Impact and evaluation of colonialism and colonization
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This article refers to the evaluation of Western colonialism. See colonisation for other examples of colonialism.
Given that colonialism involves the rule or taking of territory of one people by another and without their consent, it is a highly emotive subject. Debate about the perceived positive and negative aspects of colonialism has occurred for centuries, amongst both colonizer and colonized, and continues to the present day. Different types of colonialism must first be distinguished, as they were spread in time and thus didn't represent the same historic phenomenon. Starting in the 15th century, the School of Salamanca, gathering theologians such as Francisco Suarez, theorized natural law, thus limiting the domination of Charles V's imperial powers by according natural rights to indigenous people. However, the School of Salamanca also created a casuistry justifying legitimate cases of conquests, thus legitimizing the colonization project itself. The Valladolid controversy opposed the famous Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas to the dominant beliefs of his times, which considered that the Indians had no souls and could thus be freely enslaved. In the 18th century, Diderot criticized ethnocentrism and the colonisation of Tahiti in Supplément au voyage de Bougainville ("Supplement to Bougainville's Travel", 1772).
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[edit] Defense of Colonialism
Defenders of colonialism point to such former colonies as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore as examples of post-colonial success. These nations do not, however, represent the normal course of colonialism in that they are either settler societies, or tradepost cities.
Advocates of 19th century colonialism ("New Imperialism") argue that colonial rule benefited the colonized by developing transport infrastructures such as roads, railroads, ports, etc., necessary to economic development. This modernization and, often, introduction to the rule of law were aids to eventual democracy. Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, The White Man's Burden (1899), thus discussed the urge of the West to take up "the toil of serf and sweeper" for the welfare and betterment of colonized people, for example, to "Fill full the mouth of Famine/And bid the sickness cease."
Colonialism brought regions that had previously known only autocratic rule into contact with European concepts of self-determination and civil rights. For example, the British tried to exterminate the Indian caste system, which relegated individuals to the rank and occupation they were born into, and sati, the custom whereby a dead man's widow burned to death on her husband's funeral pyre. Colonial subjects who later led their countries to independence were often educated in European schools and traditions. India's Mahatma Gandhi attended University College London and, while there, joined and served as an officer of the Vegetarian Society; he later credited this pursuit with giving him valuable organizational experience.
[edit] Common Criticisim of Colonialism
Since colonialism involves the rule or taking of territory of one people by another and without their consent, many people believe that the worst effects of colonialism is the fact that a country (in history, European), takes land rightfully belonging to natives (usually Native American or African) without any consent, and generally mistreating the natives afterwards. Though whether or not this is the worst effect or not can be debated, it definitely plays a major role in the debate of colonialism
[edit] Pigmentocracy
In the Portuguese colonies, miscegenation was commonplace, and even supported by the court as a way to boost low populations and guarantee a successful settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. Some of the children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, possibly based on lighter skin color, but not race. Some former Portuguese colonies have large mixed-race populations, for instance, Brazil, Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe. Miscegenation was still common in Africa until the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in the 1970s, which succeeded the 1974 Carnation Revolution. To the present day, Angolan, Brazilian, and Cape Verdian societies are defined by the degree of melanin (lighter skin). In Cape Verde, the population is often differentiated by lighter and darker skin (known as pele de chocolate, or "chocolate skin"). Because of white supremacist institutions and the values they inculcated among the populace, many such miscegenated societies were and remain to this day heavily stratified by color, with darker-skinned citizens assigned the lowest economic and social status. This was demonstrated by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre's famous Casa-Grande & Senzala ("The Great House and the Slave Quarters" - 1933). Eduardo Galeano also showed how the profusion of Spanish words to design various types of skin color demonstrated a very precise racial hierarchy in Latin America. In the US, anti-miscegenation laws were passed and racial segregation enforced.
[edit] Genocides and relation to the Holocaust
Concerning the scramble for Africa, most historians tend to describe both positive aspects (infrastructures, education) and negative aspects (racism, exploitation, and, in some cases, even extermination - see for example the Herero genocide between 1904 and 1907). Several authors, such as Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist (1992[1]), French historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison[2] or, in a more moderate way, Hannah Arendt (1951[3]) have linked the possibility and the history of the Holocaust to colonialism. In Exterminate All The Brutes (a sentence taken from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness), Sven Lindqvist argued that the techniques and inhumanity necessary to the Holocaust were indeed commonly practiced during colonial rule, in which several ethnic groups were exterminated. However, this thesis, linking the Holocaust to colonial genocides, has been harshly disputed by others authors.
[edit] Imperialism and dependency theory
Dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank argue that colonialism leads to the net transfer of wealth from the colonized to the colonizer, and inhibits successful economic development. Critics such as Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth,[4] the Négritude movement (gathering Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor) argue that colonialism does political, psychological, and moral damage to the colonized as well. Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy likened debating the pros and cons of colonialism to "debating the pros and cons of rape".
Critics of the alleged abuses of economic and political advantages accruing to developed nations via globalised capitalism have referred to them as neocolonialism, and see them as a continuation of the domination and exploitation of ex-colonial countries, merely utilizing different means. Neocolonialism is in this sense a new form of imperialism, which had first been theorized by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg thought that the necessary economic expansion of capitalism automatically led to territorial expansion, in order to find new resources and markets.
[edit] Post-colonialism and post-colonial literature
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[edit] Historical debate in France
On May 10, 2001, the Taubira law officially recognized slavery and the Atlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity. Between various propositions, May 10 was finally chosen as day dedicated to the recognition of the crime of slavery. Anticolonialist activists also want the African Liberation Day to be recognized by the Republic. Although slavery was recognized by this law, four years later, the vote of the February 23, 2005 law by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), asking teachers and textbooks to "acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa", was met with public uproar and accusations of historic revisionism, both inside France and abroad. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria, refused to sign the envisioned "friendly treaty" with France because of this law. Famous writer Aimé Césaire, leader of the Négritude movement, also refused to meet UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy, leading the latter to cancel his visit to Martinique. The controversed law was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006.
Philosopher Paul Ricœur has spoke of the necessity of a "decolonization of memory", starting with the recognition of the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian war (1954-62) and the recognition of the decisive role of immigrated manpower in the Trente Glorieuses post-WW II economic growth period.
[edit] References
- ^ Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All The Brutes, 1992, New Press; Reprint edition (June 1997), ISBN 1-56584-359-2
- ^ LeCour Grandmaison, Olivier, Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial, Fayard, 2005, ISBN 2-213-62316-3 ((French))
- ^ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951, second section on imperialism
- ^ Fanon, Frantz, "The Wretched of the Earth" Pref. by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Constance Farrington. London : Penguin Book, 2001
[edit] Bibliography
- Diderot, Denis, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772)
