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Cutting the colonial navel string *LINK*

Cutting the colonial navel string - not a simple task

Keeble McFarlane
Saturday, February 12, 2005

Many of us can still remember the wall maps which had pride of place in our schools and many public places - all the countries under British rule were coloured red, and occupied every corner of the map. The boast in those days was that "the sun never set on the British Empire". Before that, Spain, Portugal, France and Denmark either imposed their mission of "civilisation" on the people they found in the colonised countries, or imported people under the most brutal conditions to open up those lands for commercial gain.
Britain eventually elbowed its way to the top of that heap, and late-comers like Germany and Belgium joined the group when the pie had already been mostly shared out.

The distinguished Trinidadian scholar and political leader, Eric Williams, specialised in the study of colonialism and wrote incisively about it. He argued that the European powers became the dominant economic and political force in the world for centuries because of the colonialism they practised in the Caribbean.
The back-breaking labour of the slaves they
press-ganged from west Africa enabled the capitalist system to flourish in the home countries. But the party had to end at some point, and people in all corners of the empire raised their voices against it - in small numbers at first, but with growing force as the years went by.

The countries which had existed long before the
colonial powers came in were the first to reject the newcomers, but since the colonisers had all the power, the fight was one-sided.

Trinidad and Tobago News

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