Analysis Of Colonialism By Walcott

Simpson criticizes historians, political scientists and anthropologists for assuming that the era of colonialism in the new world is over. According to Simpson, colonialism is defined by a territorial project because she sees that the colonists do not seek for labor but rather more land to expand. Simpson adds that Indigenous peoples are strongly tied to their territories, which make them a problem for the colonials, and therefore they’re subject to “elimination” (pg. 19).

Initially, the concept of colonisation will be explained, including the forces that were driving the colonisation and the usual ways it was achieved. At a general level, the ideologies underpinning the colonisers’ interactions with indigenous peoples will also be described. A comparison will then be made between the experiences of colonisation for Aboriginal peoples

In the poem “XIV”, Derek Walcott recalls a memory in which he visits an elderly storyteller. The reader can understand the significance behind the journey as Walcott uses poetic devices such as imagery, metaphors, and personification to establish tone and highlight symbolic aspects in the poem. The overall intriguing tone of the poem adds

By the 1800s, Europe had gained considerable power- centrally governed nation-states had emerged and the Industrial Revolution had deeply enriched different country’s economies. Advances in science and technology, industry, transportation, and communication provided Western nations with many advantages. Encouraged by their new military and economic prestige, European countries embarked on a path of aggressive expansion that today’s historians call “New Imperialism (1800-1914).” Europeans brought much of the world under their influence and control, dominating various countries politically, economically, and culturally. Though the West reaped the benefits of foreign imperialism, native peoples felt its harmful effects. For example, in Document

It is a widespread belief that colonization of the Americas started and ended with the English and the 13 colonies, an exclusive and extremely condensed version of history. In American Colonies, Alan Taylor delves deeper into this condensed version of events to offer a more informative and truthful point of view on American history. In this document, Taylor presents the argument that American colonization was the result of the efforts of multiple cultures and races. He continues on to say that many of these groups of people were left out of the story of American history, which led to the English being established as the dominant force of colonization.[ Taylor, American Colonies, 1]

Throughout history, colonization has affected many societies. European colonization and colonialism greatly impacted the Canadian First Nations’ style of living. Alfred (2009) described European colonization as “the invasion and eventual domination of North America by European empires” (p. 45). However, colonialism is more complex. Alfred (2009) inferred that “colonialism is the development of institutions and policies by European imperial and Euroamerican settler governments towards Indigenous peoples” (p. 45).

“Colonialism is complex, for sure, but it is also simple in that it falsely promotes the superiority of Europeans over Indigenous people.” – Wenona Victor, an oppressed Aboriginal who created a “decolonizing dialogue.”

The founding of the New World fascinated many Europeans because of the possibilities of the economic, political, and social growth. Europeans packed their belongings and boarded the boat to new beginnings. Arriving in the Americas was not what they had expected. Already pre-occupied in the land, were the Native Americans. The Native Americans refused the Europeans colonization in the America’s, but not all colonies in the Europe just wanted to colonize with the Natives. The intentions of the Europeans colonies were all different, as the Dutch solely came for business transactions. The Dutch business transactions resulted in the change of economic, political, and social movements, changing the lives of the Native’s.

In 1770, the British discovered the land of Indigenous and then they disgorged people who was socially excluded and brought along with their culture, knowledge, social order, nation of poverty and most important, their racial prejudice(Miller 1985, p7). The construction of race started with the claim of Terra-Nullius, the land was ‘waste and unoccupied’ (Reynolds 2003). By recognising the land as Terra-Nullius mean that they not considered Indigenous as a ‘fully human’, not recognised their culture, the ownership of land at that time. They failed to attempt to deal with the native, and start the invasion of the land. During the time, the Indigenous society was completely disrupted by the invasion and dispossession, and illness and death on Indigenous society started due to the lack of immunity of European disease (Stanner 1977).

After the prime era of colonialism and imperialism, there came to be point where one questioned; why? Beside the fact that conquering a land and its people was and is still deemed as power, as well as an empire’s strength and has been that way for all of time. The Europeans gave justifications as to why they believed they were meant to conquer, tagging the natives as savages, but still gave some credit to the natives as they grew to appreciate some attributes of their culture and lifestyle

Keal, Paul. European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

The inequality and conflict between the settlers and the natives are the result of the imperial rule – more broadly, the consequence of the imperialism. Exploitation of the natives by the colonizers is a common norm of imperialism; yet, Ferguson tries to defend such negative consequence by presenting the benefits conferred by British law and administration and being non-venal – that its sins are generally sins of omission, not commission (Ferguson, 2002,

Derek Walcott, born on January 23, 1930 in St. Lucia, became a well renowned African-American author, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1972 for his substantial work in poetry. Many of his poems deal with the idea of race and British imperialism in the 19th century and the poem “Ruins of a Great House” is no different. Walcott reflects on the effects of slavery and British colonization in the Caribbean, continually referring to England as the “empire”. “Ruins of a Great House” is written from Walcott’s perspective in the 19th century Caribbean and tackles the destruction of the Caribbean culture using vivid imagery, allusion, word choice, and metaphors. Derek Walcott eloquently conveys the frustration of the native peoples, in the Caribbean, when he portrays the deterioration and disarray of post British rule throughout this work.

Walcott put out in an interview for the journal “contemporary literature” how the richness of his poetic voice is coming from the multicultural background of/ and language lived in him; “French creole”, English “creole” and “English”. He definitely show the importance of owing this estates, fact that make him unique. By using creole, the poet was able to describe landscapes that are singular and which have the power to claim their complete integrity including the past, degrade, history and its effect.

In ‘Another Life’, Walcott conveys the moment in which he receives his vocation as a spiritual or epiphany-like experience. Throughout the poem Walcott uses a religious semantic and allusions to connote this idea. In the third stanza he starts, “I was seized by a pity more profound”, the verb “seized” implies the idea of an external force, a higher power that he could not control. He relates this to imagery associated with a religious experience or an epiphany such as “uncontrollably I began to weep” and “I felt compelled to kneel”. In the last three lines, we see his experience encapsulated in “like Saul, unhorsed, /that he fell in love with art, /and life began.” The first line is a biblical allusion to the story of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. In the bible, it is a sudden and profound experience, which ultimately drastically changes his life’s purpose. As a result, his name is changed from Saul to Paul, Paul meaning small and humble. For Walcott, poetry is his divinity; after this conversion, the entirety of his life is for and about poetry, and literature and the preservation of that as an art form. Like Paul, he knows he must make himself smaller in order to magnify the poetry he creates and thus making it a movement larger than himself. Walcott sees his era as the beginning of true Caribbean literature, and himself as the father of that. The last two lines, “that he fell in love with art, / and life began.” seem out of character in their simplicity and unembellishment. He’s saying that one does not need to defend or speak out for the poetry. His involvement in that sense is not needed, he is confident that his poetry can precede him and hold its own. The full stop at the end of the poem is a signifier that his chapter before discovering his vocation is over and there’s a sense of completeness in that; he feels that he has fulfilled his purpose in that part of his life. It does also connote a certain finality, this is where he ends as a singular person, beyond this point he knows he is no longer living for himself but for the poetry and the influence that creates. Here, he pursues a sense of personal dislocation as he knows it is essential for his poetry to succeed; it