The war that began in 1914 was not a war between a few quarrelling European states. It was a war between world empires. It was a war within Western civilization. And it was the first sign that the West carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. In this war, more than in any previous conflict, the West unleashed its killer applications against itself...
...war can also be a driver of human progress. As we have seen, the impressive advances of the Scientific Revolution were helped not hindered by the incessant feuding of the European states. The same was true of the clash of empires between 1914 and 1918. The slaughterhouse of the Western Front was like a vast and terrifying laboratory for medical science, producing significant advances in surgery, not to mention psychiatry...
In many ways, then, the Nazi Empire was the last, loathsome incarnation of a concept that by 1945 was obsolete. It had seemed plausible for centuries that the road to riches lay through the exploitation of foreign peoples and their land...
The Co-Op in Sointula; a trading alternative...
...in the course of the twentieth century it gradually became apparent that an industrial economy could get on perfectly well without colonies....
Comment:
Interesting premise.
However, perhaps much depends on how we perceive colonisation. Let's examine to what extent achievement of riches no longer relies on the exploitation of foreign peoples or lands. To the extent that Western nations strive to clean their environments by erecting acres of wind farms consisting of hundreds of wind turbines, so Chinese workers, mining rare earth minerals are exploited. Does it matter that this exploitation is not of the nature witnessed during colonial times? Does the Chinese miner know or care?
What we may be witnessing is the final demise of the Nation State. The coloniser is now the corporation, not the foreign power.
Interesting premise.
However, perhaps much depends on how we perceive colonisation. Let's examine to what extent achievement of riches no longer relies on the exploitation of foreign peoples or lands. To the extent that Western nations strive to clean their environments by erecting acres of wind farms consisting of hundreds of wind turbines, so Chinese workers, mining rare earth minerals are exploited. Does it matter that this exploitation is not of the nature witnessed during colonial times? Does the Chinese miner know or care?
What we may be witnessing is the final demise of the Nation State. The coloniser is now the corporation, not the foreign power.