Quote of the Day: Colonial Nationalism and Anti Colonial Nationalism

If nationalism inspired two incompatible movements, how should we evaluate it?  You might just call it a wash: Nationalism giveth, and nationalism taketh away.  But this shoulder shrug overlooks two mountains of bodies.  The first mountain: All the people killed to establish colonial rule.  The second mountain: All the people killed to overthrow colonial rule.  It is perfectly fair to blame nationalism for both"transition costs." 

Surprising implication: Regardless of the relative merits of colonial versus indigenous rule, the history of colonialism makes nationalism look very bad indeed.  Why?  Because colonial rule didn't last!  So if you're pro-colonial, nationalism led to a high transition cost, followed by ephemeral wonders, followed by another high transition cost.  And if you're anti-colonial, nationalism led to a high transition cost, followed by ephemeral horrors, followed by another high transition cost.  Two dreadful deals, however you slice it.

But don't you either have to be pro-colonial or anti-colonial?  No.  You can take the cynical view that foreign and native rule are about equally bad.  You can take the pacifist view that the difference between foreign and native rule isn't worth a war.  Or, like me, you can merge these positions into cynical pacifism.  On this view, fighting wars to start colonial rule was one monstrous crime - and fighting wars to end colonial rule was another.  Nationalism is intellectually guilty on both counts, because it is nationalism that convinced people around the world that squares of multi-colored cloth are worth killing for.

(italics original)

This is from economics professor,  prolific blogger and author Bryan Caplan at the Library of Economics and Liberty

Graphic: Has Facebook been Reconnecting Past Colonial Ties?

Interesting observation from the Economist

The Economist writes

EIGHT years ago Facebook launched as an online social network connecting a small college community from a dorm room at Harvard University. Today the company has 845m active users across the globe and a wealth of data. One aspect of these data, which Facebook has shared with The Economist, shows a rough correlation between current global Facebook friendships and the old boundaries of once-mighty European empires.

The maps below rank 214 countries according to the strength of their ties to Britain, France, Spain and Portugal respectively. The darker the blue the higher the fraction of foreign Facebook connections with the imperial power in question. (Facebook has not shared the underlying percentage data, just the ranking.) These closely correspond to countries or territories which were, whether wholly or in part, at one point under British, French, Spanish or Portuguese rule, as seen in the bottom set of maps.

Australia, New Zealand and swathes of east Africa hold the strongest ties to Britain. West African Facebookers have most connections with France. Spanish-speaking Latin America is most strongly tied to Spain. Brazilians remain firmly linked to Portugal, as do people in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau.

For the complete view of the graph, proceed to the Economist original site here