The decolonization of the period 1946-1962 was a stunning and rapid change in the lives of half the human race. Literally scores of countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific were now autonomous. Some used their independence to implement programs of import-substitution or implement some variant of socialism. In a few cases, the imperial power's commercial holdings were expropriated, with or without compensation.

Nevertheless, many patriots in the newly-independent countries were skeptical. Independence, they said, had been a fraud. Each case was different. The USA, with its preponderant legal apparatus, had compelled the Philippines to adopt the Bell Trade Act under which the new RP was barred from competing with US firms in export markets, or restricting US ownership of land in the RP. In former British colonies, such heavy-handed methods were less commonly used, in favor of entrenched marketing networks. India, for example, had suffered the effective liquidation of its domestic textile industry, and now wholesale consumer goods were mainly a British concern. In French West Africa, the main tool of prolonged colonialism was the personnel, who tended to strongly identify with France. At the same time, oil resources were recovered by French oil companies, mineral resources under the control of the French defense ministry, and so on.

In the Philippines, frustration with neo-colonialism was targeted at the American military bases, continued US influence on RP foreign policy, and of course the vast plantations American firms had seized over the years of occupation. In Africa, however, the frustration seems more likely to be directed at the new castes of elites—European wannabes. Both are to be found in both places, however. The phenomenon of surrogate colonialists in former empires is a complex one that affects perhpas over two thirds of the human race; a cursory glimpse could fill a volume. However, this is an essay on private sector imperialism, so this is going to address one single aspect: the way in which the private sector manages and sustains the colonial relationship, with different personnel on top.

As before, let me hasten to point out that the private sector is not the only perpetrator in this sort of relationship. National governments also prefer to interact with weak, poor states through a subaltern class of technocrats. The private sector is usually opportunistic and adaptive, so one could argue that it is rarely much more than a bystander with a cynical (and usually accurate) expectation of the outcome. Your typical investment banker doesn't care if a particular 3rd world country retains the character or special relationship with its "mother" country; political elites do. On the other hand, the business elites are relentless and shameless about pressing their advantage.

Allow me to also point out that, in this series, I've neglected both the political and economic motives for aggression by putatively socialist countries. This is something that needs to be redressed in a future series, since I think it's worth discussing the abuses that can occur when a nation believes itself to have definitively put itself beyond imperialism for all time. However, the imperialist and neocolonial abuses under Communist regimes obviously fall outside the scope of "private sector imperialism."

Another point—this is not intended as a polemic against the private sector or capitalism. I believe such a thing would waste my readers' time. Capitalism is the economic system we live under, and I'm much more interested in discussing how it works and where it's going, not what "ought" to replace it. Moreover, free enterprise does what it does because people pay for it. It allows resilient, mutually beneficial transactions between countries or parties—even if one or more of those parties is perpetrating larceny. Given that most humans live in an urban economy, it's vital for that urban economy to flourish; but it's also vital to understand the costs associated with that economy. FDI is not a crime; the things done to attract it or protect it may sometimes be.

Each country's colonial experience has been different. There is an understandable tendency to generalize by colonial power (UK versus France, and so on), which has some merit; but note even for a given colonial power, methods varied radically from region to region. The French style of colonial administration in Cochin China (the southern 3rd of Vietnam) was very different from its methods in Laos; policy in Niger could scarcely have differed more than it did from policy in Senegal, yet both were in French West Africa. Likewise, there have been trends by region colonized: there were striking similarities among British, Dutch, and Spanish/US regimes in the Malay Archipelago. These had a major impact on the post-colonial experience. Generally speaking, if a "pro-business" country like the UK colonized a country in the 19th century, it was likely to be much less involved financially after decolonization. Hence, Dutch commercial involvement in Indonesia, Belgian involvement in the Congo, US financial involvement in the Philippines, even British involvement in India, tend to be modest. In contrast, if the colonization took place in the 20th century (precisely, if after 1907), then financial involvement tended to be quite important for the colonized country; hence, US involvement in Haiti, British involvement in Iraq, and so on.

In countries that were nominally independent during the 19th and 20th centuries, such as South American countries, China, Ethiopia, Thailand, or Iran, there was generally a strategic involvement by multiple powers in spheres of interest; hence, Qejar Persia was largely controlled by British and Russian agents, while Siam suffered partition into French and British spheres of influence. In Latin America, the main intervening power was the USA, then the UK, then France (esp. under Napoleon III), and the medium was usually financial and covert (e.g., UK support for various factions in Argentina's turbulent early history). In all of these countries, the old colonial powers continued their involvement until forcible expulsion or displacement. Argentina and Chile, for example, became effectively colonies of the UK during the 1920's and 30's; the Anglo-Russian domination of Iran was renewed after 1942 through invasion and subsequent contracts signed by the new government there.

After "independence" or expulsion of the colonial power, the system of colonial rule persisted; this time, the master was the urban elite, usually the same that had managed the colony as subalterns or auxiliaries. Nigeria, for example, was "indirectly" ruled by Britain by building up defeated tribal rulers into a subaltern class of despots (LoC); after independence, the northern rulers who had ruled Nigeria for Britain were briefly replaced by coalitions of parliamentarians, then military men from the North. In Pakistan and Nepal, Punjabi/Gurkha "martial races" employed by the British were later to come to power in coups or royal dictatorships. Occasionally, as in Rwanda, there were abrupt reversals of fortune (but not in neighboring Burundi). Sometimes these political leaders came to power publicly condemning the colonial powers, as did Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana or Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, who then established their own system of regimenting society—with different types of foreign assistance.

The important point to remember here is that the countries principally involved in rent extraction before and after colonialism were not necessarily the same ones; this did not matter very much since the integration of global capital and money markets, plus multilateral institutions, had made imperialism an increasingly professional, culturally indifferent force. Washington was often with good reason quickly identified as the new locus of imperial power, in place of London, Paris, or Amsterdam. But it was still true that Washington was merely a front office for interests operating all over the world—sometimes, including the new urban elites in Jakarta, Manilla, Rio de Janeiro, or Tehran.