Phalapoem editor, 26/09/25
For centuries, the great powers of Europe—Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and later the United States—swept across Africa, Asia and the Middle East with armies, missionaries and merchants. Behind the banners of “civilisation” and “progress,” they invaded, occupied and partitioned lands that had their own rich histories and political systems.
The record is brutal.
• In the Congo Free State, millions perished under King Leopold’s private regime of forced rubber extraction.
• In India, British economic policies contributed to famines that killed tens of millions in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• In Algeria, Kenya, Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere, uprisings against colonial rule were met with massacres, scorched earth tactics, and concentration camps.
• The Sykes–Picot Agreement and similar deals carved up the Middle East into artificial states whose borders still fuel conflict.
Raw materials—gold, diamonds, oil, cotton, spices, labour—were shipped to Europe and North America to fund the industrial revolutions that made these states the richest and most powerful in human history. Colonies were left with shattered economies, distorted borders, and political systems designed to divide rather than unite.
After Independence: The “Invisible Empire”
Formal empires collapsed after World War II, but the structures of control endured.
• Western powers propped up friendly dictators, armed rival factions, and toppled governments that resisted Western economic or strategic interests.
• Structural adjustment programmes from the IMF and World Bank kept many post-colonial economies tied to foreign creditors.
• Weapons and covert funding turned local disputes into civil wars, while global corporations continued to extract oil, cobalt, coffee, and rare earths.
The Great Reversal
Ironically, the same countries that devastated the global South became beacons of opportunity. Their wealth—built on centuries of plunder—created welfare systems, strong currencies, and technological innovation. For people trapped in poverty or war, migrating to Europe or North America often meant the difference between survival and despair.
Yet migrants arriving in London, Paris, Berlin or New York were no longer “subjects of empire.” They were immigrants, labelled outsiders and often met with racism, discrimination and political scapegoating. They cleaned hospitals, drove buses, and staffed essential industries, while hearing lectures about “integration,” “freedom,” and “democracy”—values long denied to their own ancestors.
Accident or Strategy?
Was this a master plan? Did imperial powers deliberately devastate other regions to ensure permanent dominance and a captive labour force?
Historians debate intent. Some argue it was calculated economic design: monopolise resources, impose dependency, and reap profits for generations. Others see a series of opportunistic decisions driven by short-term greed, not a grand conspiracy.
Either way, the outcome is clear:
• The wealth gap between former colonisers and former colonies remains staggering.
• Borders drawn in colonial capitals still ignite wars.
• Migration flows continue to follow the old imperial trade routes.
The Moral Question
Western governments now position themselves as global arbiters of human rights and democracy. They condemn coups, corruption, and war crimes abroad—often in countries destabilised by their own historical actions. Migrants, despite enduring racism and exclusion, still find these societies more liveable than the homelands left fractured by colonial rule.
This is the great paradox of the modern world:
Those who broke the global South now hold the keys to its escape routes.
Whether this was a deliberate “master plan” or the long shadow of empire hardly changes the lived reality. The descendants of colonisers live in nations built on extraction and violence; the descendants of the colonised navigate a world order still tilted against them, yet often choose to build new lives in the very capitals that once ruled their ancestors.
History may not offer a tidy conspiracy, but it does reveal a system: conquest, exploitation, enrichment—and then the power to define morality itself.