Colonialism, Post-colonialism

Abstract

In the preface of the Wretched of the Earth, Jean Paul Sartre unintentionally provided a sketchy outline of colonialism by mentioning Europe’s accomplishment of Hellenizing the Asians and creating a “new breed, the Greco-Latin Negroes” (Fanon, 1963, p. 6). Despite the reality exposed by this statement, the phenomenon and the project of colonialism could not be described within a short sentence. Predominantly, the definitions of colonialism revolve around the notions of control, power, and domination and the act of compel-ling compliance with imposed political, economic, and cultural schemes. Moreover, colonialism designates the subjugation of a community living within a certain territory to a powerful group of invaders. The case, of course, with colonialism is that invasion, in its context, did not take place as a process of war, at least not officially. Notwithstanding the bloodshed that accompanied the settlement of the colonizers or the establishment of their domination, the difference between colonialism and imperialism lies, according to Ronald Horvath and John Hobson (cited in Horvath, 1972), in the fact that colonialism is accompanied by the settlement of a vast amount of colonizers (coming from the colonizing country) in the colonized territory. Indicative examples of colonialism where settlers from a European country migrated permanently to a colonized territory are Latin America, North America, and Australia and of imperialism are the majority of Africa’s and a number of Asian territories (Ibid.). What followed this, as seen in histories and imposed geographies, was the exploitation of the territories’ natural resources; the destruction of their primitive economies and cultures in the name of cultural homogenization according to the colonizer’s protocol; and more specifically, genocides, civil wars, slavery, epidemics, and environmental devastation.