September 11 events have their parallels throughout the past

Friday 2nd November 2001

Much has been written about how the times we live in post-September 11 are unprecedented. Eight weeks have elapsed since the new world order of America's war on terrorism was imposed.

Yet rarely does any event lack some sort of previous parallel. The obvious one in terms of the risks faced by investors and economies at present comes from the commercial colonialism of the 19th century, although there are examples even older than that in the rise of international trade and the evolution of capitalism.

We live under sustained economic downturn during a period of expanding world trade and pressure for free markets. Commerce has internationalised itself such that events in one country can have swift and direct bearing on economic performance in other countries far away. If the nation concerned is the dominant economic power, domestic occurrences can rapidly mutate into an international domino effect such as we see now, where American recession has been exported worldwide. The war on terrorism has overlaid a complication on this foundation but many of the circumstances we find ourselves in are far from unique.

The 19th century equivalent of the US today was of course the UK. The British then dominated world economic activity, which they premised on free trade and laissez faire capitalism. Indeed, markets were probably freer back then than they are now. Like the US today, the UK exported both booms and busts, depending on its own business cycle. During sustained downturns in the British economy, the sorts of calls we hear now for protectionism were not infrequent.

Although the British operated a colonial empire based on directly imposed political sovereignty, they and other colonial powers practised in some countries a quasi-sovereign domination not unlike the special trade zones set up in China since the era of Deng Xiao Peng. These enclaves were the trading concessions seen particularly along coastal China in the 19th century.

Direct sovereign colonialism has virtually disappeared now but corporate colonialism has burgeoned in its stead. Present examples could be pointed to in Ireland and Malaysia, and more generally it could be said that localised concessionary regimes set up to favour foreign corporations and investment are of the same feather. The country of location retains at least nominal political sovereignty, but in reality it is the occupying corporations that are in control, backed by the sovereign powers of their home countries.

In China, confusion of the state and private enterprise in colonial activities was perfected by the Japanese, who during their occupation from 1931 to 1945 set up a vast web of commercial interests that ranged across commodities like coal and rice to more exotic trade in Chinese prostitutes and heroin. The gangs and the army acted like the Japanese government but operated as businesses. Naturally the Chinese fought back.

Earlier examples of corporate colonialism can be found in the East Indies companies chartered by the Dutch and the British. These corporations conducted themselves as if they were sovereign powers in their own right. The British corporate colonialists had a lot to answer for in India, but their Dutch counterparts in the East Indies - today's Indonesia - were particularly cruel and oppressive. Yet these organisations were companies. Their brutal and exploitative actions aroused widespread and bloody resistance among native peoples.

Before then we could consider the period of European plunder of the Americas. The Conquistadors set up companies chartered by the governments of Spain and Portugal and promptly behaved like sovereign powers. Acts of looting and genocide followed, as did resistance. To get a piece of the action, the likes of Elizabeth I created their own corporate colonialists in licensing official piracy by gallants like Sir Francis Drake.

Today's Islamic militants and others such as world trade protesters see themselves - rightly or wrongly - at least in part as victims of corporate capitalism and identify colonising US businesses with the US government. These businesses in turn may have encouraged this view by being too ready to use projection of US sovereign power to further their commercial objectives.

While the Americans need to build an international alliance to wage war on terrorism, the great risk they run is that they will compromise many governments that co-operate. Disaffected citizens will see their organs of state as having been further co-opted by US corporate colonialism. Then the sort of protracted, internecine wars of national liberation that previous periods of colonialism have triggered will reappear.

At that stage Osama bin Laden will have got what he wanted, and the likes of the global economy, free trade, and international investment will suffer a long winter of discontent.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet