Colonialism 101

I think the true epiphany came to me a couple years ago when I first visited the Disney-ized (but also “real”) gold mine that is a big attraction in the “Gold Reef City” theme park near Johannesburg.
Before the eager visitors get to “re-create” the thrill of being an actual South African gold-miner by being winched down the very scary mine-shaft, you get to wait in a sort of museum-y place where they have actual artifacts, old photos, diagrams, maps, etc.
One sequence of grainy old photos has a (circa 1985?) caption telling us that these are the “native African boys” (actually, a crowd of very ragged-looking grown men) who were persuaded to work down the mines by the fact that they needed to earn cash to pay poll-taxes that had summarily been slapped on them by the British colonial power that had taken over their land. Otherwise, the caption added someplace, the “boys” would have been very reluctant to go into the bowels of the earth in such a dangerous way to carry out the British mineowners’ desires…
So here it is, Helena’s guide to How to be a Colonialist. (Iraqis, Palestinians, and other peoples of color probably don’t need to take this course.)
1. Have a big army. Take over a country.
2. Pauperize the “native” population as fast as you can by destroying their “native” economy. If necessary impose outrageous taxes.
3. When the locals are truly desperate, offer them terrible sweatshop work at extremely low rates of pay. (But only offer it to a few. Have them compete for the chance to work so then they feel “grateful” if they get it!)
4. Feel good about the fact that you are offering the chance to work to these poor benighted souls who otherwise would be in total destitution.
5. Take your profits home. Enjoy them. Feel good about yourself for bringing “civlization” and “modernization” to those distant natives.
Actually, Riverbend has had a few good posts about how this whole process has been working in today’s Iraq. Like this one, today.
Juan Cole has had some interesting news along the same lines, too. For example, today he reports that yesterday (Sept. 23) the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program(WFP) issued a joint report that recorded that chronic malnutrition afflicts several million persons in Iraq today, including 100,000 refugees and 200,000 internally displaced persons. “The situation of mothers and children in central and southern Iraq is of particular concern,” the report says.
However, soon after that, he comments:

It is a horrible thing that a potentially rich oil state such as Iraq has been reduced to fourth world conditions by the misrule of the Baath.

I certainly don’t hold a candle for the Baath. But I don’t recall reports of such chronic malnutrition in Iraq during their time in power. Terrible atrocites of other descriptions, yes. Thousands of otherwise avoidable infant deaths because of the UN-impsoed sanctions, yes. But widespread and chronic malnutrition? I just don’t recall it.
Plus, honestly, how can you blame the Baath for malnutrition that’s occurring now, nearly six full months after the US “won” the “major combat” phase of the battle–and thereby, under international law as well as simple logic, became completely responsible, as occupying power, for the basic welfare of the country’s population???