bruce-gilley Quotes About colonialism

“Congo reformers like Morel, much to the annoyance of Hochschild, advocated either German or British colonization of the area (Congo). Morel’s view, according to Hochschild, speaking ex cathedra from the hallowed seat of modern California, “seems surprising to us today” and was among his “faults” and “political limitations.” Quite the opposite. The moment the Belgians colonized the Congo in 1908, a miraculous improvement was noted on all fronts. Seeking to debunk colonialism, Hochschild’s book demonstrates the opposite. This is the first and biggest lie at the heart of King Leopold’s Ghost.”

Colonialism Leopold Ii Belgium Adam Hochschild Belgians Leopold S Ghost Bruce Gilley King Leopold S Ghost Edmund Dene Morel

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.

“Hochschild insists on calling the EIC an example of “colonialism”, stretching the term beyond its meaning. European colonies were governed by and accountable to the institutions of a liberal state at home. That was the fundamental structural fact of a European colony, meaning the characteristic that explains its behavior. This fundamental fact was absent from the EIC. This explains its evolution and eventual takeover by Belgium. The EIC was a second-best solution to the absence of colonialism. Hochschild will have none of it because his intention all along was to use his tale as an indictment of European colonialism (“A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa”, as the subtitle put it). A fevered ideological agenda does not collapse a valid conceptual distinction.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“Comparing the EIC to the Nazis is grotesque. Hochschild has nothing to say about this odious rhetorical maneuver, an insult not just to Jews but to the Congolese who fought and remained loyal to the memory of the EIC. Referring to my essay as “polemical” in defense of a book that makes regular references to Auschwitz is rich indeed.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“Hochschild’s sweet reason in his letter on the complex question of European colonialism appears to have abandoned him while writing the book (or is newfound). “Communism, Fascism, and European colonialism each asserted the right to totally control its subjects’ lives,” he wrote grandly in the book. How is it possible that he now writes about the “subtle and complex business” of assessing colonialism?”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“I am glad that Hochschild admits that the photographs in his book are fake. Still, to his point, I do not doubt that the traditional African hippo whip was used by EIC officials. Nor do I doubt that chains were used to confine prisoners in the EIC when prisons were not available. Nor do I doubt that the Arab tradition of chopping off the hands of fallen enemies persisted well into the EIC era, even among natives employed by the government or concession companies. So what? If Hochschild’s argument is that the area should have been colonized from the start (as his hero Edmund Morel argued), I would agree. If his argument is that the EIC should have been financed by liquor imports or village hut taxes rather than the 40 hours per month labor requirement for those who could not pay individual taxes, I will side with the King.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“I wish that Hochschild would come clean on the litany of other errors I catalogue in my essay: Conrad could not have seen any of the alleged rubber atrocities; Léopold did not burn his archives, and nothing was “locked away from outside view”; Kurtz’s head-strewn compound was not based on a Belgian official but on African warlords; Léon Fiévez’s African troops killed 100 warriors of local tribal chiefs who had reneged on a promise to supply food, not 100 hapless villagers who failed to turn in rubber; the trade surplus of the EIC reflected payments that went for infrastructure, administration, and security, not a slave economy.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“As I wrote, despite the malicious craft practiced by Hochschild and others, I am glad that an extensive documentary record of the EIC and of European colonies more generally survives, not that I expect any honest use of them in our current moral panic. Hochschild was merely an early entry into a genre that has since blossomed into an industry of scholars who “interrogate” the archives to cough up evidence of the evils of the West. There is of course no such documentary record of the horrific conditions the Europeans replaced, and in any case most Western readers would not buy a book on endemic venereal disease in Africa or stool disputes among the Kuba. A salacious tale on the Belgian king and his mistresses torturing black people to pay for their follies? Now you’re talking!”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“I also do not begrudge Hochschild his millions, although, unlike him, I have untold praise for the capitalist system that produced them (he recently compared Amazon warehouses to slave plantations and in a 2016 book he lamented the failure of a socialist revolution in Spain). But to write history requires an immersion in the context, constraints, and worldviews of those involved.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“Hochschild just can’t seem to get over the fact that life was very, very different long ago. I, for one, am less ready to leap to condemnation for the petty abuses of the EIC, especially against people who are no longer alive to defend themselves. If he wants to join the Congo Reform Movement, so be it. It has been going on for over 100 years and is not likely to stop. When I call this white guilt porn, I do not intend it as polemic, but merely description.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost Bruce Gilley King Leopold Ii

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.

“Much is at stake. In giving Hochschild its Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award in 2008, the American Historical Association claimed that King Leopold’s Ghost “broke through one of the most impenetrable silences of history” by revealing the “mass death” and “rampant atrocities” in the EIC. Be reminded that the AHA is the representative of professional historians in the United States, not the editorial board of Dissent magazine. The AHA went on to call the book “a key text in the historiography of colonial Africa for college and graduate students.” The AHA and Hochschild are also agreed on the really excellent quality of the 1619 Project, which Hochschild calls (micro-aggression notwithstanding) “masterful.” He has described the writing of history as uncovering “shame.” The AHA, warming to the idea, praised Hochschild’s “humanist agenda” with its mission “to combat inhumanity.” History should have no agenda other than uncovering the truth. It should combat only ignorance about the past. If this is the state of public history in the West, we are in a very bad place indeed.”

Colonialism Congo Congo Free State 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

“The second, but more visible, untruth is the claim that for 23 years, EIC officials throughout the territory sponsored violent actions such as chopping off hands to force natives to collect rubber, leaving millions dead in a horror that should be directly compared to the Holocaust. There are about a dozen little cheats here, one embedded in the other like Russian nesting dolls.”

Colonialism Congo Leopold Ii Congo Free State Adam Hochschild Leopold S Ghost Bruce Gilley King Leopold S Ghost Red Rubber

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.

“An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production (King Leopold’s Ghost) is better described as historical fiction.”

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

Author:Bruce Gilley

“As someone celebrated as an anti-colonial hero in the contemporary academy, it is often forgotten that Patrice Lumumba was an active “collaborator” in Belgian colonial rule by any measure: a postal clerk, the head of a local trade federation, and an insider in colonial society as head of Stanleyville’s Association des Évolués.”

Colonialism Congo Belgian Congo Bruce Gilley Patrice Lumumba

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

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

“Of course colonial governance can only return with the consent of the country in question. The nationalist leaders in developing countries are probably not eager to see this happen. But the people- given those decades of ‘anti-colonial disaster’- possibly are.”

Colonialism Congo Belgian Congo Kinshasa

Author:Bruce Gilley

“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. 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

“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.

“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.

“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

“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

“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

Bruce Gilley Quotes

Filter quotes by topic

Famous Bruce Gilley Quotes