Latest / Thinking Class / #104 - Alexander Chula - An African Dictator Understood Western Civilisation Better Than The West Does

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#104 - Alexander Chula - An African Dictator Understood Western Civilisation Better Than The West Does · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to Alexander Chula.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Alex is a medical doctor and writer working in London.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: His first book, Goodbye Dr.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Bander, was published in 2023.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Alex and I think out loud about what an African dictator can teach the West and Britain about themselves, how multiculturalism impacts conceptions of personal and national identity, the perceived cultural openness of modern society compared to the past, and why engagement by middle class Westerners with foreign cultures on their travels are really superficial in their nature, and why this is in stark contrast with the more profound respect and curiosity exhibited by earlier generations, including those we thought were regressive or in modern parlance not progressive, and why British Victorian missionaries were more influential and had a greater, more positive impact than modern NGOs and aid workers in Africa, and much, much more.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: This episode and conversation indeed was personally, intellectually, and culturally enriching, and I'm fortunate to have had the chance to meet Alex again after a chance meeting at an event we were at earlier this year.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Having realized there's a lot of overlap in the work that we're doing outside of this podcast conversation, there will be more discussions on cultural and national identity between Alex and I to come.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, like, subscribe, follow, and share Thinking Class on your podcast platform of choice, YouTube and Substack, and enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Alex Tula, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is my pleasure to have you on.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And also, by way of a brief preamble for listeners, it is uh a very happy circumstance that Alex finds himself on the show because we we met at Bijan Amrani's book launch for God as an Englishman.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: He is also a former guest of the show, and we we met in passing, and then we managed to track each other down and make this conversation happen.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it was through Bijan putting you in touch with me that I found that you'd written a wonderful book called Goodbye Dr.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Bander, uh Lessons for the West from a Small African country.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about your time in Malawi before you got into your medical career.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Alex, I'll I'll have you tell us what you learned and why you think Malawi has lessons for the West and Britain.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and perhaps we begin with that, because actually your time there amongst its people and learning its history subverted fashionable narratives about British Empire, colonial oppression, and slavery.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us how.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for that um that very kind introduction, John.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes, so uh I um I found myself in uh in Malawi by accident.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's a small landlocked, impoverished country in southern Africa that uh um most people never visit and uh many people may never even have heard of.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh yes, certainly from a marketing point of view, it's been extremely difficult uh to explain why uh why people should uh yes uh divert their attention to this uh to this place.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: But my the my focus with the book was thinking about how Westerners have interacted with Malawi, using it as a case study of how Westerners interact with other cultures more generally.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I was thinking very much about uh the you know the the present as well as the past, but there is quite a lot of historical context that does need to be uh need to be laid down, and um I think a lot of that context uh is itself interesting from the point of view of how we in Britain regard our our history at the moment, because uh Malawi was part of the of the British Empire, um and yet I I think it uh come clear from my my book that its experience of imperial rule um was uh a mixed one, uh as was uh probably that of any country that uh that experienced imperial rule.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I tried to suggest um a predominantly positive one, uh, and certainly one that subverts prevailing narratives, as you say, about imperial rule being a story of unalloyed evil of uh colonial repression, um, but also one which I think tells uh an important but very neglected story about uh about the history of slavery, which tends to get lost in the in the furori about the transatlantic slave trade.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um that works.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean I think um the thing to consider is that is that this is the territory that became known to to Britain um through David Livingston.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: This was the territory that obsessed him, and the reason it obsessed Livingston was because once the transatlantic slave trade had been had been suppressed, the largest in the world was that being conducted on Africa's east coast by a number of actors, but uh predominantly by Omani Arabs who had a vast empire uh which was expanding quite uh quite rapidly at the time that Livingston encountered uh the region in the in the middle of the 19th century, um stretching all the way from the the northernmost tip of Portuguese territory and today's Mozambique um up to the borderlands between uh Kenya and Somalia today.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this territory, this this empire being so successful that the the uh Omani Arabs had actually recentered their capital from Muscat in uh in Oman uh to Zanzibar.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and on Zanzibar there was the largest uh slave market in the world at the time that's that Livingston was exploring the hinterland.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um now the the slaves were drawn from a very, very wide territory within Central Africa, but uh among them um Malawi was particularly important because it was relatively speaking um quite a populous territory.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a land which when Livingston uh arrived there, uh conditions uh could fairly be described as hell on earth.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So massive disruption of settled agriculture, uh of settled communities through persistent slave raiding um by the Arabs, but also by uh by Islamized uh tribes acting as their as their accomplices.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the result has been a condition of of recurrent famine.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it let alone I mean it not only does it inhibit any sort of development, um I mean it simply inhibits basic uh subsistence farming.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it was a land of of starvation, of terror.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Malawi suffers even more because it finds itself at the nexus of different forces.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So not only do you have the uh the the the uh um slave traders coming in from from the from the east, uh you've also got um Portuguese slaves, specifically uh a class of um mixed-race Portuguese African robber barons who are particularly brutal and have carved out fiefdoms in the area, uh, and uh terrorizing local societies in in the broad territory of Malawi.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then to add to this, you then have uh the Umgoni, who are a uh a breakaway tribe from from the Zulu diaspora uh coming up from the south, who have brought the the the martial prowess of the Zulus and are very much um fighting uh sort of a um it's very much a land grab, but a very a very brutal one in uh in Malawi.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's a land that was whose societies were really being devastated.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Livingston's perception was that there was no way of redeeming, improving the situation apart from by the introduction of the notorious three C's which causes so much embarrassment today, that is, Christianity, civilization, and because he was a realist and recognized there was a need to pay for it, commerce.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean it's worth reflecting that it it was a very different situation to the transatlantic uh slave trade, which had been relatively easily suppressed by naval policing.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: This wasn't possible on the Swahili coast, the Indian Ocean, um, because uh it's a trade being conducted in a myriad of tiny coastal hugging vessels, and these large British men of war can't uh you know get in close enough to the coast to spot them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a it's a long, friendly coastline, which uh which is under the control or notionally under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so Livingston really is convinced that it has to be by by missionary settlement deep in the interior as the the only way of controlling this this problem at the source.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and British involvement in the region is driven by this missionary motive, um, by this uh um sort of early humanitarian motive.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um the British government uh actually uh assumed uh take absorbs it as a protectorate uh in 1891, only with the utmost reluctance, because it's a territory which is uh very little uh um strategic interest, very little resources.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the missionaries have have long have before that already gone in um a uh very, very isolated missions to try to suppress slavery and have actually done such uh uh an extraordinary job in doing so that the impetus grows in in Britain and pressure is on put on the government that really they ought to be supporting this endeavour.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it is an astonishing accomplishment what the the missionaries that uh that that followed Livingston um managed to achieve in this territory.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I always used that to find it almost inexplicable how such a large swath of uh uh people on the earth could have been uh converted to an alien religion without the use of force by a handful of men uh acting in extraordinary extraordinarily uh difficult um and dangerous circumstances.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the the the the reality is is that the the conditions there were so appalling when the early missionaries from Britain arrived in the territory that uh when strangers uh uh arrived offering a message of peace on earth and goodwill to all men, it was embraced very, very enthusiastically.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think a testament to this is that although these figures are uh consigned to almost total oblivion in in Britain today, um they are still remembered very warmly in the territory of Malawi.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um a period of colonial rule follows, which is uh which is a uh which the the the record is mixed, but overall I think that achievement in bringing uh in extirpating slavery remarkably peacefully and establishing a a security uh to the to the region which it had not known for a very, very for many generations before, uh uh must be counted as one of the great moral achievements um of the of the the whole British Imperial Project.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Alex, th there are a lot of threads on that that we we are going to pull on like mad throughout this conversation, not least Christianity, but not least what this means for Dr.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Bandit and uh his relationship to Britain and uh indeed the uh the flowering, I suppose, uh at least for a time of uh civil society in in these places.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps before we we start getting into those those meaty elements of the story of Malawi and your time there, let's hear about how you found yourself there, because uh very amusingly at the beginning of the book you write about having studied classics at Oxford with this uh uh this this kind of um a sense of um perhaps uh self-satisfaction, I think, which you you talk about uh amongst your your peers that you're at Oxford, you're studying classics, you're all you're all that, and you're also highly sought after by corporate firms, and you you talk about how there are magic circle firms, those in the the law profession, and much else besides, that were effectively courting you all at these events, giving you free food and drinking and come on, you'll be great here, as is so often the case for the the a good percentage of our graduate class in this country.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um what why why did you find yourself in Malawi and why did you not go down the route of the cushy corporate life?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean well the simple answer is rather by accident, it should be said.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm I'm actually a medical doctor, um, but I've taken a rather meandering course into medicine.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um as you say, studied classics uh for my for my first degree.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and at the towards the end of my classic degree, it sort of became apparent that most of my my peers were being drawn towards uh um the world of law, the world of finance in London, um, which um did not appeal to me at all.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um indeed I I sort of rather recoiled from it uh and looked for um work elsewhere.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I I had uh probably sort of entirely fanciful romantic notion that I might find something to do in sub-Saharan Africa, um, and I think it would have been very easy for me to have uh washed up as one of the um um uh aid or development workers that uh that I end up from landmasting somewhat in the book.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was sort of the idea I half had in my mind.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: But in the midst of uh looking for such a post, I came across an advert for a teacher of Latin and Greek in Malawi and um uh reflected that it was probably the the only job on the entire continent that I was actually qualified to do.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I uh yeah, so I um uh uh applied for it and um ended up having one of the um most um informative experiences of my of my life there.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was wonderful.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I it was the beginning of a long infatuation with with Malawi, which uh which continues uh you know to today.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I later came back to the UK and uh studied medicine, and then I was able to return to Malawi as a doctor, so I've had the chance to see the country from different perspectives.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: But my first um uh my first acquaintance with the country was through this very, very bizarre academy uh established by Malawi's very eccentric and very angliphile uh dictator, Hastings Bander, who thought that the study of Greco-Roman civilization was the way to advance development in uh in Africa.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think what is striking about the book is that well, you can tell you're a classic student, that's for sure, because of your your deep understanding of uh Greek and Latin literature and the culture that it it bequeathed to the West, so to speak.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um what you notice throughout the book is that you're obviously writing it biographically, you're writing your observations on uh the people of every of every class, though different different class systems are here in in Britain, that's for sure.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: But um but you have a real sense of where it is that you come from, which is also an interesting conversation for us to have because I know that is also fraught for for you with your your mixed heritage, your your your English and and Thai um heritage.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll get onto that in a moment, but you do have a real sense of where you come from, and it you learned the follies of modern Britain and modern civilization through having been exposed to a country that was very much, I suppose, in the ashes of an attempt of implementing a Greco-Roman-based civilization, um, trying to bring all of the best of institutions and literature and culture so that Banda's own people could flourish.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You were able to see right up front just how much value there is in British civilization within Western civilization more broadly, by having been exposed to others without diminishing theirs either.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you you just mentioned a lot of your friends who went to Oxbridge, found themselves in finance and law.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've rubbed shoulders with with that that profession or those professions in my my career, and I think what I'm struck by is how few people have the sense of who they are, whether from like you express in your book.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you get that from classics, I'm sure you get that almost from your mixed heritage because it helps you reflect even more on identity and all the rest of it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the amount of people who are graduates, uh high performing graduates from Red Brick universities, Russell group universities, that go on to occupy the professional elite of the country who have almost no understanding, basically zero, of the civilization of which they're effectively the stewards of at this point.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they are the ones that are pulling the strings for our future direction in many ways, and they're passing nothing on meaningfully, and almost have no reflection on it because they're so materially focused on adding value in the corporate context, on growth, but there's nothing to say about where they're from, why that's important, or even if there's anything good about it.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um these observations that you've had too, or am I just a an overblown cynic?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, I think you've uh you've expressed very well a lot of uh a lot of thoughts that I've had.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think my I think my background of being half Thai, half British has always um I I think for a long time I found it uh aspects of that uncomfortable, feeling that uh in some ways I was I was condemned to always feel slightly ill at ease, never fully at home in either world.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um but as I've uh as I've grown older, I think that slight outsider status is uh one that I've come to embrace.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um because I I I think it has um just allowed me the huge advantage of uh of having the constant compare and contrast of these two wildly different uh societies between Thailand and England.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh so being able to see each one, I suppose, with with uh to some extent fresh eyes.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean Thailand is curious because it's uh in many ways it could be held up as a sort of poster boy for the universalist idea that actually if we just uh yes get the the the the governance and economic prosperity okay, then everything's everywhere's basically the same.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think Thailand uh really flies under the radars quite how quite how strange uh a country it is.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's got a lot of the it's got all of the appurtenances of a of a of a modern Western state, but it's a very, very eccentric country.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and one that because of my the the intimacy which I which I've I've I've um if I know it um I can't realize it is so wildly different from from England.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the acquaintance with both has I suppose given me a um an appreciation um uh an awareness of how different societies are and appreciation for uh yes for for the differences in each.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so Perhaps that's what you got in mind when you think of um uh people who've known only England um but have grown up somehow oblivious to the the enormous um cultural spiritual wealth that's uh of which they are uh of which they should be the the inheritors.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You also reference, Alex, uh I think in the the the the introduction to the book that having been born in South London to uh one English, one Thai parent, um, and as you've just explained, not necessarily feeling entirely comfortable in either culture, maybe we can meditate a little bit on multicultural England and um your thoughts on that, because I think it's probably fair to say, and I think you do pick up on this uh later on in the book.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: You you you mentioned that you're an anywhere person.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is a term that David Goodhart has popularized, that around 15 to 20% of the population are anywhere people, they can be at home anywhere in the world uh because they have a more um uh a kind of free and easy um mixing with other cultures and civilizations and and find the similarities and uh generally are more bohemian and cosmopolitan in their in their outlook.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not how everyone's wired, and the other 80% are broadly split quite evenly between somewhere people, those rooted to time, place, people, tradition.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're not going to leave within 45 miles of where they were born and grown up, and they're still very rooted, regional identity, all the rest of it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are the people in the in the middle.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it's fair to say that that London cosmopolitan outlook is pretty much localized to the university towns of the country, the towns and cities of the country.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the somewhere view um of what England is and what their regional identity is is very different to the London view.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is that also what you you mean when you say you fully don't you don't feel fully part almost of England and Englishness because you're from the cosmopolitan uh centre with the multicultural um celebration that goes on, which is something that most of the rest of the country actually isn't particularly a fan of.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, or of Thailand and Thinus for that matter.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no, absolutely.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think uh, you know, I characterize myself very much as an anywhere person in the in the book, but I uh I felt uh you know, for large chunks of my life like a sort of anywhere person yearning to be uh to be a somewhere person.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I think uh one of the huge attractions of Malawi was to encounter people who were so quintessentially somewhere people, so quintessentially rooted in a particular place, a particular time, a particular community with with such powerful bonds of of of kinship and uh and and and locality.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um and perhaps that's something we can we can we can touch on later, but uh certainly my upbringing in uh the sort of uh what in the in the cosmopolitan world of multicultural South London uh was was the the the basis for for my misgivings about the the the multicultural project because I grew up being in so many ways a sort of a perfect exemplar of that, being mixed race, uh having a foot in two very different worlds, um, and yet I found there was something so uh insipid about that or that about the celebration of that experience.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um it felt to me like it was so difficult to get a proper handle on even just one culture, let alone two, that as soon as the the the project's extended to the vast multiplicity that you have in that you have in London, um it becomes completely fatuous to imagine that you might have anything other than the most superficial engagement with any with any one of or any any any one of those cultures.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I mean I I grew up with uh uh multicultural friends, um uh, and that was the case in in Thailand as well as uh as well as in uh in the UK, um, who were uh sort of part of that sort of international anywhere society, and I remember being struck on a number of occasions by how uh dismal and homogeneous that society was.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I remember going to going to parties and being uh amongst people who every person present was mixed race like myself, um and with a foot in multiple continents, and yet somehow the the the the shared culture between them was somehow absolutely the same.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh everybody had been to similar international schools all around the world, uh, everybody had the same interests, you were sort of uh inescapable conversations about uh uh yoga or capuero or vegan food.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it was a complete uniformity to the cultural experience, which could not have been more different from when I then was able to set foot in Malawi, where you actually had uh a culture that had a you know a real integrity to it.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that was that was so that was so refreshing.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's linger for a moment on the insipid culture as you as you describe it.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's something that I've experienced uh fleetingly, I I think, um, insofar as I've joined friends who are on their own sabbatical travel years and all the rest of it, and finding myself um in hostels, whether in Colombia or Peru, which basically feel like an outpost of that universalist European um middle class culture, I suppose, which is um very global in its outlook, morally relativist in in many ways, culturally relativist too, and you know, it's very you do you.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have several amusing observations that you make in in the book.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and one of them is your experience of uh people who work for non-governmental organizations, typically they're doing humanitarian work, and uh you'll be better to tell the story.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you're someone who arrives there as a Latin and Greek uh scholar, there to teach these ancient languages, and the other Westerners that you come across are typically there doing NGO humanitarian work.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um what was your what was your take on what they're about and their engagement with the culture, the people, the history?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so that that I suppose is the focus of my critique of that uh of that world.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean uh obviously the the the the more um uh pertinent critique uh would be that of the complete failure of uh any of these um um uh of the international development industry to achieve anything, certainly in Malawi.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that Malawi is the country which uh Rory Stewart famously described as the place where we spent four and a half billion pounds of British taxpayers' money and the country is somehow poorer than when we started.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I'm not uh I'm I'm not a development economist.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the um uh the critiques of of that that world, that system, have been done uh very, very well indeed by recently um Dan Lisa Moyo's book, Dead Aid, about I mean it's been going on for a long time before that.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, certainly Peter Bauer's work in the 1970s uh exposing the the the the the absurdity and the futility of um international development endeavours.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I suppose what I was trying to contribute was was a focus on the the cultural side of it.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the the culture which uh uh international aid professionals, international development professionals uh export or carry with them to the rest of the world.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it struck me as deeply depressing because so um the the context of Malawi, as I was saying at the start of the program, is one in which there were, if you like, the the the the proto-humanitarians, the proto-direct workers um were there in the middle of the 19th century and then um up until the um the end of British rule in the 1960s, and achieved so much and sacrificed so much to achieve what they did, embraced lives of real hardship and danger, and so many of them gave their lives to the cause of improving this remote corner of the world, uh, which had in so many ways nothing whatsoever to do with uh with Britain.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yet their successes, quite apart from how little they've actually achieved, despite vastly greater resources and vastly greater technology to facilitate whatever they're doing, um, are so contemptuous um when they're not ignorant of that record.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so the book was in some ways written in a in a sort of fit of indignation about how um how dishonoured uh have been those those early figures who really did make a a big difference to conditions in in sub-Saharan Africa.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um but on the cultural side there's this sort of fantasy we have today that um uh we're now sort of so open-minded and sensitive and enthusiastic about other cultures, we're to be congratulated for our for our multiculturalism, um, and that this is in contrast with the bad old days of the past when our forebears were all uh their approach was to be characterized by um bigotry and racism and Eurocentrism.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yet when you when you sort of drill into the the the the reality of what international fellow workers, how they engage with local societies today versus those forebears, even and especially in the bad old days of the Victorian era, you it becomes obvious that that today we approach very remote, wildly different cultures with vastly less respect and curiosity than our forebears, certainly the best of our forebears did in the past.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the the superficiality of that engagement with local cultures that I could see in Malawi that that appalled me so much.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, on a most on the most fundamental level, um in the international development industry, people don't spend very long in the countries where they go to work.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um you swap one dysfunctional country for another as you make your way up the up the career ladder.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um three years or so is considered a long stint in one place.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um that does not allow for any meaningful engagement with uh with with local peoples, local languages, especially in in societies where so much is uh is transacted on a very, very personal, personal level.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the the complete incuriosity about about uh local cultures was was to me also staggering.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean so few of those that I regularly countered showed any interest in the in the history of the country or its ethnography, um when these are so fundamental to the situation there today.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was left with this overwhelming impression that actually what they were there for was a basically a job that sort of resembled a holiday.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think this is sadly one of the reasons why such an ineffectual system of international development has been perpetuated, is because the the the major actors in it, whether they're the recipients of aid, the you know, on the political level in in these uh usually very corrupt countries, uh, or the uh or the um the developed workers themselves, there's a vested interest in continuing it because if you're a developed worker in Malawi, you live a really splendid life.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean your salary might not be that substantial by Western standards, but by local standards it's enormous, and you can live like royalty, and you are treated with enormous respect, and it's a very congenial country with lovely white sand beaches by the lake, and the whole thing has enough of a frisson of uh of adventure and uh and exoticism to add a glamour to your life.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the actual uh engagement with the country I always found to be so so limited.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the slightly depressing conclusion that I reached was that um I think the disparity, because I think you know some of these people are in some ways conscientious, they are caring people, um, they would like to see the world somehow magically made a better place, um, and they are very conscious of the enormous material disparity between their lives and local peoples, at the same time, completely impotent to do anything about that.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they certainly don't want to reduce their own material circumstances to a level of equality.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: So instead, what you get is a great uh exhibition of informality, of false fraternity with local peoples, because that's how one flatters oneself as a westerner that uh actually maybe the gulf isn't so vast between us and them after all.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe actually uh yes, uh the the universalist ideas that I brought out with me uh can still can still hold true.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: But then what do they do?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: They cultivate that very informal local relationships.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh they go and kick a football around uh a village with some villagers, maybe they pose uh with a child on their shoulders for a photo.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe they have a fleeting relationship with someone in the country, and then they go, and then it's over.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is so obvious to local peoples how fleeting and how insincere is the um attempt to satisfy uh these people attempt to satisfy themselves that they are forming a meaningful connection with the countries in which they spend time.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I suppose the the the the the thing that makes it feel rather pointed in the current situation in in Britain is that you for the most part, uh I don't think it's controversial to say that uh um professionals in in the development industry are generally uh um politically uh liberal.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um they are uh classic, they sort of classic um uh proponents of the multicultural agenda in their own country.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And yet when you actually see them, how they envisage interaction with other people's cultures when they go and spend time in their countries, you realize how utterly shallow their engagement is.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: They live in their own monoculture.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, uh, there's a uh a grim irony to that.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you talked about the the liberal inclinations of uh these these aid workers.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this is all happening post-Hastings Banda, who, as you write in the book, uh actually uh expelled hippies, liberal journalists, and the US Peace Corps from the country.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if this is Western civilization, you can keep it.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there any more you can add to that?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: What uh uh what what was seen as so deleterious about these people's presence in the in the country when Banda was trying to uh build uh Malawi on uh Western foundations?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe we need to delve a bit into who who who who Dr.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Banda because I suppose the um uh part of the the only part of the reason I felt sort of um impelled to write the book was that um Banda was a uh um pretty totemic figure of the the post-colonial period in Africa, uh and for a time a figure of um great significance of international renal who has also faded into uh into into obscurity.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um but he what what and and and uh the the book is is only very, very partly a highly selected biography of Banda.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: It it just happened that his life, uh which of about a hundred years spanning pretty much the whole 20th century, provided a very convenient uh narrative backbone to the uh to the to the book.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the it will not surprise uh uh listeners to learn that uh you know Banda as an African dictator was a very, very flawed figure indeed.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I hope my book does not shy away from the dysfunctionality, the corruption, uh uh and I'm afraid the the the brutality um of his rule, especially towards the end.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um But I've tried to give a a fair and um perhaps a slightly sympathetic um assessment of this very, very curious, uh even by the recurring standards of post-colonial Africa, this very uh curious leader.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the the focus of my interest and the reason I felt it was a story that was relevant to the West today is there's something very poignant in the fact that at precisely the era when the West is abandoning or repudiating the cornerstones of its uh of its civilization, um you have in this tiny remote country um a final uh rather feeble attempt to uh to fly the flag for Western civilization, especially its Greco-Roman antecedents, um, by uh by um uh an African dictator who had actually begun his political career as an ardent anti-colonialist.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I think to I think to explain this we probably need to delve somewhat into into the life of um into the life of Banda, uh if time will will permit that, John.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um please do uh so Banda grows up in a a peasant family, subsistence farmers in the late 1890s, um in what is what is now Malawi.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and this is a society which has not achieved um the written word, um, does not have the wheel, does not have the plough, and yet suddenly, and is suffering from the appalling predations which I described right at the start of our of our conversation, uh, from slave raiding from the from the the Amani Arabs and incursions of the warrior and goni from the south and so on.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then there is the the arrival of Scottish missionaries who teach this young village boy who's known only a life of subsistence farming and security, uh basic literacy and numeracy, for which he has a remarkable aptitude.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and here's rumour of other places on the continent that if he could just get them, he could secure for himself a a uh a better education.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um And so he actually sets off as a teenager on foot to walk fifteen hundred miles to uh to South Africa and he's trying to get to a missionary uh institute called Lovedale uh because, among other things, he's heard that well, first of all, it it's it's heard it's reputed to offer the best education available to black Africans anywhere on the continent.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in particular, it's known to offer Latin and Greek, um, which to his to his perception is uh the the the the ultimate um prestige subjects when one is trying to with with you embrace this exciting new culture of literacy that's emerged.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: You want to go to its its its earliest possible um in its finest antecedents.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um but he he doesn't make it to Lovedale, he ends up having to work in the mines in Joburg.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um but from there he goes to evening classes, he manages to get a scholarship through church groups uh of all places to the US and in America he then spends 12 years in full-time adult education, studying history, classics, liberal arts, then he dabbles in some anthropology with a very uh prominent black American anthropologist called Mark Hannah Watkins, takes a history degree from the University of Chicago, uh, and then switches to medicine, uh, becomes a becomes a doctor, then comes to the UK to practice um in Scotland and then and then London, um, and basically has a pretty much a full medical career before the uh winds of change begin sweeping uh African nationalist leaders back to the continent.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and Bander is has by his experience and education is sort of so clearly the most sophisticated and and uh and must be admitted, most competent man to run the country.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he uh um he after a brief uh period of antagonism with the British um uh sort of reconciles with them and is is installed at uh uh independence uh makes himself president for life very soon, very soon after that.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um but in in later later in his in his presidency, which then goes on for 30 years, um I remember he's already in his 60s when he comes back to Malawi, having had his career as a doctor in the in the UK, um he embarks on this rather quixotic program to um promote the Western culture which with which he'd become so infatuated as a student in America.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he th that the biggest uh dream is to is to actually create a university in Malawi so that Malawians don't have to do what he did, which is walk 1500 miles to another country in order to go in search of an education.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: So he found this the University of Malawi fairly early on.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh as he gets older his uh eccentricity deepens and his obsession with classics deepens and he uh uh ends up um sort of wanting to establish classics departments at the university and establish this elite academy specifically to promote the study of Latin and Greek.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the the the poignancy is that as this is happening, what he's observing is the the rejection of this culture and the lowest sort of to his eye the lowest um forms of of Western culture sort of rocking up in in Malawi.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: So he um uh uh becomes very censorious, and the list of things that he decides to censor is is is rather magnificent.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he doesn't like uh there's a wonderful uh list that was available at every airport in uh point of entry to Malawi of um forbidden books, which included things like Simon de Beauvoir and Nabokov, uh John Berger, um uh the music of Paul Simon.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he was also uh yes, uh disgusted by hippies who were a feud entry.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: People with long hair were had were forced to have a short back and signs on entry.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh bell bottom trousers were uh um uh uh elaborate legal prohibition was devised to uh to yes ensure that, as he put it, bell bottom trousers would never see the light of day in Malawi.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um the US Peace Corps was kicked out, Jehovah's Witnesses.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the quote you said, he his attitude was you know, if that's Western civilization, you can keep it, because this is someone who was obviously so had developed such a deep affection for Western culture as a result of very rigorous study of that culture.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: So to then encounter um um yes people who have come from that who have just rejected and showing no interest in that uh in that traditional rocking up in Malawi to live a hippie lifestyle of smoking marijuana on the lakeshore, um, was understandably abhorrent to him.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Final couple of sentences there about Banda wondering how Westerners could disavow that rich heritage uh in some way and actually negate it um often consciously caused him clearly a lot of alarm and distress and didn't want any of that, just wanted to keep the the good parts.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: It reminded me a little bit of um well she she's American now, but the the Somalian Ayan Hirsi Ali, who um found herself in Europe effectively as an asylum seeker because she she broke away from um an arranged marriage, um she was en route to arranged marriage.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think he may have been a cousin, I can't quite remember, but he he lived on the continent and she sought refuge while while she was in Frankfurt, was uh deeply Muslim and deeply Somali at the time culturally, because that's all she'd ever known.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, having found herself in the Netherlands, having claimed asylum, and then being taught all of the great classics of Western civilization and political thought, all of her previous ideas about the world melted away, and she realized this was something worth fighting for the dignity of individual, um, and then all of the great fruits of the civilization itself.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now she has had to obviously move to America, partly because of her husband, but partly because ultimately, as she sees it, the West has given up on itself.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Western countries have given up on themselves, so it doesn't recognize attacks from strident Muslims on the culture, um, both physical threats that were made on her life, and indeed saw some of her colleagues murdered um by Islamists.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: She thought this is a culture that no longer wants to defend itself and it is very decadent.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, look at it, there's there is every means of its salvation right here.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: If only we were to take it seriously once more and believe in it.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps talks a little bit to your outsider status yourself, is that often being on the periphery and getting a deep understanding of something can help you become more attached to it and convinced of its uh virtues rather than taking it for granted and doing the whole kind of teenage rebellion thing that never quite you never quite grow out of.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um yes, I I don't know if that's something you you also thought, but as you as you were talking there about um the ethos of these Scottish missionaries that had influenced Banda, um you've already talked about him, uh Livingston, but there is a section within the book that's dedicated to the Overtown Institute, which I believe Livingston had had set up, and it was very much uh based on missionary work.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's important for us to get into what you've already described as the motivations of these Christian evangelicals, these missionaries, um, because we can probably do a bit of a compare and contrast with the secular west, which we we've already partly done.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, could you tell us a bit about the Overtown Institute's ethos, what it sought to achieve whilst it was there in Malawi for the people?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean I think maybe the place starts to go back to Banda for a second and uh acknowledge that I'm sure to many uh to many listeners, uh, the idea of uh um uh sort of uh promotion of uh classics in sub-Saharan Africa must seem um uh uh certainly absurd, possibly grotesque.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he was uh lambasted for for this uh for this project, especially by the um um the post-colonial thinkers of the of the second half of the 20th century, uh for whom I mean he was Bander is absolutely grist to their mill.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the the the Kenyan critic who died recently in Guki Watjongo, uh who wrote sort of the seven-old book, The Colonized Mind.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Bander is is like the perfect example for him of the colonized mind, and the academy that uh that I ended up at is is is is a is a quintessential product of that for him.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I uh well there well there obviously are aspects of the project which you know which which are which are absurd.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: What Ngugi and others completely miss, uh, and by the way, it tends to only ever be uh Westerners or Western educated uh um uh um critics who uh who are uh vehemently opposed to uh to who are most who are most outraged by Banda's project rather than uh rather than um native Malawians in my experience.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um what I think they miss is that Banda's idea for promoting classics, Western Grecoan culture in Malawi is not actually some aberration that comes completely out of nowhere.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not some sort of perverse personal peccadillo of his.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's actually consistent with a tradition of high intellectual academic ambition which completely suffuses Malawi's history from the first contact with the early missionaries, um, and which Bander was very much uh very explicitly referring to and and drawing on.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so obviously there is the the evangelization element which is central, but alongside that Livingston and those that followed him were had a very lofty educational program.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was not um the Overton Institute that she mentioned is is perhaps sort of the most striking example of this, but actually it was um it was consistent amongst a lot of the early missionaries, and that's because when Livingston returned to England from his um uh expeditions in Malawi and appealed for volunteers to come and take up his crusade against slavery, the first place that he that he went was the University of Oxford and Cambridge.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and dozens and dozens of young men answered his appeal.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Young men who were of some of the highest intellectual and moral calibre that Britain has ever produced.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they were classicists, physicians, linguists, mathematicians, musicologists.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they were in so many cases giving up highly lucrative opportunities elsewhere as they graduated from Oxbridge in order to go to a very remote place in Central Africa where most of them uh were not just aware of the risk of dying, but actually expected to die there, possibly without ever having made it back to Britain again in the in the interim.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um but they brought with them the academic ambition of Oxbridge and the uh the uh the the high intellectual culture of Oxbridge and tried to transplant it to Malawi.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one current.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: The second current was a Scottish Presbyterian tradition, which was more austere um but no less ambitious.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this was figures um from a sort of background that Livingston himself came from.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: So Livingston's uh grows up in complete destitution.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: His family are from the Hebridean island of Ulva, where there is literally nothing for uh yes, uh for a uh a large family, except his parents had to subsist on.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: So they move to uh a mill uh town outside outside um uh Glasgow, um and the children all go to work uh on the spinning jennies from an early age, but there's a school and they self and they educate themselves, and uh uh Livingston himself uh teaches himself uh Latin uh and is able to read uh Horace and Virgil from books Proctuch on the Spinning Jenny, and you you can see his um books if you go to the Livingston Museum.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um no parallel text or anything, just uh just the Latin, which is not something that graduates of Oxford uh um I can assure we can can do today.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but he and a handful of other Scottish Presbyterian missionaries had had very similar backgrounds, they they'd emerged from grinding Victorian poverty, but through education they had bettered themselves.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they had this very powerful sense of the power of education to for social transformation, and it so much they observed, achieved in their native Scotland, and there was simply no way no sense of why it should be uh wrong to try and do the same thing in sub-Saharan Africa.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the figure that uh that that that uh you might touch on is is is Robert Laws, who comes from just such uh just such a background.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it takes and he he goes out to uh Malawi specifically because he as a as a boy he's so um uh infatuated with the achievements of Livingston, and he wants to go to exactly the region of the world where Livingston uh um had uh had operated.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and after a very long period of losing uh many colleagues to uh to disease and one unsuccessful mission after another, he eventually founds um a mission that really does flourish up on a very um remote plateau in northern Malawi, high up above the lake shore.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it it's overwhelmingly uh uh successful.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he manages to draw in very different tribes who are attracted to um what is the the miraculous fruits of civilization which are being exhibited there.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's technically extremely competent.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's actually trained some medical missionary like Livingston, so he sets up a hospital, he's working as a surgeon, at the same time as he's preaching, at the same time as he's trying to introduce novel agricultural techniques, at the same time as he's building uh yes, uh, yes, stone, uh buildings in stone, you know, which have never been seen before in uh you know in the in the territory of Malawi.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um he even he he even um um teaches himself electrical engineering to establish uh the first hydroelectric power station uh to power the uh the mission station uh um in the early years of the 20th century.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the real extraordinary achievement is in education, and he establishes this uh uh Overton Institute, which you which you mentioned, um, specifically to try to bring what he called um uh the all of the spiritual treasures of mankind to local people.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think uh as we as with the achievements of all of these figures, it's it's so important to just think about the actual concrete reality that they were confronted with when they arrived.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: So apart from the fact that he's uh been lucky enough to avoid dying of uh dying of fever, like so many of his colleagues, um just to begin the task of teaching people literacy, he has to learn local languages from scratch, and he learns five or so of them.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: He then has to compile a dictionary, which he does, and they've all got such robust academic training, especially in classics, that they have the um the philological uh apparatus in order to produce these grammars and orthographies and dictionaries of local languages.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Umly then is he in a position to start translating the Bible uh into a local language.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: And only when he's accomplished all of this is he in a position to start teaching someone how to read it.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: So all of this enormous groundwork and this enormous intellectual energy has had to be expended alongside everything else he's doing before he can begin to teach people the written word.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: But when he does so, the result is so explosive.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: There is so much excitement and appetite for literacy among local peoples that he soon discovers that he can expand his curriculum.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so he realized he can start teaching them Latin and then Greek and Hebrew and philosophy and theology and literature and history, and it becomes this unbelievably ambitious academic program, which by the time colonial authorities begin to assert any measure of control, uh, attracts skepticism because, from the point of view of a more narrow-minded colonialist approach, you have the attitude was, what on earth are you doing teaching uh this these academic luxuries when we want uh uh workers trained in basic vocational skills?
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: But he was always absolutely adamant that it was about cultivating intellects, cult uh cultivating uh spiritual depth, especially because he wanted uh he wanted um um uh local clergymen, um, but also wanting to promote um independence of mind amongst local peoples.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I had this uh extraordinary experience where I um uh relate I related to this anecdote um which was actually uh told by uh an English anthropologist who came out from SOAS in the 1940s to uh um uh ascertain levels of educational attainment in this part of northern northern Malawi.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and she was walking in the hills and she comes across a young Angoni warrior walking in the hills on his own with a spear in one hand and a book in the other, and when she exposes with him it's a copy of Plato's Republic.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I related this anecdote to a fellow Oxford graduate of my age, civil servant who had worked for um the Department for International Development as as as then was.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he physically winced when I when I told him this, and then just muttered something with horror about cultural imperialism.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now the the the the the absurd uh irony is that i if this was cultural imperialism, it spectacularly backfired because from Noah's Overton Institute, you suddenly get this this blossoming of Malawian intellectuals who become pastors and writers and poets and are the founders of a startlingly substantial um body of Malawian literature which continues to flourish to this day.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and crucially these were the figures who ended up becoming the independence leaders who, most of them in their own lifetimes, saw the country's transition to independence through their own mostly overwhelmingly peaceful activism.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that these people were sort of somehow being mentally shackled by um yes, alien modes of of thought and feeling, which is, and Gugi's uh thesis in the book I mentioned, The Colonized Mind, is I I'm afraid I think highly flawed, especially when you contrast it, um, as I think it's.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Necessary to do with the alternative, which was the Arab imperialism, which was encroaching so deep into Central Africa at this at that at that moment.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh in the um middle to the end of the of the 19th century, um there are um offshoots of the Omani-Arab Empire establishing sultanates deep in today's Democratic Republic of Congo.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that was the alternative.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: But when you think about if you're getting sort of bandy around ideas of cultural imperialism, that's the contrast you have to draw because that was the alternative reality.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing that uh staggers me is that in over a the best part of eight or nine hundred years of Arab domination of certainly the the East African coast, uh, the the spread of literacy is so fantastically limited.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's restricted to the uh offspring of uh of Arab elites, uh Arab elites and their and their offspring usually fathered uh from from slaves.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: And their approach to the continent was purely one of exploitation.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was just about taking slaves, taking ivory, and absolutely no interest whatever in the edification of the peoples on whom they were on whom they were predating.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: Alex, I know you're not Christian.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's clear that you have a deep admiration for those Christian missionaries and everything that they achieved whilst they're in Malawi.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked a little bit about the impotence of foreign aid work and um indeed uh you could argue the culture of the the foreign aid workers.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I suppose my question is is could could do anything meaningful like Laws and Livingston, the Overton Institute, could any of that happened if we sent people with the mindset we have today toward the world and ourselves, transplanted ourselves in Malawi?
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: Could do you think we would have done anything as meaningful with regards to literacy, civilization, culture, the the um the the rediscovery or indeed discovery of Malawi's own culture and heritage and indeed language.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: Would any of that happen, do you think, if we had um gone in with the way that we think about the world today?
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think uh um m manifestly not.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh as uh mentioned previously, um uh Malawi uh is not alone in being the um the target of uh decades and billions of uh decades of of of time and energy and billions of dollars uh uh devoted to its to its uplift and yet so very so very little achieved.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if one di difference uh between the approach of contemporary development workers and uh and the missionaries that I've that I've described, um if there's one difference that trumps others, it must be the belief in the project.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't see any real belief in the project.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: The missionaries I've described were willing to die for their for the the cause of evangelization and and and civilization in in sub-Saharan Africa.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they they did die in droves.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean they they were so accustomed to the idea that they might need to give their lives to this cause that it became a habit among them to choose their epitaphs on the long outward journey from uh from from from Britain to Africa.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um now, however much today's development workers might protest their passion for international development, uh I see uh none of them, um perhaps the exception of uh yes, the handful who really do go to uh uh expose their lives in very dangerous places, but those are um uh those are a minority, a very small minority.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I see the opposite.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: I see them wanting to embrace the the holiday lifestyle that I had described earlier.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And how should that surprise anyone?
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who is going to be willing to sacrifice anything much at all, let alone their life, for say, a um gender-sensitive um community-based disaster preparedness program sponsored by the EU?
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is not something which is going to uh which is going to stir that spirit of uh of total sacrifice.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I I we I mean we can see uh you know that how this sort of um um uh failure of of of self-belief played out um because we have a perfect example of it in the catastrophic Western experiment in Afghanistan.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um now um admittedly it didn't um um I mean the the the time scale we're talking about in Malawi also and in much of South South Africa has to be flexed on.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, very short.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um the British are in Malawi for 60, 70 years, meaningfully.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um of course it's only 20 years in Afghanistan, but I sense that a large part of the failure of that mission, setting aside the you know the strategic and military challenges in which I'm not qualified to comment, was a uh a failure of belief in what we were trying to achieve, or even an ability, an inability to even outline or identify what we were trying to achieve.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um in one tiny anecdote I think was so revealing of this, um there was uh an educational project that um was was um was filmed in Afghanistan in which some rather sloaney English girls on what seemed like gap years have been dispatched to uh teach local women about Western art.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I got said as they were all having a very jolly time, but apart from that, what was the um what was the item of Western art which uh which they'd chosen to educate locals about?
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was Marcel Duchamp's fountain, uh the the the the rhinal statue which um um is notorious as uh as a as a statement of repudiation of the entire canon of Western art.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't believe anybody is really going to bring anything even approximating the level of self-belief which allowed the missionaries in the region I'm concerned with to achieve what they did to uh the promotion of um uh yes, Duchamp's fountain in uh in in central level.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is a whole other set of conversations we could be opening up here specifically about Malawi's um relationship to formative moments in human life and indeed the things that make us human and how instructive that is for our our own English culture and the things we've lost over time and in um respect of rituals and traditions.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should we should do a part two, Alex, because as we were talking before we pressed record, we have a lot of overlap with regards to the predicament of England, and I think this is probably a a good place to wrap up the observations about Malawi and what that teaches us about Britain and the West and our own history as well as theirs.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but before we wrap up fully, I'd like to ask you the same question that I ask all of my guests who come on the show, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you thought it was an absolute, maybe it was something smaller day to day, but it felt significant that you changed your mind.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what was it that made you think differently?
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I I think one of the uh things that I enjoy about practicing medicine actually is is the fact that you're sort of almost constantly sort of uh uh required to change your mind um as uh you know you're constantly revising your diagnosis, constantly reassessing your your patient's response to treatments.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh um not just that on the less technical side, I think it's the way that patients can surprise you with the way that they uh respond to situations.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I I have the feeling this is not really what um um not really the sort of the idea behind the question.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I um uh I suppose I would turn my mind back to the period after my my first degree in classics, um when I left thinking that actually all that I really cared about, was concerned about was the art and the literature that I that I loved.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I believed it was possible to live a life cocooned from the world of certainly politics, which I found so distasteful and to some extent still still do.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I tried to sort of labour under that belief for for for quite a long time, but uh I could not avoid the uncomfortable questions of why was it that nobody else why did so few other people seem to share my uh affection uh for um the products of Western culture which I so loved?
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um why actually were so many people rejecting them?
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um why was it not possible?
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why why was why was nothing equivalent being uh produced today?
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself confronted with the reality that that that I could not cocoon myself in the way that I'd that I'd hoped.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that actually the things that I loved were under threat uh from people who were inclined to from from from ignorance, uh from resentment of them, from actual active hostility towards them.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that actually, unfortunately, a level of broadly speaking, political engagement was necessary to think about those questions.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly don't mean that at a party political level, uh something which still I found it very difficult to interest myself in, but in the broader sense of the term, um reluctant uh um realization that um that on some level the politics is also necessary.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating you say that, and it's uh it's calling to mind a literary reference which I I think many of us in the 21st century um fall back on.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed, I think I even noticed Elon Musk do it uh of late.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But Tolkien is clearly very influential for people, often some of the um biggest tomes of literature people have have read, and also very instructive for the the English mind itself.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And effectively, what I hear you saying is you you feel you felt like in the end you've been called away from your hobbit hole to the edge of the Shire, realizing that somehow you have to defend it in your own way.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think Musk goes on to talk about ultimately the reason why the Shire could be so peaceable is that there were people beyond it, the men of Gondor who were uh who were effectively keeping it safe.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I know this has taken on with quite a lot of the zoomers of a conservative bent that they they talk about um having to be the men of Gondor that if you want to shire, then you you've got to go out and protect it in whichever way you think necessary.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's something that I grapple with quite a lot as well.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as an Englishman, I have uh often thought, I mean, I I live up in the northeast of England, away from uh big cities and all the rest of it.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes I could there have been there's been this fervent hope that I could uh cocoon myself off and not deal with the decadence and the decay and uh the febrile atmosphere and all the rest of it, and then realizing that actually you can never really do that.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's always there, it's just whether you choose to to look it in the face or not.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Alex, your book is wonderful, and uh I I think people would do very well to read it to be able to understand the fruits as well as the you know the rotten fruits of Western civilization because you express these ideas obviously through the lens of your own experiences, and I think for that reason it comes across very differently.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's not a polemic, it isn't isn't overly academic, uh, it is spoken at that human level, and I think people will get it.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think there's a there are a lot of subtleties in there, but they um whilst not explicit, they can be felt to be explicit.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it is magnificent, and uh just it if you it didn't get bigger praise enough, uh as we were speaking before the call, you managed prior to uh his passing to get this book in front of Sir Roger Scruton, who you did not know and who loved it, and um and you ended up in correspondence with him.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when when Sir Roger Scruton gives you the stamp for approval, and indeed Lord Nigel Bigger as well, who's been on the show a couple of times, um, I think that tells everyone what they need to know, which is this book is well worth reading.
• 1:21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Go out and read it.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Alex, I know you're working on another.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's too soon to say when we might expect it if it comes to fruition, but otherwise, where can people find you in the darker corners of the internet and get to know your work?
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh good question.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm not very good at dark corners of the internet, I have to confess.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_01: I do have a uh uh an X X account.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh Alexander Chula, as I think the um uh the um whatever you call it, um, tag has all I'm I'm not I'm not an avid uh I'm not an avid uh tweeter, um, but there is there is a presence there.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I should probably be more of an avid tweeter myself, given uh I have a podcast, but much like you, typically sitting in the background.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um Alex, it has been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm looking forward to our next conversation where we can we can get into uh the the predicament of of England um and and all the various different aspects of uh our current malaise and what we might Lemon do about it as well.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um but in the meantime, keep fighting the good fight.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck with your book writing and thanks so much for coming on the show.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks you ever so much, John, for the invitation and for the very very kind words about my book as well.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're very welcome.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: All the best.