Colonialism

Abstract

Colonialism is the expansion of one people or nation into the territory of another people or nation to establish a material, economic, political, and cultural presence. Archaeological evidence suggests and textual records confirm that human communities have been colonizing territories for millennia. Sometimes, the original intent has been simply to solve a problem of overcrowding or resource shortage through the peaceful establishment of new settlements with ties to the original community. At other times, the intent has been to establish commercial networks that foster the welfare of both the original and the colonial communities. Frequently, however, the colonial enterprise has been accompanied by military force with the primary purpose of extracting value from the colony to increase wealth, freedom, and power for the ruling class of the colonizers. From the ancient regimes of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Rome to the more recent European colonization of Africa, the Asia Pacific, and the Americas, economic, political, and cultural domination has characterized the colonial experience. It is this form of colonialism, along with the beliefs used to legitimize its practice, that has come under intense moral scrutiny in recent years in a critical reexamination of the past 500 years of European/Western history.

Colonialism

Introduction

Colonialism is the expansion of one people or nation into the territory of another people or nation to establish a material, economic, political, and cultural presence. Archaeological evidence suggests and textual records confirm that human communities have been colonizing territories for millennia. Sometimes, the original intent has been simply to solve a problem of overcrowding or resource shortage through the peaceful establishment of new settlements with ties to the original community.

At other times, the intent has been to establish commercial networks that foster the welfare of both the original and the colonial communities. Frequently, however, the colonial enterprise has been accompanied by military force with the primary purpose of extracting value from the colony to increase wealth, freedom, and power for the ruling class of the colonizers. From the ancient regimes of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Rome to the more recent European colonization of Africa, the Asia Pacific, and the Americas, economic, political, and cultural domination has characterized the colonial experience. It is this form of colonialism, along with the beliefs used to legitimize its practice, that has come under intense moral scrutiny in recent years in a critical reexamination of the past 500 years of European/Western history.

Colonialism as a Social Issue

The seminal modern critical work in colonialism, published by Jean Paul Sartre in 1964, framed discursive parameters of colonialism, neocolonialism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism, generating a robust exploration of European colonialism, influencing Jean-François Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jacques Derrida. In his advocacy of violence as an instrument of political goals of freedom, Sartre's work was a touchstone not only for the dissolution of the French colonial empire but also for colonialism itself as a legitimate social concept.

Theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Mikhael Bakhtin, Anne McClintock, Edward Said, Ella Shohat, Gayatri Spivak, Sara Suleri, and others have examined the colonial ...