New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Although we have not yet descended to the dystopian depths depicted by
Orwell, “newspeak” has become ubiquitous and mendacity commonplace.
Lies and half-truths of breathtaking scope are paraded about in the
media and polite academic circles with little apparent embarrassment.
Perhaps more alarming is that many seem to recognize that they are
being lied to by their leaders, but choose to ignore it in favour of more
comforting “morality tales” of the kind told by Ferguson. 94 It is hard to
disagree with the judgement that Ferguson’s historical revisionism is all
about imperial self-image. 95 The debate, in other words, is not about
history per se but about the role that Ferguson’s sanitized version of
events plays for those embarking on the latest round of imperial
conquest; it is a hymn to the past glories of empire designed to heighten
the moral tone of today’s tawdry imperial enterprise. In the end,
therefore, it is a debate not about the facts of imperial history – for these
have been plain for decades – but about a version of the past that speaks
to the self-deluding fantasies of those who control the present, but whose
imperial hubris by no means guarantees their control of the future.
NOTES
MOOERS: Nostalgia for Empire 131
1. See the introduction to this volume.
2. Although Britain also had extensive imperial interests throughout Latin America this
region never became a major part of its colonial empire in the nineteenth century.
3. See Ellen Meiksins Wood’s contribution to this volume.
4. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
5. Peter Gowan, Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance
(London: Verso, 1999), p. 159.
6. Harvey, New Imperialism,p.50.
7. Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2003), p. 26.
8. Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace (New York: Basic Books, 2002), p. xvi.
9. Bacevich, American Empire, p. 148.
10. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York:
Penguin Books, 2004), p. xvi.
11. Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (New York: Viking Press, 1995).
12. Francis Fukuyama, State-building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century
(New York: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 99.
13. Ibid., p. 120.