60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

62 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
change, state agency and social divisions elsewhere. Relevant factors
have been indicated, among others, for the rebellion in Madagascar in
1947 (Tronchon 1974: ch. 6) and the recurring outbreaks of violence
in Burundi since independence (Ndarishikanye 1998).
But in terms of imperial agency, too, the use of force could be circumstantial
even without force fulfi lling any specifi c purpose as economic
coercion. Gini’s fascist epistemology tied violence to a development
doctrine in which the overall assumptions were consistent,
albeit odd, while also implying that force manifested itself randomly.
Gini analysed economic data with comparative statistical methods to
prove that colonial rule provided advantages for imperial states (Gini
1937b: 13-16). But these were not considerations of transitive development
and coercive agency. In organicist constructions, moreover,
violence could happen as non-preventable structural adjustment. Given
these lines of reasoning, there was no need to argue how and why
agency achieved a set purpose. Normative arguments fl owed from Italy’s
economic grievances, per se, relating to diffi culties in mustering
structural power in the quest of modernisation. These problems were
being identifi ed by scientifi c observation but also disconnected from
a causal chain. Such arguments, therefore, appear to contrast rather
sharply with British liberal and ‘constructive’ doctrines to which explicit
links between economic purpose and normative agency were
central. Nonetheless, these strands of thought, too, operated with
categories that, parallel to the doctrine, accepted both the use of force
and ‘silent’ violence as residuals.
One could argue that specifi c mechanisms tying material constraints
in economic management to doctrines of development had implications
for condoning violence as ‘collateral damage’. Ideas of national
development and welfare arguably heightened the acceptability of
violence by insinuating ‘necessity’ and ‘inevitability’. Gini’s thinking
implied that the existing economic and political world order prevented
Italian prosperity, giving a sense of urgency to colonial acquisition.
Coercion in production schemes and labour recruitment in colonial
empires generally was rationalised by arguments about national
developmental requirements or as necessary discipline, though to a
degree the very purpose of coercion also checked the use of force.
Liberal and ‘constructive’ imperialists in Britain and elsewhere could
read mortality rates, notably in the course of the building of transport
infrastructure and trade, as the ‘collateral damage’ of modernisation
under tropical conditions. Military campaigns, invoking necessity,
took African manpower for granted (Killingray 1989: 488). With a
diff erent twist, offi cials in South Africa could turn a blind eye to dis-