EMPIRE AND AFTER^425monopoly visited on non-European peoples is wrong. Yet that is what
most people think of as imperialism. To be sure, something different
happened when Europeans sailed or rode around the world and sub
dued strange tribes and nations by means of superior weapons and
knowledge. These far places and peoples were culturally, geographi
cally, and physically distant. Whereas earlier conquests were next door
and implied absorption or assimilation, these strange lands were viewed
as prizes, as fields of opportunity—not as components, but as annexes.
The native population? A lesser breed—usable, improvable, but not po
tentially European. The mother country did not envisage a fusion of
old and" new, though this could and did happen, as in Spanish Amer
ica and in Portuguese colonies in both the New and Old worlds. Sport
tells the story. In 1898, a British governor in West Africa had two
cricket pitches built, one for Europeans, the other for natives. When
the two teams sportingly played each other, these games became racial
contests; and when the African side began to win, the competition had
to be discontinued.^5 We have come a long way since then: less colonial
pride and more colonial losses.
The annexation and exploitation of these distant lands took many
forms. For the Spaniards, the heart of the matter was treasure. Their
empire consisted of veins of ore linked to local and regional supply lines
of labor, food, and manufactures, and to sea lines stretching back to
Europe. The Portuguese in Asia, on the other hand, worked in lands
inhabited by much larger and, for them, unconquerable populations.
They had to build on small, defensible holdings such as Goa—points
of presence—and radiate from there, buying, selling, and extorting
protection money from local merchants.**
- Exception is sometimes made for modern Japan; but what of precolonial Africa? The
same "progressive" thinkers who denounce European colonialism are quick enough to
take pride in the expansion of the Zulu or Ashante. On this manichean view of world
history, setting the demonic white man against victimized people of color, see Bruck
ner's emphatic Tears of the White Man.
î Thus the Spanish government originally envisaged keeping Spaniards and Indians
apart, but the inevitable unions of invaders and natives (castas) led to a large mixed
population that, owing to the ravages of disease, almost came to equal in numbers the
Indians of pure race. It was this mestizo and criollo group that deliberately separated
itself from the castas and eventually led the rebellion against Spanish rule and took over
the new nations—Klor de Alva, "Postcolonization."
- Contrast in this regard Portuguese empire in Asia with that in South America
(Brazil) and Africa (Angola and Mozambique). On these other continents, they en
countered sparse populations lacking the political organization to oppose a serious re
sistance. So they took territory, with boundaries long undefined.
- Contrast in this regard Portuguese empire in Asia with that in South America