Imperialism and the Political: Kenya

 

Imperialism and the Political: Kenya

Peter Schultz

 

                  Here’s an interesting passage from the book, The Rule of Empires, by Timothy H. Parsons, regarding British imperialism in Kenya.

 

                  “The Kenyan imperial state was one of the most oppressive manifestations of the new imperialism. It grafted its deceitful legitimizing ideologies onto a highly exploitive model of the kind of old-style settler colonialism that destroyed the Amerindian and Aboriginal civilizations of North America and Australia. Dressing the East Africa Protectorate’s pacification campaigns in the garb of liberal humanitarianism was bad enough, but the settlers’ argument that they were civilizing the people of the highlands by exploiting their labor was simply disgusting. As one dubious official in the Colonial Office acidly noted: ‘Does anyone really believe in the educative value of labour on a European farm?’ The reality of the settlers’ self-avowed goal of making Kenya into a ‘white man’s’ country turned Africans into a permanent underclass.” [p. 348]

 

                  This suggests that the ideology of liberal humanitarianism was merely a “garb,” used “deceitfully” to hide what was really going on. The implication is that had the ideology of liberal humanitarianism been taken seriously, then the Kenyan imperial state would not have been oppressive.

 

                  But this assumes that the ideology of liberal humanitarianism is not pathological, that it constitutes a kind of politics that is not only best but is actually “ideal.” In fact, as the dubious official in the Colonial Office observed, such an assumption is unwarranted insofar as it requires believing that labor intrinsically has “an educative value,” and that those who labor will not therefore be relegated to a permanent underclass that necessarily detracts from the laborers’ human worth by having them engage in dehumanizing work.  

 

More generally, by this assessment, the oppressive character of the Kenyan imperial state was the result of deceit. But if all political orders, all regimes are pathological, intrinsically so, then even if the Kenyan imperial state had been genuinely based on liberal humanitarianism, it would still be oppressive. Insofar as all regimes are pathological, defective, unjust, and oppressive, then all forms of imperialism, including that form that may be labeled “liberal humanitarian imperialism,” will be defective, unjust, and oppressive.

 

Machiavelli observed in The Prince that while most everyone admired Hannibal’s greatness, they failed to see that his greatness was due to his “inhuman cruelty.” The same might be said of mankind’s greatest empires, that while they might appear to be most admirable, they were only made possible and maintained by inhuman cruelty. The inhuman cruelty that the British engaged in Kenya to try to maintain Kenya’s imperial state was no accident. And once that inhuman cruelty was no longer acceptable to the British, the Kenya imperial state failed. So it goes.