Modern Colonisation

During the olden days, the British were a powerful empire that spreads across the globe with countless colonies. Of course, colonisation was not only the habit of the British, the French, the Portuguese and the Spaniards all had their fare share of colonies too. With the exception of Japan who tried and failed, most olden days colonial masters originated from the west.

While being colonised, all the wealth of the colonies in the form minerals, spices or produce were transferred back to their home country. Our country’s reserve, once said to be the highest concentration in the world, were all repatriated back to England. There were also gold, mainly from India and other reserves being sent back to England. All these are achieved by using the local population as cheap labour. Once they have sucked a country dry, they leave in the name of ‘granting independence’ to the colonies.

Basically… they came…they invade… they repatriate…

The days of colonisation are over… or are they?

Former colonies like ours, which have been granted independence spent years in developing themselves in order to reach whichever state they are today. Let’s just leave out the notion of corruption or mismanagement of funds in our country for the time being. That aside, our country have indeed made much progression from whatever that was left with us when the colonial masters left.

Now, with whatever wealth that we have gathered, we asked the west, or anyone who has money to come and invest in our country. With much potential, many came and some are still coming. They pour money into our country… employ us as their employees… make us slave ourselves in trying to make profit for them… and finally send back the profit to them in the form of dividend.

So now… we ask them to come… they invest… we repatriate…

In the old days, they came with their warships carrying troops and invaded our country. They put our forefathers into a somewhat slavery state to plough our lands of our resources and took all our wealth away.

In the modern era, they come with their Multi-National Corporations (“MNCs”) carrying cash. They pay us and tempt us into believing that we will be paid better and better thus most of us are willing to slave ourselves for them. Unknowingly to most of us, they will only pay us a nominal amount. All the wealth in the form of profits of the MNCs will be sent back to them by way of dividend. Worse, some professional mistakes makers here are willing to slave day and night to trying to package the repatriation process in order to maximise rewards for them… and then feel proud about it.

You will be surprise that there are a lot of MNCs whose domestic operations are not making much money; some are even making losses domestically. But they are seen as giant on the world stage simply because the money generated via overseas operations is tremendous… simply because operations from overseas keeping sending money back to the MNCs.

It has been years since the colonial masters left their colonies. But where once there were invasions, there are now investments. Where they were once invaders, they are now investors. Where we were once slaves, we are now employees. Where there was once this land is a colony, it is now flooded with subsidiaries.

This is indeed… modern colonisation.

P/S: Thanks Rinnah for the “Fabulous Award” and also to Mumsgather for the “Creative Blogger Award”. I feel very honoured indeed.