EMPIRE AND AFTER^431public works concessions, loan contracts, favorable market arrange
ments. It is no accident that much of the literature on dependency has
been the work of Latin American economists and political scientists.
They feel, with some justice, that their part of the world, though nom
inally free, has been put down and looted by stronger partners.
Formal empire is now a great rarity. Much here depends on defini
tion (is Puerto Rico a colony of the United States?), but one still finds
odd pieces (Guam, Samoa, Bermuda, the French DOM-TOM [dé
partements and territoires dyoutre-mer) that come under someone
else's rule. Sometimes, as with Bermuda, or New Caledonia, or Puerto
Rico, the dependents prefer it that way because dependency pays.*
Panama, after years of "working for the Yankee dollaaaah," as the old
song has it, is also thinking twice about American departure from the
Canal Zone. But most lands that were once colonies, dependencies,
protectorates, dominions, metropolitan departments, or overseas de
partments are now free. Given the sensibility of once subject popula
tions and accumulated resentments of subjugation and humiliation,
material advantages have rarely stood up to separatism.
A wave of liberations more than tripled the world's nations after
World War II. Each of these newcomers, however small and artificial,
was sovereign and enjoyed a vote in the United Nations. Freedom
promised growth and prosperity to countries once exploited, and—the
important reverse of the coin—portended shrinkage to the capitalist
nations that had thrived on oppression of others and would now have
to make it on their own. Justice would be done.
Things have not worked out that way. Once-imperialist economies
have prospered as never before. And most of the former colonial na
tions have found it hard to get on track. Their colonial masters, afraid
of their incipient nationalism and contemptuous of their abilities, had
not taught them much—barely enough to do the subaltern tasks of
government. White rulers dreaded educated natives: detribalized, filled
with "inappropriate" aspirations, they were, in the words of one British
official (1886), "the curse of the [African] west coast."^11 The British,
for all their reliance on local elites, systematically excluded these dérac
inés (uprooted ones) from posts of responsibility in government and
trade.
- France is a holdout for global dominion, primarily for reasons of prestige and self-
esteem. Such vanity costs, and the French, pressed by European constraints to reduce
their budget deficit, are supposedly reconsidering—Wall Street Journal, 25 January
1996, p. 1. Don't count on it.