In his book The Dynamics of Global Dominance, David B. Abernethy proclaims that imperialistic colonies are, by design, inherently "self-defeating enterprises." That is, historically as a colony grows and progresses according to the design of its ruling nation, the volatility of that colony increases exponentially no matter how hard the government described by Abernethy, in power tries to maintain social stability within the colony. This is due to the fact that, as imperialistic nations seek to create microcosms of the mother nation in a foreign colony, the metropole inadvertently facilitates the ability of the colony's indigenous population and its early colonists to break off and form their own nation. Abernethy mentions that a metropole, in its attempts to create an overseas colony, essentially nurtures a society that will eventually find it within itself the need and ability to break off and establish itself as its own, independent nation.
[...] According to David Abernethy, European colonialism was a fundamentally contradictory institution; although imperialist nations wanted to develop semi-advanced, often industrialized societies abroad, they did not believe that these societies should or could be allowed to retain any of the contemporary political and social advancements that existed in the metropole. That is, while “Sovereignty, popular representation in government, [and] national identity were ideas integral to European political development from the eighteenth century onward . Metropoles refused to grant these ideas an export permit, claiming their inapplicability abroad” (Abernethy 331). [...]
[...] I have described how, through the hypocritical social and political mistreatment of its educated settlers, imperial nations created colonies that were fated from the onset to break free from colonial rule. Furthermore, I have illustrated how, by allowing for such a great disconnect to exist between the metropole and the colony, imperialist rulers created an atmosphere that was ripe for new nationalist movements that had the potential to overthrow colonial rule. That is, by educating colonists and allowing they to become increasingly smarter and more socially and politically conscious while still offering very little political representation or sovereignty to the colonies, metropoles essentially created a ticking time bomb of contradiction that inevitably would cause relations between the metropole and its overseas outpost to explode. [...]
[...] In this way, education of the people served to unite colonial societies, and all classes within these societies, in several ways, furnishing a “high culture” that allowed for all people of the society to come together over a common language and schooling experiences. In this sense, the decision of the metropole to educate the people of its colonies served as the initial foundation upon which nationalism could grow in the colonial societies; people were becoming ever more united, educated, and socially uniform, all of which where conditions that needed to be satisfied in order for nationalism to exist, according to Gellner. [...]
[...] Unlike many societies which cannot support nationalism because of their strictly segmented societies, a society with a “high culture” that is pervasive among all of society which creates a unified population that speaks the same language and is literate can support nationalism because the “high culture” promotes a social unity that nationalism urgently needs in order to exist. Gellner writes that a “high culture pervades the whole of society, [and] defines it . That is the secret of nationalism” (Gellner 18). [...]
[...] Herein lies a significant part of the reason why Abernethy argues colonialism is “self-defeating:” the metropole nations, in their attempts to create advanced, westernized societies out of the colonies, exported western education to their outposts abroad, and in doing so, awoke the colonial population to the social and political injustices which they were facing. This concept is paradoxical in that the metropole nations, in order to advance their satellite societies abroad by educating the colonial populations, inadvertently spelled the eventual fate of their power over the colonies, as with advanced educations, the colonial populations learned to question and fight the hypocritical rule that was held over them. [...]
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