Homework # 5: Imperialism Homework # 5: Imperialism Read the documents by Cecil

Homework # 5: Imperialism
Homework # 5: Imperialism
Read the documents by Cecil Rhodes and Ho Chi Minh and then write a reflection that is at least 400 words. You don’t have to answer every question, but you can use them as a starting point. Submit homework on Canvas Assignments.
1) What can we learn about imperialism from Cecil Rhodes?
2) How did Rhodes view the people that Britain colonized?
3) Choose one quote or passage to analyze and explain why you find it interesting or important.
4) What can we learn about imperialism from Ho Chi Minh?
5) Choose one quote or passage to analyze and explain why you find it interesting or important.
CECIL RHODES
“CONFESSION OF FAITH” (1877)
Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) was a British imperialist, businessman and politician who played a dominant role in southern Africa in the late 19th Century, driving the annexation of vast swathes of land. He founded the De Beers diamond firm which until recently controlled the global trade. Scholarships allowing overseas students to come to Oxford University still bear his name. Rhodes’ detractors see him as a racist, and one of the people who helped prepare the way for South African apartheid by working to alter laws on voting and land ownership.
It often strikes a man to inquire what is the chief good in life; to one the thought comes that it is a happy marriage, to another great wealth, and as each seizes on his idea, for that he more or less works for the rest of his existence. To myself thinking over the same question the wish came to render myself useful to my country. I then asked myself how could I, and after reviewing the various methods I have felt that at the present day we are actually limiting our children and perhaps bringing into the world half the human beings we might owing to the lack of country for them to inhabit; that if we had retained America there would at this moment be millions more of English living. I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings…what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence. Added to this the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars, at this moment had we not lost America I believe we could have stopped the Russian-Turkish war by merely refusing money and supplies. Having these ideas, what scheme could we think of to forward this object. I look into history and I read the story of the Jesuits–I see what they were able to do in a bad cause and I might say under bad leaders.
At the present day I become a member of the Masonic order–I see the wealth and power they possess, the influence they hold, and I think over their ceremonies and I wonder that a large body of men can devote themselves to what at times appear the most ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an end.
The idea gleaming and dancing before one’s eyes like a will-of-the-wisp at last frames itself into a plan. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object: the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream, but yet it is probable, it is possible. I once heard it argued by a fellow in my own college, I am sorry to own it by an Englishman, that it was good thing for us that we have lost the United States. There are some subjects on which there can be no arguments, and to an Englishman this is one of them, but even from an America’s point of view just picture what we have lost, look at their government, are not the frauds that yearly come before the public view a disgrace to any country and especially theirs which is the finest in the world. Would they have occurred had they remained under English rule; great as they have become, how infinitely greater they would have been with the softening and elevating influences of English rule. Think of those countless [numbers] of Englishmen that during the last 100 years would have crossed the Atlantic and settled and populated the United States. Would they have not made without any prejudice a finer country of it than the low class Irish and German emigrants? All this we have lost and that country loses owing to whom? Owing to two or three ignorant pig-headed statesmen of the last century, at their door lies the blame. Do you ever feel mad? Do you ever feel murderous? I think I do with those men. I bring facts to prove my assertion. Does an English father when his sons wish to emigrate ever think of suggesting emigration to a country under another flag, never—it would seem a disgrace to suggest such a thing. I think that we all think that poverty is better under our own flag than wealth under a foreign one.
Put your mind into another train of thought. Fancy Australia discovered and colonized under the French flag. What would it mean merely several millions of English unborn that at present exist we learn from the past and to form our future. We learn from having lost to cling to what we possess. We know the size of the world. We know the total extent. Africa is still lying ready for us. It is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race; more of the best, the most human, most honorable race the world possesses.
To forward such a scheme–what a splendid help a secret society would be; a society not openly acknowledged, but who would work in secret for such an object.
I contend that there are at the present moment numbers of the ablest men in the world who would devote their whole lives to it. I often think what a loss to the English nation in some respects the abolition of the Rotten Borough System has been. What thought strikes a man entering the house of commons, the assembly that rule the whole world? I think it is the mediocrity of the men, but what is the cause. It is simply—an assembly of wealth of men whose lives have been spent in the accumulation of money and whose time has been too much engaged to be able to spare any for the study of past history. And yet in hands of such men rest our destinies. Do men like the great Pitt, and Burke and Sheridan not now to exist. I contend they do. There are men now living with I know no other term the [Greek term] of Aristotle but there are not ways for enabling them to serve their Country. They live and die unused, unemployed. What has the main cause of the success of the Romish Church? The fact that every enthusiast, call it if you like every madman finds employment in it. Let us form the same kind of society–a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea. We should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands; just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his County. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.
Take another case, let us fancy a man who finds himself his own master with ample means of attaining his majority whether he puts the question directly to himself or not, still like the old story of virtue and vice in the Memorabilia a fight goes on in him as to what he should do. Take if he plunges into dissipation there is nothing too reckless he does not attempt but after a time his life palls on him, he mentally says this is not good enough, he changes his life, he reforms, he travels, he thinks now I have found the chief good in life, the novelty wears off, and he tires, to change again, he goes into the far interior after the wild game he thinks at last I’ve found that in life of which I cannot tire, again he is disappointed. He returns he thinks is there nothing I can do in life? Here I am with means, with a good house, with everything that is to be envied and yet I am not happy I am tired of life he possesses within him a portion of the [Greek term] of Aristotle but he knows it not, to such a man the Society should go, should test, and should finally show him the greatness of the scheme and list him as a member.
Take one more case of the younger son with high thoughts, high aspirations, endowed by nature with all the faculties to make a great man, and with the sole wish in life to serve his Country but he lacks two things: the means and the opportunity, ever troubled by a sort of inward deity urging him on to high and noble deeds, he is compelled to pass his time in some occupation which furnishes him with mere existence, he lives unhappily and dies miserably. Such men as these the Society should search out and use for the furtherance of their object.
(In every Colonial legislature the Society should attempt to have its members prepared at all times to vote or speak and advocate the closer union of England and the colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire. The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press, for the press rules the mind of the people. The Society should always be searching for members who might by their position in the world by their energies or character forward the object but the ballot and test for admittance should be severe)
Once make it common and it fails. Take a man of great wealth who is bereft of his children perhaps having his mind soured by some bitter disappointment who shuts himself up separate from his neighbors and makes up his mind to a miserable existence. To such men as these the society should go gradually disclose the greatness of their scheme and entreat him to throw in his life and property with them for this object. I think that there are thousands now existing who would eagerly grasp at the opportunity. Such are the heads of my scheme.
For fear that death might cut me off before the time for attempting its development I leave all my worldly goods in trust to S. G. Shippard and the Secretary for the Colonies at the time of my death to try to form such a Society with such an object.
Rhodes later added that all of his wealth should be used:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.
Ho Chi Minh—Writings on French Imperialism (1920-1925)
Source: Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66. Bernard B. Fall, ed. New York: Signet Books, 1967.
Introduction
Ho Chi Minh was a Communist and revolutionary leader of the Vietnamese People. Before coming to power in 1945, Minh wrote several articles and books describing the horrors of French Imperialism.
Speech at the Tours Congress—December 25-30, 1920
-At this Congress, Ho joined the left wing of Socialist Party and approved resolution to found the French Communist Party and join the Third International
-“I come here with deep sadness to speak as a member of the Socialist Party, against the imperialists who have committed abhorrent crimes on my native land. You all have known that French imperialism entered Indochina half a century ago. In its selfish interests, it conquered our country with bayonets. Since then we have not only been oppressed and exploited shamelessly, but also tortured and poisoned pitilessly. Plainly speaking, we have been poisoned with opium, alcohol, etc. I cannot, in some minutes, reveal all the atrocities that the predatory capitalists have inflicted on Indochina. Prisons outnumber schools and are always overcrowded with detainees. Any natives having socialist ideas are arrested and sometimes murdered without trial. Such is the so-called justice in Indochina. In that country, the Vietnamese are discriminated against, they do not enjoy safety like Europeans or those having European citizenship. We have neither freedom of press nor freedom of speech. Even freedom of assembly and freedom of association do not exist.” (21)
-“Thousands of Vietnamese have been led to a low death or massacred to protect other people’s interests.” (21)
-“On behalf of the whole of mankind, on behalf of all the Socialist Party’s members, both left and right wings, we call upon you! Comrades, save us!” (22)

Some Considerations on the Colonial question—March 25, 1922
-“workers of the mother country must know what a colony really is, they must be acquainted with what is going on there, and with the suffering—a thousand times more acute than theirs—endured by their brothers, the proletarians in the colonies.” (26)
-“Unfortunately, there are many militants who still think that a colony is nothing but a country with plenty of sand underfoot and of sun overhead, a few green coconut palms and colored folk, that is all. And they take not the slightest interest in the matter.” (26)
-“The French workers look upon the native as an inferior and negligible human being, incapable of understanding and still les of taking action. The natives regard all the French as wicked exploiters. Imperialism and capitalism do not fail to take advantage of this mutual suspicion and this artificial racial hierarchy to frustrate propaganda and divide forces which ought to unite.” (27)
-“If the French colonialists are unskillful in developing colonial resources, they are masters in the art of savage repression…” (27)
Racial Hatred—July 1, 1922
-“A certain Pourcignon furiously rushed upon an Annamese who was so curious and bold as to look at this European’s house for a few seconds. He beat him and finally shot him down with a bullet in the head.” (28)
-“A railway official beat a Tonkinese village mayor with a cane. M. Beck broke his car driver’s skill with a blow from his fist. Mr. Bres, building contractor, kicked an Annamese to death after binding his arms and letting him be bitten by his dog. M. Deffis, receiver, killed his Annamese servant with a powerful kick in the kidneys.” (28)
-“A Frenchman lodged his horse in a stable in which there was a mare belonging to a native. The horse pranced, throwing the Frenchman into a furious rage. He beat the native, who began to bleed from the mouth and ears, after which he bound his hands and hung him from them under his staircase.” (28)
-“A missionary (oh yes, a gentle apostle!), suspecting a native seminarist of having stolen 1,000 piasters from him, suspended him from a beam and beat him. The poor fellow lost consciousness. He was taken down. When he came to, it began again. He was dying, and is perhaps dead already…” (28)
-“Has justice punished these individuals, these civilizers? Some have been acquitted and others were not troubled by the law at all. That’s that.” (28)
Annamese Woman and French Domination—August 1, 1922
-“Colonization is in itself an act of violence of the stronger against the weaker. This violence becomes still more odious when it is exercised upon women and children.” (29)
-“It is bitterly ironic to find that civilizations—symbolized in its various forms, viz., liberty, justice, etc., by the gentle image of woman, and run by a category of men well known to be champions of gallantry—inflicts on its living emblem the most ignoble treatment and afflicts her shamefully in her manners, her modesty, and even her life.” (29)
-“Colonial sadism is unbelievably widespread and cruel” (29)
-“These facts will allow our Western sisters to realize both the nature of the ‘civilizing mission’ of capitalism, and the sufferings of their sisters in the colonies.” (29)
-Colonial tells this story—“On the arrival of the soldiers…the population fled; there only remained two old men and two women: one maiden, and a mother suckling her baby and holding an eight-year-old girl by the hand.”
“they became furious and knocked down one of the old men with their rifle butts. Later, two of them, already drunk when they arrived, amused themselves for many hours by roasting the other old man at a wood fire [until he was] disfigured by the roasting with his fat which had run, melted, and congealed with the skin of his belly, which was bloated, grilled, and golden, like the skin of a roast pig. Meanwhile, the others raped the two women and the eight-year-old girl. Then, weary, they murdered the girl. The mother was then able to escape with her infant and, from a hundred years off, hidden in a bush, she saw her companion tortured. She did not know why the murder was perpetrated, but she saw the young girl lying on her back, bound and gagged, and one of the men, many times, slowly thrust his bayonet into her stomach and, very slowly, draw it out again. Then he cut off the dead girl’s finger to take a ring, and her head to steal a necklace.” (29-30)
An Open Letter to M. Leon Archimbaud—January 15, 1923
-“you prefer to pass over in silence the crimes and offenses committed by your civilizers in the colonies.” (32)
-“your civilizers—with impunity—have robbed, swindled, murdered, or burnt alive Annamese, Tunisians, and Senegalese.” (32)
-“one should not pretend to give lessons in equality or justice to others when one is unable to apply them at home.” (32)
-The Vietnamese are “robbed of their land only to see it given to the conquerors, and forced thereafter to work as slaves” (33)
-“You speak finally of ‘duty,’ ‘humanity,’ and ‘civilization!’ What is this duty?…It is markets, competition, interests, privileges. Trade and finance are things which express your ‘humanity.’ Taxes, forced labor, excessive exploitation, that is the summing up of your civilization!’ (33)
Annamese Peasant Conditions—January 4, 1924
-“The Annamese in general are crushed by the blessings of French protection. The Annamese peasants especially are still more odiously crushed by this protection: as Annamese they are oppressed; as peasants they are robbed, plundered, expropriated, and ruined. It is they who do all the hard labor…It is they who produce for the whole horde of parasites, loungers, civilizers, and others. And it is they who live in poverty while their executioners live in plenty and who die of starvation when their crops fail.” (36)
-“If the Annamese did not come in sufficient numbers or if they showed discontent, violence was then resorted to: Landholders seized the mayors and notables of villages, cudgeled and tortured them until these unfortunates had signed a contract pledging themselves to supply the required number of workers.” (38)
-“there are spiritual ‘saviors’ who, while preaching the virtue of poverty to the Annamese, are no less zealous in seeking to enrich themselves through the sweat and blood of the natives.” (38)
-“Though not taught in the Bible, the method of obtaining these lands was very simple: usury and corruption.” (38)
-“one can see that behind a mask of democracy, French imperialism has transplanted in Annam the whole cursed medieval regime…and that the Annamese peasant is crucified on the bayonet of capitalist civilization and on the Cross of prostituted Christianity.” (38)
Indochina and the Pacific—1924
-the French have “turned a people of 20 million souls into one big sponge to be squeezed by money-grubbers. We are, on top of all this, to be endowed with slavery.” (43)
The Failure of French Colonization—1924
-“France always pretends that it is the first colonial power that has known how to colonize.” (46)
-“French colonization is only practiced in favor of a gang of adventurers, dishonest and ineffectual politicians of the mother country, alcohol and opium racketeers, unscrupulous profiteers, and dubious financiers.” (48)
Report on the National and Colonial questions at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International—July 8, 1924
-“In all the colonies, the native peoples are unremittingly exploited by French imperialist capital.” (68)
-“Together with the big capitalists, the [Catholic] Mission founded companies for the exploitation of the plantations, which were occupied without any payment, and the land stolen from the peasants.” (69)
-“French capitalists in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco have carried out the same policy of robbery and exploitation.” (69)
-“French colonial policy has abolished the right of collective ownership and replaced it by private ownership.” (70)
-Africa—“Due to shortage of food, they have to eat wild vegetables and grasses or rotten rice and consequently are infected with typhus and tuberculosis. Even in good harvest years, peasants are seen turning up rubbish heaps, disputing food remnants with dogs. In lean years, the corpses of peasants dead of starvation are seen everywhere in the fields and on the highways.” (70)
-West Africa—“These colonies are in the hands of about forty companies. They occupy everything: land and fields, natural resources, and even the natives’ lives; the latter lack even the right to work for themselves. They are compelled to work for the companies” (70)
-“Another method is to make old people, women, and children work as servants. They are lodged in small huts, ill-treated, beaten, ill-fed, and sometimes murdered.” (71)
-“The same system of pillage, extermination, and destruction prevails in the African regions under Italian, Spanish, British, or Portuguese rule.” (71)
-“The Hereros had 90,000 cattle. Within 12 years the German colonists had robbed them of half. Similar cases are numerous in all the black countries which came into contact with the Whites’ civilization.” (72)
-“French capitalists have never hesitated to drive each region in turn to famine if it might be of advantage to them. In many colonial countries…the inhabitants are no longer allowed to grow cereals but have to grow other crops required by French industry. These crops are more profitable to the planters.” (72)
-“In all the French colonies, famine is on the increase and so is the people’s hatred. The native peasants are ripe for insurrection. In many colonies, they have risen many times but their uprisings have all been drowned in blood. If at present the peasants still have a passive attitude, the reason is that they still lack organization and leaders. The Communist International must help them to revolution and liberation.” (72)
French Colonization on Trial
-“Before 1914, they were only dirty Negroes and dirty Annamese, at the best only good for pulling rickshaws and receiving blows from our administrators. With the declaration of the joyful new war, they became the ‘dear children’ and ‘brave friends’ of our paternal and tender administrators and of our governors…They (the natives) were all at once promoted to the supreme rank of ‘defenders of law and liberty.’ This sudden honor cost them rather dear, however, for in order to defend that law and that liberty of which they themselves are deprived, they had suddenly to leave their rice fields or their sheep, their children and their wives, in order to cross oceans and go and rot on the battlefields of Europe.” (73)
-Colonized people “heroically allowed themselves to be massacred to water the laurels of the chiefs with their blood and to sculpture the marshals’ batons with their bones.” (73)
-“All told, 700,000 natives came to France, and of this number 80,000 will never again see the sun of their country!” (73)
-“As in Europe, the great poverty of some is the cause of profit for others” (75)
-West Africa—“Didn’t one commanding officer think it ingenious, in order to induce the young Senegalese, who were running away from him, to leave their hiding place and wear the military cap, by torturing their parents? Didn’t he arrest old people, pregnant women, and young girls, making them take off their clothes which were burned before their eyes? Naked and bound, the unfortunate victims were flogged as they ran through the district at a trot, to ‘provide an example!’ A woman carrying her baby on her back had to beg to have one hand freed to keep her child balanced. Two old people fainted on the way; young girls, terrified at such cruelty, had their periods for the first time; a pregnant woman gave premature birth to a still-born child; another gave birth to a blind baby.” (75-76)
-“A rope was strung across one end of the main street in a village, and another rope at the other end. And all the Negroes who were between the two ropes at that particular time were automatically enlisted.” (76)
-“As soon as the guns had had their fill of black or yellow cannon fodder, the loving declarations of our leaders were magically silenced, and Negroes and Annamese automatically became people of a ‘dirty race.’” (77)
-“the colonial government has in one stroke committed two outrages against humanity. On the one hand it doesn’t want to do its own dirty work as a poisoner but it wants to associate with it its poor victims of fratricidal butchery. On the other, it values so low the lives and blood of its dupes that it considers it is paying sufficiently for the loss of a limb or mourning for a husband by throwing them this rotten bone.” (78)
-“we are sure that the civilized world and the good Frenchmen are on our side in condemning the sharks of the colonies who do not hesitate to poison a whole race to line their pockets.” (78)
-“what a strange way to civilize: To teach people to live well, a start is made by killing them!” (80)
-“It is usual for our illustrious ones to ‘educate’ the natives with kicks and sticks.” (80)
-“Everything is allowed, everything is possible in this Indochinese paradise.” (84)
-“In the colonies, if one has a white skin, one belongs to the aristocracy: One is of a superior race. In order to maintain his social status, the least of European customs officers has at least one servant, a ‘boy’ who, quite often, is a maid of all work.” (85)
-“it is not rare to see colonial officials returning to France on leave or retirement, taking their domestics with them.” (85)
-“Colonial officials are the main cause of the high cost of living in the colonies.” (85)
-“be hanged to you, if after such authoritative evidence, you persist in not believing that colonization is neither more nor less than a civilizing and humanitarian mission.” (86)
-“If one has a white skin, one is automatically a civilizer. And when one is a civilizer, one can commit the acts of a savage while remaining the most civilized.” (87)
-“And people are surprised at the discontent on the part of the natives in the colonies!” (87)
-“People spend all day hitting the Annamese with sticks or the flat of a sword to make them work.” (89)
-“The Annamese are very gentle and submissive; but they are spoken to only through kicks on the backside.” (89)
-“The contractor himself burned down the strikers’ houses to oblige them to go back to work. A whole village was in flames during the night.” (90)
-“Nowhere in the world, writes Vigne d’Octon, is there a vanquished people who are the object of more ill treatment than the native.” (90)
-“All the Frenchmen…arrive here with the idea that the Annamese are their inferiors and must serve them as slaves. They treat them like brutes good only for leading with a stick. All of them got into the habit of considering themselves as members of a new and privileged aristocracy. Whether they are military men or colonial settlers, they normally visualize no other kind of relations with the natives than those they have with their servants. It seems that their ‘boy’ is for them the representative of the entire yellow race. You should hear with what idiotic disdain a Frenchman of Indochina speaks of the ‘yellow-skinned man.’ You should see how boorishly a European treats a native.” (91)
-“The conqueror attaches a great price to signs of submission or respect on the party of the conquered. The Annamese in the towns, like those in the countryside, are obliged to take off their hates before a European.” (91)
-“we are crueler and more barbarous than the pirates themselves” -colonial soldier (92)
-“Besides the promotion awaiting the most zealous, it appears that the gentlemen of the police are entitled to a commission of 20 per cent on the proceeds of fines! What a wonderful system!” (93)
-“One Pourcignon, furious, threw himself on an Annamese who had the curiosity and audacity to look for a few seconds at the European’s house. He struck him and finally brought him down with a revolver shot in the head…” (93)
-“While the life of an Annamese dog isn’t worth a cent, for a scratch on the arm of Mr. Inspector General Reinhart receives 120,000 francs indemnity.” (94)
-“The civilizing of the Moroccans by gunshots is continuing.” (94)
-“if one goes to the colonies, it is to steal from the natives.” (94)
-“The administrators are petty potentates who like to surround themselves with luxury and sumptuousness to enhance, so they say, their prestige with the natives.” (97)
-“Whether they have been restaurant keepers or college ushers, once they arrive in the colonies our civilizers lead a princely life.” (98)
-“Not only are taxes crushing, they vary every day.” (99)
-“There exists no rules other than the whims of the customs officials.” (99)
-“But why, in Indochina, the French gentleman who shoots down an Annamese with a revolver shot in the head; the French official who shuts up a Tonkinese in a dog’s case after savagely beating him; the French contractor who kills a Cochinchinese after binding his arms and making his dog bite him; the French mechanic who ‘brings down’ an Annamese with a hunting rifle; the French naval employee who kills a native crossing-keeper by pushing him into a furnace, etc. Why are they not punished?” (104)
-“And why are only eight days’ prison, with reprieve, ‘inflicted’ on these young gentlemen in Algeria who, after having punched and kicked a little native boy of thirteen, impaled him on one of the spikes surrounding the ‘Tree of Victory’?” (104)
-“what is criminal for the [native] is an act of civilization when committed by the [French]” (104)
-To the French, “the Annamese and the Algerians are not men, they are dirty…’goats.’ There is no justice for them.” (104)
-“Justice is represented by a good lady holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other. As the distance between Indochina and France is so great, so great that, on arrival there, the scales lose their balance and the pans melt and turn into opium pipes and official bottles of spirits, the poor lady has only the sword left with which to strike. She even strikes innocent people, and innocent people especially.” (105)
-“it is a real crime for Annamese to praise the blessings of liberty, and they are given five years in prison, merely for that!’ (106)
-“Villages are declared responsible for disorders which occur on their territory. Any village which gives shelter to a patriot is condemned. To obtain information, the procedure—always the same—is simple: The mayor and notables are questioned, whoever remains silent is executed on the spot. In two weeks, a militia inspector had seventy-five notables executed!” (109)
-“It was said: ‘Colonization is theft.’ We add: rape and assassination.” (110)
-“the incredible cruelty of the administrator who poured liquid rubber into a Negress’s private parts, then he made her carry a huge stone on her head in the blazing sun until death overtook her. This sadistic official is today carrying on his exploits in another district.” (110)
-“Facts as odious as this are unfortunately not rare in what the worthy press calls ‘overseas France.” (110)
-“It is a painful irony that civilization—symbolized in its various forms: liberty, justice, etc., by the gentle image of woman and managed by a type of men who pride themselves on their manners—should cause its living image to undergo the most ignoble treatment and shamefully strike at her in her morals, her modesty, and her life.” (112)
-“Colonial sadism is unbelievably frequent and cruel” (112)
-“The unrestrained sadism of the conquerors knows no limits. They carry their cold cruelty as far as the refinements of a bloodthirsty civilization allows them to imagine.” (113)
-“Never at any time and in any country has the violation of all human rights been practiced with such cruel cynicism.” (114)
-“French mothers, women, daughters, what do you think of this, sisters? And you, French sons, husbands, and brothers? It is certainly ‘colonialized’ French gallantry, isn’t it?” (114)
-“In all the speeches, in all the reports, in every place where they have the opportunity to open their mouths, and where there are idlers to listen to them, our statesmen ceaselessly affirm that only barbarous Germany is imperialist and militarist, while France, this peaceful, humanitarian, republican, and democratic France, this France represented by them, is neither imperialist nor militarist. Oh, not at all! If these same statesmen and soldiers—children of workers and the workers themselves—to massacre the workers of other countries, it is simply to teach the latter to live properly.” (114-115)
-“French capitalism, anxious at the awakening of the working class in the metropolitan country, is trying to transfer its domination to the colonies. It draws from there both raw materials for its factories and human material for its counter-revolution.” (115)
-“Sometimes these gentlemen carry their impudence so far as to oppose their generosity to British colonial banditry: They describe British policy as a ‘cruel method,’ or ‘heavy handed,’ and uphold that the French practice is full of justice and charity.
It suffices to glance at our colonies to judge how ‘fine and gentle’ this civilization is.” (115-116)
-“The natives are forbidden to possess arms to defend themselves against wild animals which devastate whole communes. Education and hygiene are lacking.” (116)
-French imperialism is “an institution which places men on a level with animals and which dishonors the so-called civilized world. The natives, their patience at an end, revolt. Then comes bloody repression. Energetic measures are taken. Troops, machine guns, mortars, and warships are sent; a state of siege is proclaimed. Mass arrests and imprisonments are carried out. That is the gentleness of civilization!” (116)
-“French colonialism hasn’t altered its motto: ‘Divide and rule.’ That is why the empire of Annam—that country inhabited by a people descended from the same race, having the same customs, the same history, the same traditions, and speaking the same language—was divided into five parts. Through this hypocritically exploited division, it is hoped to cool off the feeling of solidarity and fraternity in the hearts of the Annamese and to replace it by an antagonism of brother against brother.” (116)
-“Capitalism is a leech with one sucker on the proletariat in the metropolitan country and another on the proletariat in the colonies. If the animal is to be killed, both suckers must be cut off at once. If only one is cut off, the other will continue to suck the blood of the proletariat; the animal will go on living and the cut off sucker will grow again.” (119)