 Yeah, colonialism in the world order, what a juicy topic. History is here to help with the history professor Peter Hoffenberg. This is Think Tech, I'm Jay Fredelsen. It's a 12 o'clock block on a given Thursday. So Peter, I just want to tell you a short story before we start. Okay. So my wife and I went to Lisbon. Lisbon, Portugal, they did a lot of colonialization, colonialism. And at the harbor there, there's a square, a huge big square right along the water. And this inlaid into the square, into the rocks, the stone on the square, a map, a world map showing all the trips that the Portuguese sailors made around the world and when and who and so forth. It's a living map of all their travels. And it kind of answers the question of why, why did colonialism pay? And how did colonialism pay? Somehow this map that Lisbon answers that. Now I know you're going to say that colonialism began a long time before the Portuguese. I know you're going to say that because you have that kind of historical scope. But let me say what it shows me is that colonialism is rooted in technology, better ships, better guns, better organization of crews and Marines and what have you. And when they went to an underdeveloped country, nobody would stand in their way. So the Portuguese had an easy time of it. So did the Spanish and so forth. But no, tell me when you think it really started and why. It really started. All right, I think though you're absolutely right in our, in our general common Western sense of colonization, you are absolutely right. The Portuguese have the first Western effort after the Romans to expand in a systematic way. So I think you're absolutely right. When colonization started, I suppose whenever a kingdom or a tribal community decided to expand, to blow away what had been accepted borders and conquer the next kind. So we, I think historically, I'm not sure it proves much going beyond the ones that most people know about. Wait, wait, wait. There's something just saying that I think it's worth dwelling on for a moment. I have been implying that, that if you, if you aspire to having the country next to you, to take it over, such as Putin is trying to do in Ukraine, that's colonialism. But when I think of colonialism, I think of some remote place at a different level of development rather than just my neighbor. Could you distinguish that and help me with that? Fair enough. So the first distinction is conquest in and of itself is not colonialism. Conquest is conquest. Colonialism is conquering and occupying, controlling in other societies, domestic and foreign affairs. That's colonization. So to sweep across the steps of Eurasia, pillaging and plundering wherever you go, but not necessarily establishing a new political system or controlling those other people's lives, that's conquest. And that's probably been there, as we know from paleo anthropologists, that's been there since certainly meanderthal and chroma and yon conquest. Okay. So what you're asking. You also distinguish me from me. Sure. The difference between exploration and colonialization because you can explore something, find it, plant the flag and go home. So when you colonialize, you do much more than that, right? Right. Let me have to the first question first, which is that you can colonize your neighbor, work, for example, on Germany during the Second World War and what all of your viewers know about about Laban's arm, the idea of gaining new territory. That was a colonization of the Soviet Union. It did not work. So I don't think distance, distance is not required. And there are even arguments about internal colonialism. Wait, for example, Australian originals or Native Americans. So the distance is the idea that it's another people. Right. Now that people could be internal or external. So the distance comes into play with your excellent point about technology, which enables societies beyond horseback to overcome. So certainly distance is a factor, but it's not necessary. And I think one of the difficulties when we think about colonization is we assume your excellent point that it has to be a distance. And somehow we don't look at, for example, internal or neighborly occupation and rule as something different than colonialism. But it is a form of colonization. Now, does exploration inevitably mean colonization? I don't think historians would say it inevitably means exploration. When exploration is followed by some kind of a political or economic relationship, which extends beyond the exploration. So yes, there were explorers to the Americas, but clearly with Columbus, there was an effort to extend that rule and extend the economic exploration. So an explorer, I suppose scholars interested in sort of in the realm of ideas would say that's kind of a colonial idea to go and explore and discover. But I think serious historians would say that doesn't necessarily lead to colonization. So we as historians try to understand when and where it did and when and where it did not. And there's certainly historical faces where it did not lead, right? The idea of quote unquote discovering for yourself, perhaps just in territory, might not have necessarily meant colonization. Another parameter up here is violence. Would you say that colonialization always involves a certain degree of violence, physical violence to take over the other place that it's not necessarily peaceful? Yeah, I don't think anybody would disagree with that. And that, again, is included in conquest without colonization, but I don't think anybody who treats colonization seriously would either ignore your point about violence, generally ignore some kind of dispossession of land almost inevitably, not inevitably. And this is not just white European colonizers. This is the process of colonization. In one way or another, denies sovereignty. So you're removing somebody's political system of their own. And that gets a little bit later on when we talk about where the colonial was a good thing or not. What did it replace? We have to be very careful, but certainly replace sovereignty. And that's the only challenge most customs. Sometimes colonizers use local customs. I think you could see Hawaii in the merging of Christianity as a colonizing measure, merged with Hawaiian traditions and back and forth. And then thirdly, I think most historians, actually I have not read any would disagree, but I'm sure they're out there. It also in one way or another affects resources. So land and labor. In other words, we're talking about bodies as well as the land itself. And I think those three problems, right? Loss of sovereignty, some type of erasure or change of culture at the place, and then the new kind of exploitation of land and labor. And why I say new kind is certainly most of the societies are colonized. We're not egalitarian societies. So again, we want to be careful, but they weren't replaced by egalitarian societies either. So when I teach this, I teach what the Aztecs did, which was sovereignty, right? They had their own customs and they certainly had their own forms of exploiting land and labor. So the Spaniards come along and they change all of those, which is not a claim that one was better or worse. It's a claim that colonizations and agency have changed, which I don't think anybody would disagree with. It's mostly an agency of, as you said, resources. I go to the new world to find gold, for example. I go to the new world to find riches. I want to bring those riches back. That's what drives me. And that's what drives Isabella to send me and fund my trip, my promise that I will find riches and bring them back, right? Probably that's certainly one of the motivations. I don't think anybody would doubt that it's one of them. And that gets back to probably most colonizations have some kind of El Dorado myth. The Laban drum was that land was there and weed and oil. Even late 19th century European intervention in Africa and Chinese intervention in Africa now is driven by not necessarily what's there, but what one thinks is there. And I don't mean to be cutesy. I just mean, for example, late 19th century imperialism, even contemporaries recognized that it was probably an investment in many cases. Now, there was rubber and there was coal and gold. That's for sure. But Europeans invested in places where there was the hope. And you can think about the Western view of China as an El Dorado where there are a limitless number of resources, right? And limitless number of labors. So I think you're right. An historian like myself would take that idea and see how it is connected to other ones. You mentioned the word imperialism. And that's a new connection. And I wonder if you could help me understand the relationship between imperialism and colonialism. You know, that's a really interesting connection. It's an interesting connection. And it's one where, you know, from our tradition to historians, three opinions, I won't add the ethnic root to our tradition. So some historians just use those terms interchangeably. But if we wanted to try to have a discussion where we distinguish them, quite often colonization discusses what develops after conquest or what developed in the ensuing years, et cetera, after an imperial venture. But again, I don't think in many cases, as the French would say, that might be a difference without a distinction. I don't want to disregard the scholars who do that. But I think we probably pretty easily use it interchangeably. One difference might be apropos the question you posed. Most people don't say imperialism has anything good in it. But people do say colonization has something good in it. So it may be a reflection of some innate reaction to the word. Now, historically, though, there was a distinction in that you could think of yourself as a colonizer without being an imperialist. Because up to 1900, about the term imperialism referred to a formal empire, Napoleon, China, Russia. So Americans recognized they were colonizers, but they weren't imperialists as America was a republic. And even though I know that sounds like chopping a little too finely, but you could see politically in a sense of people's culture, right? In the 19th century, clearly the US is expanding, clearly. And clearly it's expanding in ways which are very similar colonization. But the term having an empire changes after 1900. And you're very wary to say, hi, I'm promoting an American empire, because people will think about Rome, and they'll think most immediately about Napoleon. So it had additional luggage. And there's lots of good scholarship on the history of words, which says that at least in the West, the term changed its meaning to more of what we think of today. But if that was around the later 19th or early 20th century. So one takeaway question here, Peter, is, and we can get to it as we go, is whether colonialization, colonialism is part of the species. You see it so often, and you see it repeated, and you see it succeed, you see it fail, and then repeat it again. Throughout human history, in one degree or another, one form or another, seems to me we've had this. And so ultimately, I think I would like to know from you whether it is part of humankind. It's just the way we operate. And if so, can we ever come to rest on borders? Can we ever come to rest on cultures and the distinctions between one sovereignty and another sovereignty? And I might add that one interesting part of colonialization for me is that some colonial enterprises have been much more successful than others. Some have been abject train wreck failures. And I would really like to know from you what the characteristics are of a, quote, successful colonialization and an unsuccessful one. A couple of questions, all of which will take at least a week to answer. I think I lost the train for a second. I apologize. The first question was whether it's baked into our history. Yeah. And I, not to avoid the question, but I turned to somebody like EO Wilson, who's a sociobiologist. And if he were here, I think you would say yes, that there is something evolutionary, not necessarily about colonization, the way we've defined it very precisely, but he spent his life studying ants. And the idea of an ant colony, which is not irrelevant, right? A pattern of behavior, which shares a hierarchy. Clearly there's a queen and ant colonies are capable of expanding, exploiting resources and bringing them home. And, you know, whether or not one agrees with that, that's probably when you talk about baked into sociobiology, that's probably just as important as what the Chrome and Jons did. All right. So in other words, it's something species. Now I'm not trained in that way. I'm trained to find it interesting and read about it. So I would say that most of our understanding of human history, at least since times of having written down a record, including Canadian foreign tablets and including non-Western forms, we found some types of conquest and colonization. I would also say though, and one of the reasons that this current Russian Ukrainian crisis is so interesting and important, is that it's no longer seen by most of the world as acceptable. So the traditional formal conquest and colonization, I'm going to make a distinction between formal and informal, is reacted to in 2022 in a way very different than 1822. And certainly very different than the date you began us with 1522. So I would also say that human political development has tried to lay down borders, as we talked about last time, right? Part of the 1945 post World War II agreement was to say that formal imperialism and formal colonialism were no longer acceptable. And so you saw the birth of probably at least two thirds of the world's countries. Now, having said that, one response is that there persists throughout the world informal forms of imperialism and colonialism. And this is what scholars and others call neocolonialism. And this gets back to your second question. Well, if, for example, the goals of the Western colonizers, and now the goal of China as a colonizer, include wealth, include access to resources, include controlling the world's economy, then you'd have to say European empires were successful, right? Because it is a globalized world, which even those not in the West participate with Western tools. In any way, Brazil and China and India serve themselves economically really are ways in which 19th century Western powers did. So that gets to, and I don't mean in Talmudic way to respond with a question to you, but in a way that means back to your question about why people colonized. So let's say, for example, the Portuguese one you began with. Well, among the reasons we're converting people around the world. Religious. Religious. Religious. Religious. Right, but the crusades are different because crusades are going out and murdering non-Christians. Just murdering them. The goal of imperialism was only to murder them if you couldn't convert them. So if we were to argue, for example, that one of the goals of the Spanish and English and French and Dutch colonizers, and also Islamic colonizers was to gain converts, then you know what? If you look at the countries they colonized, there are more Muslims in countries that Islamic power is colonized, and there are more Christians around the world in places like India and Syria than they would have been otherwise. So if the goal were to convert parts of the world successful, if the goal was to gain economic wealth, yes and no. But in Portugal and Spain are not unnecessarily wealthy successful economic countries. That's probably as much as another discussion if you want to get to European economies, but their wealth at the time certainly depended upon having an empire, and Britain and France and Holland in particular. So if the argument were to gain money immediately, and perhaps continue to play a role economically around the world, it's sort of a mixed bag, right? I mean Spain and Portugal were major powers when really France and Britain and Holland were not, but then France, Britain and Holland replaced Spain and Portugal as imperial powers, but also having wealth. What about the goal, if you will, of planting your cultural flag in a given place and making it look like, act like, you know, adopt your values and be with you culturally for, you know, forever? Very important and that's an issue that when people are interested in neocolonialism are particularly interested because do those cultural attributes continue, for example, after political independence, right? Like how British is India or what are the connections? I mean, how French is Vietnam? I think so certainly, certainly it was one of the goals. I'm not sure as I study and I mean it's one of, there are lots of people studying this. This is only my view. It was certainly there. I think the impetus grew though. I mean, in general, you know, we're talking about, say, for example, a place like Australia, right? In other places, you're talking about a relatively small group, even in India, you're talking just about an economic relationship. So I agree with you. I'm not sure when it's, if that was at the beginning, it certainly was a thought among some people, but you're certainly right. So if you were to say is a colony or an imperial venture successful because, for example, people in that former colony speak your language. Right. Well, then we look at, for example, in India, the prominence of the English language, or we look at places in French, formerly French West Africa. So one thing would be culture would be language, I apologize. Secondly, it would be, as I mentioned, religion. Christianity in India is a product of imperialism. Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia, those are products of imperialism. So you'd also ask, right, what is the role of that religion is to be, for example, an indigenous religion. The interest in consumerism, look at, of course, are important consumer items, televisions, radios, what you eat, what you drink. I mean, here in Hawaii, for example, of the way in which the interaction of various other cultures influence the diet. Clearly, right. The concept of a McDonald's. All right, and that that is seen in almost every colonized place that is systematically colonized right because to a culturated people, and it was also often done by force. For example, Gaelic was outlawed in Ireland. One had to speak English to participate in public life. I would say that and I'm not trying to disagree with me. It takes time. Right. It takes time to create a vicious minor plantation. It takes time but it takes much more time right. Education, newspapers, outlaw in another language, but I think you're absolutely right that's one way to measure and certainly there are those in Britain, for example, who look at among the triumphs of British colonialism, the spread of the English language. The spread of the European form of the novel. And I think you can see in the response to colonialism, long term as well as more recent reaction to that, you know, the crucial question, right? If someone use that assimilation to strengthen oneself socially and if so, what do you lose and or do you reach back. So around the year 1900 some Irish nationals reached back to Gaelic, because that was the custom and the culture. That was the way they thought they could best respond to British imperialism. So raises really the fascinating question, and we see in Hawaii, right, whether one should emphasize sovereignty in light of speaking Hawaiian, not pigeon but Hawaiian, emphasizing Hawaiian cultural attributes and strengths and or should those be merged with things like Christianity which is hardly indigenous concepts of parliamentary politics. So you're asking. Let me move forward. It seems like it's a thread of reaction. In other words, you get to a certain point, you've had a profound effect on the colony. And at some point, maybe, you know, the turn of the century, people started reacting to that and pushing back on it. And no, we want our culture back. You've taken it away and may have been, you know, a low level kind of reaction, but over time it became a greater reaction. And now my question for you, which is really, I love this question. I mean, I love it. You may not love it. I mean, by the time of the war, was colonialism falling apart. Anyway, was it what would it have, would it have fragmented, you know, would it have declined. Had there been no Second World War. That is, there's a whole field of history called what if. All right, let me let me try to answer because we only have two minutes. Certainly, that the war destroyed in many cases, European economies, European political will, particularly coming after the First World War. So Europeans, I think you're specifically talking about Europe, although remember Japan had colonies as well, Korea was a colony of Japan. So not just Europe. So I think the quick answer is that the forces are generating an imperial crisis were there before. If you look at most of the key colonies, they had very active nationalist movements in the 20s and 30s. Those nationalist movements were increasingly turning to violence or direct confrontation. And in Europe, I'm not going to speak for Japan, I know far less about Japan. And in Europe in the 20s and 30s, particularly with the League of Nations, there was already a movement away from formal colonies. There wasn't a mandate meant rule, but a mandate meant rule with a clock on it. So I think the answer to you is that probably 1945 would not have been as significant a date. So 1945. Right. But to answer your question, we would still have seen a massive amount of independence and nation building, maybe not in 45, maybe a little later. But it's hard to think of the historical momentum towards independence. Now, I'll tell you one of the key factors is what would the US role have been. Because once Roosevelt pens with Churchill, the Charter for the United Nations, then colonial powers have to really recognize that they have to pursue either a neocolonial attitude, or they better pick up and leave. So Churchill went back after signing and promised Parliament. It did not include Suez and did not in Egypt and did not include India. But Oy vey, it included almost the rest of the British Empire. So very interesting and I'm not making an argument for American exceptionalism, but I'm arguing in your comment about the war. If the US had remained isolationist about most of the world, I, again, it would have taken now remember the US involvement, then both decolonization and colonization because US supported France in coach in China. So the US role is a fascinating important role, and it is as usual to face. It's not. But to answer your question, 1945 and World War II required formal US participation after 1941 to help answer the, the decolonization. After the war, after 45 in the United Nations and the liberal world order, which we've talked about before, and which, you know, in retrospect is a very, very, very important time for humanity, a liberal world order. And you've you've alluded to the process that the liberal world order liberated around the world, the end of the war liberated around the world. A lot of these colonies, maybe not all of them in the same degree, but it liberated a lot of a lot of countries. And so some countries, again, were more successful in being liberated and then others. Some countries went on to establish or reestablished their own sovereignty, their own government to re rediscover their own cultures. Others did not. Some were some had no, no lack of security and and pro and progress and prosperity. And some did not. So there's no, it seemed to me, my observation, there was no hard and fast rule about whether that liberation from a colonialization would work the same way everywhere. But in general, Peter, was it a successful effort? Was it a successful effort to say, we're going to end colonialization and go and move to, what did you call it, neocolonialization? Has neocolonialization been a success? It's been a success for the neocolonizers. In many cases, it has been a absolute abject disaster for those who live in, who live in what had been former colonies and now in neocolonies. And that gets back to your question about 1945 and the liberal order. The liberal order was generally, generally successful, not entirely successful in promoting political independence. That is, those living within a former colony now have their essential political sovereignty, right? You elect or with a coup, you determine your own political leader. All right, so politically, yes. With a couple of important, I think, editorial, shall we say, tweaks, more than tweaks. One is that parallel to the liberal order and consistent with the establishment of the liberal order was the Cold War. So when we discuss success or not for former colonies, we have to recognize in places like Egypt, in places like Indonesia, continuing in places like Latin America, the discussion of one's success politically, economically and socially can't be divorced from the Cold War. And I'll give you an example from history. One of the first most successful movements to overthrow colonialism was the Haitian slave revolution. And after 10 years of bitter fighting between slaves and slave owners, British troops and French troops, Haiti became an independent republic. But the response to that was not so dissimilar from the Cold War response because it became an independent republic in the context of the French Revolutionary Wars. So people thought that Haiti would promote revolution and a successful Haiti would promote revolution and it occurred in the context of slavery and the slave rebellion. Yes, Haiti had a flag and Haiti had its own political leaders, but it had no international political, social or economic support. So the answer into one of your answers is okay, there was a liberal order, but that liberal order unfolded during the Cold War. Secondly, very quickly, we have the end of political imperialism. We don't have the end of everything else we've been discussing continued exploitation and unfair use of land and labor. The dumping of Western goods, the appropriation of non Western resources to make those goods, the inability of most people in the colonies to purchase those goods. So again, right, you don't have imperialism, but you do have neo colonization. That's my last question. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I was, I was going to ask you, you know, if you assume from the beginning of our conversation that it's baked in, it's baked into the human scheme scheme of things. Assume that just assume for a moment that that may be the case. And then you have the liberal world order, which was, you know, in the larger scheme of things that was in an instant moment that passed quickly. And that was an enlightenment for much of the world. But here we are and we are seeing what is happening with Russia and Ukraine, where they want to do conquest for no other reason than conquest. There are other kinds of, you know, phony justifications, but it's conquest to their neighbor, they want to invade the sovereignty, they want to take over. And whether they're, you know, the same cultural origin or not doesn't matter, they want to take over and it's a kind of a message to the world that the liberal world order may be over, and that colonization may may be coming back, but in the same form, in different forms, different characteristics, different processes. So it seems to me that Ukraine, the whole thing going on in Ukraine really puts us at an inflection point as to whether colonization in its brand new 21st century model is coming back. Your thoughts please. My thoughts are I don't disagree with your description of what Putin and Russia are doing. One might add with some hesitancy question genocide. But I'd also ask people to think about the response to a Russian attempts at conquest, and other than the usual suspects including China and India, which for a variety of reasons. And Russia's record is not good on this either. There's been a general outcry against, against this, and the response against the invasion and we can debate elsewhere with experts about whether more should be done. But I mean today, for example, the Russians were removed from the Security Council, which is a very big step. I mean take a member of the Security Council, who goes to war. Human Rights Council is the Human Rights Council. I don't think it was a Security Council. Okay, but the, but the removal of right a member member state for violating the rights of another member state that's a pretty big step. Yeah, okay. And even if it's human rights and I'm happy. I mean, I'm often wrong about a lot of things. So if I stand correct. Okay. I think the, again, the response to is a defense of the liberal order of borders, and you see in the European Union, and you see in NATO, an earlier 20th century attempt to control regions. So notice how many countries are uniting against China in the Indo Pacific. I mean Vietnam is suddenly an American ally. You saw the outcry when the Solomon Islands last week made a deal with the Chinese, and the Solomon Islands leader had to say publicly, this is not a defense deal. I agree with you that I worry, but one of the things that I'm not, and I'm not being Polly on ass against this, because it hasn't always worked like the League of Nations did not work. But there is pushback. I think there are other dangers which we can talk about that the Russian attempted conquest includes such as our old friend ethnic nationalism. And that I think as we talked about two weeks ago is a threat to the liberal order, the idea of ethnic nationalism very much. My final point because I know we need to go is just for us to remind ourselves of the American experience. Now America by law and treaty became independent in the early 1780s. But let's remember how long it took to get rid of slavery, which was an integral part of colonization. So you know how Alexis to talk well as a liberal can look back and say, huh, you are politically independent right, but you're continuing and slavery was not just a domestic matter. So I think part of the slave trade was of course suppressed, but money from slavery went not just throughout the US but with went throughout what had been a global economic order at the time. So I think part of the issue here. And again I don't want to be simplistic. What one scholar recall the acceleration of history or expectations that if we were to look at our own history of imperialism and decolonization. There's a lot of these issues, including tense relationship between the US and your right that's why Washington uses farewell address. It's not entangling alliance, you know with China. It's he doesn't want us to get involved in the wars between Britain and France and Spain. So I'm this is not to be banal but just to remind us to just step back for a minute. What are you talking about like was most things are we looking out at another part of the world, asking them to be like us, but asking them to be like us much faster than we're even able to be like us. Much better and much better. Maybe they'll be maybe they'll be better that would be great. But, and this is not a criticism of America. Okay, but it's a criticism I think of Americans understanding of the history. And certainly when it took this long to get a black African Americans the Supreme Court, right, and we still have people using swastikas and threatening with nurses that that will remind you. It takes a very long time to create a decent open society, even if you have political independence, and even if you have a constitution. I think we should be very careful my final point will be in that evaluating the failures of other people. I think we should be very careful about the criteria we use. Are we using ethnicity or race like are we explaining a country's problem because we think they're racially that way. We just have to be very careful. Just like we met Franklin would have asked when defining who is this new man who is this new American. He did not necessarily want Americans to be judged by other people's categories. The point of building a nation in a society, it's a certain degree also establishing your own categories, and to be judged by those. Okay, I know we're out of time. Thank you. Thank you, Peter Peter. Professor at UH Manoa so happy to have this conversation with you. Thank you forward to two weeks hence, but I am, I am, I feel warmed by the nutrition of your comments and I have learned a lot today. Thank you, Peter. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii.com. Mahalo.