“The rest of the world – and you know this very well, Federica – is not exactly a garden”: The West, the ‘Rest’ and the Tale of Forgotten Colonialism

Antique photograph of the British Empire: Annexation of the territory of the king of Ado

Beginning with uncivilized and barbarians and then moving to failed states; fragile states; failing states; and rogues states, Ladies and gentlemen we have now arrived to the latest representation of the non-West: the jungle. It is a lawless, chaotic, cruel and a brutal place to be, far removed from the order, beauty and structure of a garden. It is this stark binary imaginary which High Representative Josep Borrell conjured at the Inauguration of the European Diplomatic Academy when he called on people to imagine the difference between the North and the South. This inauguration ceremony was organized on the 13th of October, 2022 and presided by Federica Mogherini, Rector of the College of Europe. He argued that: “Yes, Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together.”1 At first glance, for the unsuspecting mind, this might seem an appropriate representation. Europe seems everything, the ‘rest’ is not. The rest of the world, as Federica was reminded, “is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle…”.2 Unsurprisingly, not only was Federica not informed about how the ‘garden’ came to be, or about how the plentiful lands were turned into a ‘jungle’, Federica was also kept ignorant of the fact that the garden was built on the systemic oppression and resource exploitation of the people of the ‘jungle’ through years of colonialism and imperialism.

Federica should have been told that the ‘garden’ was built on both oppression and exploitation during colonialism. This directly resulted in social divisions, poverty, and various forms of deprivation. For instance, the now Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries, during colonial times, was the Congo Free State – the personal colony of King Leopold II of Belgium, the gardener of one of the ‘gardens’. Leopold designated large parts of the Congo Free State as concessions to private companies in which he was the primary stakeholder. These private companies extracted natural resources through extreme violence and by co-opting the powers of local leaders.3 Whether it be the “British colonialists transforming the Malay peninsula into a plantation economy to meet the needs of industrial Britain and America” or straining Myanmar’s local resources by exploiting the control of minerals, timber and opium or the European powers carving up Africa in the so-called “scramble for Africa” during the late 19th century,4 these vast swathes were turned into a ‘jungle’ to build the ‘garden’. The systematic oppression of ‘the rest’ through resource exploitation by the colonial powers, which includes all the ‘gardens’, put unprecedented strains on local resources and resulted in poverty, destitution, and a struggle for survival. I am sure Federica must have sweat in her boots, when Borell made his next statement: a veiled threat to her ‘garden’.

“…the jungle could invade the garden”, he said. Of course, when Borell used the word invasion he was implying immigration from the South and not territorial invasion, of which the ‘gardeners’ seem pretty expert. With a history of invasions which go centuries back in history and continues to this day, the ‘gardeners’ seem to have mastered the art of invasions since the colonial era; they just don’t call it colonialism these days and pretty ruthless and invasive they were. For instance, the rubber concessions granted under Leopold II had disastrous effects in that an estimated 10 million people – approximately half of the population of Congo – died between 1880 and 1920.5 France played an active role in many genocides in Africa, provided weapons and cooperated with the powers that carried out the genocide. France killed millions of Algerians by shooting them or burning them in limekilns during the 132 years of exploitation and occupation in Algeria from 1830 onwards. More than 1 million people were killed in the period between 1945 and independence. In 1994, a similar process took place in Rwanda and France provided weapons and military training support to the local aggressors and had a direct impact on the deaths of nearly 1 million people.6 So Federica, do not worry about an ‘invasion’. This ‘invasion’ which Borell speaks about is largely a result of the systemic oppression and the erosion of social cohesion which dates back to when you were building your ‘gardens’. I am sure Federica would have slept cozy in her bed, under the warmth of the moonlight after hearing Borell’s solution to thwart an ‘invasion’.

“The gardeners have to go to the jungle.” He said. “Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.” Can someone please inform Federica that the ‘gardeners’ never left the jungle! Though the process of decolonization in the late 1940s wrestled the territorial control of the ‘rest’ from the imperial stranglehold of the ‘gardeners’, however under the guise of liberal internationalism, another fancy word that implies the imposition of the will of the ‘gardeners’ on the ‘rest’, exploitation of wealth and resources continue to thrive. The democracy which the ‘gardeners’ brought to Afghanistan and Iraq in the earlier decade, resulted in a complete breakdown of the national economies and consequently costed uncountable human lives. The democracy brought to Syria and Libya tore the countries apart and allowed the ‘gardeners’ to siphon off their oil reserves. The ‘garden’ needs oiling! International organizations continue to be used as tools for the ‘gardeners’ political interests and all this in the name of keeping the ‘garden’ safe. Finally this brings me to the latter part of the above mentioned quote.

One of the major shifts in the early 2000s, in the way global politics were perceived, happened when Condoleeza Rice, the US National Security Advisor claimed that “today’s threats come … less from strong states than from weak or failed states”.7 What Borell did in his speech was just change the words to give a more imaginative slight to it. It is uncanny how for the last couple of decades or so, the assailants have become the target, the victims have become the aggressors and the threatened have become the threat. This speech was a rhetorical continuation of that policy where the victims of centuries of exploitation and oppression resulting in irreversible losses in man and material, aren’t even allowed to take ownership of their victimhood. But what this speech actually unveils is that all measures of decent livelihood such as peace, security and development etc. are worked by the ‘gardeners’ to secure the ‘garden’, because they do not apply to the ‘jungle’.

By calling upon our imaginations of a ‘garden’ and a ‘jungle’, Borell chose to simplify the many means and methods in which the North has ‘engaged’ with the South. In doing so not only has he presented a decontextualized and a dehistoricized version of European opulence, his optimistic agenda of ‘engagement’ with the ‘rest’ reeks of an imperial utopia. At the same time he has insulted both Federica and the audience, because either he believes that they are ignorant of the copious literature produced on the lasting legacies of European imperialism, or he thinks his words would be taken uncritically. In any case, the European Diplomatic Academy will benefit more from engaging with scholarship on European colonial traditions and the lasting power asymmetries it has created which continue to this day and maybe then Federica might find out to her horror, why “The rest of the world – and you know this very well, Federica – is not exactly a garden.”