Events & Issues
– The Case for Colonialism
Bruce Gilley
Department of Political Science, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA
ABSTRACT
For the last 100 years, Western colonialism has had a bad name. It is
high time to question this orthodoxy. Western colonialism was, as a
general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in
most of the places where it was found, using realistic measures of those concepts. The countries that embraced their colonial inheritance, by and large, did better than those that spurned it. Anti-colonial ideology imposed grave harms on subject peoples and continues to thwart sustained development and a fruitful encounter with modernity in
many places. Colonialism can be recovered by weak and fragile states
today in three ways: by reclaiming colonial modes of governance; …
Read the paper in this RA link
– A Quick Reminder of Why Colonialism Was Bad
Nathan J. Robinson/ September 14, 2017
Ignoring or downplaying colonial atrocities is the moral equivalent of Holocaust denial…
Perhaps the easiest way to understand why colonialism was so horrific is to imagine it happening in your own country now. It is invaded, conquered, and occupied by a foreign power. Existing governing institutions are dismantled and replaced by absolute rule of the colonizers. A strict hierarchy separates the colonized and the colonizer; you are treated as an inconvenient subhuman who can be abused at will. The colonists commit crimes with impunity against your people. Efforts at resistance are met with brutal reprisal, sometimes massacre. The more vividly and accurately you manage to conjure what this scenario would actually look like, the more horrified you will be by the very idea of colonialism.
Read the paper in this link:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/a-quick-reminder-of-why-colonialism-was-bad.
– A Controversial article praises colonialism. But colonialism’s real legacy was ugly.
Brandon Kendhammer September 19
How many of today’s problems in the Global South are a direct legacy of colonialism? A recent journal article by Bruce Gilley, “The Case for Colonialism,” kicked up great controversy by arguing that the “orthodoxy” that Western colonialism was universally harmful to colonized peoples and countries is overstated. Colonialism, Gilley writes, was “both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate” in many places.
Gilley, a political scientist at Portland State University, studies Chinese politics and recently made waves for resigning his membership in the American Political Science Association over its alleged lack of political diversity. His article in Third World Quarterly, however, ignores many existing studies that answer these questions with better data and more rigorous analysis, and which come to a resounding conclusion of “no.”
Read more on the story here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/09/19/colonialism-left-behind-a-long-legacy-most-of-it-bad/?utm_term=.1190fdac9cdc
– Responding to the Viewpoint article on “The case for colonialism”
Shahid Qadir/ Editor-in-Chief, Third World Quarterly
September 2017
Third World Quarterly (TWQ) recently published a Viewpoint article entitled “The case for colonialism”, written by Bruce Gilley of Portland State University. This Viewpoint has, very understandably, generated intense debate. As a peer reviewed, scholarly journal, our Aims and Scope sets out that TWQ “…examines all the issues that affect the many Third Worlds and is not averse to publishing provocative and exploratory articles.” Throughout its 40 year history, TWQ has been at the forefront of shaping development discourse, with Viewpoint essays enabling challenging opinions to be tested though rigorous double-blind peer review and then debated upon publication by fellow researchers. As with all articles in the journal, this Viewpoint did undergo double-blind peer review and was subsequently published.
Read the full response in this RA link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/pb-assets/TWQ-response-Sept-2017.pdf
– Petitioning Editor of Third World Quarterly Shahid Qadir and 33 others
Retract “The case for colonialism”
Maxine Horne Manchester, United Kingdom
Letter to: Editor of Third World Quarterly Shahid Qadir
We, the undersigned, call for a retraction of the article “The case for colonialism”
The offending article has brought widespread condemnation from scholars around the globe. The article lacks empirical evidence, contains historical inaccuracies, and includes specious fallacies. There is also an utter lack of rigor or engaging with existing scholarship on the issue.
The peer review process exists to ensure rigor in published research and should have been employed to stop such a poor piece of scholarship from reaching a wide audience. Editor or editors at Third World Quarterly allowing this piece utterly lacking in academic merit to be published should be replaced from the Editorial Board.
Read more on the story in this link:
https://www.change.org/p/editors-of-the-third-world-quarterly-retract-the-case-for-colonialism
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