The West and the Barbarians: A Master Race Democracy on a Planetary Scale

1. Self-government by white communities and deterioration in the conditions of colonial peoples

Asserting the principle of consent by the governed as a condition of the legitimacy of political power, liberalism
galvanized national independence movements. This initially occurred with the American Revolution. And it
immediately offered an example. Some years later, it was the French colo nists of San Domingo, determined to
defend their property in slaves against interference from central power, who entertained projects of
independence or adhesion to the North American Union. However, the colonists agitation had an utterly
unanticipated consequence, in the emergence on the American continent of a new independent state ruled by
blacks and which was the first to abolish the institution of slavery. But San Domingo Haiti was the excep tion
and an exception that filled the liberal world in its entirety with horror and scandal. The outcome of the war of
independence against Spain also induced perplex ity and unease. It was crowned with success thanks to the aid
of the ex slaves of San Domingo and, albeit amid bitter conflicts, witnessed the emergence of a new identity
stamped by a restoration of pre Columbian ancestry and a mixing of races. Giving vent to a widespread
sentiment, at the start of the Latin American revolution a senator from South Carolina (Robert Y. Hayne) scorn
fully referred to its leaders as men of color, who were looking to Hayti with feelings of the strongest
confraternity.1 They admired the island which, in Jeffersons view, could serve only as a dumping ground where
blacks could

1 Hayne, quoted in Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996, p. 141.

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be deported and deposited. For the purposes of that operation i.e. the defin itive disappearance of the black
race from our borders John OSullivan, the theorist of manifest destiny, thought above all of the Latin
American conti nent: The Spanish Indian American population of Mexico, Central America and South America,
afford the only receptacle capable of absorbing that race [They are] themselves already of mixed and
confused blood.2 In the view of Elam Lynds, father of the prison system then in force and a prominent US
figure, whose practical talents are universally acknowledged (the characteri zation is de Tocquevilles) the
Spanish of South America formed a race closer to the ferocious beast and the savage than civilized man.3 The
category tradi tionally employed to define redskins was now also applied to the populations that had
committed the error of mixing with them. While white colonists in the British Commonwealth saw their right to
self government recognized, the Latin American peoples, excluded from the white community and the
community of the free strictly defined, became part of the colonial world. This explains the Monroe Doctrine.
Reinterpreted and radi calized in 1904 by Theodore Roosevelt, it conferred an international police power on
civilized society in general, and the United States in particular, in relation to Latin America.4 The white
colonists of the British Empire encountered no serious diffi culty achieving recognition. Having learnt the lesson
implicit in the American Revolution, the London government decided to pursue the policy of concili ation
formerly suggested by Burke in its relationship with peoples in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates.
Thus, from the second half of the nine teenth century, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa first
achieved significant autonomy inside the Commonwealth and subsequently attained complete independence. It
was a well founded principle (observed John Stuart Mill in 1861) that, at least in domestic policy, the colonies
of European race were fully entitled to self government.5 As in the case of the United States, self government
by the colonists could entail a drastic deterioration in the conditions of colonial peoples or peoples of colonial
origin, now subject to the exclusive, unhampered control of their direct

2 John OSullivan, Annexation, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 4, July 1845, p. 7. 3 Lynds,
quoted in Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres compltes, ed. Jacob-Peter Mayer, Paris: Gallimard, 1951, vol. 5, pt 1,
pp. 634. 4 Roosevelt, quoted in Jean-Pierre Martin and Daniel Royot, Histoire et civilisation des tatsUnis,
Paris: Nathan, 1989, p. 179. 5 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, ed. Harry B.
Acton, London: Dent, 1972, p. 378.

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oppressors. We are familiar with Smiths observation about the catastrophic consequences that free
representative bodies monopolized or controlled by slave owners could have for black slaves. Several decades
later, in 1841, James Stephen, one of the actors in the struggle that had led to the abolition of slavery in British
colonies, declared himself in favour of their firm control by the Crown: popular franchises in the hands of a
great body of owners of slaves were the worst instruments of tyranny which were ever yet forged for the
oppression of mankind.6 The pertinence of this warning was tragically confirmed by subsequent developments.
In 1864, referring to New Zealand, which for some years had been able to count on responsible government
that is, ultimately, self government by the white community The Times observed:

We have lost all imperial control in this portion of the Empire, and are reduced to the humble but useful
function of finding men and money for a Colonial Assembly to dispose of in exterminating natives with whom
we have no quarrel.7

In Australia the extermination of the Aborigines had already begun some time earlier. But in this case too it was
the de facto self government which the colo nists succeeded in exercising that pressed on the accelerator,
whereas expressing concern in 1830 about the indelible stain being imprinted upon the character of the
British Government was the Colonial Secretary.8 In this sense, accord ing to the observation made at the start
of the twentieth century by an English liberal whose position was highly anomalous namely, John Hobson what
was occurring was a kind of private slaughter, carried out by colonists who had wrested self government or
substantial freedom of action.9 In the case of South Africa, once the government had defeated the Boer settlers
and subjected them to the Empire, it reassured them: Your fate is in your own hands the good sense of the
British people will never tolerate any intermeddling in the purely domestic concerns of the people to whom it
has conceded the fullest liberties of government.10 Self government by white

6 Stephen, quoted in Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro, New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1970, p.
299. 7 Quoted in Henri Grimal, De lEmpire britannique au Commonwealth, Paris: Colin, 1999, p. 109. 8 Robert
Hughes, The Fatal Shore, London: Collins Harvill, 1987, p. 420. 9 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, London: Unwin
Hyman, 1988, p. 252. 10 Chamberlain, quoted in Thomas J. Noer, Briton, Boer and Yankee, Kent (OH): Kent State
University Press, 1978, p. 115.

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settlers involved the emergence of a racial state, which segregated blacks in a semi servile condition and
remained in place for almost a century. Significantly, this regime took the South of the United States as its
model.11 There, following a brief interlude (so called Reconstruction) immediately after the Civil War, when
African Americans were genuinely able to enjoy civil and political rights, the reconciliation between the former
enemies in 1877 re established in the southern states the self government of whites, who subjected the
recently emancipated slaves to a terroristic dictatorship based on the prin ciple of white supremacy. As in South
Africa with the compromise between the British and the Boers, in the United States the compromise between
central government and the dominant class in the South, which re acquired the right to self government, paved
the way for the reassertion of master race democracy.