Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:28:34.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Colonialism as a Problem in American Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Philip W. Bell
Philip W. Bell
Affiliation:
Haverford College
Get access

Extract

Colonialism has been a sore spot in the handling of American foreign policy in the post-World War II period largely because of ambivalent forces, domestic and foreign, which have been tugging at the United States. At the heart of the colonial problem which has faced this country is the central issue of eventual political status for colonial territories. On this question United States policy has traditionally been and continues to be one of condemnation of colonialism and in favor of independence for colonial peoples, with certain reservations added in small print—the grant of independence should not be too hurried and it should be given only to peoples who desire it and are capable of assuming the responsibilities involved.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1952 , pp. 86 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The term “colonialism” in this paper is used to describe the relationship between metropolitan countries and non-contiguous territories which are avowedly dependent politically upon them. It explicitly excludes, therefore, certain types of dependence which might be classified as “colonialism” in a broader use of the term: (1) minority, or even majority, groups under political domination of others within the boundaries of a nation-state; (2) contiguous dependent relationships, as in Tibet or in the outlying Soviet Republics in fact, if not in theory; and (3) all forms of “concealed colonialism,” both of a purposeful nature as in the Soviet-satellite relationships, and of an accidental nature, brought about, for example, by the preponderance of a small country's exports on a single large-country market, as in the case of Bolivia and the United States, or New Zealand and Ireland and the United Kingdom. “Colonialism” frequently connotes a state of mind, either on the part of peoples in the metropole or in the overseas territories, and is sometimes used interchangeably with “imperialism.” Technically, “colonialism” should probably be used to describe the relationship between a mother country and politically dependent territories populated by groups transplanted from the mother country, and “imperialism” the dependent relationship between a metropolitan country and subject territories in which people are of different origin from that of the metropole. In most existing non-self-governing territories there is a combination of both elements, however, and “colonialism” has now come to mean a politically dependent relationship without distinction as to how it arose and without connotation of any specific state of mind on the part of the people in the metropole or in the territory—i.e., it describes an existing political fact.

2 Space does not permit detailed documentation of American policy on colonialism. It is to be found in a great variety of sources, including wartime proclamations (the Atlantic Charter and statements by Secretary of State Hull), debates and voting on non-self-governing territorial questions in the United Nations, abstentions from resolutions of the Organization of American States, and unilateral statements by high State Department officials. While many of our words, votes, and deeds have been of the “pinprick” variety, this has been true neither of the example set in our colonies (which has not been antithetical to our own direct interests but has had extensive repercussions in the dependencies of other countries), nor of the important role this country played in the establishment of the Indonesian and Libyan republics. It has been made clear by the State Department that failure to vote with the anti-colonial bloc in the recent Moroccan and Tunisian cases brought before the United Nations has been a matter of temporary expediency rather than any basic change in policy.

3 The strong influence of farm and dairy groups and the American Federation of Labor in promoting Philippine independence in the early 1930's has been traced in Pratt, J. W., America's Colonial Experiment, New York, 1950, pp. 302–3.Google Scholar The Bell Trade Act of 1946 specified that equal rights should be granted United States citizens in the development of Philippine natural resources (necessitating an amendment to the Philippine Constitution) before large-scale payments could be made under the 1946 Rehabilitation Act. This provision was more an injudicious use of dollar diplomacy to further private economic interests than a string attached to the grant of independence, but the timing of the measure leaves this country open to the charge of replacing standard colonialism with a form of concealed colonialism. Cf. Rupert Emerson's review of pamphlets in Pacific Affairs, xx (December 1947), p. 451; and Crossman, E. G., “American-Philippine Relations: The Prospect,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, XXII (January 1948), p. 31.Google Scholar The average annual expenditure of around $150 million in Puerto Rico during the post-World War II period has led to numerous demands by Miliard Tydings and others that Puerto Rico be given its independence.

4 Kirk, G., “Declining Empires and American Interest,” Survey, LXXXV (May 1949), P. 257.Google Scholar

5 In a few cases, where a resolution was particularly objectionable to colonial powers, we have sided with them or abstained, and recently we have recognized our own interests involved in North Africa and, temporarily at least, helped to prevent airing of the Moroccan and Tunisian disputes.

6 There has been no comprehensive study made of colonial problems since that of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the 1930's. Cf. The Colonial Problem, London, 1937. Of the many works published on the topic since then, none has been so exhaustive and only a few, all of British authorship, have indicated a keen insight into the complex of diverse problems involved; for example, Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice, Cambridge, 1948.Google Scholar

7 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on Information Transmitted under Article 73(e) of the Charter, 1950, pp. 41–43.Google Scholar

8 Italy, which has a temporary ten-year trusteeship over Italian Somaliland under United Nations auspices, is not here included.

9 The undemocratic nature of the French Union is to be found both in the organization of the legislative superstructure, which thus far has hardly functioned and even on paper affords the Associated States only an advisory voice in foreign affairs and security matters of the Union, and in the legislature of the Republic, which, because of dual electoral colleges in overseas territories heavily populated by non-European inhabitants, results in these regions averaging “only one deputy for 800,000 inhabitants, the metropolitan French one for 75,000 inhabitants” (Luchaire, F., Manuel de droit d'outre-mer, Paris, 1949, p. 134).Google Scholar French citizenship was extended to all peoples in the Republic by the constitution, but the means by which nationals of overseas territories exercise their rights as citizens is laid down by law (Article 80), thus allowing one million European French in the three Algerian departments to elect the same number of delegates to the French Parliament as eight million Moslems, and similar discrimination exists in Madagascar and French Equatorial Africa. Also, while local autonomy has in principle been granted the Indochinese, in practice economic and financial affairs are by treaty under a quadripartite board with members from each of the three states and France. The provisions of the treaties which concern the board are vaguely worded and allow considerable latitude for French control. For a brief criticism of French centralization in the metropole, cf. Cobban, A., National Self-Détermination, Chicago, 1947, p. 143.Google Scholar

10 About fifteen colonies would be left without full sovereignty (i.e., with only local autonomy) if the tentative hopes for federated Dominions were realized: the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cyprus, the Falklands, Fiji, Gibraltar, Gilbert and Ellice, Hong Kong, Malta, Mauritius, Pitcairn, Seychelles, Singapore, the Solomons, and St. Helena. Some of these, of course, like Cyprus and Hong Kong, might be ceded to other nations, as may be eventually expected of Aden, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, British Somaliland, Brunei, Sarawak, and Swaziland.

11 In 1901 the Supreme Court in De Lima vs. Bidwell and Downes vs. Bidwell drew the distinction between incorporated and unincorporated territories; the former, established by the express or implied will of Congress, are subject to all provisions of the Constitution not obviously meant for states, while for the latter only certain “fundamental” provisions of the Constitution apply.

12 George F. Kennan has made a start at defining “national interest” by indicating what it is not. Cf. “The National Interest of the United States,” Illinois Law Review, XLV (January-February 1951), pp. 730–42. I will not enter here into whether or not the national interest should be the objective of American policy but will accept this as a dictum, following Kennan and others in believing that it is all we can “know” and that our first responsibility is to ourselves.

13 The extent of United States national interest involved in colonialism has received little attention, Professor Jacob Viner's wartime study being the only comprehensive investigation. Cf. Viner, J., et al., The United States in a Multi-National Economy, New York, 1945Google Scholar, Chapter 1.

14 These bases include United States trusteeship islands, Guam, Samoa, Singapore, Hawaii, Alaska, and a network of small islands scattered over the Pacific; Bermuda and the Azores (technically an integral part of Portugal) in the Atlantic; Trinidad, Puerto Rico, and inactive leased bases in the British West Indies for defense in that region; Morocco and Greenland as strategic bombing bases with naval protection; and Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean. The United States maintains or has specific plans to operate bases in all of these territories except Singapore, Gibraltar, and Malta, where the British have important facilities.

15 The Round Table, No. 119 (June 1940), p. 551.

16 Quoted from George's, David LloydMemoirs of the Peace Conference, in Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, 1951, p. 129.Google Scholar

17 New York Times, November 30, 1939, p. 8, and February 9, 1940, p. 3.

18 Lewis, W. A., “Food and Raw Materials,” District Bank Review (Manchester), September 1951, pp. 1–11.Google Scholar

19 Percentages are computed from 1949 production figures in the United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 1949–50.

20 The areas of supply listed are the principal sources. Cf. Mutual Security Agency, The Overseas Territories in the Mutual Security Program, March 31, 1952, p. 2.Google Scholar This country's dependence on colonial territories is steadily increasing, as is shown by comparing 1950 figures with those of 1943 compiled in United States Military Academy, raw Materials in War and Peace (New York, 1947), although the imports above were partially for stockpiles. Professor Edward S. Mason has argued that for the United States, alone and at war, loss of any or all of the raw material supplies outside of the Western Hemisphere would, after full allowance is made for substitution, involve a relatively small decline in the output of war materials. Cf. “American Security and Access to Raw Materials,” World Politics, 1 (January 1949), p. 150. While this may be correct, and it might not be in our own interests (excluding supply considerations of our allies) to divert military forces in order to protect strategic material supplies in Africa or in the Far East, it is surely beneficial to avoid the substitution costs and the production of some inferior goods if possible. And against a “cold war” background, preservation of Western Hemisphere supplies by use of the products of other areas is clearly to our advantage.

21 For an account of the development plans in Africa, cf. Organization for European Economic Cooperation, Investments in Overseas Territories in Africa, South of the Sahara, Paris, 1951.Google Scholar

22 Clark, G., The Balance Sheets of Imperialism, New York, 1936.Google Scholar

23 Trade data are derived from United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Joint Publication), Direction of International Trade, Series T, Volumes I and II.

24 Cmd. 8065, pp. 24–5, and Cmd. 8195, p. 36. This does not include an unallocated dollar deficit on the whole Sterling Area account of $876 million as a result of payment agreements with non-sterling countries, but this should be more properly attributed to the United Kingdom than to the colonies, It also does not include gold sales to Britain by the colonies, which increase dollar earnings by $50–$100 million over the period.

25 International Monetary Fund, Balance of Payments Yearbook, in (1949–1950), pp. 197–201.Google Scholar

26 Total known British capital in the colonies from data on securities traded amounted to £245 million in 1948 ($700 million at the current rate of exchange). Cf. Bank of England, United Kingdom Overseas Investments, 1938 to 1948, London, 1950.Google Scholar Material presented at the Washington loan negotiations and subsequent balance of payments data indicate that private investments not registered on the stock exchanges would bring total investment up to around twice this known amount.

27 The British taxpayer cost for the period January 1, 1944, to July 20, 1949, was given in Parliament as £180.4 million, but this includes the total of £120 million allotted under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act in 1945 for a ten-year period. Cf. The Economist Records and Statistics Supplement, August 20, 1949, p. 163. The £100 million estimate above was arrived at by adding the amounts actually used from the Development and Welfare Fund through 1950 to other costs given in the above source. Expenditures of the United States in Puerto Rico are given in the latter's balance of payments data. The breakdown of the French budget is presented in supplements to Ministère des Finances, Statistiques et études financières.

28 The Ford Foundation made it possible for the author to spend the month of January 1952 in the British, United States, French, and Netherlands territories in the Caribbean.

29 New York Times, May 1, 1948, p. 7.

30 The crucial vote on tripartite trusteeship for the area among France, Great Britain, and Italy came in 1949 following the failure of four-power agreement and submission of the issue to the General Assembly. British administration of Cyrenaica and French administration of the Fezzan were barely approved by the necessary two-thirds majority, but Italian trusteeship lacked one affirmative vote. Liberia, which had voted in favor of Great Britain and France, abstained in the case of Italy. Defeat of this section caused the entire South American bloc to smother the whole resolution, and Libyan independence was decided upon at the next session of the Assembly.

31 Quoted in Weinberg, A. K., Manifest Destiny, Baltimore, 1935, p. 423.Google Scholar

32 Cf., e.g., the 1950 statement of George C. M. Ghee, then head of the African Affairs Division of the State Department, advocating the “advancement toward independence” of colonial territories in Africa (United States Department of State Bulletin, XXII [June 19, 1950], pp. 999–1003), or John Foster Dulles' statement before the General Assembly in 1947: “The colonial system is obsolete and should be done away with as soon as possible,” quoted in Crocker, W. R., Self-Government for the Colonies, London, 1949, p. 10.Google Scholar

33 Emerson, R., “American Policy Toward Pacific Dependencies,” Pacific Affairs, xx (September 1947), pp. 259–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 An example of what seems to be disproportionate weighting of this factor is the following statement: “To win praise instead of disapproval, the United States must find an answer to a most difficult question: What policy compatible with our democratic values can we adopt toward our own colonies and those of other powers which will reconcile these two demands [freedom and welfare] and thus diminish conflicts within dependent areas and concerning them?” (Fox, A. B., Freedom and Welfare in the Caribbean, New York, 1949, p. 3).Google Scholar

35 Arendt, op.cit., Part Two.

36 Niebuhr, R., The Irony of American History, New York, ìgsa, pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

37 Cobban, , op.cit., p. 74.Google Scholar