(^438) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
[Japan] was as responsible in its policies toward its colonial populations
... as was Belgium in the Congo, France in Indo-China, Holland in the East
Indies, or Germany, Italy, Spain, or Portugal in Africa. And in all fairness, it
can be argued, it is against these other colonial situations, rather than against
some theoretical Utopia, that Japan's colonial efforts should be judged.^26
The world belongs to those with a clear conscience, something Japan
has had in near-unanimous abundance.
Korea and Taiwan would say they succeeded in spite of Japan, which
steered them into agriculture and away from industry. Japan subjected
them to repeated reminders of their political and social subordination;
made them, in the Korean case, change their names and assume a
second-class, imitation Japanese identity; assigned them to jobs that
Japanese found too dangerous and disagreeable (for example, mining
in the home islands). When freedom came, Koreans remembered. But
they did not let memory get in the way of material development.
"Don't get angry; get even."
Korea and Taiwan are the exception. Most of the new postwar na
tions remembered too well and took the wrong path. The economic
system of their former rulers was anathema: capitalism was seen as in
efficiency laced with corruption and injustice. In the light of the Soviet
victory in World War II, socialism cum dictatorship was the assurance
of production and promise. They couldn't have been more wrong.
Looking back, then, on the imperialism experience, one sees a persistent
conflict between theory and reality. For most of the past century, the rul
ing orthodoxy has been not simply anticolonialist. It has incorporated
anticolonialism into a larger vision (explanation) of economic history:
colonies as pillars of a dying capitalism. In this model, colonies paid,
whether by nourishing the growth of imperialist economies or by trans
ferring wealth from poor to rich—empire as vampire. Without colonies,
bourgeois domination would come tumbling down. Or to put it dif
ferently, Europe could not afford to give up its colonies. Conversely,
once the subject peoples free, they would rise swiftly to prosperity.
Could not afford... Not at all. Over the course of the twentieth
century, resistance to imperial masters grew. European ideals of free
dom and the rights of man proved contagious, and subject peoples
learned from their masters how to resist their masters. Meanwhile pub
lic opinion, once blithely supportive of empire, now deplored it. Major
scandals—the revelations of torture and mutilation in King Leopold's
Congo and of atrocities (including concentration camps) in the war
nora
(Nora)
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