Lenin had written of "semi-colonies". For him these were places like China at the time of the First World War, where "independence" concealed continued political subordination to foreign armed forces in partial occupation of the country. There were some places where things did seem like this after the end of direct colonial control in the 1950s and 1960s. In many cases the departing colonial administrations were able to ensure that their place was taken by their own creatures, with enormous continuity in the per�onnel of the state, especially when it came to key positions in the armed forces. So, for instance, France had granted "independence" to huge areas of West and Central Africa by handing power to people who continued, as in the past, to work with French companies, use the French currency-and periodically invite French troops in to maintain "order".
But in some of the most important cases independence did mean independence. Governments proceeded not only to take seats in the United Nations and set up embassies all over the world. They also intervened in the economy, nationalising colonial companies, implementing land reforms, embarking on schemes of industrialisation inspired by the preaching of theorists of economic development or often by Stalin's Russia. Such things were undertaken with varying degrees of success or failure in India, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Indonesia, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Angola and South Korea, as well as by the more radical regimes of China, Cuba and Vietnam. Over time even some of the "docile" ex-colonial regimes began to follow the same path. This was true, for instance, of the Malaysian regime,57 of the Shah's regime in Iran in the 1960s and early 1970s, and of the Taiwanese regime. Even the dictator Mobutu, brought to power with the help of the CIA in Congo-Zaire in 1965, nationalised the mighty Union Miniere de Haut Katanga mining corporation along with 70 percent of export earnings three years later.
To call regimes like Abdul Nasser's Egypt or Jawaharlal Nehru's India "neo-colonial" or "semi-colonial" was a travesty-as it was with "populist" regimes in Latin America or the Fianna Fail governments in Ireland. Attempts were made in each case to establish not only independent political entities, but also independent centres of capital accumulation. These still operated within a world dominated by the much stronger capitalisms of the advanced countries, but they were by no means mere playthings of them.
The Long Boom
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