"How Does Colonialism Work?" in Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss (eds), Global Politics: A new introduction (2nd edition, Routledge, 2013). (original) (raw)
Related papers
Colonialism: The Rape of Minds and Nations
In 1972, the popular musical act War, wrote the following, "Don't you know that it's true, that for me and for you, the world is a ghetto." The song reached number seven on the Billboard charts. The lyrics resonated with the people. The irony of the band's name should not go unnoticed. Less than a hundred years before the nations of Europe viewed the world as their ghetto. In their quest for more resources, land, and wealth, they simply raped the minds and nations of those they viewed as inferior. In Niccolo Machiavelli's book The Prince, he wrote, "The end justifies the means." It appears European nations followed that creed by using whatever means necessary, including military force, 1 to extract everything they could from less powerful nations. Europe colonized wherever they could and made the world their ghetto.
Domination and Exploitation: The Primary Aims or the By-Products of Colonization?
2021
Domination and colonization are the terms closely related to each other as they are inseparable in the sense that when colonization comes into being, it either aims at domination or domination becomes the by-product of colonization itself. Hence, my paper will focus on the purpose of colonization and its inevitable outcome that is, domination that may or may not be the primary aim of colonization but without which colonization ceases to survive. Colonization, in general, comprised of people whose primary aim was to settle elsewhere, earn their livelihood and pass a better life there. To maintain these, again the colonizers become despotic and dominant over the colonized. Though the critics, historians and postcolonial theorists often characterize colonization as the means of subjugation of one race by the other, colonization was in fact a solution to a social problem which is to save large number of population in Europe in general and in United Kingdom in particular from an anticipa...
A Handbook of English Renaissance Literary Studies, 2017
understanding biology and its tendency to view the human body as pre-programmed by genes that are transmitted from parent to offspring. In this view racialism is pred icated upon a rather inflexible idea of biology, one that underscores the role of inherited traits to denote an individual' s racial identity at birth (Hannaford 1996; Appiah 1990). In such theories, a person' spcial identity-delivered biologically-is an aspect ofhis/her nature that cannot be changed. Such understandings of difference are conditioned by a rather rigid divide-even an opposition-between the concepts of nature and culture. Although cultural differences might serve to express one' s racial or ethnic identity, modern ideologies do not afford culture the power to alter or shape racial identity. In this view culture is "superficial" or "skin deep;' while race, bound to nature, is a permanent marker of difference that pervades the body at a deep level. Attentive to this modern ideology of difference, despite its dubious claim to scientific rigor (Venter 2007; Gould 1996; Fields and Fields 2012), historians have argued that pre-Enlightenment societies have not been bearers of"racial ideologies" in this modern sense (Bartlett 1993; Kidd 2006; Banton 2000). Rather, as they have compellingly argued, earlier eras-Medieval or early modern-have leaned more heavily on accounts of cultural practice to theorize human difference, suggesting that the lines dividing one population from another are more flexible in earlier eras and therefore fundamentally at a remove from modern ideologies. Speaking of the Medieval period, for instance, Robert Bartlett has argued: "To a point, therefore, medieval ethnicity was a social construct rather than a biological datum ... When we study race relations in medieval Europe we are analyzing the contact between various linguistic and cultural groups, not between breeding stocks" {1993, 197). Still more compellingly, Bartlett, quoting Isidore of Seville, a famous schoolmaster of the Middle Ages, observes: "Races arose from different languages, not languages from different races, or, as another Latin author argues, 'language makes race' (gen tem lin g ua Jacit)" (1993, 198). Implicit in this observation is the premise that culture precedes and instates nature in the earlier periods in ways that cease to be possible for modernity. And yet, the view of these historians has been called into question by critics who observe resemblances, connections, and relations between modern and pre-modern forms of race thinking, in large part due to a growing suspicion that "the bifurcation of'culture' and 'nature' in many analyses of race needs to be questioned" and that we need to "query the very boundaries between these categories" (Loomba and Burton 2007, 8, 25.) (For the Medieval period see Heng 2011 and Nirenberg 2007). If that is true of all periods-since nature and culture always "develop in relation to one another" (Loomba and Burton 2007, 8)-it is absolutely crucial for analyzing pre modern cultures. For the noun "culture" that appears in modern vocabularies to describe the endeavors of distinct human populations was never used in the same way in the earlier period, a point whose significance to the study of early modern race cannot be overstated. As Raymond Williams long ago argued, culture was not a thing so much as "a noun of process" in the early modern period, an activity that exerted a shaping force on any aspect of nature-human or otherwise-whether a
Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter nose than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.
A Mission to Civilize, the Enlightenment and Racism
Although the idea of colonialism existed since time immemorial, it is generally associated with the subjugation of and domination over countries in Americas, Africa and Asia by European states. The occurrence started in earnest roughly in the 15 th century and grew exponentially ever since, to such an extent that Europe, which constitutes only 8 percent of the world's land surface, managed to control in 1800 about 35 percent of the world. At the peak of the colonialism crusade, which was the turn of the 20 th century, that figure climbed as high as 84 percent (Philip Hoffman, Why did Europe Conquer the World?). The main reasons for colonialism were economic and political dominance, Christianization, and civilization (a mission to civilize). Europeans perceived themselves as superior to the rest of the world in terms of each and every aspect of existence. The world therefore had to be in service to them, their needs and their programs. A new Euro-centric world order was on the horizon. It was anchored in a biased worldview that favoured everything European or Western to the disadvantage of everything non-European or non-Western. Europe was the world and the world belonged to Europe, revolving around it.
Where does colonialism come from?
This paper reflects on the medieval and classical antecedents of modern colonialism. In its first section, it focuses on Pisa's medieval experience in order to contribute to a genealogy of colonial imaginings and practice. Unable to expand inland and surrounded by hostile polities, Pisa amassed a number of colonial possessions during the eleventh and twelfth century, primarily in Sardinia, but also in the Balearic Islands, North Africa, and in the Levant. Sidestepping the findings of an important debate about whether colonial phenomena in radically different eras can be seen as 'continuous' with their predecessors (both sides of this debate present convincing arguments that are consistent with their respective definitions -i.e. 'the Ancients Greeks or Romans set up colonies' , 'modern colonialism is entirely unprecedented'), this paper's second section refers to settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination and outlines how it was practiced in classical antiquity. Each section is followed by an epilogue touching on the intellectual afterlives of the 'empires' outlined by each section.
2015
In the previous chapter, some significant and morally challenging implications of colonial rule were presented. The point of departure of this chapter is the question of how colonialism and imperialism shaped the present global structure. The primary question is: How were the present poor former colonies affected by the fact that they were colonized by foreign powers for hundreds of years? Did it accelerate their development or was it an obstacle to their progress? The secondary questions are: How did the exploitation of the colonies affect development in the now wealthy nations? Were colonialism and imperialism important for their development or did they play only a minor role? Both these questions are highly controversial and, needless to say, experts in the field are far from unanimous. Hence, my aim is to review some of their answers and discuss the implications for my main question in this book: Is there is a valid argument for rectificatory justice after colonialism and imperi...