Colonialism and Postcolonialism

Abstract

Much of the history of international relations is characterized by the violent attempts of one community to subjugate another. In 1955, Aimé Césaire wrote of the "great historical tragedy" that befell Africa in its encounter with European colonialism, an encounter that led Césaire to conclude that "Europe is responsible before the human community for the highest heap of corpses in human Defining ColonialismDefining colonialism is not a straightforward task. A variety of forms of historic and contemporary interaction between different peoples have been described as colonial or neo-colonial in character, and this poses problems: define the term too narrowly, and particular communities who have experienced injustice which they characterize as colonial are excluded; too broadly, and almost any form of relation featuring inequality of power between different international parties appears to be an instance of colonialism. Robert Young writes that colonialism "involved an extraordinary range of different forms and practices carried out with respect to radically different cultures, over many centuries," and lists examples including settler colonies such as British North America and Australia, and French Algeria; administered territories established without significant settlement for the purposes of economic exploitation, such as British India and Japanese Taiwan; and maritime enclaves, such as Hong Kong, Malta, and Singapore (2001: 17). A recurrent problem concerns the relation between the terms "colonialism" and "imperialism." For some, "colonialism" refers to a particular model of political organization, typified by settler and exploitation colonies, and is best seen as one specific instance of imperialism, understood as the domination of a territory by a separate metropole. Others

The ‘solution’ is now the ‘problem:’ wind energy, colonisation and the ‘genocide-ecocide nexus’ in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca

“…13 Nonetheless, Butt identifies three primary characteristics of colonialism: (1) the external domination of one people by another; (2) the imposition of colonial 'culture and customs onto the colonized'; and (3) the exploitation of the colonised (slavery, natural resource extraction and 'misappropriation of cultural property' to name only a few). 14 This also justified what Gayatri Spivak following Foucault called 'epistemic violence', which constructed a method of knowledge to justify claims to superiority over the 'Other', 15 and that simultaneously served to discredit and subjugate alternative perspectives, and knowledge that asserted different values and ontologies. 16 While these are foundational characteristics of colonialism, if one wanted to understand the heart, the composition and the way colonialism enforces these cultural relationships, then these definitions remain relatively open-ended and ambiguous.…”

‘Justice and Colonialism’

“…More interesting than the contingent view is the list view of the specific injustices attached to colonialism. Daniel Butt and Kok‐Chor Tan independently identify three wrong‐making features of colonialism: (a) political domination; (b) cultural imposition; and (c) exploitation (Tan ; Butt ). I examine these features in reverse order, elaborating on the different forms that they took in different kinds of colonial systems.…”

Ecocide, genocide, capitalism and colonialism: Consequences for indigenous peoples and glocal ecosystems environments

“…The intimately related notion of ecocide, however, is not yet formally accepted as a legally defined term within the body of international law (the Rome Statute referring only to widespread, longterm and severe damage to the natural environment within the context of war). Butt (2013) (quoted in Dunlap, 2017: 4) identifies three 'primary characteristics of colonialism: (1) the external domination of one people by another;…”

“…Butt (2013) (quoted in Dunlap, 2018: 553) identifies threeprimary characteristics of colonialism: (1) the external domination of one people by another; (2) the imposition of colonial ‘culture and customs onto the colonized’; and (3) the exploitation of the colonized (e.g. slavery, natural resource extraction and ‘misappropriation of cultural property’).…”