Colonialism is not a European invention or concept designed specifically to keep non-white people down. The myth of the evil white colonialist is one of the most pernicious myths espoused today, and for a couple of big reasons. The first reason is that colonialism has been around for a long time. Today, the Han practice colonialism through the fascist Chinese state. In the 19th century, the Ashanti practiced colonialism throughout their slave-trading empire. The Ottoman Turks practiced colonialism until their empire collapsed in 1923 (and with it a 600 year period of colonialism). The theocratic Javanese state of Mataram practiced colonialism until its demise in the 17th century. The Incan state was also well-versed in colonial practices.
It is important to remind readers of colonialism’s history because of a lack of criticality on society’s part. This lack of critical thinking skills stems from the condescending view of non-Western societies that the modern Western citizen has adopted. As co-blogger Jacques Delacroix so eloquently states:
Liberals profess to reject American military intervention abroad because of a strong myth of people of color’s virtuousness. According to this liberal myth, people of color, non-whites, seldom ever do anything wrong by any standard. When they do, as when they eat their neighbors, for example, it’s always somehow because of something or other that Westerners, Whites, usually Americans have done to them, or to someone else. Or something. And then, of course, you shouldn’t do anything to them or in connection with them.
The idea that Western civilization is somehow responsible for inventing and propagating colonialism is actually a condescending one, and, conveniently enough, permits me to segue into reason number two for combating the pernicious myth that White European society is to blame for all the world’s problems: the myth doesn’t allow for any intrigue or guile or cunning or Realpolitik on the part of colonized societies.
This concept is especially important to grasp if you want to gain a better understanding of how international politics works today. In the early 16th century Portuguese ships arrived on the western coast of the island of Java, one of the world’s most important trading regions at the time. The Portuguese promptly allied with a local polity, a kingdom known as Sunda, and began to work on building a fortress to protect Sundanese elites from another rival polity on the island: Demak. Got this so far? The European player on the scene is just one of aspect of what is thus far a three-way affair, and this is going on in one of the world’s busiest trading regions. One Javanese polity has enlisted the support of a European polity to help protect it against another, stronger Javanese polity. There is no coercion on the part of the Portuguese. Indeed, the Portuguese had no choice but to make alliances in order to survive in the region.
Demak recognized what was going on between Portugal and Sunda, so it attacked and defeated the two allies. Decisively. The Demak elite then created two vassal, or buffer, states out of the recently conquered territory: Cirebon and Banten. Got that? The Portuguese are out of Java. So too is the Sundanese state. What we have are three Javanese polities: Demak, Cirebon, and Banten, with the later two serving as buffer states of Demak. So Demak is practicing colonialism with the former Sundanese state.