Weldon Mercer--midterm & rewrite

Rewritten midterm

Caribbean Colonial and Postcolonial

       According to colonial historians, the European colonial experience involved “Commerce, Christianity and Civilization.” However, from my research and studies of early colonialism reveals much more. Commerce, Christianity and Civilization cannot be called three distinct objectives as such because all three are incorporated within an overarching system that by its nature functioned to establish European supremacy and dominance over the rest of the world, whatever the consequences. At times, I imagine that dominance required deadly force and torture, and eventually death to the Caribbean native and African slaves as well.

       In Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe the natives, Indian or African while misunderstood are mentioned as uncivilized savages, and treated as such. The native’s lives were of no significance to the colonizer but merely as tools of the trade, or property. For instance, I feel that fear of the unknown, and greed among other elements of disregard led to destructive interpretations and actions by the colonizers in most cases.  For example, oppression is a basic ingredient of colonization and it dehumanizes both the oppressor as well as the oppressed. Basically, the native or slave realized that his hopes and aspirations were limited under the rule of the colonizer. As a result, the native or slave resorted to violence in hopes that the colonizer would leave him alone or go away.

       In addition, my findings reveal that exploitation and misuse of power were the elements of the colonist to achieve total dominance with exposure to cruelty and exploitation of the natives. For instance in Crusoe, Crusoe enslaves Friday and uses his manpower in advancing his cause, a part of his property. Another example is when Crusoe forces Friday to learn the English language and totally disregards Friday’s language. Above all Crusoe stigmatizes Friday by forcing his Christian religion upon him without giving Friday a choice. Moreover, the ultimate cruelty of the settler is evident when Crusoe sells Friday as a slave to the captain of the ship who delivered them out of the island.

     Historically, after Christopher Columbus made his discovery in America the exploration door opened wide with England, France, Portugal, and Spain in the lead for competition. In 1450 to1789, the British colonized the Caribbean. In my opinion, the Europeans did not seek to consciously establish a collective European ascendancy, certainly the rivalry was rife between the Caribbean islands consist primarily of three major groups: the Bahamas Islands, including the Turks and Caicos islands, Greater Antilles the (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico), and, southeast of Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles (Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago). European colonization of the Caribbean islands started after Christopher Columbus landed on several of them in the 1490s and claimed the entire area for Spain. Foreign traders were also excluded. From the mid-sixteenth century, English ships' captains began to participate in the highly profitable smuggling trade that supplied the Spanish-American settlements and continued into the late 1570s. Then, as Europe's Counter-Reformation became increasingly bitter, Caribbean voyages, on which captains threatened local officials with violent attacks before they commenced trading in order to allow the officials to claim overwhelming force, became ventures for both commerce and raiding. These targeted the Spanish plate fleets as they traversed the Caribbean as well as local coasting traffic. English, French, and Dutch all participated. The institution of a grudging peace in the early seventeenth century allowed the resumption of the earlier smuggling trade. England, France, and the Netherlands all began establishing their own colonies in the Caribbean in the 1620s and 1630s.

     In addition, the Caribbean islands are primarily made up of three major groups: the Bahamas Islands, including the Turks and Caicos islands, the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico), and, southeast of Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles (Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago). European colonization of the Caribbean islands started after Christopher Columbus landed on several of them in the 1490s and claimed the entire area for Spain.

    Foreign traders were also excluded. From the mid-sixteenth century, English ships' captains (pirates) began to participate in the highly profitable smuggling trade that supplied the Spanish-American settlements and continued into the late 1570s. Then, as Europe's Counter-Reformation became increasingly bitter, Caribbean voyages, on which captains threatened local officials with violent attacks before they commenced trading in order to allow the officials to claim overwhelming force became ventures for both commerce and raiding. These targeted the Spanish plate fleets as they traversed the Caribbean as well as local coasting traffic. English, French, and Dutch all participated. The institution of a grudging peace in the early seventeenth century allowed the resumption of the earlier smuggling trade. England, France, and the Netherlands all began establishing their own colonies in the Caribbean in the 1620s and 1630s.

                  Early colonial populations on the islands were shaped by economic downturns and high death rates. Agricultural colonies such as Barbados began growing tobacco as an export crop, but, after the tobacco boom collapsed Barbados's planters, leaving them with only poor-quality tobacco to sell, they turned to experimenting with cotton, then with indigo. However, during the 1640s these commodities became early casualties of Britain's civil war, with the market for imports collapsing. The planters then welcomed Dutch merchants who gave easier credit, had access to shipments of slaves from West Africa, and helped teach them how to process sugar. The resulting "sugar revolution" transformed Barbados's society. Sugar promised a profitable crop, but setting up a sugar estate demanded substantial profits for labor to gather the crop and for machinery to process the canes. Large estates benefited from economies of scale while small plantations could no longer compete.           

   As a result, English writer Robert Defoe believed that Englishmen were destined to succeed at colonialism if they overcame their fear through the use of their psychological tools: their reason, their work ethic, and their Protestant faith. In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe imagines a true-born Englishman fulfilling his fantasy. Throughout the novel, I found that Defoe makes clear that a man's power over himself and nature depends upon ceaseless labor — this is the secret to the colonial project. Before the colonialist can begin to work, security precautions must be taken. Work ethic is Crusoe's first concern. The next phase of conquest is the act of possession

            As a civilized man, he makes peace with God and institutes daily readings from the New Testament. From this point on, there are few skills he cannot master with the use of logic and reason, although issues of security and ownership remain unsettled. The island contains no singular embodiment of nature to be conquered, so instead every element of the island presents a threat. Crusoe vacillates on how to deal with these threats. The first method involves visualization of mastery:  From Defoe's Robinson Crusoe onwards the allegories of colonial expansion often brought the colonial mind up against an image only of itself.

           In addition, from the Caribbean past, people are filled with anger and resentment as colonization is recanted, a brutal and inhumane past. I found that from what is left of the Indian natives and African slaves that were once considered savages by the colonist and treated indifferently; migration to other countries like England and America provides a release through understanding and education of other cultures. For example, Jamaica Kincaid’s book, Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah, and their four children. Lewis and Mariah, a thrice-blessed couple is handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is.

         At the same time that Lucy is coming to terms with Lewis's and Mariah's lives, she is also unraveling the mysteries of her own sexuality. Gradually a new person unfolds: passionate, forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character possessed with adamantine clear sightedness and strong integrity--a captivating character for our time.

          I enjoyed Defoe and Kincaid’s writings, especially in “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid and Lucy gave me permission to feel the resentment and ... powerful a warrior navigating homeland colonization. In addition, Kincaid discusses British colonialism, the corruption of the Antigua, and post colonization.  Kincaid also discusses the state of race relations in the United States.

         For example, as a native Texan I am an example of a multi-culture makeup, similar to Kincaid’s scarred and oppressed memories. I can understand and identify with much that the Caribbean writers are conveying about anger and resentment and being looked at as less than equal. For example, the major theme in “A Small Place” is the effects of colonialism in which Kincaid expresses her anger both at the colonist and at the Antiguans for failing to fully achieve their independence. Likewise,  Kincaid discusses British colonialism, the corruption, racism, and greed in Antigua. Ultimately, Kincaid's vision of the human condition is extremely negative but her haunting, almost hypnotic prose really held me. I recommend the book to anyone planning a trip to a poor country for their own pleasure. Perhaps, soften the wounds of their oppression as well. In my youth, I read several novels and films on Robinson Crusoe and the story helped me to understand and sooth my scarred background; my oppressed native Indian heritage that partially caused my anger. Like, I am not the only survivor.

      Consequently, colonialism and post colonialism’s Commerce, Christianity and Civilization cannot be called three distinct objectives as such because all three are incorporated within an overarching system that by its nature functioned to establish European supremacy and dominance over the rest of the world, whatever the consequences, the tortured lives and deaths of Indian natives and African slaves.

Works Cited

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. London: Penguin Books, 1965. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. London: Virago, 1988. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York: Plume, 1991. Print.

www.amazon.com/Small-Place-Jam apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/books/43176-jamaica-kincaid-lucy-a-novel?class=fancy_m

apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/books/43176-jamaica-kincaid-lucy-a-novel?class=fancy_m

   11. Ridley, H., Images of Imperial Rule (London: Croom Helm, 1983), p.5.

Original midterm                                                                                                                                                                                                     

October 4, 2009

Caribbean Colonialism and Postcolonial

According to colonial historians, the European colonial experience involved “Commerce, Christianity and Civilization.” However, the colonial experience has much more to uncover. Commerce, Christianity and Civilization cannot be called three distinct objectives as such because all three are incorporated within an overarching system that by its nature functioned to establish European supremacy and dominance over the rest of the world. At times, dominance required deadly force, death to the Caribbean natives and African slaves.

After Christopher Columbus made his discovery in America the exploration door opened wide with England, France, Portugal, and Spain in the lead for competition. In 1450 to1789, the British colonized the Caribbean. In my opinion, the Europeans did not seek to consciously establish a collective European ascendancy, certainly the rivalry was rife between the Earthen Caribbean islands consist primarily of three major groups: the Bahamas Islands, including the Turks and Caicos islands, Greater Antilles the (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico), and, southeast of Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles (Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago). European colonization of the Caribbean islands started after Christopher Columbus landed on several of them in the 1490s and claimed the entire area for Spain. Foreign traders were also excluded. From the mid-sixteenth century, English ships' captains began to participate in the highly profitable smuggling trade that supplied the Spanish-American settlements and continued into the late 1570s. Then, as Europe's Counter-Reformation became increasingly bitter, Caribbean voyages, on which captains threatened local officials with violent attacks before they commenced trading in order to allow the officials to claim overwhelming force, became ventures for both commerce and raiding. These targeted the Spanish plate fleets as they traversed the Caribbean as well as local coasting traffic. English, French, and Dutch all participated. The institution of a grudging peace in the early seventeenth century allowed the resumption of the earlier smuggling trade. England, France, and the Netherlands all began establishing their own colonies in the Caribbean in the 1620s and 1630s.

The Caribbean islands are primarily made up of three major groups: the Bahamas Islands, including the Turks and Caicos islands, the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico), and, southeast of Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles (Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago). European colonization of the Caribbean islands started after Christopher Columbus landed on several of them in the 1490s and claimed the entire area for Spain. Foreign traders were also excluded. From the mid-sixteenth century, English ships' captains (pirates) began to participate in the highly profitable smuggling trade that supplied the Spanish-American settlements and continued into the late 1570s. Then, as Europe's Counter-Reformation became increasingly bitter, Caribbean voyages, on which captains threatened local officials with violent attacks before they commenced trading in order to allow the officials to claim overwhelming force became ventures for both commerce and raiding. These targeted the Spanish plate fleets as they traversed the Caribbean as well as local coasting traffic. English, French, and Dutch all participated. The institution of a grudging peace in the early seventeenth century allowed the resumption of the earlier smuggling trade. England, France, and the Netherlands all began establishing their own colonies in the Caribbean in the 1620s and 1630s.

           The British settlements in the Leeward Islands (Anguilla, Barbuda, Dominica [which became part of the Windward Islands in the nineteenth century], Saint Christopher's, Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat) and Barbados in the Windward Islands proved in the 1620s and 1630s more permanent than those earlier footholds on the South American mainland. Colonies were founded in St. Kitts in 1623 and in Barbados in 1627. Settlers from St. Kitts expanded onto Nevis in 1628 and Antigua and Montserrat in 1632. These island colonies got their start in part because they were established when Spain was preoccupied in European wars, although local Spanish forces still staged some successful attacks. Another reason was that these islands were mostly uninhabited, since the indigenous Carib tribes had been enslaved a century before or had fled to the Windward Islands (Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, and the Grenadines) where they defended their independence, and the Spanish had neglected the Leewards and set up colonies primarily in the Greater Antilles.

          After the English began settling the islands as plantations, West Indian havens offered operation bases for seamen engaged in smuggling or in raiding Spanish towns and ships. In the early 1660s, some of the buccaneers on Tortuga, off Hispaniola, moved their operations to the recently won English colony of Jamaica (taken from the Spanish in 1655), where, besides bringing in needed cash, their ships helped deter Spanish attacks. In the Bahamas, which were first settled by the English in 1646, pirates operated until the 1720s.

        Early colonial populations on the islands were shaped by economic downturns and high death rates. Agricultural colonies such as Barbados began growing tobacco as an export crop, but, after the tobacco boom collapsed Barbados's planters, leaving them with only poor-quality tobacco to sell, they turned to experimenting with cotton, then with indigo. However, during the 1640s these commodities became early casualties of Britain's civil war, with the market for imports collapsing. The planters then welcomed Dutch merchants who gave easier credit, had access to shipments of slaves from West Africa, and helped teach them how to process sugar. The resulting "sugar revolution" transformed Barbados's society. Sugar promised a profitable crop, but setting up a sugar estate demanded substantial profits for labor to gather the crop and for machinery to process the canes. Large estates benefited from economies of scale while small plantations could no longer compete. Large-scale planters then found it cheaper to buy out their neighbors than clear virgin land.

            As a result English writer, Robert Defoe believed that Englishmen were destined to succeed at colonialism if they overcame their fear through the use of their psychological tools: their reason, their work ethic, and their Protestant faith. In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe imagines a true-born Englishman fulfilling his fantasy. Throughout the novel, Defoe makes clear that a man's power over himself and nature depends upon ceaseless labor — this is the secret to the colonial project. Before the colonialist can begin to work, security precautions must be taken. Work ethic is Crusoe's first concern. The next phase of conquest is the act of possession

            As a civilized man, he makes peace with God and institutes daily readings from the New Testament. From this point on, there are few skills he cannot master with the use of logic and reason, although issues of security and ownership remain unsettled. The island contains no singular embodiment of nature to be conquered, so instead every element of the island presents a threat. Crusoe vacillates on how to deal with these threats. The first method involves visualization of mastery:

           I came to an opening the country appeared so fresh it looked like a planted garden                                      surveying it with a secret kind of pleasure to think that this was all my own; that I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly, and had a right and possession; and, if I could convey it, I might have it in inheritance as completely as any lord of a manor in England.

Here, Crusoe is expressing a Lockean sentiment: the perception that "I own it" is half of ownership. Yet this is insufficient, because anyone or anything could perceive and state likewise.

          From Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1715) onwards the allegories of colonial expansion often brought the colonial mind up against an image only of itself. As Hugh Ridley has observed in Images of Imperial Rule (1983): "Crusoe's Island, like the fictional representations of European colonies which succeeded it, is peopled with figures which already lay within the traveler's mind; the journey across the world, the shipwrecks and the strange adventures lead although the protagonist by no means realizes this back to Europe and the European self."[11]

           In addition, from the Caribbean past, people are filled with anger and resentment as colonialization is recanted, a brutal and inhumane past. From what is left of the Indian natives and African slaves that were once considered savages by the colonist and treated indifferently, migration to other countries like England and America provides a release through understanding and education of other cultures. For example, Jamaica Kincaid’s book, LUCY, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple--handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is.

           At the same time that Lucy is coming to terms with Lewis's and Mariah's lives, she is also unraveling the mysteries of her own sexuality. Gradually a new person unfolds: passionate, forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character possessed with adamantine clear sightedness and strong integrity--a captivating character for our time.

           I enjoyed Defoe and Kincaid’s writings, especially in “A Small Place” Jamaica Kincaid ... LUCY gave me permission to feel the resentment and ... powerful a warrior navigating homeland colonization. In addition, Kincaid discusses British colonialism, the corruption of the Antigua.  For example, as a native Texan I am an example of a multi-culture makeup, similar to Kincaid’s scarred and oppressed memories. I can understand and identify with much that the Caribbean writers are conveying about anger and resentment and being looked at as less than. Kincaid discusses British colonialism, the corruption, racism, and greed in Antigua. Ultimately, Kincaid's vision of the human condition is extremely negative but her haunting, almost hypnotic prose really held me. I recommend the book to anyone planning a trip to a poor country for their own pleasure.

Works Cited

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. London: Penguin Books, 1965. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. London: Virago, 1988. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York: Plume, 1991. Print.

ww.amazon.com/Small-Place-Jam apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/books/43176-jamaica-kincaid-lucy-a-novel?class=fancy_m

apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/books/43176-jamaica-kincaid-lucy-a-novel?class=fancy_m

   11. Ridley, H., Images of Imperial Rule (London: Croom Helm, 1983), p.5.