Uncertain Dimensions. ltestem Overseas Empires in the Ttientieth C‘entur). Rl;mi>nd F

Bftts (Odor> L’nl\erslt> Press, 1985). 263 pp.. P.B. (‘7.95. H C. i:l9.3).

Book Reviews 10s

for instance. but in the main its eiiL”<t was to deepen &vision tvirhin the colonial 'dual

cconom>--European-export. local-consumer‘ (p. Y 1). Native industries received vsrh

scanty encouragement. though some were growing up in India through Indianentrrprise. Labour recruitment differed only in degree from the bad old methods. the ‘bleak path from slavery to indenture‘ ip. 105). Betts goes on to discuss ‘dependency theory *, and rical views as to whether imperial rule was a liberatin g or a suffocating fxpertencc. It uas. In fact, both, in a complrs counterpoint.

Later on he picks out some: prominent spokesmen of the subject races and their criticisms of their rulers. and of the western civilisation these purported to represent. One is Marcus Garvcy. the Jamaican. self-proclaimed ‘provisional president of .Africa‘: another the philosopher-politician Gandhi. and his frllovv-countryman the writer Tagore. Aim6 Cisaire the poet of lfartinique is taken as a representative of those who were trying to call up and give ltterary shape to a ‘black consciousness’. -\nti-coionial organisations and movements are bristly reviewed; the very early appearance. and energy, of a colonial newspaper press is emphasised. World War IIcan be seen in retrospect as the deathblow to the old order, but imperialists were still bent on keeping it going.and in too many regions armed force had to be resorted toagainst them. Amertca was standing ready to inaugurate a new order, in many ways a continuation ofthe old, under the t~rleofwhat Washington called ‘world leadership’, and others called ‘neo-colonialism’. Independence was quickly followed by disillusion. *It is obvious’, Betts remarks in conclusion, ‘why a Marxist interpretation of history appealed to Third W’orld intellectuals’ (p. ?I?).

titlivrrsilj, o/‘ tifinhurgh

Victor G. Kiern~n ‘

T&e Humanist Tradition in the West, .?.lan Bullock (New York and London: W.U’. Norton, lY85), ZOY pp., s24.95.

This slight volume contains five lectures by the English historian, Alan Bullock, for the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. They offer a superficial sketch of the ‘humanist tradition in the West’ for the benefit of the usual Aspen Institute audience of major corporate executives, assembled on this occasion in the University Club’s stately Italian Renaissance palace on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The audience expects from the lecturer an uplifting refresher course on ‘Culture’.

Alan Bullock IS a very distinguished political historian with a First Class degree in both history and classics from the University of Oxford where he became successively a history don, Master of a college and Vice-Chancellor. He was elevated’ to the Peerage in 1976 (Labour).

Bullock’s personal views on man and society are explicitly stated in his text. He scorns dogmatic religion but writes that a ‘belief in the existence of a power in the universe, greater than oneself, on which one can draw for help’ is useful (p. 16.5).

He sees the world as divided into four parts-the Nato bloc {humanistic), the Communist bloc (anti-humanistic). the Third World(confused)and the Far East. Bullock knows he is open to criticism for assumin g that the humanist tradition is peculiar to the West. He also tells us that some critics have called his brand of humanism ‘an ideology which belongs to the period of bourgeois individualism’ (p. 183). Bullock denies the charge but nothing in these lectures disproves it.

The book is divided into fivechapters: Renaissance. Enlighrenmenr, Xinercmlh Cenrq~.

Twentierh Cenrur), and Has Hunmisn~ o Future? The ‘Dark Ages’ are omitted because their music, architecture, sculpture. stained glass. wood and ivory carvings and literature-everything created between &rgusrine and Petrarch-have no interest for the