A critique of Bruce Gilley’s “The Case for Colonialism”

Paradigm shifts are the lifeblood of discourse. A stultifying consensus reduces dynamic, contested bodies of knowledge to artifacts in a museum, the meaning and significance of which already decided upon by the power-knowledge apparatus of state propaganda. “The museum is where history goes to die”, to paraphrase the historian Evgeni Dobrenko, and it’s in this spirit that we should appreciate Bruce Gilley’s recent kamikaze attack on the field of postcolonial studies. Regardless of what we may think of Dr. Gilley’s premises, the will and capacity to challenge orthodoxies is the sine qua non of a functioning public sphere; the rowdy and raucous debate of a controversial proposition epitomizing the vital signs of a body politic. For what it’s worth, I’m glad this book exists.

Background

Bruce Gilley is a Canadian academic who shot to prominence in 2017 after publishing an incendiary article titled “The Case for Colonialism” for the journal Third World Quarterly. The article was both a revisionist history that defended 19th century European colonialism, but also advocated a return to formal colonialism under specific conditions as a means of bootstrapping development in Sub-Saharan African. The article provoked the kind of vitriolic reaction one would expect, Gilley henceforth becoming an object of near-universal opprobrium among the academic community. Petitions were signed to have his PhD revoked, campaigns were mounted to have him fired, articles penned in the broadsheets besmirching his character and urging that he be “ostracized, publicly shamed and humiliated”. Finally, credible death threats were made to the editorial board of Third World Quarterly, resulting in the article’s retraction and an end to the whole affair, allowing Gilley to join the swelling roster of based academics whose attempted cancellation by the woke mob led ironically to them having a bigger platform than ever before.

In 2023, he published an elaborated version of the article that also takes aim at the state of academia, the scholarly value of most works of colonial history, and a grab bag of various right wing cultural grievances. “The Case For Colonialism” is published by New English Review Press, the same publishing house that brought us such titles as “Allah is Dead: Why Islam is Not A Religion”, “Jews Make the Best Demons: ‘Palestine’ and the Jewish Question”, “No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care: A UKIP Brexit Memoir”, and who could possibly forget “Woke Bullies and Their Assault on Mental Health”? My own interest here stems from having specialized in Global History at grad school, a field in which colonization features prominently and wherein left wing bias is implicit. Lacking the confidence to challenge what I was reading back then, I nevertheless distinctly recall noticing something that Gilley repeatedly mentions throughout the text: the absence, in most colonial histories, of a conceivable counterfactual. It’s one thing to demonstrate the evils of colonialism, but was there a plausible alternative predicated on more humane relations? One of Gilley’s key insights is that the stitching together of a world economy was well underway in the 19th century, and state involvement more often than not had the effect of providing some measure of accountability and regulation to a process that would otherwise have been led by freelancers, trading companies and adventurers accountable to no one. The problem with The Case For Colonialism is that Gilley stretches this idea that ‘the alternative to colonialism was worse’ well past the limits of persuasively supporting his premise, and in the process takes us to some truly astounding places.

I’ll begin by first laying out the broad framework of his premise, then discuss the idea to “recolonize” Africa, followed in part two by his revisionist perspective on colonial history, and conclude with a fascinating take on the colonization of the United States.

Conceptual Framework

Gilley makes a point of clarifying a small matter early in the book that one could say invalidates the entire enterprise: The Case For Colonialism – surprisingly – is intended as a polemic, rather than a balanced evaluation. According to Gilley,

“such an endeavour would have served no purpose other than add to the “it’s complicated” intellectual approach that seems to be the only permissible alternative to the “it was evil” orthodoxy in the academy. If, after due consideration of evidence and logic, a scholar believes that colonialism was an unambiguously “good thing” in most times and places, then he needs to begin by making that case itself.” (p. 95)

There’s nothing at all wrong with polemics – I myself am an unabashed polemicist – however, Gilley spends half the book criticizing the lack of objectivity in most colonial scholarship, then challenges that orthodoxy with his own partisan dogmatism. It would be perfectly legitimate if his intention was merely to even the scales, but this would require him to treat the scholarship he’s criticizing as an enterprise equally valid to his own, which he doesn’t do. “The field has become a cult, not a place of science” (p. 130), Gilley laments. Indeed. And what better way to affirm the ideals of science than by explicitly ignoring alternative explanations and inconvenient evidence?

Gilley aims to substantiate 4 basic conclusions:

1. European colonies of the period from roughly the 1830s to the 1960s were – on the whole, and in most places – better governed, more humane and more economically productive than the alternative.
2. These colonies were objectively legitimate in that they had the overwhelming consent of those governed.
3. The period of decolonization (beginning around the mid 1950s) up to the present has been a failed experiment in self-government, contrasting in virtually every way with the period of colonial government. It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to conclude that some form of limited recolonization would be a superior alternative.
4. A combination of misguided guilt, callow political correctness, and yes, cultural marxism, has called into question the legacy of the Western liberal tradition, leading to left wing ideological capture of the academy and a concomitant debasement of colonial scholarship. Groupthink and fear of professional consequences have had the effect of muzzling free inquiry and open debate on the legacy of colonialism, producing at least two generations of mostly worthless scholarship in desperate need of revision.

I’ll begin with one of his key ideas, namely that colonial economic management was superior to alternatives. According to Gilley, an effective way to evaluate colonialism’s efficacy at stimulating economic development is to compare the present-day economies of countries who continued to pursue ‘colonial-style policies’ even after colonization ended versus those who pursued what Gilley calls ‘anticolonial policies’.

[I]n 1958, South Korea’s economy was the same size as Peru’s, while Taiwan’s was the same size as Egypt’s. In the following decades, South Korea and Taiwan pursued colonial-style policies of export-development and financial and economic integration with the West, while Egypt and Peru pursued anticolonial protest. By 1982, South Korea’s economy was more than twice as large as Peru’s, while Taiwan’s was 70% larger than Egypt’s. Today, Taiwan and South Korea have per capita levels of GDP that are four times higher than their anti-colonial counterparts… It did not take a Ph.D. to realize that the countries which had preserved their colonial legal orders, economic systems, bureaucracies, and political pluralism were the ones that were doing better. In Southeast Asia, Singapore and Malaysia carried on the colonial system with great success while anti-colonialists laid waste to Burma and former French Indo-China. Across the Middle East, anticolonial movements destroyed millions of lives from Algeria to Lebanon while a few beacons of stability like the United Arab Emirates and Israel took over colonial mandates to create decent societies. Africa was no different: grotesque human suffering at the hands of anti-colonial movements from Ghana to Mozambique leavened by adherence to colonial systems of law and market economies in places like Botswana and South Africa. (p. 28)

It’s immediately apparent that Gilley is painting with a broad brush on some points, while other claims are simply bogus. Few of his ideals of ‘colonial-style’ states had during this period what we could call political pluralism (by my count, only Malaysia, Botswana1 and, arguably, Israel would count). No matter though, the main thing is that they pursued ‘export-development’ and ‘economic integration with the West’. This is where the Gilleyan colonial/anticolonial binary starts to breakdown, however, because he attempts to reduce all foreign trade to ‘pursuing colonial policies’, depsite the fact that comparative advantages were often obtained by totally disregarding said policies. An example of this is the South Korean chaebol system of national champions with close government ties, a textbook case of industrial policy in direct contravention to anything that would have been permitted under colonialism (imagine colonial African governments providing loans and assistance to local industrial concerns so they could better compete European imports). Gilley is correct in implying that the policy of import substitution industrialization2 was a failure, but he insults the intelligence of his readers by lumping all successful alternatives to this policy together as examples of ‘colonial policies’. Moreoever, what do South Korea, South Africa, Israel and Taiwan all have in common? Each were key strategic allies of the U.S. during the Cold War, a relationship from which they benefited enormously but one that for Gilley isn’t even worth mentioning. The difference between South Korea and Israel on the one hand, and French Indochina on the other, has nothing to do with nurturing the former while pulverizing the latter. It’s actually about who pursued colonial policies. He makes a similarly farcical claim in reference to Cuba:

The costs of anti-colonialism in Cuba were shocking: comparable islands had income levels roughly ten times that pitiful island. (p. 30)

Cuba has been under a sanctions regime since the early 1960s, but this again has zero impact for Gilley. The only variable that can plausibly explain successes is whether or not a decolonized nation pursues “colonial-style” policies.

The corruption, political instability and lack of economic development in modern Sub-Saharan Africa is a theme to which he periodically returns to contrast with the halcyon competence of colonial rule.

The Oxford philosopher John Plamenats warned in 1960 that “foreign rulers ought to see to it that, when they withdraw, the passive and inarticulate do not fall victims to a ruthless minority of exuberant patriots.” Yet, this is precisely what happened in most places. Civil war, political tyranny, and economic collapse spread from one country to another … Given the proximity to the colonial era, it was easy to blame these disasters on “the legacies of colonialism”, even if non-colonized places like Ethiopia were experiencing similar traumas … [t]his pat phrase would have enduring appeal to anti-colonial intellectuals. It had no statute of limitations because to deny oneself this intellectual cop-out was to force oneself into mature thinking. (pp. 19-20)

This is a fair point, particularly from the vantage of 2024 as the colonial period fades from living memory. Gilley can’t help but step on a banana peel, however, contradicting himself by claiming that in fact the legacies of decolonization are still plaguing African countries. He cites the example of Guinea-Bissau, whose roughly ten year experiment in anti-colonial one-party rule have led to “continuing political disarray … what might have become a prosperous and humane Macau or Goa of Africa is today a cesspool of human suffering”. (p. 47). In his own words, “it should not have taken more than a decade or so for the fruits of decolonization to be harvested” (p. 19), unless, that is, the country succumbs to the toxic allure of anticolonialism, which unlike decades of colonial rule does leave the country in a permanent mire, according to Gilley.

A final point I’ll make about his overall premise concerns a genre of argument to which we’ve all resorted from time to time: the “I have black friends/black people agree with me” defense. A whole three chapters towards the end of the book are dedicated to scouring the works of Third World writers like Chinua Achebe and V.S. Naipaul for positive appraisals of colonialism. In principle there’s nothing wrong with this, but again it smacks of the same partisan ventriloquizing he criticizes when postcolonial scholars do it. Because these chapters are essentially revisionist treatments of anecdotal testimonies by exceptionally privileged colonial subjects, I consider them of limited support to Gilley’s thesis, however I bring them up to highlight his delusions that they provide some sort of rhetorical cover for the clearly anticipated charge of racism, particularly in light of the scalding hot takes he drops on us later. I fear that trotting out instances of alleged support, such as “[t]the people of the Third World all thank you,’ a new friend in India wrote” (p. 66) may appear a tad specious when you’re advocating turning Africa into a governance daycare.

“Recolonizing” Africa

As wild as it sounds, this is actually one of the stronger sections of the book, however it also inevitably tips us off as to cui bono from a reappraisal of colonial history. Here’s our neutral arbiter on the virtues of objective scholarship:

This also underscores the importance of reinvesting in a nonbiased historiography of colonialism so that the colonial periods are seen not as objects of resistance but as fruitful sources of creativity. Secondly, and related, the colonial governance agenda recognizes that the capacity for effective self-government is lacking and cannot be conjured out of thin air. The lack of state capacity to uphold the rule of law and deliver public services was the central tragedy of “independence” in the Third World … To reclaim “colonial governance” means increasing foreign involvement in key sectors in business, civil society, and the public sector in order to bolster this capacity. (p. 48)

It almost sounds like Gilley is trying to launder the reputation of colonialism to detoxify the process of Western multinationals taking over key government functions in the developing world, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now. He does provide a genuinely solid example of how this can work in practice:

In 1985, the Indonesian government fired all 6,000 government inspectors at the Jakarta port of Tanjung Priok and replaced the corrupt and inefficient customs service with the Swiss firm SGS. The Swiss rebuilt the customs service, handing back partial control in 1991 and full control in 1997. Indonesia’s exports boomed. (p. 49)

There’s nothing particularly devious about a country with expertise in a given area being invited to share that expertise with a country in need (developed nations provide this sort of training to each other all the time). With this in mind, then, let’s hear him out on recolonization:

While the conceptual abandonment of the myth of self-governing capacity is now mainstream, the challenges of making new forms of colonialism work are immense. There are (two) separate questions for policy-makers: (1) how to make colonialism acceptable to the colonized; (2) how to motivate Western countries to become colonial again … and make colonialism achieve lasting results. (p. 54)

Let’s discuss each challenge in turn.

1. How to make colonialism acceptable to the colonized
   • Gilley advocates a somewhat maverick approach here in that he feels that actually appealing to the colonized in the form of a plebiscite or referendum would paradoxically lack legitimacy.
     

     [A]t least in the initial phases, legitimacy will be demonstrated not by the holding of a plebiscite or by the support of organized and broadly representative groups, but simply by the ability of the intervening state to win compliance from key actors and get the job done … it is precisely the absence of conditions for meaningful accountability or representation that makes intervention necessary in the first place, much as colonialism spread in order to better manage ungoverned encounters with the West … As in colonial times, foreign control by a liberal state with its own robust accountability mechanisms is the closest that a people with a weak state can come to “local ownership.”

     I’ll try to unpack his line of reasoning as best I can here. Since many African states lack sufficient governing capacity, according to Gilley, they’ve already demonstrated their fundamental illegitimacy. Even when freely elected, they often fail to deliver on promises and provide necessary services. Therefore, even if a majority of Africans in a given country voted for some form of “recolonization”, that wouldn’t make it legitimate, as the political process itself is meaningless. Even allowing the impression that recolonization was subject to popular approval would doom the whole enterprise, as the caprice and instability of African democracy is among the root causes of underdevelopment in the first place. To solve this dilemma, Gilley champions a kind of “liberal authoritarianism”, a paradigm in which, if abuses should occur, the responsible and accountable liberal state will document them, and perhaps the party in the home country who presided over the abuses will be voted out of office by citizens indignant at the mistreatment of faraway peoples, thus solving the problem by encouraging the next ruling party to be better colonial administrators. This is apparently the best accountability Africa can hope for; the abstract sympathy of Western voters.

      

     The obvious issue here is that the West has been singing the praises of democracy to the developing world for half a century, but under this new paradigm the line becomes “authoritarianism is actually okay when it’s a rich state exercising authority over a poor one”. The irony here is that Gilley originally made his name as a China watcher and critic of the Communist regime, and now he’s essentially affirming what they’ve been saying all along, the idea that ‘liberal democracy doesn’t work for everyone’, and that the stability necessary for long-term economic planning is often better achieved under authoritarian auspices. Gilley cites several positive examples of limited ‘proto-recolonization’ efforts, including the Government and Economic Assistance Management Program (GEMAP) in Liberia which gives budgeting oversight to external actors in order to combat rampant corruption. This is an interesting experiment, though in my view undermines rather than supports his argument. GEMAP is nearly 20 years old and Liberia remains one of the poorest countries on earth. If anything, this example demonstrates that formal Western involvement in African governance wouldn’t be the panacea Gilley claims.

2. How to motivate Western countries to become colonial and make colonialism achieve lasting results.
   • For Gilley, this proposition would actually be tougher to achieve than the first because colonialism is not only unpopular, but unprofitable. He makes the amusing claim that, in spite of what most of us probably take as common knowledge – that colonization was predicated upon extracting more wealth than was reinvested – “colonialism was probably a money-loser for the imperial powers” (p. 54). To substantiate this bold claim, he cites three of the feeblest sources imaginable: the first, a study from 1966 that excusively deals with Portuguese colonization. Next up, an article in an economic journal about the 17th century Dutch colony of Formosa (two centuries outside his own stipulated chronology). Last but not least, an article in the Atlantic by fellow imperialism advocate Robert Kaplan. Not exactly ironclad evidence when the consensus he’s trying to overturn is that Europe benefited financially from colonialism. Later on, we find him walking this claim back somewhat when justifying the extractive nature of colonial relations “I cannot think of a more noble aim. The comparative advantage of colonial areas was in resources and commodities and modernization entailed developing those advantages” (p. 99). So, they probably lost money, but even if they didn’t it was a noble endeavour.

      

     How then do we entice Western governments to support recolonization, when a stubborn, indefatigable “anti-colonial ideology can be easily mobilized” against this civilizing mission? Gilley suggests:

      a “market in transnational governance” which we might less euphemistically call “colonialism for hire.” Colonial states would be paid for their services, an important motivator to be successful. The contractual motivation would also strengthen consent through periodic renegotiation of the terms. Properly designed, host countries would more than recoup those costs through higher foreign investment, lower external borrowing costs, and greater business confidence, benefits that were arguably more significant than improved governance in the colonial era. (p. 55)

     

2. • He futher elaborates that the enterprise could be based on “chartered cities” like Hong Kong and Macau, a small slice of territory in which Western governments would have sovereignty to encourage investment through providing a safer business environment. This is actually not a terrible idea for the sole reason that the African country who freely elects to give it a shot doesn’t have much to lose; leasing a sliver of territory that’s probably not being put to productive use for the possibility of higher foreign investment is kind of a no-brainer. But the obvious model here – Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s – bears no similarity to the current situation in Africa. For one, Hong Kong had been slowly built up over the course of a century before playing the crucial role of banker in the Chinese economic miracle. Back then, investing in Mainland China via Hong Kong made sense because of the considerable language barriers and unfamiliar business environment, not to mention the far greater importance of face-to-face business relationships in the age before the internet. It’s unclear how a hypothetical British chartered city in Sierra Leone, for example -which needs to be built from the ground up – could possibly provide the impetus for rapid economic development, especially considering the fact that, unlike in the golden age of colonialism, the contemporary business climate prioritizes immediate returns on investment. There are already ways to invest in African economic development via Western banks. The chartered city concept isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it does seem an impractical one.

      

     However, if the idea isn’t exclusively designed to jumpstart African development, but rather to create a safe, low tax/cheap labour haven for Western capital under the guise of a civilizing, humanitarian mission, the proposal starts to make more sense. As labour costs naturally start rising in Asia, capital will demand new destinations where the profit margins are still relatively high. The problem – one of the Western world’s own making – is that many of the prime destinations for capital in the 80s and 90s (China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) were authoritarian countries who kept labour in line and ensured business ran smoothly. African countries were encouraged by decades of Cold War propaganda to be democractic3 despite the system often tending towards dysfunction, with the result that, while Sub-Saharan Africa should be the next China, what Western capital now requires, ironically, are strong, nationalist, authoritarian states with whom they can do business without fear of coups or the vagaries of popular will. The chartered cities model is an attempt to artificially implant that sort of business environment in Africa, a belated recognition of the ideologically flawed modernization theories preached by the West that claimed democracy precedes development.

      

     While intriguing, the prohibitive costs and probable hostility towards chartered cities make them a fairly unrealistic prospect; a coked up case for colonialism that would probably work better as an episode of Atlanta than an actual real life project.

To be continued…

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