[arawde]

It's incredible just how long the Iberian fascist regimes lasted. I imagine that if you polled a set of random people from the street, and asked when they thought the last war for colonial indepence from a European power was, very few would answer "the 1979s" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War

[somenameforme]

France is still being kicked out of African states. In recent times it's been Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. [1] There haven't been any wars over this yet, but France (as well as the US) was very much intimating that there would be. That was meant to intimidate the government and/or populations, but instead it just resulted in widespread demonstrations (against France) and people enlisting in the military en masse. So France waved their other flag and went home. It wasn't just troops and bases either. France was also exploiting these countries and extracting their mineral wealth (like uranium in Niger) while offering well below market rate royalties. I assume these 'agreements' have changed, but I haven't been following the exact events there lately.

I'm sure there's plenty of others as well. The tentacles of colonialism are getting scarcer, but are still very much there.

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-f...

[int_19h]

In case of Mali and Niger, it seems that the locals have simply traded French boots on their necks for Russian ones, so I doubt that things will get any better for them wrt foreign exploitation of their resources.

[somenameforme]

I see no reason to think this is the case. Time had a reasonable article with some relevant back history here. [1] But beyond this I'd also add that I think colonialism has been an abject failure. It's been a story of small-short term gains for massive long-term losses, the MBA mindset of geopolitics. As soon as colonies start to become successful, they seek their independence. So you just end up with expensive adversarial relationships with anything resembling successful colonies, while getting bankrupted by your unsuccessful colonies. Basically - the story of the rise and fall of the British Empire. It's not something anybody is looking to recreate.

[1] - https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/

[int_19h]

It's very simplified back history, though. Lest we forget, those "socialist governments" that Soviets provided support to were themselves very oppressive in many cases, and not particularly socialist in most. And while Russian presence there today does enjoy popular support overall, the families of people who get summarily executed by Wagner might not be so enthusiastic.

As far as gains and losses, you're correct when looking purely at the economic aspect of it, but that's not all there is to it. Indeed, my fear is that the West is finding it very hard to understand (and believe in) what Russia is doing precisely because it is so focused on economic cost-benefit analysis, and ignores the ideological aspects, which dominate the Russian political elites today.

[somenameforme]

The point I'm making is that there's simply no evidence to suggest that Russia is interested in colonialism. It's neither in their ideological nor economic best interest - by contrast a strong and independent Africa that has good relations with them, absolutely is! Also, the US has not been in the least bit caught off guard by anything Russia has done. Here [1] is a fun cable dating back to 2008, describing in detail how NATO looking to take in Ukraine would likely lead to war.

---

"NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains "an emotional and neuralgic" issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene."

---

That's just one paragraph. The whole cable is an easy read, interesting, and full of evidence. But what makes that cable fun is not only how clearly it emphasizes we knew exactly what would happen, but also who wrote it. It was written by William J Burns - the current head of the CIA.

[1] - https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html

[wumeow]

Ukraine has flirted with NATO since it split from the Soviet Union, but it wasn’t until the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas war that it began seriously pursuing membership. Now Finland and Sweden have joined, and whatever’s left of Ukraine after the war will probably join too. If Russia doesn’t want countries to join NATO, it should stop giving them reasons to.

> It was written by William J Burns - the current head of the CIA

When Burns joined the CIA in March 2021, Russia was already building up troops for the invasion. I’m not sure what, if anything, you’re insinuating here.

[racional]

The point I'm making is that there's simply no evidence to suggest that Russia is interested in colonialism.

A very strange thing to say, given that war against Ukraine is an extremely blatant attempt at re-colonization (with a heaping dose of full-tilt racist ethnic cleansing to boot).

Putin's designs in Africa are clearly different, and "colonialism" probably isn't the right conceptual model to apply there. But this insinuation you're making that he's on some kind of "anti-colonial" mission there (or that that he's lending the people in those countries a helping hand in any other way) is equally bizarre, an fundamentally quite naive.

[defrost]

It's not just the European powers .. Dutch colonialism in the East Indies was replaced with Indonesian colonialism.

For anybody unfamiliar the many many islands in the East Indies historically have had easily distinguishable cultures and largely seperate rule until the Dutch consolidation.

The Dutch were replaced as "rulers" by a small group, the most overtly colonial act being the invasion of West Papua following the west largely shrugging their shoulders when independance was sought and "free elections" were rigged via torture.

I'm sure there's good writing on the subject, a cursory search turned up

https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-...

which seems adequate as a starting point.

[jimvdv]

I would love some reading recommendations on the history of Indonesia after Dutch colonialism

[082349872349872]

The junta in Greece went next, and Spain made it almost to the end of 1975: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770

[TremendousJudge]

They have all of these big monuments to their "Guerra do Ultramar" too, I don't think there was any sort of nationwide realization of what that implies.

[lkdfjlkdfjlg]

If you spend any time in Portugal, one thing youll learn is that they are very proud of their past. No self-reflection whatsoever.

And I said they even though Im one of them because I hate the culture of the country. Foreigners arent any depper, of course. They go "ohhh lisbon is so beautiful" and that's as far as they go.

[styluss]

Yup. There is no self awareness of how much we got from all our colonial history.

It is also wild seeing how people are reacting to the President talking about reparations.

[MaxHoppersGhost]

They should be proud of their past. Every civilization in the world (including the ones they conquered) at the time would have done what the Portuguese did if they could. All from a tiny country of a few million people.

[int_19h]

"Others were bullies, too" is not a valid reason to be proud for ever having been a bully.

[pdpi]

Hell, Portugal and the UK ceded control over their colonies in China (Macau and Hong Kong respectively) in the late 90s.

[runarberg]

It can be argued that the Vietnam war was a colonial war. Even though the original colonial power, France, had (mostly) withdrawn from the conflict after the First Indochina war concluded in 1954. Vietnam was still partitioned with the South having a puppet government from the western colonial powers. By the same logic it can be argued that the Troubles are an extension of the Irish war for independence and as such colonial war. Although I would admit both those examples are quite stretched.

Less stretched though is the struggle to end South Africa’s apartheid and the Israel Palestine conflict. Both Apartheid South Africa, and modern day Israel are fighting to legitimize a settler colonial state (preferably ethno-state of European descendants) which unevenly allocates land and rights to the descendants of the European colonizers (see also Northern Ireland before the good Friday agreement).

And finally we have Western Sahara, which is a full on colony just like Angola, and has an ongoing colonial war for liberation (just like Algeria). The only difference is that the colonial power is Morocco, which is not a European power.

[int_19h]

I mean, if you count Russia as a European colonial power - and you should! - then it's far more recent. Chechnya fought a war over its independence in 1994-96, then another one with an active phase in 1999-2000 that tapered off into guerrilla warfare that lasted until mid-2010s.

[timeon]

They are currently trying to regain one colony as well.

[int_19h]

I referenced Chechnya because it is a very traditional case of colonialism that very obviously parallels other European colonies in Africa etc: acquired through straightforward territorial conquest in 18-19th century with no justification other than "might is right" (with a dash of "white man's burden" thrown in for good measure), specifically to exploit as a colony.

Ukraine is a bit different in that both the official Russian ideology and the prevailing public opinion don't see it as a colony, but rather as "lost heartland" that is inhabited by what are still fundamentally Russians who have "strayed". So the long-term goal there isn't to acquire a new colony for the metropole to exploit - it's to forcibly assimilate its Ukrainian population into the metropole in its entirety. Now in practice this isn't that simple either, because of course the occupied territories are exploited. However, one could argue that it is still not colonial exploitation, because its economic nature is fundamentally the same as the relationship between Moscow and basically every other Russian region. That is, it would make sense to say that occupied Ukraine is a colony if you're also willing to say that pretty much all of Russia is also effectively a colony of Moscow (which is not an unreasonable way to describe it, to be fair - just not a conventional one in Western historiography).

[rightbyte]

If you count failed attempts the Falkland war and IRA comes to mind.

[int_19h]

Do you mean to say that invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was a war of colonial liberation? If so, who was being liberated, exactly?

[runarberg]

I’m also having a hard time seeing how the IRA “failed”.

The Good Friday Agreement brought both Civil Rights and equal political representation for Northern Irish Catholics. It also gave a political avenue for further decolonization (including their ultimate goal of reunification with Ireland), making more terrorist activities kind of unnecessary.

I would consider that a pretty good results of violent resistance against your colonizer.

[rightbyte]

Ye maybe IRA was a bad example.

[rightbyte]

Ye no I would not say it was a war of independence. But a colonial war though.

[ghostDancer]

Supported by western democracies, USA and UK have always supported dictatorships while they are useful to them, economically and politically, and using the fear of communism they both supported both fascist regimes till the last minute.