Rüstow was distinctive among neoliberal thinkers in the period of decolonisation in his conviction that colonialism was 'a bloody stain on the historic record of humanity, an endless chain of gravest crime against humanitarianism'. Along with his pragmatic concerns about the propaganda value the Soviets were drawing from European colonialism, he grounded his critique in natural law, which he depicted as 'the legal armory of the struggle for freedom and human rights'. Singling out the cruelty of the Spanish conquistadores, he denounced the sharp contrast between their 'unrestrained bestiality' and their 'professions of Christianity and the values of their Western civilization'. Challenging the rhetoric of the civilising mission, he denounced the colonial powers for trampling on the 'human dignity of the colonial peoples', and labelled their claims to be carrying out the 'white man's burden' pure hypocrisy.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 278