Me,
an imperialist?
Jeb
Sprague
My
first experience as an imperialist came
in April 2000. One hundred and forty four
years before me, Mark Twain wrote on a voyage
to Hawaii in 1866 "I suppose I am to
take a new disease to the Islands &
depopulate them, as all white men have done
heretofore." After reading this quote
I began to think about my own experience
as an American tourist in Morocco and how
that related to imperialism.
While
in Morocco I realized what I was seeing
was the product of a long historical process
of imperialism. I had the opportunity to
visit Tangiers in Morocco, for just one
day while I was visiting Spain. I traveled
with two friends aboard a large oceanic
vessel from the port of Algrecias (in Spain)
across the straight of Gibraltar to Ceuta,
a Spanish colony and a small port on the
northern tip of Morocco. Ceuta was a beautiful
little port town but it had a kind of forced
presence to it. It felt as if a sort of
European architecture or culture was forced
onto the land. After spending a short time
in Ceuta we got aboard a tour bus, which
drove us across the little Spanish colony's
border into Morocco on our way to visit
the city of Tangiers.
Immediately
upon crossing the overly militarized border
things changed rapidly. As we made our way
through numerous small towns I saw poverty
and run down buildings. At the same time
I could see a traditional indigenous economy
at work with small vendors selling vegetables
and goods in the town centers. I had never
felt so strange in my life -- being a tourist
looking down at these people from the bus.
I felt like an imperialist coming to look
at the "primitives" who my ancestors
had conquered. Approached by children and
vendors begging to sell me things for the
first time I realized that there was a global
economy that existed on inequity. These
people would do the same work a person in
the United States would do but for a fifth
of the cost. I never realized that entire
nations could live in a perpetual state
of poverty.
This
poverty or what westerner's like to deem
as "backwardness" cannot be attributed
to some kind of "cultural deficiency
of the third world" or their failure
to work as hard as the west. To look at
third world nations from a western perspective
places them as foreigners in there own land.
It uses racism to justify imperialism. It
takes away from they're own self-determination
and historical development. Their histories
involve the development of beliefs and technologies
that make our own way of life possible.
Educators, community leaders, or those who
pressed for the self-management and betterment
of their people were killed or imprisoned
by European armies. Before we point our
finger at third world nations we should
look at the history of colonization and
see how it applies to the modern day global
economy. The belief that free trade and
corporate globalization will improve the
plight of third world people is similar
to the argument used one hundred years ago
by American statesmen who claimed that only
through missionaries and military occupation
could Filipinos become a civilized people.
Third
world countries must receive debt relief
and corporations that exploit third world
labor must be held to higher standards.
Perpetual poverty is caused by a competition
for the lowest wage, which is often the
only way third world nations can receive
foreign investment. It's a downward spiral.
Here in Los Angeles, there is the same kind
of imperialism but in a domestic form is
at work. Immigrant workers in sweatshops
in the garment district of Los Angeles struggle
daily in miserable conditions. The impersonal
route of our modern day capitalist economy
creates a large rift between producer and
consumer. Now more then ever it's important
to make connections between those in the
"undeveloped" world and those
in the "developed" world. We must
better understand what third world people
have gone through and what they are currently
undergoing. I hope this essay will motivate
readers to further work to understand the
historical roots of our global economy.
Jeb
Sprague is a master of history student at
Cal State Long Beach and can be reached
at jebbathehut@hotmail.com.
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