Bruce Gilley Quotes

“The Belgian period was the beginning of the most successful era in the history of the Congo. It was the only period in which it had an effective police force and army. The country was being run orderly, was relatively incorrupt and capable of maintaining internal order and of protecting its sovereignty. Only then, under the Belgians, was that the case.”

Colonialism Congo Leopold Ii Congo Free State Belgian Congo Belgian Colonialism

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Academics keep writing about the glorious slave revolt of Haiti (1791-1804). As if it still is the best thing that could have happened to Haiti. But it is the worst thing that happened to Haiti. Ever since the slave revolt against the French, Haiti has been in chaos. Massive human suffering, lasting destruction. Why celebrate that? But no: Let’s hold another conference on that fantastic Haitian Revolution.”

France Colonialism Haiti Haitian Revolution French Colonialism French Colonial Empire French Empire

Author:Bruce Gilley

“The Spirit of Berlin was embodied in two principles. First, colonial powers, whatever else they did, had a responsibility to improve the lives of native populations.”

Berlin Conference German Colonialism

Book:In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West

Source: In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West

“The Spirit of Berlin was embodied in two principles. First, colonial powers, whatever else they did, had a responsibility to improve the lives of native populations. The second principle insisted that any colonial claim needed to be backed up by “the existence of an authority sufficient to cause acquired rights to be respected.”

Colonialism Berlin Conference German Colonialism

Book:In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West

Source: In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West

“China was the opposite world. If you want to know what Hong Kong would have looked like without the British, you only need to take a look across the border.”

China British Empire Hong Kong Chinese Politics British Hong Kong

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Tony Blair had just been elected prime-minister and he and his foreign secretary, Robin Cook, were totally uninterested. In the pouring rain they were looking at the military parade from underneath their umbrella, for the transfer at midnight. Their entire attitude signalled something like: ‘’Can we go now?”

China Colonialism British Empire Hong Kong British Colonialism Tony Blair

Author:Bruce Gilley

“King Leopold’s private fiefdom in the Congo was precisely the counterfactual to colonial rule and the best argument for colonialism. His inability to control his native rubber agents who continued their pre-colonial business of slave-trading and coercive rubber harvesting showed the problems that would arise if European freelancers allied with native warlords and slave-traders to establish regimes with no outside scrutiny.”

Colonialism Leopold Ii Congo Free State Belgian Colonialism

Book:The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics

Source: The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics

“For all our modernist beliefs in truth, evidence, logic, and fairness, perhaps we have reached a point of no return in the writing of history where modern progressives attack the historical record with malice aforethought, leaving us stupider than we were before this movement took shape in the 1960s, when the twentysomething Hochschild was at the barricades protesting Vietnam and all the rest. It is for future generations to re-colonize history using the precious intellectual resources of the Enlightenment. Until then, we do well to fight the progressive warlords like Hochschild who enslave formerly colonized peoples in distorted victimization narratives that rob them of agency, all the while keeping the white man front and center.”

Colonialism Modernism Leopold Ii Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost Post Modernism

Book:King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

Source: King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“Most centrally, how did approximately 10,000 people killed in skirmishes between the EIC police and natives in a small portion of the territory over a 20-year period mushroom into 10 million dead, “mass murder on a vast scale” and “a forgotten Holocaust”? Rather than climb down from this ludicrous claim, which the doyen of Congo studies, Jean Stengers, called “absurd” and “polemical,” Hochschild repeats it. His source? The same Jan Vansina whose work, I noted, was based on an erroneous reading of an earlier report (a Harvard study that rejected the report of the Permanent Committee for the Protection of the Natives of 1919 that Hochschild cites in his letter) and whose own work was based on nothing more than “oral traditions.”

Holocaust Leopold Ii Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost Bruce Gilley King Leopold Ii

Book:The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind

Source: The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind

“By contrast, dozens of serious demographers and statisticians—not just the Jean-Paul Sanderson I mention—have concluded the overall population rose slightly or was unchanged at around 8 to 10 million from 1885 to 1908. Others include Bruce Fetter, Guy Vanthemsche, Jean-Luc Vellut, Pierre-Luc Plasman, Anatole Romaniuk, and, as mentioned, the later Jan Vansina. Taken on its own, the EIC was a positive influence on the black population in the Congo because of its campaigns against slavery, endemic tribal warfare, cannibalism, and polygamous rape and torture. Infrastructure and trade brought life-saving income. Population remained unchanged only because of the persistence of endemic disease and slavery. According to Romaniuk, venereal disease alone can explain the depression of population growth after 1900 when the EIC had finally brought a modicum of peace and prosperity to the region.”

Leopold Ii Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost Bruce Gilley King Leopold

Book:The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind

Source: The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind

“In a pattern of misrepresentation that is repeated on other issues, Hochschild at first mentions this inconvenient fact and then proceeds to say the opposite for the entirety of the book. The fiefdom “was shared in no way with the Belgian government,” which “had no legal authority over [Léopold] as ruler of the Congo,” he alerts readers. Yet not only the subtitle of the book but laced throughout are constant smears against European colonialism.”

Leopold Ii Congo Free State Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost King Leopold S Ghost

Book:King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

Source: King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“The freelance EIC had at its peak just 1,500 administrative officers and about 19,000 police and soldiers for an area one third the size of the continental United States. As such, it exerted virtually no control over most areas, which were in the hands either of Arab slave-traders and African warlords, or of native soldiers nominally in the employ of Belgian concession companies without a white man for a hundred miles. Hochschild’s description of the EIC as “totalitarian” is bizarre, as is his claim that Léopold exerted a “framework of control…across his enormous realm.” If only this were true.”

Colonialism Leopold Ii Congo Free State Adam Hochschild Independant Congo State

Book:King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

Source: King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“By 1891, six years into the attempt to build the EIC, the whole project was on the verge of bankruptcy. It would have been easy for Léopold to raise revenues by sanctioning imports of liquor that could be taxed or by levying fees on the number of huts in each village, both of which would have caused harm to the native population. A truly “greedy” king, as Hochschild repeatedly calls him, had many fiscal options that Léopold did not exercise.”

Leopold Ii Congo Free State Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost Red Rubber Conho

Book:King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

Source: King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“The report quotes an earlier report on the Belgian Congo of 1919 which claimed that the population “has been reduced one-half.” It quotes this claim in order to state that it is almost certainly false. That is because population estimates for the Belgian Congo varied widely and remained pure guesswork. They were of “little value in drawing any precise conclusions.” The only firm conclusion it reached was that population was not increasing. The causes were multiple, including sleeping sickness, inter-tribal warfare, poor nutrition, female trafficking, polygamy, and the working conditions for men in European industrial and commercial enterprises.”

Genocide Colonialism Leopold Ii Belgian Colonialism

Book:The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics

Source: The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics

“Asians are doing more to stay on the colonial track. They don’t say this out loud, but there is far less anti-colonial bombast than elsewhere. They admire the colonials. Go to the national museum in Singapore. “The British did this, the British did that”. All positive.”

Colonialism British Empire British Colonialism Signapore

Author:Bruce Gilley

“The British colonial empire has done more to fight poverty than all post-war development aid combined.”

Colonialism British Empire British Colonialism

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Then you can say: those people had a bad conscience. But perhaps those people, in that time and context, really believed this to be the best choice for their country. Regardless of its limitations the colonial world offered more opportunities and protection than indigenous governance would have done. And the post-colonial experience has taught us that those people were right!”

Colonialism Bruce Gilley British Colonialism Post Colonialism

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Many African leaders started out ostensibly modern, liberal, but began to behave more like traditional leaders- not as a leader who is part of an institutionalized political system, but as the system itself. They opened up their economy, but out of necessity; if it could no longer be obstructed. The same goes for elections: They were held to prevent civil war. The so-called “African renaissance” was only that on the surface. The leaders did not really believe in it. In reality they returned to forms of mythical, traditional governance. That is how they smashed into the wall. African tradition is irreconcilable with the modern world. Every country will have to break with it’s traditions in order to create a modern society.”

Colonialism Imperialism British Colonialism African Renaissance

Author:Bruce Gilley

“he ordering of cultural customs, forms of governance and economic institutions as being better or worse does not fit into the modern ethos of equality. We- rightly- want equal opportunities and rights. A positive vision of the colonial past apparently doesn’t fit into that. I mean, my whole university is busy decolonizing! That is the train I slammed into.”

University Colonialism Woke Antifa Facism Social Justice Warriors Campus Craziness College Craziness University Crazies

Author:Bruce Gilley

“It is also difficult to maintain that post-colonial Africa hasn’t seen violence and suffering. The Africans who- oh wry irony- step into rickety boats in order to find a safe haven in the Europe of the former colonial powers.”

Europe Colonialism Migration Migrants Post Colonialism Migrant Crisis Eu Migrant Crisis

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Partnership is nonsense. Germany helping Zambia, that is not partnership. That is a superior economic system helping another country improve itself. And that is also what late colonialism was: An embrace of the opportunity to improve the lot of others. But not as equals, no”

Germany Colonialism Zambia German Colonialism

Author:Bruce Gilley

“If we are going to write history on the basis of the number of victims, then we should also take into account that Germany for example- as a colonial latecomer- developed a remedy to the sleeping disease that saved one to three million lives during the twenties. Without their colonial aspirations that would never have happened.”

Germany Colonialism German Colonialism German Empire German Colonial Empire Second German Empire

Author:Bruce Gilley

“The Berlin conference has been subject to a relentless campaign of debunking by modern intellectuals. One claim they make is that the assembled delegates “carved up” Africa like a bunch of gluttons. This is wrong. For one, the carving was already happening when Bismarck acted. The conference was a response to, not a cause of, expanded colonial claims. Critics seem to think that absent the conference Africa would have been left untouched. Quite the opposite. The scramble for Africa created tensions, suspicions, and fears on all sides. Bismarck wanted to set some ground rules.”

Africa Bruce Gilley German Colonialism

Book:In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West

Source: In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West

“One hundred years of disaster is enough. The time has come to once again advocate for colonialism.”

Colonialism Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“And these weren’t trolls. There were also professors. Oxford-historians, Harvard-historians. That’s what I found to be most the terrifying. When people with permanent positions in Western universities organise an attack on a colleague, or encourage attacks, the aggression comes very close.”

Free Speech Colonialism Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Anybody who complains about, say, taxation is retroactively called a proto-nationalist who was resisting colonialism”

Nationalism Colonialism Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“So you can say: That man was a collaborator. But I think he is representative of the indigenous reaction to the British. Now everyone who expresses the anti-colonial sentiment is counted as the authentic voice of conscience. Everyone who speaks out in favour of colonialism, was practicing self-censorship, was insincere, etcetera. That is far too simple for me.”

Colonialism Nigeria Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Colonialism spread rapidly, with relatively little force from the colonial powers and also with relatively few Westerners in the colonies. That is a sign that the colonial regimes enjoyed legitimacy in the eyes of the indigenous population. See also the large numbers of locals who worked for tax offices, police, and the administration.”

Colonialism Colony Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Colonialism isn’t just railroads. I do not need those railroads in order to defend colonialism. It is also legitimate governance, opportunities, protection, self-development, emancipation. And dignity. Colonialism gave people dignity, for the first time in their life. Regardless of who you are, which tribe you belonged to, or whether you are friends with The Big Man.”

Colonialism Imperialism Tribalism Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“People had status as subjects of the colonial empire. Maybe not yet as citizens, with voting-rights, but certainly as subjects who were treated as equals by the institutions and the law. And that was an improvement. That is why the colonial justice system was constipated: people could suddenly go to the judge over a piece of land.”

Colonialism Imperialism British Empire Bruce Gilley Colonial Empire

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Yes, many bad things happened under colonialism. But why would you only emphasize that? Then you assume that without colonialism far fewer people would have suffered, and that is a figment of the imagination.”

Genocide Colonialism Bruce Gilley Eimperialism

Author:Bruce Gilley

“In Asia the people who argued for continuity with the colonial institutions became the leaders. In Africa they were imprisoned.”

Colonialism Africa Asia Bruce Gilley

Author:Bruce Gilley

“Ik concludeer dat de problemen van het meeste onderzoek naar het koloniale verleden zo diepgeworteld zijn dat in de meeste gevallen niets minder dan een volledige herschrijving van de koloniale geschiedenis onder de juiste wetenschappelijke voorwaarden zal volstaan. Hetzelfde geldt waarschijnlijk voor veel andere onderwerpen in de sociale wetenschappen.”

Kolonialisme Koloniale Geschiedenis Sociale Wetenschappen

Author:Bruce Gilley

“What The Hague is doing right now in Sint-Maarten and Sint-Eustatius, namely intervene in parts of the administration. The black nationalist leaders cried murder over this Dutch ‘neo-colonialism’, but the people seem content.”

Colonialism Imperialism Dutch Colonialism Dutch Antilles Dutch Empire

Author:Bruce Gilley

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