| Chapter 1: | The Role Of Public Relations In Global Issues |
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In most of these nations, “as many problems were created by colonizers’ incompetence as by their exploitation” (Easterly, 2006, p. 272). In many, sheer spite took its toll as well. Take the case of Guinea-Bissau:
Upon exiting the newly liberated country … the retreating [Portuguese] troops set fire to the National Archives which they had in fact built. Official records of births and deaths, titles to land, government agreements, treaties and diplomatic arrangements, and other business committed to paper during a 400-year occupation were destroyed. Thus Guinea-Bissau became modern and free. Having won back their country, they would now have to begin writing their history.
(Schwarz, 2005, p. 3)
Although Africa is far from the only continent to have been colonized, it illustrates some of the pressing issues. The dominant colonizers of Africa—France, Britain, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and (to a lesser extent) Germany—met at the 1884 Berlin Conference to create countries within Africa based on distributing mineral and agricultural wealth, a scene William Easterly (2006, p. 23), a former research economist with the World Bank, compared to “children scrambling for candy as the piñata breaks open.” These lines were drawn without regard to existing tribal, linguistic, or cultural concerns, leading to a legacy of ethnic conflict and a lack of national identity.
What of countries such as India and Brazil, however, which are on different continents and gained their independence at different times? The “experience of colonialism” (Quayson, 2000) remains strong in these countries as well. Look no further than the lingua franca of Brazil, Portuguese; likewise India, which has 15 official languages, uses another language, English, for political and business communication. Language is not only part of culture; in many ways it helps define culture. The inextricable link between language of colonizer and country formation cannot be ignored. Even countries that gained independence in the 19th century, such as Brazil, are still very much postcolonial nations.