Neocolonialism

Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalisation and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country instead of the previous colonial methods of direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony). The term was first used by Kwame Nkrumah in the context of African countries undergoing decolonisation in the 1960s.

Kwame Nkrumah (pictured on a Soviet postage stamp) is a Ghanaian politician who coined the term "Neo-colonialism."

Quotes

• As with all so-called humanitarian crises, it is essential to remember that the social conditions found across most of the countries of the South are the direct product of how these states are inserted into the hierarchies of the world market. Historically, this included a long encounter with Western colonialism, which has continued, into contemporary times, with the subordination of poorer countries to the interests of the world’s wealthiest states and largest transnational corporations. Since the mid-1980s, repeated bouts of structural adjustment — often accompanied by Western military action, debilitating sanctions regimes, or support for authoritarian rulers — have systematically destroyed the social and economic capacities of poorer states, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with major crises such as COVID-19.
  • Adam Hanieh, This is a Global Pandemic – Let’s Treat it as Such, 27 March 2020, Verso Books

• Moreoever, we understand that the solution of the main problems we now face—peace, security, and development—lies not in the formation of closed international clubs, but in the participation of all the peoples of the world in the decisions that affect them all. A harmonious situation cannot be founded on the dissension of most of the inhabitants of the world. Our people are aware that their poverty produces wealth for others. The accumulated resentment against political colonialism is now reborn against economic colonialism. Colonial attitudes that should have disppeared still try to control international relations. The centers of world influence impose their conditions for exchange on the other countries. Moreover, they reduce the capacity of action of weak nations by opposing indispensable transformation of structures or by intervening in the political processes of these nations. The history of underdeveloped nations is a permanent struggle between the forces that seek social change and those that try to perpetuate injustice. The latter almost always have the support of powerful foreign groups that try to impose inadequate systems on countries whose true reality they ignore.
  • Luis Echeverría, June 15, 1972, as quoted in Historic Documents of 1972. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
• Khe Sanh, one of the major battles in the Vietnam War, was just one little piece of a huge malignant disaster in a war that was criminal from its inception, and that had no purpose beyond perpetuating the neocolonialist control by the US of a long-subjugated people who were fighting to be free, just as our own ancestors had done.
  • Dave Lindorff, The Glorification of War (May 31, 2010), CounterPunch.

• The methods of neo-colonialists are subtle and varied. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.

  Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.

  • Kwame Nkrumah, "The mechanisms of neo-colonialism," Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)

• A state can be said to be a neo-colonialist or client state if it is independent de jure and dependent de facto. It is a state where political power lies in the conservative forces of the former colony and where economic power remains under the control of international finance capital.
  • Kwame Nkrumah, "Sham independence," Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968), p. 8

• The three essential components of neo-colonialism are:
  1. Economic exploitation
  2. Puppet governments and client states
  3. Military assistance
  4. Economic "aid."
  • Kwame Nkrumah, Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968), p. 15

• I realized that my gloss as chief economist, head of Economics and Regional Planning... was part of a sinister system aimed not at outfoxing an unsuspecting customer, but rather at promoting the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known.... The march had begun and it was rapidly encircling the planet. The hoods had discarded their leather jackets, dressed up in business suits, and taken on an air of respectability. Men and women were descending from corporate headquarters in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, London, and Tokyo, streaming across every continent to convince corrupt politicians to allow their countries to be shackled to the corporatocracy, and to induce desperate people to sell their bodies to sweatshops and assembly lines... a world of smoke and mirrors intended to keep us all shackled to a system that is morally repugnant and ultimately self-destructive.
  • John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004)p. 160

• Imperialism, trying to preserve itself in the face of the oppressed masses’ anticolonial struggle, presented neocolonialism to the masses. Neocolonialism means powerless visibility. You see an African president, but the entire country is controlled by France or Belgium or England—its former colonial master.
  • Kwame Ture, Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 10 November 1992. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-679-74313-2.  Afterword

• The term neocolonialism is possibly more apposite when considering, the post-colonial educational relationships and problems facing, developed countries during the last two decades of the twentieth century, since it is the means by which existing educational institutions and patterns are subtly, and not so subtly, preserved, or even controlled by external powers, usually the former colonial authorities. It is at the same time more difficult to ‘prove’ or quantify educational neocolonialism than it is trade or economic relationships because the educational relationship between the metropolitan powers and the developing countries simply because it is often very subtle; because aid to education is often couched in terms of the highest altruism; and because the educational and political elites of the Third World countries acquiesce in this relationship either because of inertia, because they see no way round it or because it suits their interests by helping to maintain them in power.
  • Keith Watson, Educational neocolonialism, in: Education in the Third World. (Watson 1982: 183). Quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.212

See also

• Colonialism
• Postcolonialism