The Story of Colonisation

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 926, 10 May 1957, Page 5

The Story of Colonisation

2OR a _ single notion the English language usually has at least two names, one neutral, the other naughty. In the field of colonisation the naughty word these days is colonialism. A BBC series starting from 1YC this Saturday, May 11, touches both, but deals mainly with the older, less derogatory term. Colonisation, as Bertrand Russell indicates in his introduction, dates back to around 3000: B.C., when settlers began spreading along the river valleys of esopotamia, Egypt, India and China. ; In the second talk, the scholar and essayist Sir Harold Nicolson deals with the first true colonies of the West. These were the Phoenician trading centres along the east and sbuth Mediterranean coasts, isolated from the mother city but without the independence enjoyed by many later Greek colonies. With these last, and with the invasions of Persia and Macedon, colonisation (or perhaps colonialism) by the sword enters Western history. The Roman Empire, of which the archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler speaks, was built largely by force. Yet its outstanding qualities, he says, were law, peace and tolerance. Peaceful, too,

was the Indian "drive" to the East outlined by C. H. Philips, of London University’s School of African and Oriental Studies, in the fourth talk. Talks five and six, by European historians Bernard Lewis and R. R. Betts respectively, reintroduce the martial note by dealing in turn with the expansion of Islam, which reduced

Christendom to an enclave, and with the "hammering hordes" which invaded and colonised Eutope intermittently during the Middle Ages. The Indian historian Sirdar K. M. Panikkar concludes the series with a reassuring outline of the way in which civilised communities have throughout absorbed and assimilated their conquerors, (1YC, Saturday, May 11, 7.43 p.m. Saturday, May 18, 7.44 p.m, and on subsequent Saturdays.)