LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Midterm 2003

Rosalyn Mack

Colonization as a Tool of European Empire

Derek Walcott’s “Two Poems on the Passing of an Empire” drew a connection between the Roman conquest of the British Isle and the European conquest of the African continent.  The poem made me start thinking about the Roman method of spreading imperialism.  Generally, the Romans overran an area with soldiers, removed the most likely rebels and then began a calculated cultural invasion.  They took what they felt were the most useful aspects of the conquered people’s culture and added Roman religion and laws; creating a hybrid culture that eased the new people into being Roman citizens.  Walcott’s second poem, Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness, and Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, portray a seemingly more brutal and capitalistic method of colonization employed by the Europeans in their taking of Africa.  But what do these texts tell us about the success or failure of European colonial rule?

Conrad begins his tale by hypothesizing the initial Roman impression of Britain, imagining that they must have viewed England as “[h]ere and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay – cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death, - death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush” (Heart 34).  The first impression is an offering of legitimacy for what happens in Africa, a kind of “the Romans did it” attitude.  But just when the connection is being drawn between the ancient conquest and the nineteenth century enterprise, he snatches it away, making the claim that the Romans were “…no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect.  They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force… It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale…as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness” (Heart 34).

There is a certain irony to this pronouncement, Conrad recognizes that his are the words of conquered and colonized.  He institutes a postcolonial dialogue between himself and the reader regarding ancient imperialism.  He wants the reader to see the connection between the colonization Marlowe is witnessing and the centuries-old invasion of England.  The connection is violence and the theft of the wild freedom of nature.  Conrad and Walcott paint the same picture of pre-Roman England with nature as pristine, untouched wilderness without the disrupting influence of civilized humanity.  The natives aren’t restless because they’re one with nature. 

For both men it is the trampling feet of civilization that begins the inevitable downward spiral into the destruction of untamed nature and all its heathen inhabitants.  Conrad struggles to interject some distance between the actions of Europeans and those of their ancient brethren, the Romans, by citing religion, or as he refers to it “an idea” (Heart 35) as the driving force behind the invasion of Africa.  And yet, at the same time he validates force and murder as the appropriate tools for conquest and empire. 

The point is to differentiate European colonization and justify its brutality and disregard for the land and people it conquered.  Conrad’s protagonist, Marlowe, makes these remarks after his experiences in Africa, after he’s seen the Belgian colonization of the Congo region but before he tells of his adventures there, so the denouncement of the Roman invasion as “robbery with violence” is a hollow device meant to reassert the idea of Europeans as the most civilized of people.

But despite his attempt to interject some notion of religion at the beginning of the story, Marlowe is uncomfortable when his aunt directly mentions it.  In direct contradiction to his criticism of the Romans, Marlowe “hints that the company was run for profit” (Heart 40) in an attempt to downplay her emphasis on civilizing Africa through religion.  So though he implies that religion might be the civilizing factor in colonization, Marlowe shies away from the idea, leading the reader to the undeniable conclusion that there will be no civilizing influence on Europeans in Africa. 

Marlowe wants to justify African colonization as an attempt to spread civilization across the world but reality, in the form of his journey down the Congo River, thrusts the truth in front of him: European colonization is as brutal as any before it.  The beating and killing of the natives, the lack of any law and the wanton destruction of the land all meld into a testament to the barbarity of any colonization effort, whether in the nineteenth century or the first century.

In the second poem of “Two Poems on the Passing of an Empire,” Walcott echoes the sentiment.  The character of the poem is one of deep regret and some bitterness; the colonization effort has left nothing of value behind, at least nothing of value to the defeated natives.  The English would argue that they brought civilization to the heathen Africans and Indians but the natives are more likely to disagree.  Walcott’s veteran sees the death of his culture and the spiritual death of his children as the lasting impression of imperialism.  The colonization of Africa was for wealth and resources, Christianity just a convenient tool of the trade, and any of the objecting natives were mere delays to be removed. 

Untamed natives became enemies skulking in the jungle waiting to jump out and kill the unwary, just as in Marlowe’s fanciful account of early Roman excursions into Britain.  Conrad draws the parallel but seems to be able to dismiss it because these invaders are not English, they are Belgian, French, and Russian.  Conrad wants to maintain the fiction that this is not the way in which the English implemented their imperialism but Walcott, and history, deconstruct Conrad’s fantasy by showing that British colonialism was as racist and destructive as any other form. 

Perhaps more unbearable to the twentieth century eye is the paternalistic idealism of the British and other Europeans towards those countries they invaded.  The assertion that the natives didn’t know how to properly utilize their natural resources and needed to have someone come in and manage for them scrapes like sandpaper across the mind.  The Europeans defended this racist view because they believed that European culture was the most civilized and, therefore, the only way acceptable way of living.  But, in reality, they were applying the Roman “robbery with violence” technique, taking what they wanted, and then claiming capitalism to make their theft more palatable. 

In Heart of Darkness capitalism is all-important.  It is the grease that moves the wheels of so-called progress in Africa.  But it is also the wedge that opens the heart to greed and corruption.  Kurtz is Conrad’s living embodiment of unadulterated power and greed, but Conrad also peppers his novel with references to the waste of life and property involved in the taking of Africa.  In his essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” Achebe refers to “the ravages of King Leopold’s International Association for the Civilization of Central Africa” (An Image 260), the irony being that there don’t appear to be any attempts at civilization beyond those necessary to earn a profit.  The civilization of Central Africa is actually the gutting of the region for profit and wealth. 

Between Walcott and Conrad lies Achebe.  Actually, Achebe would precede these two writers because Things Fall Apart is a view of a pre-colonial African village, before the coming of Europeans.  Here is a culture that functions on the level of what most would recognize as civilized; there are laws, traditions and prescribed social behaviors.  In fact there is little difference between European culture and Achebe’s Ibo culture, except for the passage of time and the development of technology.  Achebe creates Conrad’s native-at-one-with-nature, but breathes life into this being, giving him breadth and depth, making the African three-dimensional and human.  Achebe’s Africans are more human than Conrad’s Europeans; they present a range of actions, motives and feelings.  Conrad’s Europeans are merely greedy animals constantly seeking more power or money, only Marlowe seems made of flesh and he lacks the ability to feel empathy with or for those around him, white or black.

Achebe writes about pre-colonial Africans because he himself is a postcolonial product.  He feels compelled to provide a voice that can dispute the abundance of colonial literature depicting Africans as erect beasts.  In particular, he writes in direct refutation of Heart of Darkness.  In “An Image of Africa…” he sees Europe suffering “deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparisons with Africa” (An Image 261).  In order to gain the needed reassurance and justify colonial atrocities, Achebe feels that Europe must demonize the landscape and dehumanize the people of Africa. 

Achebe attacks Heart of Darkness as a masterwork of racism and dismisses Conrad/Marlowe as espousing the right words and attitudes so as to appear more liberal than he really was.  Achebe sees Marlowe as a tool, used to showcase Conrad’s “advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by the atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians or whatever” (256).  For Achebe, a postcolonial subject, Conrad and Europe’s casual dismissal of Africans as human beings is too much.  He recognized that if the African people were going to be heard in literature, an African would have to provide the voice.

Which brings us back to the question of what these different texts tell us about European colonial rule.  Could it be called a success?  Yes, if the goal of colonization was the acquisition of wealth and power as well as the spread of European culture and civilization.  While it lasted, European countries reaped the financial benefits of the gold, ivory and gemstones to be found on the continent.  They increased their political status by the number of colonies they had across the world; an increase in political status was equivalent to higher political clout and therefore more political power. 

Using philosopher Michel Foucault’s definition of power as the “action of structuring the possible field of action of others by the deployment of one or more reigning institutional codes or ‘disciplines,’ be they legal, educational, religious, medical, or political” (Literary Theory 613), the European bout of imperialism was a rousing success.  African nations use or model European legal, educational and political systems, European languages are the official languages of communication, and Christianity is practiced by a large number of Africans.  Therefore, European colonization was successful in that regard.  The three various texts would agree on this point.

But I would argue that imperialism was an unsuccessful endeavor for Europeans as well.  They lacked the ability to maintain the conquest and convert the natives into English or French or Belgians citizens.  With the Romans, the conquered peoples could become citizens of Rome, with all the attendant rights and privileges.  There was motivation to remain within the Roman imperial embrace, one day you too could be part of the power structure.  The Europeans offered no such carrot to its new colonies.  To be born outside of Europe was to forever be a second-class citizen, no matter whose flag was flown over your native country. 

Racism also guaranteed that the African and Indian colonists would never gain equality.  The European viewed these people as simplistic and lazy, incapable of managing on their own; they could never foresee a day when the colonists would be competent to rule themselves.  Only England seemed to think that some day it’s African colonies might be prepared for self-rule; others dismissed the idea out of hand.

With no opportunity or hope of ever being treated as an equal citizen, there was no incentive for the colonist to remain part of the imperialist program.  This was why the United States broke away from England and why the African nations began fighting for their freedom.  Perpetual subjugation is intolerable to every race.

So though they succeeded in changing the face of the map, the Europeans failed at their imperial experiment because their concept of culture was not flexible enough to adapt; they could not add new ideas or interactions to its lexicon.  Their xenophobia prevented them from taking the best of the new culture and blending it with their own to create a functioning hybrid culture.  Therefore they remained merely conquerors, forcing their ideals onto the subject people.  But, having cast aside colonialism, the postcolonial people of Africa and India are striving to merge the two sides of their new culture and take what is best form both.