Two types of colonialism ("Catholic" and "Protestant" approaches)

Interesting, provocative theorizing... one can hardly avoid noticing that the essential difference is between hardcore Protestant and Catholic/High Church Anglican notions of colonialism.

Perhaps it was precisely the oft-mentioned "Judaizing" of Calvinists that made it so easy for them to be ethnocentric, while Catholic cultures carried on the multicultural imperial traditions of the Roman Empire.

And yet, I do not mean to uncritically agree with everything that's written below.


http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009274.html


Two types of colonialism


In an offshoot of the discussion on "Saletan's solution to racial differences in intelligence," Karen from England said that the English of the Church of England "need to have a group of people they can look down upon, and if this group behaves in an utterly dysfunctional manner, they like them all the better." She found examples of this behavior in the days of the British empire. Alan Levine, who is a historian, replied that this was a "very strange picture of the Victorian British. They rarely intervened in their subjects' lives except to prohibit the most grotesque and evil customs involving loss of life.... I can't think of a case where the British admired the most dysfunctional of their subjects." Here Karen replies by explaining that the British had two very different and conflicting approaches to colonialism.

Karen writes:


Alan Levine has a superficial view of British imperial history. I will expand upon what I wrote yesterday.

During the time of Empire, the "British Elite" was not a unitary group with a single set of beliefs. It consisted of two distinct groups which were culturally and ideologically different and often opposed each other over policy issues leading to many clashes. There were the English/Welsh who favoured the colonial model of the Spanish/Portuguese, and the Scots who favoured and practised the colonial model of the Dutch. The Dutch model produced economic powerhouses like South Africa, Rhodesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia; the other model produced economic basket cases like India, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, the Philippines and Latin America.

The late Ian Smith typifies this difference in colonial style. A man of Scots descent, he believed, as did the Dutch, that the whites were God's chosen people to run Africa (and the colonies). He believed in racial differences and the inability of human beings to change these differences. (Only God has the ability to ameliorate these differences and he evidently does not want to). This is a style which was not shared by most English who ultimately became his main opponents.

The two models are described here:


Dutch/Scottish Model

1. The Dutch and Scots are Calvinists who believe in a Covenant religion, race and nationality. The basis of nationality is ancestry and not where one is born or lives. They also believed in a God-given mission to colonise.

2. Humans do not have the ability to transform people, make Africans or Asians into Europeans, or change racial differences. Transformation or progress must be initiated by people from within their own communities (e.g. Japanese). Hence there was no attempt by the Dutch or Scots to impose their civilisation/religion on colonised peoples.

3. Since we have no ability to improve or transform people, and since racial differences exist, the colonised people should be kept separate from the colonisers to protect the standards of the colonisers and protect the colonisers from violence/barbarity/immorality or other negative influences. It is not racism but a realistic recognition of racial differences and of our inability to change them.

4. Dutch and Scots focused on setting up strong economic/administrative systems focused upon efficiency and profit and largely excluded non-Europeans from working in these systems by means of apartheid or segregation.

5. Examples: South Africa under apartheid, Rhodesia under Smith, Hong Kong, Singapore.


English/Spanish/Portuguese Model

1. Not Covenanted people.

2. Method of colonisation haphazard.

3. Belief that all humans can be Hispanics or English and become Catholics or Anglicans. (As Jung said, primitive people should have primitive religions, and Third World peoples have corrupted Christianity horribly by adding Voodoo and other superstitions).

4. Emphasis on spread of language/culture/religion (and in the later stages, democracy) rather than effective administration and economics and the generation of profit.

5. Inclusion of colonised peoples in colonial economic and administrative systems.

6. Inordinate concern with the "civilisation" of primitive peoples and a refusal to accept obvious racial differences.


A good comparison of the two styles is South Africa/Rhodesia and Nigeria. Ian Smith and the Afrikaners did not seek to teach the blacks English or Dutch and did not seek to impose the Church of Scotland or Dutch Reformed Church on the blacks. They left the blacks to their own devices and got on with running the country efficiently, marginalising the blacks but producing a better standard and quality of life for them. Blacks in Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa had the best standard of living of all the blacks in Africa and lived in the least corrupt countries.

Nigeria: English prioritised teaching Africans English and Christianity bringing the Anglican Church to Nigeria. Poor administrative systems and economic development of the country was chaotic. Promotion of "democracy" and universal suffrage. Involved Africans in running the country. Result: the most corrupt country in Africa with one of the lowest standards of living in the world despite being a major oil producer.

If Nigeria had been run like Rhodesia or South Africa, the blacks would have been better off (except for the klepocrats in the government) and Britain might have had a stable source of high quality oil at a cheap price.

The difference between these colonial styles has led to many clashes throughout the time of Empire and even until the present day.

1. Hong Kong- before the handover to China, the English sought to grant (or impose) democracy on Chinese Hong Kong Peoples. This was opposed by the Scots who ran HK including the Governor David Wilson who believed that Chinese people do not need democracy and the colony can be run more efficiently without it. Wilson was removed and the bungling idiot Chris Patten came to impose democracy on a people who had never asked for it. Subsequently curtailed by Chinese Communists.

2. India: Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, said to Queen Victoria, "When you send me a book about civilising a savage, ma'am, I just throw it away." English belief: sending an Asian or African to Eton and Oxford will turn him into an Englishman. This naivety has lead to them being conned many times over. Scots belief: this education will put a veneer on what remains irredeemably a Third Worlder. India was run efficiently by a few British soldiers and administrators and there was no need for a vast Civil Service.

3. Northern Ireland and Britain; The English favoured granting British citizenship to Irish immigrants who had declared a war of independence against Britain in 1916. Result: civil war in Ulster and terrorism and political subversion within the UK. Scots favoured mass deportation of all Irish immigrants with entry only for those with jobs on visas with no political rights or citizenship. These differences of beliefs lead to a 20 year fight between Scottish and English Conservatives.

Salman Rushdie was correct when he said that the English "need to have people to look down upon and so imported lots of backward people after the Empire was lost." The English style of colonialism currently adopted by Americans does not work and creates political and economic instability. The Americans have not learnt that lesson from the fall of the British Empire, which they seem to be trying to replicate. The spread of religion, culture and democracy achieves nothing. The death of Ian Smith should be a reminder that economic and political stability can be achieved only by the repression and containment of primitive peoples and their exclusion from world power and influence.


- end of initial entry -

Yes, the first type is the antecedent of Liberalism, and the second type of Conservatism.

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Originally Posted by Macrobius

Yes, the first type is the antecedent of Liberalism, and the second type of Conservatism.

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Oh yes, the "liberalism grew inevitably from Protestantism"-meme.

Would you also be ready to argue that Vatican II-type open-borders Catholicism grew "inevitably" from traditional Catholic universalism, instead of being its grotesque modernist distortion?


Petr

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Originally Posted by Petr

Oh yes, the "liberalism grew inevitably from Protestantism"-meme.

Would you also be ready to argue that Vatican II-type open-borders Catholicism grew "inevitably" from traditional Catholic universalism, instead of being its grotesque modernist distortion?


Petr

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One needn't fall into post hoc, ergo propter hoc. One must supply a bit more than that to make a case.

No, I don't subscribe to that meme. Anglicanism is protestant, at least through 1832, and Anglicanism is on your 'B' list. What you highlight is the difference between Tories and Whigs. Whig means Covenanter, as in Scotland. Tory means an Irish landowner, as in Anglican High Church and the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and Virginia. The difference is not, in the first instance, Protestant and Catholic, but to the extent that the core of the protestant *political* bloc is Calvinist, and to the extent that Anglican protestants are half on the fence with Catholicism, esp. Tory ones, it turns out that way.

Conservatism was invented, more or less, by Disraeli, as an alliance of manufacturing new money Oligarchs and Tory Anglicans. It was opposed, also more or less, by Gladstone, as an alliance of Freetraders and freethinking atheists against the establishment.

The conclusion that you draw is your own, not mine. If you see in your analysis a 'good side' and 'bad side' and associate those with Protestantism, respectively Catholicism, and then infer an old canard, that is your problem. The genesis of Liberalism and Conservatism are more complex.

In the continental countries like Spain, it was definitely a case of the serviles (Conservatives) supporting the Catholic Church, and the liberales the Latin American revolutions, anti-clericalism, and radical secularisation, as obviously in the French Revolution.

I believe you have, in the analysis you posted, a valid historical description of *a* schism, but I wouldn't be so quick to say it is entirely a religious one. The political dimension -- yes of Calvinism -- in Scotland and Holland is a key to understanding the genesis of the modern world, in the post-Napoleonic era.

Read this:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Inve.../dp/0609809997

It's not the old Weberian canard (Liberalism is just Capitalism, and we know who invented that). First of all, Calvinists aren't all the protestants, and likewise Scots aren't all the Calvinists. Second, he has plenty of evidence. Third, before one slips into the canard it must be qualified, that Scotland participated in the creation of the modern world critically, but was not a sort of hearthland for it. The interactions with the French Huguenots and the continent -- Holland and later Germany/Prussia -- were also key. The curious backwardness-because-of-forwardness of the Anglo-American world is a factor too. (Case of a revolution hitting early, and thus a bit softer and more moderately than elsewhere). That the modern world was generated somewhere between the Hanseatic League and the east coast of America is without doubt, but the story is complex.

The British elite tried to enforce a Spanish catholic colonial system in their American colonies. But, Bacon's Rebellion, and similar revolts in other British American colonies killed that attempt at turning us into a catholic mestizo/negro nation. Here I use the term catholic as in universal...

Let's not forget that Bacon came from a family of English natural philosophers---so he surely understood the game that was being played and the possible outcomes.

A couple of three generations ago, Americans & American historians understood better the central role that Bacon and others palyed in the future of America.

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Originally Posted by Pennsylvania_Dutch

The British elite tried to enforce a Spanish catholic colonial system in their American colonies. But, Bacon's Rebellion, and similar revolts in other British American colonies killed that attempt at turning us into a catholic mestizo/negro nation. Here I use the term catholic as in universal...

Let's not forget that Bacon came from a family of English natural philosophers---so he surely understood the game that was being played and the possible outcomes.

A couple of three generations ago, Americans & American historians understood better the central role that Bacon and others palyed in the future of America.

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A nicely made point, however I don't believe the substance of it. I don't think there is any actual evidence linking Nathaniel Bacon to the philosopher's family. Also, if you read his writings, you will notice a distinct lack of education. The contrast with Adams and Jefferson is palpable.

The rebellion itself seems to have been over trade grievances and a desire to pay back the Indian tribes on the part of the tier of society from lower gentry or yeomen and down. Also, the background of the fighting in Maryland in the 1650s should be kept in mind -- the early colonies were polarised along Puritan/High Church lines, with Catholic Maryland siding with the High Church Cavaliers, and a pro-Cromwellian faction led by Clairbourne. This latter faction 'surrendered' Virginia to Cromwell in 1651/1652. (We tend to forget that the Puritans briefly 'conquered' America).

[QUOTE=Macrobius;24221]A nicely made point, however I don't believe the substance of it. I don't think there is any actual evidence linking Nathaniel Bacon to the philosopher's family. Also, if you read his writings, you will notice a distinct lack of education. The contrast with Adams and Jefferson is palpable.[QUOTE]

Bacon's family background, and education are well established.

The rest is pretty obvious, even today the government wants to deal with the tan everyman rather than the White man. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Pennsylvania_Dutch

Bacon's family background, and education are well established.

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I take that back. His grandfather was a cousin of Lord Verulam.

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The rest is pretty obvious, even today the government wants to deal with the tan everyman rather than the White man. :rolleyes:

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It would be interesting to spell this out in detail with respect to Berkeley's government.

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Originally Posted by Macrobius

I take that back. His grandfather was a cousin of Lord Verulam.



It would be interesting to spell this out in detail with respect to Berkeley's government.

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Go to Google books, type in Bacon's Rebellion. Read anything published before 1900. :cool: But, remember the further back you go in time toward the original sources, the clearer the situation becomes. A book published before 1900 is closer to the events, a book published before 1850 is even closer, and so forth...

It's worth noting that, Dutch Roman and French laws differ considerably from English common law. I don't think that you can compare the impact that traditions have upon national policies such as colonisation, with out also studying the differences between these countries legal systems.