The Monthly Review often runs small “fillers” at the end its articles. Sometimes these are quotes from previously published articles, but the one that recently caught my attention is from David Starr Jordan‘s book Imperial Democracy, published in 1899—it certainly has relevance for today:
This, according to John Morley, is England’s experience in bringing peace to suffering humanity in the tropics: “First you push into territories where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment and, in the wild countries, resentment means resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and that their act is rebellion (this in spite of your own assurance that you have no intention of setting up a permanent sovereignty over them); fourthly, you send a force to stamp out the rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, confusion and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this territory would be left in a condition which no civilized power could contemplate with equanimity or with composure. These are the five stages in the Forward Rake’s progress.
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