Colonialist Literary Conception

1. COLONIALISM
COURSE: LITERARY THEORY

2. INTRODUCTION
• Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a dependent area or people.”
• A practice and worldview
• As a practice, it involves the domination of a society by settlers from a different society.
(colonialism is when one country violently invades and takes control of another country, claims the land
as its own, and sends people — “settlers” — to live on that land. ).
• As a worldview, colonialism is a truly global geopolitical, economic, and cultural doctrine that is
rooted in the worldwide expansion of West European capitalism that survived until well after the
collapse of most colonial empires.
• Colonialism describes different aspects of the control exercised by one society over another.

3. CONCEPT ORIGIN
• The etymological origins of the word ‘colonialism’ stem from the Latin ‘colonia’, which refers
to a farm or settlement and related particularly to roman citizens who settled in conquered
territories.
• Defined by Loomba (2015, p.20) as
‘the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods’.
• Colonialism has been a widespread and recurrent feature of world history, being a prominent
characteristic of the Roman, Mongol, Aztec, Inca, Ottoman and Chinese empires among
others before the age of modern European colonization began in the 16th century
• By the 1930s, over 84 per cent of the world’s land surface was or had been subject to
colonization

4. IMPERIALISM
• The phenomenon of Colonialism can be understood with related and synonymous word
Imperialism.
• Imperialism is defined as a set of policies or practices that extend the power and control of
a nation over the political, economic, and cultural life of other areas.
• Imperialism can be regarded as an umbrella term comprehending the whole range of
relations between a dominant and a subservient society. In a very general sense it can be
used to indicate the tendency of one society or state to control another, by whatever
means and for whatever purpose. But it is given a specific meaning which reflects a
particular view of the causes and character of this control.
• Imperialism can be understood as the ideology, or logic, that drives colonial projects.

5. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM
• The main difference between colonialism and imperialism lies in the definition of the two terms.
Imperialism is the idea of expansion of the empire by gaining control over neighboring or weak
regions. While colonialism is gaining control over regions by dividing them into colonies for
economic exploitation.
• In colonialism, people from other regions are forcefully moved into smaller regions called colonies
(people are moved from their native empires or places and shifted into smaller areas). Whereas such
mass movement of people is not seen in imperialism. The empire is extended to a land that is
already occupied by their native people.
• The origin of the words can also show the difference between the terms. Imperialism comes from
the Latin word ‘imperium’ and this means ‘power’ or ‘supreme’ thus imperialism stands for gaining
power. Colonialism comes from the Latin word ‘colonus’ which means ‘farmer’. This term thus means
exploitation of the farmers or peasants economically.

6. TWO WAVES OF COLONIALISM
(FIRST WAVE)
• Began in the 15th century, during Europe’s Age of Discovery.
During this time, European countries such as Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal colonized lands
across North and South America. The motivations for the first wave of colonial expansion can be
summed up as God, Gold, and Glory:
God, because missionaries felt it was their moral duty to spread Christianity, and they believed a
higher power would reward them for saving the souls of colonial subjects;
gold, because colonizers would exploit resources of other countries in order to bolster their own
economies; and
glory, since European nations would often compete with one another over the glory of attaining
the greatest number of colonies.

7. THE SECOND WAVE OF COLONIAL EXPANSION
• began during the 19th century,
• centering around the African continent. In what is called the Scramble for Africa, European nations
such as Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain sliced up the continent like a pie, creating arbitrary
borders and boundaries, and claiming large swaths of land for themselves.
• These artificial borders split cultural groups, resulting in fierce ethnic tensions that have
had devastating ramifications throughout the continent.
• Indigenous political, economic, and social institutions were decimated, as were traditional ways of life,
which were deemed inferior.
• Among the most brutal of colonial regimes was that of Belgium under King Leopold II, known as "the
Butcher of Congo." His well-documented acts of violence against the Congolese people resulted in an
estimated 10 million deaths.

8. SETTLERS COLONIALISM
• Unlike the colonial occupation of much of the African continent, however, the Europeans who settled
in the United States never left. This is called settler colonialism, a distinct form of colonialism that
seeks to replace, often through genocide and forced assimilation, an Indigenous population with a
new settler population.
• A settler is defined as any non-Indigenous person living in a settler-colonial state like United States,
Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Understanding settler colonialism allows us to see colonialism
not as a singular event, but an ongoing process of violence and eradication against Indigenous
people.

9. SETTLER COLONIALISM
• The Europeans who first settled along the East Coast of the United States believed it was
their God-granted right, to claim territory for themselves and their posterity. As they
spread across the entirety of the continental U.S., they pushed the Indigenous populations
— who had lived on and tended to the land for ages — farther and farther west.
• Native Americans were moved to reservations — parcels of land that were barren and far
from economic opportunities. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson, hailed by President
Donald Trump and commemorated on the U.S. $20 bill, signed the Indian Removal Act,
which led to the forced removal, relocation, and mass death of thousands of Indigenous
people.
• In 1838, the Cherokee were forced west by the U.S. government, which seized control of
their land. Forced to walk thousands of miles, an estimated 4,000 Cherokees died on what
would later come to be called the “Trail of Tears.”

10. THE ECONOMICS OF COLONIALISM
• The Issues
1. The treatment of the Indigenous people is just horrifying, for example, on the land now known as the
United States. The primarily British Europeans who settled here — just like the Europeans who settled
in Africa and the rest of the Americas — overall did not care that there were people already living on
the land.
2. The majority did not want peace and harmony between cultures; they wanted the land for themselves.
Most had no respect for Indigenous cultures or histories; they wanted to enforce their own instead.
3. They did not want to share the abundant resources; they wanted to generate wealth to fill their own
pockets.
4. These colonizers did not care that land was considered sacred and communal. Most believed that
everything, including the earth, was meant to be bought and sold.

11. THE ECONOMICS OF COLONIALISM
• An Imperial Economy
The colonial powers by seizing the colonized economy developed its own imperial economy. For example, European
imperialist colonization was characterized by its extensive exploitation of indigenous resources and population as labor
and its use of colonies as captive markets for goods and services. As a result they create a systemic poverty to
exploited areas and resources. (see Walter Rodney’s book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa).
For example:
After Haiti’s liberation from France, the island nation was ordered to pay $21 billion in reparations to cover the cost of
France’s losses during the Haitian Revolution in exchange for its independence. This calculation included the cost of
lost slaves.
In the United States, Native reservations have extraordinarily high poverty, alcoholism, unemployment, and suicide
rates. These are the effects of what Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, a social worker and professor, describes as
historical trauma: intergenerational emotional and psychological damage.

12. IMPERIAL ECONOMY
• The violence of colonial thinking continues to shape the routes of countries that were once
colonizers too. Colonizers believed the world was theirs for the taking.
• They saw Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as disposable, and believed that
nothing mattered more than the currency in their pockets.
• The world’s wealthiest countries continue to hoard the earth’s resources, and their unending
quest for profit continues to trump the needs of the majority of people.
• Creation of collaborationist/comprador colonial elites, mass educational systems, and public
cultures that systematically facilitated the explicit alignment of ideas such as knowledge and
progress with Western civilization, thereby producing the illusion of European superiority and
the normalization of colonial relations

13. AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY IN A COLONIAL
ENVIRONMENT
• Agriculture and industry in a colonial environment
• Agriculture was a central component of colonialism all over the world, not only as a subsistence
pattern, but also as imposed beliefs and practices that generated profound profits for the
colonizers.
• The establishment of modernizationist projects, such as the construction of elaborate
transportation and information infrastructures, the introduction of private property in land,
specific forms of taxation, and colonial law with the purpose of enabling the extractive and
disciplinary apparatus of the colonial administration.
• The forced transfer and circulation of enslaved or indentured labor between colonies, or
between regions within the same colony, disrupting culturally articulated modes of interaction
between nature and people, and creating buffer populations between the colonizers and the
locals

14. IDENTITY POLITICS
• Colonialism impacts on all areas of a colonized people’s life, with the colonial agenda being
implemented and maintained through both force and propaganda. Drawing heavily on Gramsci’s
(1971) ideas, Viswanathan (1992, p.167) argued that:
‘cultural domination operates by consent, indeed often preceding conquest by force … Consent of the
governed is secured primarily through the moral and intellectual suasion’.
• Submission of colonized peoples is thus significantly achieved through the use of propaganda and
mind control: generating a conviction that the colonizers are, not just militarily, but economically,
morally and intellectually superior and that they are best suited to govern. As an inevitable part of
such identity politics, this propaganda process (in promoting the colonizers) demotes and distorts
the identity, abilities and culture of the colonized.

15. IDENTITY POLITICS
Example:
• The introduction of an English curriculum formed a key mechanism of the ideology
(althusser, 1971). The Charter Act 1813, has made the study of English language and
literature compulsory. Such study fostered a cultural ideal and encouraged
individualism, undermining group solidarity.
• This claimed moral, intellectual and cultural superiority was held out as being
benevolently available through the anglicized Indian education system, successful
participation in which would allow the colonized population to emulate, equate
themselves to, and supposedly ‘meritocratically’ compete with the colonial rulers
(walsh, 1983; Viswanathan, 1992).

16. HEGEMONY
• The colonizers by exercising their powers over colonized nation control not only their economy,
language but also the modes of living. All such acts that supports the power of a select few, while
limiting opportunities for the vast majority is called hegemony (Gramsci 1971).
• Colonial powers found it tempting to assume that all kind of good things are fallen to their lot,
enabling them to advance on the path to modernity, prosperity, strength, and national unity far more
rapidly than proved possible under alien control. There is no belief that it would have been
preferable to linger undisturbed in the older traditional society, or to seek to return to it, sloughing
off the alien intrusions of modernity.
• The colonizers implant woes, weakness, poverty, and internal divisions derive to the occupied nation,
it was not from anything inherent in one's own race, society, or history, but from the wounds inflicted
on an otherwise sound body by those who invaded on it and exploited it for their profit and
pleasure.

17. STEREOTYPICAL BEHAVIOR TOWARDS NATIVES
Edward Said (1995), used the term orientalism to refer to negative stereotype prejudices towards
the East. Said variously defines orientalism ‘as a set of constraints on and limitations of thought’
(1995, p.42), or ‘as a kind of western projection onto and will to govern over the orient’ (1995, p.95).
• Orient is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the orient into
western learning, western consciousness, and later, western empire’ (1995, pp.202–203).
• It is thus an example of de-humanisation, a necessary process in the colonial enterprise as it
offers pseudo- justification for the actions of the colonizer, as well as reducing their moral
engagement.
• Foucault, highlight it as power exerted by the west, aided in this process by various intellectuals,
educational and cultural institutions.

18. LOSS OF AGENCY: SUBJUGATED SELF
The history of colonialism is replete with brutal subjugation of natives by
controlling them by power and exploiting its culture and language etc.
Within a colonial system, colonized people struggle to sustain their identity and
self-esteem. This stems from their subjugated state, their loss of agency, their lack
of recognition, and multiple other indignities suffered as a colonized people.
The colonized group (and particularly its elites) internalizes and unconsciously
partly identifies with the typically white colonizer. The native self is devalued in this
process. Thus resulting in a lower ranked or subaltern status (Gramsci, 1971; Guha,
1982; spivak, 1985).

19. COLONIAL RATIONALE AND RESISTENCE
• Colonial powers justified their conquests by asserting that they had a legal and religious
obligation to take over the land and culture of indigenous peoples. Conquering
nations cast their role as civilizing “barbaric” or “savage” nations, and argued that they
were acting in the best interests of those whose lands and peoples they exploited.
• Despite the power of colonizers who claimed lands that were already owned and
populated by indigenous peoples, resistance is an integral part of the story of
colonialism. Even before decolonization, indigenous people on all continents staged
violent and nonviolent resistance to their conquerors.

20. BENEFITS AND HARM
• Colonial governments invested in infrastructure and trade and disseminated medical and
technological knowledge.
• In some cases, they encouraged literacy, the adoption of Western human rights standards, and
sowed the seeds for democratic institutions and systems of government.
• Some former colonies, like Ghana, experienced a rise in nutrition and health with colonial rule,
and colonial European settlement has been linked to some development gains.
• However, coercion and forced assimilation often accompanied those gains, and scholars
still debate colonialism’s many legacies.
• Colonialism’s impacts include environmental degradation, the spread of disease, economic
instability, ethnic rivalries, and human rights violations—issues that can long outlast one
group’s colonial rule.

21. COLONIAL LITERARY STUDIES
• Typically, “colonial literature” refers to a work written during a period of time when one
country was actively participating in the colonization or imperialistic exploitation of
another geographic area.
• There are certain pieces of writings that worked on colonial ideologies.
• Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a stunning, disturbing piece of Colonial Literature,
because it A) Takes place within a site of empire (Africa) B) Discusses the practices of
imperialism (in this case, both the economic and the social aspects) and C) Does not discuss a
world without empire. Conrad isn’t making an argument that everyone would be better off
without empire. He is critiquing the process and commenting on its results, but his world is
one where empires exist, without question.

22. COLONIAL LITERATURE
• Half a Yellow Sun : Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s multiple-award-winning book is
set in Nigeria years after independence, and deals with the conflict and violence
that resulted from years of British interference in Nigeria, the struggle that many
of the colonized people in Nigeria endured trying to relate to each other, and the
way education systems in colonized sites isolate, differentiate, and, yet, offer the
potential for colonized people to escape the hardship of their lives. It’s a difficult,
beautiful, intelligent, and eye-opening book that makes really big, political issues
both understandably and movingly human.

23. COLONIAL LITERATURE
• Passage to India: E.M. Forster’s novel is one that was, for years, considered a very early
work of postcolonial fiction because it discusses the Indian independence movement,
but recently, a number of readers and scholars have argued that Forester’s inability to
escape his own European viewpoint makes it much more a colonial novel (which
shows just how tricky this category can be!).
• The Man Who Would Be King: Rudyard Kipling was an imperial supporter throughout
his life, even if his support was a bit ambiguous and laced with criticism in some
places. Though Kim is probably his best known work of colonial fiction, this story
really drives the hubris and absurdities of imperialism home in a story that is still
exciting and unsettling to this day.

24. CONCLUSION
• To conclude the task it is worth noting that colonialism is all about the implementation of power by
providing relative improvement to the occupied nation.
• All kind of transformation in the structure of colonized nation was:
1. From the benefit point of views of colonial powers
2. With devastating effects on natives.
• Colonialism generated three main institutionalized forms of human displacement
• A large outward movement of soliders, merchnts, convicts, farmers, prospectors, missionaries and teachers
from Europe.
• Capture and sale of humn beings as slaves
• forced displacement of bonded and convict labor among various, often geographically distant, regions.
Bonded labor was destined to work in plantations, in mines, in the building of infrastructure (such as the
use of Chinese coolie labor to build the railways in North America).