ABSTRACT
Will imperialism continue in the future or are we moving towards a globalized world where respect for cultural diversity is combined with peace through greater equality? Alternatively, is globalization simply a euphemism for contemporary imperialism? With the collapse of communism in the late 1980s, more positive appraisals of the imperial past and contemporary globalization emerged that celebrated the apparent triumphalism of Western democracy and capitalism (Fukuyama, 1992). Imperialism in history was now interpreted by some ‘as little more than the opening up of closed economies’ (Blackburn, 2001). Thus, in Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), Niall Ferguson emphasized the benefits of ‘Angloglobalization’ in furthering the spread of liberal capitalism and opening up global markets. Conservatives attacked liberal political correctness for encouraging a negative view of the imperial past and a blaming and shaming that exonerated the victim (Bruckner, 1986; Kimball, 2001). The colonial era, observed Frank Furedi (1995), was increasingly portrayed as a ‘golden age’ and blame attributed to the Third World: ‘backwardness’ stemmed from corrupt, undemocratic regimes. The changing intellectual and political
climate since the 1980s has also informed the ‘new racism’ and ‘new imperialism’ (Balibar, 1991; Furedi, 1995). In Africa these developments have justified recolonization by the West.
