Subject: Unity versus fragmentation - a postcolonialist problem
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 02:19:58 +0200


12th July 2000

Dear Pocos,

Part versus whole. The world tends to move in two directions. Unity and
fragmentation. Which is right? If we are to believe the I Ching: both. But
at the appropriate time.

In the nineteenth century, people like Garibaldi and Bismarck thought the
muddle of Italian and German principalities needed sorting out. Result: the
unification of Italy, of Germany. After a civil war, the US American states
finally re-unified, and Great Britain did the same as far back as 1707. How
voluntary this was with regard to all parts of the Union, we cannot tell.
Northern Ireland is proof of the partial failure of this project.

In the twentieth, a more mixed situation. The Russian Empire breaks up, then
the Soviet Union, but Germany reunifies decades later after losing the
Sudeten lands and Silesia. India retains the colonial language, English, as
lingua franca, but loses Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (if these had
ever belonged). The Union of South Africa is stuck together with sellotape,
and after a lot of bickering and bloodshed, ends up with 11 official
languages. The "homelands" are reduced. The English-speakers in Canada
continue to tolerate the presence of French-speakers, and vice-versa. Is the
American dream a re-constituted form of the German "Heimat", rewritten
English-style?. Is the Swedish "Folkshemmet" a similar attempt? Spain
unifies by force, but later allows the parts to drift away from Madrid.
Should the Serbians keep a grip on of the Montenegrans, now that the
Slovenes have run away? Should Indonesia break up - was this whole only
cobbled together by the Dutch? Whither the British Commonwealth? Whither
Israel and the Golan Heights?

And now, the twenty-first century, with so many of the problems of the
twentieth intact.

Best wishes,

Eric Dickens




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