Neocolonialism

Neocolonialism (also Neo-colonialism) is the geopolitical practice of using capitalism, business globalization, and cultural imperialism to control a country, in lieu of either direct military control or indirect political control, i.e. imperialism and hegemony. The term neo-colonialism was coined by the Ghanaian politician Kwame Nkrumah, to describe the socio-economic and political control that can be exercised economically, linguistically, and culturally, whereby promotion of the culture of the neo-colonist country, facilitates the cultural assimilation of the colonised people, and thus opens the national economy to the multinational corporations of the neo-colonial country.

In post-colonial studies, the term neo-colonialism describes the domination-praxis (social, economic, cultural) of countries from the developed world in the respective internal affairs of the countries of the developing world; that, despite the decolonisation occurred in the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–45), the (former) colonial powers continue to apply existing and past international economic arrangements with their former colony countries, and so maintain colonial control. A neo-colonialism critique can include de facto colonialism (imperialist or hegemonic), and an economic critique of the disproportionate involvement of modern capitalist business in the economy of a developing country, whereby multinational corporations continue to exploit the natural resources and the people of the former colony; that such economic control is inherently neo-colonial, and thus is akin to the imperial and hegemonic varieties of colonialism practiced by the empires of Great Britain, France, and other European countries, from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The ideology and praxis of neo-colonialism are discussed in the works of Jean-Paul Sartre (Colonialism and Neo-colonialism, 1964) and Noam Chomsky (The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, 1979).