Colonisation became a land and power grab by Europeans against the Rest, with the use of superior military firepower, industrial and financial technology. This power grab continued into the 20th century, with Belgium taking Congo as late as 1908, the United States solidifying control over the Philippines in 1902 and the Italians trying to colonise parts of Ethiopia in the 1930s.
When the US took over the mantle of global hegemon from the British Empire after the end of World War II, many former colonies bought the neoliberal ideology that free trade and markets, democracy, the rule of law and equality would be a universal creed for all nations and cultures.
Edward Said, the Palestinian-American father of postcolonial studies, pointed to how imperialism reconfigures the past of the colonised people in favour of the coloniser. Mental colonisation is reached when the colonised, slave or vassal believes that the imperial power is superior to his or her own culture.
More recently, historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, has warned of data colonialism fuelled by artificial intelligence, allowing private or state-run platforms to know more about you than you yourself and influence your likes, dislikes and future.
Decolonisation means different things to different people, depending on their own colonial or near-colonial history. For indigenous people like the Maoris in New Zealand, it means remembering the cruel past when their lands and rights were taken away and pushing for, at a minimum, the restoration of their dignity in today’s laws.
In former colonies like India, the British “Raj” mentality is being replaced by home-grown narratives in which the country seeks “strategic autonomy” in foreign affairs and greater sovereignty – some call it nationalism – in areas such as data, including developing regulation of generative AI.
We are on the cusp of uncharted mental territory. The self-order of free markets is being replaced by an unpredictable non-order arising from competition from new state-market bureaucracies that are neither fully elected nor humanly designed.
The emerging order may even be machine or AI generated. Where is the justice if AI-generated algorithms can order the execution by missile strike or drone of someone branded a terrorist outside a nation’s legal jurisdiction? Who will enforce natural justice when the system systematically dehumanises humanity by treating individuals as digits to be manipulated, controlled or deleted?
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Researchers in Singapore use AI to read minds through brain scans
Researchers in Singapore use AI to read minds through brain scans
In an entangled overcrowded planet, the system is inherently unstable when we resolve differences through conflict and war, because history has shown that war begets more war. Humanity has survived through cooperation and peace. The neoconservative presents the case for preparing for war to maintain peace, but since war can only be destructive, we must instead prepare for the post-war peace.
In short, decolonisation is a journey waiting to unfold. The Spanish poet Antonio Machado, in his famous poem, “Caminante no hay camino” (“Traveller, there is no road”) made the important point that the road is made by walking. In the post-Western world, the Global South must walk its own path in search of a more peaceful and sustainable future.
Andrew Sheng is a former central banker who writes on global issues from an Asian perspective