4
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
Hobson.2
But given the desirability of expansion, immense problems were raised,
some common to all parts of the 'under-developed' world, some having
specific reference to particular areas. Orderly economic expansion is
impossible without a framework of government and without a settled code
of law. Where the framework of government was given, as in the case of
the United States of America, Canada and Australia (and to a less
satisfactory degree, Latin America, India and Indonesia), certain
fundamental problems which arose in Africa, particularly, were not
present. Half-way between these extremes were cases like the Middle
Eastern countries (including the Old Ottoman Empire) and China, where
there were indeed age-old civilizations and settled institutions, but
where there were also large-scale corruption and administrative
inefficiency—in short, a framework of government unsuitable to economic
progress. Life in the tropical areas of the world raised problems of
public health: wherever there were local populations racial issues had
to be faced. In all cases a network of communications had to be established. Moreover, the process of expansion was
2 Imperialism, edition
of 1902. Chapter IV, 'Imperialism and the Lower Races'. It is difficult
to quote without giving a somewhat misleading impression, but the point
made above can be justified by the following two passages (op. cit., pp. 237, 241):
(a) 'To
lay down as an absolute law that "the autonomy of every nation is
inviolable" does not carry us very far. There can no more be absolute
nationalism in the society of nations than absolute individualism in
the single nation. Some measure of practical inter-nationality,
implying a "comity of nations", and some relations of "right" and
"duty" between nations, are almost universally admitted. The rights of
self-government, implied by the doctrine of autonomy, if binding in any
sense legal or ethical on other nations, can only possess this
character in virtue of some real international organization, however
rudimentary.
It
is difficult for the strongest advocate of national rights to assert
that the people in actual occupation or political control over a given
area of the earth are entitled to do what they will with "their own",
entirely disregarding the direct and indirect consequences of their
actions upon the rest of the world.'
(b) 'There
is nothing unworthy, quite the contrary, in the notion that nations
which, through a more stimulative environment, have advanced further in
certain arts of industry, politics, or morals, should communicate these
to nations which from their circumstances were more backward, so as to
aid them in developing alike the material resources of their land and
the human resources of their people. Nor is it clear that in this work
some "inducement, stimulus, or pressure" (to quote a well-known
phrase), or in a single word, "compulsion", is wholly illegitimate.
Force is itself no remedy, coercion is not education, but it may be a
prior condition to the operation of educative forces. Those, at any
rate, who assign any place to force in the education or the political
government of individuals in a nation can hardly deny that the same
instrument may find a place in the civilization of backward but
progressive nations.
Assuming
that the arts of "progress", or some of them, are communicable, a fact
which is hardly disputable, there can be no inherent natural right in a
nation to refuse that measure of compulsory education which shall raise
it from childhood to manhood in the order of nationalities. The analogy
furnished by the education of a child is prima facie a sound one, and is not invalidated by the dangerous abuses to which it is exposed in practice.'
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