Putin's Wars by Marcel H. Van Herpen Read Free Book Online Page B

delight. [6]
    The young Winston Churchill, twenty-two years old, delivered his first political speech
     in Bath in the same year (1897). He told his audience “that our determination is to
     uphold the Empire that we have inherited from our fathers as Englishmen,” adding:
     “we shall continue to pursue that course marked out for us by an all-wise hand and
     carry out our mission of bearing peace, civilization and good government to the uttermost
     ends of the earth.” [7] Was this merely a new hypocrisy replacing the old? One might be tempted to reply in the affirmative. However,
     this is not completely true. Galbraith, for instance, stressed the important role
     Britain played in building a Rechtsstaat in India. Introducing a functioning independent and impartial judiciary in this large
     country was, indeed, a matter of great historical progress.
    “The new faith was law,” wrote Galbraith. “The British were in India to trade and
     make money. There was nothing wrong with that. But the redeeming purpose was to bring
     government according to law. It was an idea of genuine power.” [8] “Largely in consequence,” he continued, “India was one of the best-governed countries
     in the world. Persons and property were safe. Thought and speech were more secure
     than in recent times. There was effective action to arrest famine and improve communications.
     The courts functioned impartially and to the very great pleasure of the litigiously-minded
     Indians.” [9] And Galbraith concluded: “The British rulers were snobbish, race-conscious and
     often arrogant. But if colonialism could anywhere have been considered a success (the
     empty lands always apart), it was in India.” [10]
    At the end of the nineteenth century the theory of the white man’s burden became
     widely accepted in the Netherlands also. Here it was called de ethische koers (the ethical course). This “ethical course” was intended to repair the historical ereschuld (honorable debt) to the indigenous populations. [11] It is telling that even a Dutch socialist MP, Henri van Kol, who, in 1901, in an
     article in the press had severely attacked the imperialist policies of the Dutch government,
     was much more positive after a visit to the Dutch Indies (Indonesia) some years later.
     In a report he wrote of having felt “a feeling of pride” during his visit: “There
     is over there something great and noble being achieved.” [12] According to the Dutch sociologist Van Doorn, “this sense of mission, the feeling
     of being ‘responsible’ for Indonesia grew between the world wars to almost mythical
     proportions.” [13] The Dutch were even praised by outsiders:
In the 1920s American perceptions of Dutch colonial rule had been positive, even if
     such assessments were colored by paternalistic, racial overtones. Consul-General Chas
     Hoover spoke approvingly of Dutch colonial rule over the “apathetically conservative
     people of these islands.” His successor argued that “the whites—particularly the 30,000
     Dutch who are doing it—are experts in the art of government” who were willing to “discuss
     with friendly interest the aspirations of the brown people to learn how to govern
     themselves.” [14]
    Although recognizing the fact that “every empire has been both Jekyll and Hyde,” [15] ex-colonial powers, generally, have stressed the credit balance of their imperial
     rule. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century the sociologist Vilfredo
     Pareto, who was anything but a pure democrat, criticized the hypocrisy of the European
     powers. “An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Belgian, an Italian,” he wrote, “when he fights
     and dies for his fatherland, is a hero; but an African, when he dares to defend his
     fatherland against these nations, is a vile rebel and a traitor. And the Europeans
     carry out their holy duty to destroy the Africans, as, for instance in the Congo,
     in order to teach them to be civilized.”