Why study neocolonialism for historians?

Answer 1

One very important event can be used to sum up the importance of Neo-colonialism: Rwanda in 1994. The massacre that occurred in Rwanda claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in a four-month period with the machete. The UN was prevented in its attempts to label the crisis a genocide by France who was practicing neocolonialism as a state policy in which they supported, favored, and prevented intervention in their former colonies, Rwanda being one of them. Eventually, the "conspiracy of neocolonialism" went far enough to prevent the African Union from intervening when then-President Clinton promised the AU armored trucks and personnel to go in and intervene, but made them promise not to intervene until the trucks and personnel arrived. They agreed, did not intervene, and Clinton never sent the supplies he promised. The massacre ended only when the Tutsi rebels finally won in their war against the Hutu power government. The UN, AU, US, and EU were all able to act but chose not to because of neocolonialism. A more modern, generic definition of the term involves what the US and EU are doing to Africa and the Middle East currently in which we consistently go into a third world country and tell the government that the West knows better than them how to run their country and either coerces the government into doing what we want or uses force to install a new government. In any event, neocolonialism is a very harsh paradigm through which to view the world, and, unfortunately, most of the Western World has chosen to see the world through this light. This is why the study of neocolonialism is important to historians.