To what extent did the theory and practice of European colonial planners and American modernization theorists overlap?

While applauding the end of legal colonialism, American modernization theorists such as Rostow shared to large extent the theory and practice of European colonial planners, and Rostow himself saw colonialism as part of the transitional path to modernization. Sharing a similar view of modernity and development and an emphasis on self-image and cultural superiority clouded with Orientalist assumptions, both also shared an authoritarianism and recourse to violence for the 'greatest good,' although modernization theory had some peculiarities such as its distaste for formal direct rule or its increased focus on the social sciences and cultural over biological racism, the last two being borrowed by colonial planners after the Second World War to try to 'fit in' with the changing tide of history.

Colonial planning after 1900s and modernization theory of the 1950s shared a similar belief in modernity, a human-centred (vs. God-given) process of increasing order and classification, akin to the Weberian notion of 'rationalization.' This linear process led both to believe on a common and essential pattern of 'development,' a homogeinizing process tied to a modern/traditional dichotomy that was more prescriptive than descriptive of the places where colonial planners and modernization theories intervened. The overlap between the two was derived from the fact that their ideas of development were not merely a set of policies that could be easily disposed of, but a whole epistemology or metalanguage through which to explain complex phenomena, justify action and give direction to historical events. Contributing to the taxonomy of modernity was one of the main products of nineteenth century social thought, and that archive of knowledge was readily available to American modernization theorists of the 1950s, who would rather read French than Vietnamese.

Coupled with a similar view of modernity and development (after all, America had been a colonial power herself in the 1900s in Cuba and the Philippines) came a similar self-image of the foreign power as a progressive reformer, culturally-superior and thus best placed to drive reform and improvement of the 'native peoples.' Both shared the Orientalism of framing their identity on a positional superiority, without which both colonialism and American-style modernization made no sense. Although American modernization theories were also drawing from other traditions such as Manifest Destiny, both saw their causes as benevolent, universally valid and scientifically documented, requiring only the will on the part of the domestic sphere at home and the natives abroad in order to proceed. Both made respectable their causes by presenting them this way, racism and exploitation in the case of colonialism and anti-communism and economic dependence in the case of modernization.


The self-righteousness of both narratives was matched by their authoritarianism, although some modernization theories stressed the importance of (liberal) democracy for modernization to happen (but often democratization just made the process of modernization messier and less controllable). Technocracy rather than people's liberation was what modernization would ideally achieve, and in this sense it shared the foreign, top-down control of colonial planners such as the French in Algeria or the British in Kenya. Both the colonial civilizing mission of the early twentieth century and 1960s modernization were to be achieved by any means necessary, showing a mutual willingness to apply practically unrestrained state force if need be. This managerial approach to political change was most evident in Vietnam and Latin America in the case of modernization theory. The 'developmental state' was created with the paternalistic responsibility for economic growth, and growth was indeed seen many times as more important than the preservation of human rights. The recourse to violence for the 'greatest good' is often overlooked, as both the civilizing and the modernizing missions were presented as peaceful theories recurring to violence only as 'self-defense' and labelling any resistance as 'barbarism.'

Despite their multiple similarities, there were some differences between the theory and practice of colonial planners and that of modernization theorists. The latter moved from a biological to a more cultural racism, focused on color-blindness, aptitudes and economic behaviour (and indeed taken on by some late colonial powers such as the French in their 1958 Constantine Plan in Algeria). American modernisers also despised direct rule, following their standing anticolonial rhetoric (and despite conservatism at home), and preferred docile native administrators and heads of state. Lastly, those bodies of knowledge that were privileged were the social sciences, especially economics, psychology and political science, over the previously omnipresent biology and medical sciences. The social sciences provided modernization theorists with what Noam Chomsky has called the 'double-myth' of political benevolence and scientific omniscience, in a similar way in which the biomedical sciences had done previously.