captive markets and resources on the periphery. Britain’s Colonial Office, for
example, was largely staffed with those who believed that they were both
exporting decent values and assisting the development of underprivileged
natives. Nevertheless, the essence of colonialism as a concept, and especially
in modern pejorative usage, is the idea of deliberate exploitation of another
country and its inhabitants. Thus the earliest colonies of the modern world, the
British colonies in India or North America, for example, were set up by
trading companies operating under royal warrants, with the express intention
of making a profit. The earliest colonies of which we have much evidence are
probably those set up all over the Mediterranean basin by the Greek city states
from around 600BC. Nothing was seen to be wrong or undesirable about the
policy of colonialism at a time when the general indigenous populations of the
parent countries themselves were allowed no political involvement, and the
idea that colonialism was politically unacceptable arose only with the devel-
opment of internal democracy in the home countries. In fact the absolute
illegitimacy of colonialism is a later 20th-century phenomenon. One of the
war aims that was expressed by Germany in both world wars was the
achievement of colonial territory on a par with Britain’s, and few found the
demand in principle wrong, but rather objected simply to having to give up
their own colonies or national independence. Not until the creation of the
League of Nationsbetween the wars, and its successor, theUnited Nations,
did it become commonly accepted that only a mandate from the international
community to govern in the long-term interests of the colony itself could
justify a developed land owning and controlling a less developed one. It is still,
of course, often alleged that the essence of colonialism characterizes the
relations between former colonial powers and the newly independent states,
and indeed between the industrially developed powers and the underdeve-
loped countries of theThird World. This modern objection to colonialism
rests on the acceptance of the ethnically basednation state, for otherwise
there is noa priorireason why London or Paris have less right to rule India or
Algeria than they have to rule Manchester or Lyons. The French, particularly,
tried to make this a justification. They argued that their colonies, especially in
Algeria, were simply departments of the French State that happened to be
separated physically from mainland France, and several far flung territories
continue to constitute parts of metropolitan France.
COMECON
COMECON is the standard way of referring to the Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance (CMEA) which, until June 1991, functioned as the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s and Eastern Europe’s equivalent to the
European Economic Community (seeEuropean Union). Alternatively, it can
COMECON