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Vol. 23, No. 4 2024
 
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Robert J. Lewis
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Louis René Beres
Nick Catalano
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Rochelle Gurstein
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

the unflattering history of
WESTERN IMPERIALISM IN ASIA

by
NICK CATALANO

____________________________________

Nick Catalano is a TV writer/producer and Professor of Literature and Music at Pace University. He reviews books and music for several journals and is the author of Clifford Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter, New York Nights: Performing, Producing and Writing in Gotham , A New Yorker at Sea,, Tales of a Hamptons Sailor and his most recent book, Scribble from the Apple. For Nick's reviews, visit his website: www.nickcatalano.net.

 

Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

 

As we have noted several times in Arts & Opinion, the absence of strategic history courses in many university curricula has severely damaged knowledge of important events and subjects necessary for complex diplomatic activity. The result is a blurred background in real Asian history among legislators and political careerists. Foreign policy issues are vulnerable to distortions from fake news which can lead to consequential disagreement and even military action.

Obviously, government policy framers need extensive knowledge of history or their actions will suffer tragic consequences. As an example, statements from Trump officials tasked with formulating policy suffer from a paucity of knowledge about Chinese and Iranian history. Advocating huge tariffs on Chinese products and threatening Iran with sanctions simply to illustrate Trump’s power persona ignores the complex relationship with these countries and has contributed to vast tensions in recent Asian-American activity. If Trump is elected, the carefully structured relationships that the Biden people have engineered with these countries will be damaged with who knows what kinds of new tensions resulting.

A knowledge of western imperialism in Asia in just a couple of hundred years of “persuasive visitations” dealing with various Asian cultures is not a popular subject in school these days and east-west relationships have consequently suffered.

A list of just some of the intrusions of western countries in Asia yields interesting results and goes a long way in explaining some of the new hostile exchanges; and I wonder if some who are familiar with the list won’t be surprised and perhaps begin to understand some of the frustrations that Asia has had with the West. This list is incomplete but offers examples of imperialistic European activity that will surprise many:

In 1557, Portugal assimilated Macau in Southern China and turned it into one of the most lucrative gambling meccas in the world. Together with settlements in the Maldives, Moluccas and Goa in southern India, Portugal snatched Asian territory and together with Spain in the outrageous Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) proposed splitting the entire Asian sub-continent into one big colonial takeover.

In 1799 the Dutch government took over their East India company established years earlier, and expanded their colonial power by swallowing Bali and Sumatra and gaining monstrous trade power in Indonesia which it wields to the present.

Starting in 1824, Great Britain invaded Burma, and established colonial settlements in Malaysia. In 1858 with the Government of India Act, the country of India became a British colonial possession. Most remembered of all is the takeover of Hong Kong in 1842.

After decades of colonial exploration, Spain established settlements in the Philippines, Guam, the Mariana islands and Palau . They also carved out and colonized lucrative territories in Taiwan, Sulawesi and Micronesia.

In 1887 France established its vast rubber empire by taking over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and maintained a powerful colonial presence there until defeated by Ho Chi Minh in 1954.

After its victory in the Spanish-American war of 1898, the United States gained colonial possession of the Philippines. Its control was consolidated when it crushed revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo in a three year war that resulted in over 20,000 Filipino casualties.

And although it did not create other colonial possessions in Asia, the American presence in Vietnam and Afghanistan is well known.

But what is not so well known is the actions of America and Great Britain in Iran. That country had long supplied vast oil reserves to Great Britain and the United States. But in 1951 prime minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh decided to nationalize the country’s oil industry. Panicking, the British responded with threats and sanctions and was soon joined by America in pressuring for new leadership in Teheran. And this is basically how the Shah came into power and initiated his secret police SAVAK in 1957 over any who would oppose him.

Because of this oil issue the eventual overthrow of the Shah in 1979 was accompanied by predictable anti-western sentiment from many who remembered the imperialistic British and American elimination of Mossadegh. This anti-western movement was of course supported by the new splinters of Al-qaeda terrorism.


Bottom line . . . Many Asian countries have long memories about wanton western imperial activity by virtually every European country.

The lack of strategic history courses leaves many college students completely in the dark about all of aforementioned western imperialism in Asia. Unfortunately, the aggressive geographic pestering of Chinese leader Xi Jinpin has complicated matters. He is the first Chinese leader in decades to pursue territoriality as he threatens Taiwan. But any serious student of Chinese history will demonstrate that territorial imperialism has been conspicuously absent from Chinese foreign policy in the past. Incredibly, the original Communist Chinese constitution stipulates that religious freedom is to be given to 55 specifically noted religions.

The interference in Asian culture initiated by the United States and other western powers in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and middle-eastern Asia has resulted in significant anti-western posturing especially from older, educated Asians who remember the European imperialistic activity listed above.

There may be some altruistic intelligence (anti-communist) thinking and, more graphically, violent action against Asian terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi and others. But the West must figure out how to erase the Asian memory of 600 years of western imperialism and strongly convince the indigenous populations that the new West is no longer imperialistic.

Those present and future western leaders must figure out how to gain Asian trust and respect.

Admittedly, this will not be easy given the strong American military presence there, the never-ending Israel-Arab struggle, and the presence of such groups as Boko Haram, Al-qaeda and Isis. The old American excuse for military involvement in Asia was to oppose Russian-style international communism. Ironically, the word communism’ is carefully avoided in Putin-led Russia these days where even Stalin’s name is shunned.

No one ever said that diplomacy is easy. But matters may be more workable provided there are renewed efforts to properly educate university undergrads and graduate students planning diplomatic careers on Asia’s complex and not just the selfish needs of imperialistic westerners thousands of miles away.

 

By Nick Catalano:

Romantic Love: What the Poets Say
The Disappearance of Language
Paddy Cheyefsky
George Lucas - An Appreciation
Sarah Vaughan: The Divine One
Hell on the High Seas
A Producer Remembers
World War I: Armistice and Artists
The Masters: Standup Comedy pt. II
On Standup Comedy pt. I
My Times with Benny Goodman
Higher Education and the Future of Democracy
Remembering OSCAR PETERSON
Faith, Emotion and Superstition versus Reason, Logic and Science
Thinking: A Lost Art
Alternative Approaches to Learning
Aesthetic History and Chronicled Fact
Terror in China: Cultural Erasure and Computer Genocide
The Roller Coaster of Democracy
And Justice for All
Costly Failures in American Higher Education
Trump and the Dumbing Down of the American Presidency
Language as the Enemy of Truth
Opportunity in Quarantine
French Music: Impressionism & Beyond
D-Day at Normandy: A Recollection Pt. II
D-Day at Normandy: A Recollection Pt. I
Kenneth Branagh & Shakespeare
Remembering Maynard Ferguson
Reviewers & Reviewing
The Vagaries of Democracy
Racism Debunked
The Truth Writer
#Me Too Cognizance in Ancient Greece
Winning
Above the Drowning Sea
A New York Singing Salon
Rockers Retreading
Polish Jewry-Importance of Historical Museums
Sexual Relativity and Gender Revolution
Inquiry into Constitutional Originalism
Aristotle: Film Critic
The Maw of Deregulated Capitalism
Demagogues: The Rhetoric of Barbarism
The Guns of August
Miles Ahead and Born to Be Blue
Manon Lescaut @The Met
An American in Paris
What We Don't Know about Eastern Culture
Black Earth (book review)
Cuban Jazz
HD Opera - Game Changer
Film Treatment of Stolen Art
Stains and Blemishes in Democracy
Intersteller (film review)
Shakespeare, Shelley & Woody Allen
Mystery and Human Sacrifice at the Parthenon
Carol Fredette (Jazz)
Amsterdam (book review)
Vermeer Nation
Salinger
The Case for Da Vinci's Demons

 

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