A2 Theoretical Approaches

the continuing impact of the colonial experience on contemporary culture

what is the colonial experience? Colonialism is a product of imperialism Most European countries, including Britain, have a history of military imperialism. They attempted to build their empires by the conquest of less developed countries across the globe and imposed their rule their rule upon them, usually to ensure a supply of cheap raw materials to help support the development of European economies.
But

A most notorious aspect of imperialism was the slave trade. Africans were forcibly shipped to the Americas to be sold to plantation owners; a practice which was not abolished until the early part of the nineteenth century. The wealth of many British cities, including London, Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow was built on the triangular trade in which slaves were bartered for sugar, tobacco and cotton.

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four million African were shipped to the New World in British slave ships like this one

A third of them died en route

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demise of the Atlantic slave trade did not, of course, signal the end of imperialism. In fact, the major conquests of European imperialism only began as the slave trade came to an end. Britains empire reached its peak, in terms of territory, in 1924 when it amounted to nearly a third of the worlds territory. This was the empire on which the sun never set, including India, Jamaica, South Africa, Egypt, Ireland and Australia.

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Idea of Empire held a powerful grip on the British national consciousness, particularly the upper classes, who convinced themselves that the interests of Britain, the Empire and God amounted to more or less the same thing. We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too (1878 Music Hall song)

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empire began to fall apart in the period after world war two as most of the colonies successfully fought for independence, kicked out the British rulers and set up their own governments. The influence of the former colonial powers, including Britain, still lingers on in the cultures of the former colonies. A most obvious example is the English language, but there are many other legacies of imperialism in politics, migration, sport, architecture, music and other forms of entertainment.

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definition of postcolonialism could be:

the period that came after colonialism but this doesnt really help because of:
The

continuation of economic imperialism The cultural legacy of colonialism The continuing significance of colonialism for the former colonised and the former colonisers

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empire wasnt just a collection of countries ruled by Britain, it was a complex set of ideas; a way of envisaging the world including many assumptions about right and wrong including, it must be said, many implicitly racist attitudes. Postcolonialism seeks to analyse and explain this set of ideas whilst also giving expression to those many ideas, opinions and voices that were suppressed by the colonial experience.

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the empire faded away, the Commonwealth (formerly British Commonwealth of Nations) was formed to perpetuate the idea of a family of nations. Britain, of course, was the head of the family, or mother country. The queen is still the nominal head of state in many former colonies The family metaphor was a powerful part of the colonial experience, particularly the idea of parents and children.

The indigenous populations of colonies (i.e. the people who were there before the British turned up) were frequently represented in books, paintings, magazines, newspapers and songs as having child-like qualities.
Some of these qualities were more positive, such as innocence and naturalness, but others were more negative, such as immaturity and the need for a controlling hand. The idea of the white, male ruler as a benign father figure was widely circulated well into the twentieth century and is still, perhaps, quite potent in some quarters today.

Examine the extract from the Empire Youth Annual for 1951. It comes from an article by W.H. Halford Thompson in which he describes his experience as an R.M. (Resident Magistrate) in the Territory of Papua in the island of New Guinea. How would you describe the tone or mode of address with which Halford Thompson addresses his readers? How does Halford Thompson envisage his relationship with the Papuans? Books like the Empire Youth Annual were very popular in the 1950s. How do you account for this popularity? To what extent are the stereotypes of colonialism still found in todays cultural products? How has the fight to reject these stereotypes been fought in cultural practices and products?