social inequality. The sole attempt to improve the rural economy, the “miracle rice” program, had negligible impact and the use of defoliation and strategic hamlets worsened social problems - with around 7 million refugees from 1965-72. The pilot of the strategic hamlets program, Operation Sunrise, was an abysmal failure it attempted to move peasants from their villages into protected and isolated hamlets, but was hugely unpopular moving many peasants out of their homes involuntarily. Yet through Diem’s urgings these program was expanded and the problem was worsened.

Even in the event of relative military “victories” for the US forces, the US public had an increasingly negative view of the war- especially following the Tet Offensive. Indeed, mistaken reports on the offensive

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by NBC and Newsweek, which reported that the US embassy in Saigon had been captured, continued to add fuel to the anti-war movement. Even as the South Vietnamese began to meet with moderate success, pacifying large elements of the countryside by 1970, the anti-war movement, which had risen from around 60,000 protestors in 1962 to 350,000 in 1972, and the climate surrounding the Watergate scandal resulted in intense political pressure on the Nixon administration to withdraw. Indeed, Nixon would go as far as to say that the political argument about executive powers following from Watergate meant that it was no longer possible to enforce any agreement upon the North Vietnamese.

Fire in the Lake However the role of military tactics and political failings can seem largely inconsequential when compared to longer term factors in the development of a Vietnamese “shared revolutionary history”, which made the creation of a stable South Vietnamese government extremely unlikely and severely heightened the chance of political failure. The French subjugation of Indochina in 1865 continued a long history of Vietnamese oppression, and united Vietnamese resistance to this was as deep-rooted as their servitude.

Resistance to French rule originated as early as the 1880s with the Cao Voung movement and continued to evolve with the formation of the Reform movement in 1904. The 1911 Xinhai Revolution in China and the victories procured by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war diminished belief in Western superiority, furthering a Pan-Asian pride and solidifying Vietnam’s desire to form a democratic republic,

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which took the form of the Vietnam Restoration League, established in 1912. Likewise communism in Vietnam had been present long before either Indochina war, since the establishment of the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925 and the Communist Party in 1930. Japanese victories against Allied forces up until 1942 and the bestowal of independence on Burma and the Philippines in 1943 left a powerful legacy in Vietnam, with the Japanese occupation between 1941-45 diminishing the belief in inherent Western superiority. The Viet Minh, who espoused both communist and nationalist ideas, were hugely popular, having combatted famine in World War Two. In 1945 they were in control of Hanoi, Hue and Saigon, the country was united under communism.

Their continual struggle against the French from 1946-54 only strengthened their role in forming a unified Vietnamese national identity - even President Eisenhower recognised that only the Communists held popular legitimacy and that in a fair election Ho Chi Minh would win.

tax revenues rising from 5.7 pisters in 1914 to 15.7 million in 1939. The effects of this capitalist imposed hardship are evident; in 1930 there was a large-scale protest against tax and land policy in Nghe An, with over 6,000 peasants marching. This can largely be held responsible for the growth of a South-based insurgency, with around the Viet Cong numbering around 245,000 in 1967, compared with 55,000 in the North Vietnamese Army.

Ultimately the Vietnam War proved disastrous because it was a war that should never have begun. In 1945 the country was united under a singular, albeit communist, leadership.

Yet, this never posed the threat that the US thought it did, this was not “centrally directed” Communist expansionism, as the US saw so fit to describe not only the spread of communism in Vietnam, but also in the rest of East Asia. Indeed, North Vietnam was far more nationalist than it was communist, it had popular support and was able to dedicate itself far more fully to the war than the less legitimate Government of South Vietnam. AlIndeed, in many ways it was im- though North Vietnam would evenpossible for capitalist forces to re- tually win the war, capturing the main popular within Vietnam. The Southern capital of Saigon in 1975, introduction of a capitalist econ- this was a war that nobody won. A omy in the 1860s by the French hugely costly and unnecessary war, had destroyed many of the protec- that fractured a nation and has taktive conventions for peasantry and en many decades to reconcile - the meant that local landowners were Vietnam War ultimately represents able to ignore their demands. This one of the clearest cases of Ameriled to increased seizure of commu- can imperial ambitions. nal lands and forced many small landholders into dependent tenancy and huge debt. The Vietnamese rural economy was naturally a collectivist one and was ill-suited to capitalism. French imperialism led to intense hardship for the Vietnamese, strengthening popular dislike of the capitalist economy, with

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THERE WILL BE BLOOD

An analysis of the oil and mining industries and the manner in which the extractive nature of these multi-national corporations mirrors the functioning of colonial states.

By Joshua Alston

F

or the past 500 years one of the key forces shaping the development of the modern world was the desire to gain control of minerals. From the seventeenth century Gold prospectors hunting for El Dorado to the activities of the Rhodes corporation in Southern Africa, the search for minerals has always had a darker side. The extractive industries are built on the back of exploitation of its workers and from the destruction of the environments in the area of the mine. The giants of the industry from Glencore to Shell, like the mineral companies of old, have built their success on the back of a disrespect for human rights. The development of extractive industries in many cases has brought success to the few, the

“It is my obligation as a mother, my obligation to my ancestors to ensure we have our rights respected.”

Crystal Lameman

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ruling classes and a narrow clique of owners, at the expense of the majority of the population, who are left with compromised land, polluted water and a spiralling cancer rate. The pattern of extractive industries reproducing inequality has been replicated on a national scale, as companies based in North America and Western Europe are able to extract the majority of the profit from the relationship. The actions of modern day extractive industries mirrors the development of colonialism, bringing authoritarian development which is to the benefit of corporations and of elites rather than the population at risk. When it comes to minerals it is clear that all that glisters is not gold.

press the identities of the groups living in the land and in particular their sense of homeland. The action of these extractive industries is essentially coercive, with violence a common feature of their practice, particular when faced with protests focusing on the negative side effects. For many people the arrival of extractive industries will not be seen as bringing valuable ‘development’, as a source of jobs and employment, but as a force bringing violence to their communities and polluting their water. These examples are largely taken from the impact of the development of extractive industries on First Nation people in Canada, people living in the Niger Delta and people living around the Tintaya mine in Peru.

Sacrifice Zones, Violence and These companies share a disreHomeland Throughout history extractive industries leave a trail of waste and pollutants, created as a bi-product of the process of extraction. This waste will often be passed on to communities as part of the cost of doing business. Often these will be communities which are already separated from the state, through class or ethnic identity, and therefore less able to resist the will of the state and the company. The activities of the extractive industries tend to function in conjunction with a wider aim by the state to re-

spect for local knowledge and attachment to homeland with colonial powers. In Canada, tar sands companies illegally dumped waste from tar sands on what is said to be an ancestral burial site. In areas where there is such a close, almost religious connection with the land, the pollution of ancestral sites represents a form of religious repression; as the identities of indigenous people are subversive, as they challenge hegemonic discourses surrounding treatment of the land and historical memory. As well as damaging religious sites the leakage of

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“Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts.”

pollutants from mines will often leader to high rates of cancer and respiratory diseases, creating considerable cultural trauma. Often extractive industries, like colonial powers, would justify their action based upon the fiction of bringing development to the backward populations of the sacrifice zones.

This development however is not one which holds benefits for local people. Any jobs available to them, whom are most likely to be effected by the negative impacts of the exploitation such as the high cancer rate, are likely to be in menial labour rather than in skilled or management positions. Instead of enthusiasm for taking employment in extractive, the pollution created by the mining, will make other forms of employment, such as small agriculture or hunting which create dependency on the companies for jobs. The role that land destruction and pollution plays in creating employment for the extractive industries is arguably analogous to the role that the destruction of crops of Black farmers in Southern Africa in order to compel their workers to work for settler farmers. The role that pollution plays in coercion of labour for the extractive industries is in part equivalent to the role that directly perpetrated violence played in colonialism, with the effect of leaving behind traumatised communities.

These companies, when forced, still use violence in order to coerce populations in sacrifice zones. The most prominent example of this, is the conflict between Shell, the Nigerian government and the Ogoni people, represented by MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People). This is undoubtable one of the most brutal and best docuRyszard Kapuściński mented incidences of companies

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working in the extractive industries collaborating with local authorities, to kill and injure those who oppose their presence. MOSOP successfully appealed to the United Nations over the violence directed at them as part of Shell’s expansion in their lands. MOSOP was very successful at building links with wider Nigerian society, becoming part of the CD (Campaign for Democracy), an NGO around which those opposed to military rule coalesced.

The success of MOSOP led to the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni nine by the Nigerian government and the wider violence against Ogoni people being treated as a singular and unexplainable incident. In fact, this sort of violence directed against communities faced by the expansion of the fossil fuel and mining multi-nationals is part of their modus operandi.

Within Nigeria, the Ijaws had very similar experiences to those of the Ogoni, however were less able to gain publicity for their situation. In Peru, two were killed in violent police crackdowns on protests against the high levels of pollution caused by heavy metal contamination in the water supply. Dissident priests were transferred and local politicians removed. The relationship between the government and the company is sufficiently close that police were unable to distinguish whether they worked for the government or the company. BHP Billiton at its Cerrejon mine in Colombia, violently evicted pre-existing communities from its site. Rio Tinto in Papua New Guinea, provided helicopters and machinery to facilitate a military blockade of the Bougainvillian region which cost 10,000 lives. Corporations who work in extractive industries have a pattern of working with the government to organise violence on a massive

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scale, perpetrated against people working within the sacrifice zones, who are already suffering from the worst effects of mine related pollution and water contamination.

empowered by the colonial system and imperial powers, who were able to receive resources. The key role of the extractive industries within national and global systems is the reproduction of inequalities of wealth The actions of the mining and fossil and power. fuel industries, towards the communities who live around their mines As anyone who follows Premier and provide focus for the resist- League football or has ever received ance to their activities, rely on vio- an email from a Nigerian prince lence for control. This would either claiming to be a distant family membe delivered indirectly through the ber will be aware, the oil industry passing on of the environmental has a reputation for making people degradation as a result of mining very rich. As is evident from the earon to communities in the vicinity, or lier discussion of the effects of the literally through the organisation of fossil fuel and mining in the comviolence against protestors and sub- munities in the sacrifice zones this versive groups within the sacrifice wealth is often not passed on to the zones. communities near the sites of extraction. During the 1970s, Nigeria underwent a boom in oil producCorruption, Wealth and tion, at a time of rapidly rising fuel Inequality prices. The revenue of the Nigerian The extractive industries play a key national government nearly doubled role in shaping the policies of na- and the petroleum industry rose to tional governments, and the eco- represent 45% of the revenue of the nomic relationships between the Nigerian government. This should elites and the general populace. have produced a multiplier effect The focus of this is the ability that which would have triggered growth the oil industry has to enrich local in all sectors of the economy, a rise elites, either through corruption or in business takings as the oil money the promotion of inequality. Often was spent. This has not occurred. the local elites will use the greater One of the primary reasons for this revenue created by the function- is the tendency of mineral wealth to ing of extractive industries in order concentrate, thus reducing the poto purchase arms in order to pro- tential for the creation of mass demote their military or paramilitary mand. The concentration of wealth faction. In terms of the creation of comes in two poles. One is the condependency and the enrichment centration of wealth among the oil of narrow elite class in countries companies and the higher levels with states dependent on the mil- of their agents. This wealth will ofitary or in civil war. The limiting of ten be exported offshore, to bank the gain from resource extraction to accounts in Switzerland and comtiny cliques of leaders and external panies based in the UK, Holland or companies based largely in Western the USA. The second pole of wealth Europe, Australia or North America concentration is in the Nigerian is an echo of the colonial pact be- government and elites, who were tween the indigenous leaders, or able to use their ability to distribute those appointed by the imperial land, use coercive force and tax as power as ‘tribal’ chiefs, who were a way of enriching themselves and 60 |

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their allies. Often this wealth will be achieved through corruption on a massive scale. The ability of Nigerian elites and oil companies to use resources to produce wealth, creates a ruling class is in effect part of the oil industry, and prepared to serve its interests and an oil industry which is served by the political class. The Nigerian political system relies disproportionately on military compulsion for power (there have been 6 military coups since independence). Within this system there is little pressure to redistribute the oil wealth and to use it as a motor for the economy. In Nigeria the extractive industries serve to enrich a tiny governing class and internationally based companies without significantly effecting the development of other economic sectors.

“Corruption is killing children in Angola.”

Nickolas Kristof

While the Nigerian experience of the role that the oil industry plays in concentrating wealth at the hands of elites has features that are peculiar to the Nigerian context, many of the same features are reproduced in other mineral dependent economies. Saudi Arabia experience varies due to the status of Saudi Aramco as a para-statal company, however it shares with Nigerian the existence of a super-rich oil funded elite class, which also has little interest in sharing its considerable wealth with the majority of the population. This pattern can also be seen with the actions of companies such as BP and Total operating in Azerbaijan, where three of the President’s children have amassed property portfolios

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of close to $100m. It is difficult to measure their other wealth as they often operate as secret shareholders. Angola, Africa’s second largest producer of oil and a large producer of diamonds, has also suffered from civil wars funded by illegal diamonds mined on behalf of De Beers Diamond corporation, in direct contravention of United Nations policies. The role played by extractive industries in the funding of military dictatorships or civil wars in another pattern in the role that commonly arises in the functioning of extractive industries. South Sudan, another of Africa’s biggest oil producing countries is ranked 171 out of 175 countries by Transparency International in its perception of corruption index, with the oil industry being identified as particularly problematic. Like in Angola, in South Sudan much of the revenue from the oil trade has been allocated to buying weapons. The creation of an elite class who benefit from the activities of extractive industries, and use it in the pursuit of extreme wealth, military power or a combination of the two. The creation of elite local classes who are placed to benefit from the profits from mineral extraction is another continuity between the actions of companies in the extractive industries and the operation of colonialism empowering either local allies, aiming to become wealthy quickly, or oppressive state apparatus. It is clear from these examples that the mineral wealth in a country does not necessarily create wealth, and often plays a role in concentrating wealth and power towards a narrow elite, often those who are in the position to exercise the greatest level of violence.

the flow of resources towards developed countries, consolidating wealth in the core. It is this role in the global economy, with poorer countries as the producers of raw materials for richer western countries which will then use their greater industrial production to sell the resources back to them for a greater profit, that concentrates the wealth within the wealthy portion of the global economy. This is because the recipient of resources, rather than using them to fuel the development of local industries tend to export wealth. The dynamic of the production of primary goods such as minerals leaves richer countries dependent on industrial or service sectors of their economy adding the most value to products where the base materials are the minerals exported from the primary producing countries. This dependence of the exporting countries on industrialised countries as a source of demand creates a power dynamic between these countries which enables greater control, often used to manufacture concessions in mining The dependence of mineral producing countries on primary resources makes them vulnerable to variations in the commodity market and places the economy on an unstable footing. This perpetuates the inequality between different countries and the concentration of wealth within core western countries.

Good Extraction?

This essay is full of examples of resource extraction which has gone wrong, which has not benefitted the society and has been used as a driver for inequality. In a wider sense it is obvious that without In general, in the global economy gold to make phones, or fossil fuels the extractive industries promote to run factories, the global econo62 |

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my would not function in remotely the same way. There are clearly examples of times when extraction has not had the negative effects identified in Nigeria and Canada and many other mineral producing countries. The stand out example of this is Norway, which has used its oil wealth to produce the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, investing in education and producing one of the world’s best developed welfare state. In Venezuela, during its oil boom the literacy rate increased to 95%. What is clear in these two examples is the role that nationalised companies played in ensuring that the benefits of extraction were not passed off abroad, to foreign companies.

Nationalisation represents only one of many alternative methods of production. The continued utility of fossil fuel extraction and fossil fuel companies is being questioned, by groups at the frontline, such as indigenous groups in Canada, and by groups, focussing on the challenge posed by climate change, such as Reclaim the Power or People and Planet. Climate change has drawn increasing attention to wider critiques of extraction as a form of imperialism and as a promoter of equality. Ideas such as the promotion of community owned energy, at the moment mainly practiced in the form of solar power cooperatives and the view of natural resources as part of a public commons, can provided a model of the production which benefits society and gives communities the control of extraction which effects.

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LONE STAR STATE

From the very beginning, American influence has shaped the course of Liberian history.

With the Cold War came the opportunity to counter communism in Africa, but this was to spark two civil wars, a period of conflict lasting over 25 years.

By Arthur Scott-Geddes

D

uring the early nineteenth century the American Colonization Society relocated freed slaves to West Africa. Though the movement to resettle was initiated by prominent slave owners and politicians who believed that freed slaves would destabilise southern slave populations, some abolitionists did come to support the relocation. The American colonial mission operated on the unwavering belief in a total and unresolvable racial incompatibility. The subsequent declaration of independence that followed in 1847 resulted in a state based around the total belief in Western cultural superiority.

This belief today persists in a different form; the common Liberian perception of America is one that comes close to idolisation, and it is a perception that is in no way reciprocated.

er, which had been sustained since the very first freed slaves arrived in Liberia, was broken. The relative stability of Americo-Liberian political domination gave way to violent upheaval.

Samuel Doe’s junta pursued power with brutality and was fraught with illegitimacy; the 1985 election, in the eyes of many foreign observers, was stolen. As well as having over fifty of his opponents put to death, it has been suggested that Doe altered his date of birth in order to meet the minimum age requirement for Liberian presidents.

America’s interest in Liberia is easily understood in a Cold War context. The success of Samuel Doe’s initial coup cancelled out the ties with the Soviet Union formed by his predecessor, thereby helping to combat the spread of Communist movements in Africa. In addition, Over a century, incipient racial in- it has also been argued that the US tolerance mutated into ethnic con- sought to counter radical pan-Afriflict on the Pepper Coast, leading to canism, which it considered a fursome of the most horrific violence ther destabilising influence in the in African history. With American region. financial backing, as well as the alleged involvement of the CIA, The reappearance of Charles Taylor Samuel Doe’s brutal coup was suc- plunged Liberia into its first civil war, cessful. It concluded with the pub- and yet here too, American involvelic execution by firing squad of all ment is clear. Samuel Doe, the first but four members of William Tol- Liberian president to be born in Libert’s government. Tolbert himself beria, met an even more appalling was murdered while he slept, and end than the president he ousted. the Americo-Liberian grip on pow- This end, and the end of US support

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for Doe, was signalled by the decision to stop supplying arms to the government in 1999. He was captured and tortured on film, his captor, Prince Johnson, a warlord allied to Taylor, can be seen drinking Budweiser while Doe’s ears are cut off.

A symbol of the brutality and injustice that has permeated the recent history of Liberia, Prince Johnson is today the Senior Senator for Nimba County, Liberia. Fighting in the First Liberian Civil War lasted for 8 years and saw ethnic Krahn, allied to the Doe regime, fight against Gio and Mano. 200,000 lost their lives and two million were displaced. Atrocities and war crimes were rife, rape was weaponised and child soldiers fought for both sides.

Over the course of its lengthy relationship with Charles Taylor, accusations of close American complicity in the tragedy of Liberia’s recent past have abounded. America’s closeness to Taylor was first suspected after his trial and subsequent conviction at The Hague. Taylor described the direct involvement of the US government in his escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.

Taylor said he had been moved, at night, from the maximum security area of the prison, to a much less secure area, and after scaling a fence, found what he believed to be a government car waiting

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“We concentrate our efforts on Bosnia and we don’t pay any attention to Liberia, Rwanda and Burundi because they’re African countries [...] they’re black people and they’re poor people and we concentrate our efforts on white people in Europe [...] this is a tragedy” Jimmy Carter, 1998

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for him. This story seems plausible in the light of confirmation of his role as an informant to American spies working in Liberia during the 1980s. As a result, the US appears to have directly facilitated Charles Taylor’s insurgency and eventual coup against a corrupt regime that was now obsolete due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the horror of Liberia’s first civil war was exceeded by that of the second. Again, war crimes were committed on both sides, leading to as many as 300,000 deaths. Recent scholarship has marked the end of the Cold War in 1989 and America’s invasion of Iraq in 1990 as the moment at which America’s interest in Liberia finally dissipated.

America’s subsequent policy rapidly became one of neutrality, America’s only intervention was to evacuate its own nationals by helicopter. In the course of just a handful of years, American action never materialised to have any of an effect on the tragic events that unfolded. Instead, the events set in motion by America’s Cold War involvement in West Africa went unchecked, civil war raged in Liberia until the United States had intervened in Iraq for the second time. Jimmy Carter quickly deplored the racism of America’s refusal to attempt to quell the violence, which Charles Taylor later confirmed it could easily have done.

American influence has been felt strongly throughout Liberian history.

The unique mode of its establishment left harsh divisions that would provide the fuel for conflict in the country. However, it was America’s attempt to confront communism in Africa that was the spark for civil war. In this alone, America’s legacy is one of conflict, but its distinct retraction from Liberian politics after the end of the Cold War amounts to an abandonment of the Liberian people, for whose suffering it was largely responsible.