Neoliberals cast colonial rule as a pragmatic requirement for Western raw material access

Evidence

The rise of anticolonialism made neoliberals increasingly defensive of European colonialism and its supposed civilising role. Their problem, as the Dutch philosopher-economist Justus Meyer put it, reprising late colonial stereotypes, was that the colonised ‘wards’ had proved far less rational and amenable to civilisation than the liberal colonialists assumed; they clung to their own customs, they lacked the IQs to embrace education, and (like those Algerians who William Rappard had viewed as a challenge to Adam Smith’s economics), they were generally ‘not inclined to work more than necessary’ to provide their accustomed standard of living. Faced with such intransigence, Meyer claimed that ‘liberalistic colonialism is at its wits’ ends’. In an unintegrated world, it would be all very well to leave those who refused Western pedagogy alone. But, given the commercial relations developed over centuries, granting self-determination to colonial subjects ‘would dry up the sources of tropical raw materials, oil and many things the rapidly progressing western world cannot do without’. … Against the normative principles of liberal humanitarianism, which he believed had failed in practice, Meyer held up as an ‘elementary law of self-preservation’ that the ‘historically grown relations between colonial powers and their colonies not be broken off abruptly without something sensible to take the place of historical patterns interwoven with the economic system of the Western world’. The question for the neoliberals was what ‘sensible’ arrangement would confine former colonies to their allotted roles in the global division of labour as providers of raw materials and cheap labour, while shaping market subjects. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 294

Categorization

• XREF: This directly connects to the reader’s interest in market ethics and human rights — the reputational contradiction of market liberalism defending colonial extraction. — connects to: Neoliberal intellectuals saw Bandung as a resource against Western colonialism — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 275; Self-determination threatened Western access to colonial raw materials — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 294; The colonial resource grab morphed into a neoliberal regime that maintained extraction mechanisms — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 28
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘liberalism’s wits’ end’ — how market-thinking stripped colonialism of humanitarian justifications to defend it as self-preservation.

Broader Connections

• Self-determination threatened Western access to colonial raw materials #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 294
• The colonial resource grab morphed into a neoliberal regime that maintained extraction mechanisms #expands (0.78) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 28