To see the dawn

The dialectic of colonialism and post-imperialist emancipation

Thought for the day

     The traditional political structures that were not destroyed by the European conquest of the world from 1492 to 1914 were able to integrate into modern colonial administrative structures, but in a form that left them inevitably subordinated to European domination.  In contrast, the modern states created by colonialism in the conquered regions were designed to promote the economic and political subordination of the colonized, but they contained the seeds for transformation, to the extent that the colonized were able to create a revolutionary nationalist ideology and mobilize a unified political will.

     For this reason, movements for genuine post-colonial independence had to leave behind traditional concepts and political structures.  At the same time, they had to struggle against newly created forces of accommodation to colonialism.  When the neocolonial world-system fell into decadence—a victim of the greed inherent in the modern colonialist project—the revol…