What does colonialism mean? well like any term of About human affairs it covers a vast range. There's all kinds of colonialism [I] mean the worst kind of colonialism is what's called settler colonialism? like the United States or Australia or Israel now through lesser extent a settler Colonialism like the United States and Australia Means You exterminate the indigenous population Maybe not [100%] but you know pretty close, so that's a worst kind of colonialism. That's us There's other kinds of colonialism. Which are less extreme So take we were talking before [about] Wilson and Haiti and Clinton and haiti as a form of colonialism in which you effectively Take over the country for your own benefit get as much as you can out of it and [drive] the population and to Destroy the agricultural system drives the population in the cities all for the most benign reasons you know of great economic Progressive reasons and you end up with the Say the Earthquake that just happened nothing of the kind of colonialism other kinds are there's many other kinds and so you know say take take the us and philippines which happen to be an innovation in imperial history The u.s. Invaded the Philippines in about a century ago It killed a couple hundred thousand people It was vicious racism none of these guys unbelievable racism people here weren't even sure whether the filipinos were humans, or apes they were exhibited in the international Affairs, and that's sort of I'm going to just over in this when you look back at it Of course all for the most noble reasons were uplifting them christianizing them you know giving them civilization the usual stuff There were scattered Opponents people are not unknown people like mark twain He wrote very sardonic and cutting [anti-imperialist] essays he wasn't hanged, he didn't have his brains blown out, but they were suppressed The in fact I think [that] finally came [out] around 20 years ago in some scholarly edition that nobody ever read Syracuse university press But they were there was an anti-imperialist league, but it just... What happened after you conquered it That was at the innovation. It has just been studied in a really magisterial book great book by Alfred McCoy whose historian the Philippines among other achievements He's the first person to have studied in detail how they dealt with the population after they more or less still haven't totally conquered them, still going on but Pretty much sort of pacified the country well it turns out there was a major innovation In imperial history which had a lot of consequences right till today in the philippines and everywhere else [what] was instituted was a very sophisticated High-Tech Control and surveillance system now the technology of then was not the technology of [now], but it existed Telegraph radio other surveillance techniques. Every technique was [used] that was [available] to try to control, monitor, subdue the population there were also pretty sophisticated techniques of Undermining resistance that were used, so co-optation of elites Spreading rumors you know using every device you had to try to undermine the nationalists Done very well and of course there's a metal fist and the background is the philippine constabulary the Something that happens every in colonial imperial system. You have a you know kind of a power military force of Collaborators which should do what you tell them and they usually trained killers, so and you can set it up, so let's say you pick people from one tribe to kill another tribe You know use a rural population to smash the urban population. It's done in various ways in fact we do it right now This minute that's the way the u.s. Is hoping to run the occupied Palestinian territories, there's a US run army that's supposed to subdue them And it's highly praised by Obama and Kerry and the liberals and so on Anyway this array of techniques was worked out with quite impressive detail And applied in a very sophisticated fashion [it] still applies, Philippines is still pretty much under this system, the [Philippines] which remains a kind of a quasi colony is the only part of [Eastern] Southeast Asia that has not been part of the so-called economic miracle, you know take a look at Taiwan, South Korea Even indonesia, and so on has been a lot of economic [development], not the philippines, but pretty much under this system It's the one part of the region that we still run and there was an immediate blowback Wilson and the British during the first world war used a lot of these techniques domestically Consciously it could apply them at home too. Now. It's extreme. So you go to Britain. It's a surveillance society Now cameras on every street corner, you know the allegedly anti-terror devices. Here too the Patriot Act, and the u.s. applied them in other countries right away, so Haiti, Dominican Republic. You know Nicaragua. Well, that's another kind of Colonialism and very It makes a lot more sense than occupying the country it works much better. It's cheaper It can work [very] effectively in the philippines, its 100 years And it applies back it develops techniques to apply back home for controlling and subduing Populations and breaking them up and so on, well that's another kind of colonialism. In any event, to get back to your question, there's no answer to what is colonialism. It's just one form in which Powerful systems subdue others, and they subdue their own population There's nothing new about that I mean, that was pointed out by Adam Smith like He's not a fool, I mean what he pointed out and what the international affairs specialists don't seem to understand Is that, you want to understand how a country works you cannot ignore the domestic distribution of power And when he said is pointed out in the wealth of nations, you want to understand England which is his concern you have to recognize that the architects of policy are merchants and manufacturers and they set policy up so that their interests are very Well dealt with even though the impact on the people of England may be grievous and of course elsewhere it's even worse, what's called the savage injustice of the Europeans is horrible, and it's basically a truism, enduring truth about the power systems [Empire in india, the cost of...] There was a cost to the British Empire by the Population there and by the populations of England, who were also kind of colonized Yeah, so it's a class war [ok] that's it's true, and it's true For just about every imperial conquest, and as I say the most extreme form it's just extermination like settler colonialism
