Leftovers of Empire
written by Kevin Summers, December 1999
So Portugal has marched out of Macau and President Jiang Zemin has gleefully announced the end of colonialism within not only China but the Asian continent. Time then to look about for those pockets of land still defying both historical and geographic sense: those remaining outposts of empire.
Let's begin in the South Atlantic, at those barren, cold and windswept rocks the British insist on calling the Falkland Islands. Since Thatcher and the Argentinian Generals fought their ludicrous war in 1982 - like two bald men fighting over a comb, commented Jorge Luis Borges - the matter has been hanging in the air but sooner rather than later a British Government will hand over the land and the gum booted farmers and the sheep.
Then there's Gibraltar. Britain hardly needs a naval presence there to secure its economic welfare in the Mediterranean Sea. The great rock is a part of Spain and that should be the end of it. British control was, after all, something of an afterthought. Sir George Rooke only turned his attention to Gibraltar when he decided against attacking Cadiz back in 1704. He feared Admiralty censure over his lack of action while in charge of a great naval force.
Both Britain and France continue to boast of possessions in the West Indies, places one reads of in the tourist brochures: Montserrat, Martinique, the Caymans. The French, those most stubborn of nostalgic colonialists, also cling to bits of coral and sand in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It's time they packed up and departed.
The United States has finally retreated from the Panama Canal Zone, though no one doubts it has left emphatic instructions to the locals about running the waterway. After all, the Monroe Doctrine still lives in Washington (remember Grenada, 1983). Of course the U.S. still has Puerto Rico, 1500 kilometres south-east of Miami, and shows no sign of getting out of there.
And while we're lashing out, why should Denmark maintain control over Greenland? Even a cursory look at a map would indicate that Canada or Iceland should be fighting for hegemony of that great landmass. Now it is conceivable neither of these nations want more frozen waste to call its own but the Danes should do the decent thing and make the offer.
Yes, President Jiang was eminently correct to celebrate the demise of colonialism in Asia. But the man must have been speaking of the European variety. Or else his memory was playing tricks. Indonesia, murderously but thankfully now out of East Timor, remains in West New Guinea while there hangs a question mark over its historical claim to West Timor.
And there is the matter of Tibet. Perhaps President Jiang should have just thanked the Portugese and otherwise kept his mouth shut. Colonialism is an ugly thing and these possessions are no more than the remnants of national arrogance. Time for all occupiers to get out.
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