The Boomerang Effect in our Modern Times
Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.
Aime Cesaire
I agree with the assertion that Aime Cesaire made on Discourse on Colonialism that the process of colonialism inflicts a “boomerang effect” on the colonizer. It is important to determine that colonialism is defined as “a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another...” by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Aime Cesaire prefers to define colonization as what is not:
…neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law.(32)
Cesaire’s words are aware of the European voices that excuse the horrors of colonialism behind the lie of bringing civilization to the savages. But colonizers didn’t know that they were planting the seeds of hate, the roots for fantastic tales about superior races and skin colors. Inevitable, the colonizers found themselves oppressed by the same savagery that they had tolerated during the colony.
Historically, the process of colonization was almost the same for any region since the discovery of the so-called New World in 1492. The king sends an ambassador to the new territory. The ambassador negotiates with local powers and other foreign power the borders of the new colony and establishes a central office as the new administrative power. This new office was in charge of the caudation of taxes, managing the army and giving justice. After some years the foreign power absorbs local powers thanks to its technological and military advances. The process to achieve domination is characteristic by ...
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...ith the “creativity” of the “ocuppys”, and the city said that in general there were not incidents to report, more than 200 people spend the night in jail just to think different. The brutality that U.S. accused the Taliban to promote now is promoted by this country. The boomerang is coming back.
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Césaire states that “colonization works to decline the colonizer, to brutalize him in the truest sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred and moral relativism” (Césaire, 173). This can be seen
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The practice of colonialism by several nations led to the possession and exploitation of weaker countries. It resulted in the strengthening of the mother country and oppression of the indigenous people of the colonies (Nowell, 2013). Colonial cities were deliberately developed within colonial societies in order to centralize political and economic control. Essentially, colonial cities facilitated the consolidation and exportation of wealth to the dominating nation (The Editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014).
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While the economic and political damage of the scramble for Africa crippled the continent’s social structure, the mental warfare and system of hierarchy instituted by the Europeans, made the continent more susceptible to division and conquest. The scramble for partition commenced a psychological warfare, as many Africans were now thrust between the cultural barriers of two identities. As a result, institutions for racial inferiority became rooted in the cultural identity of the continent. This paper will expound on the impact of colonialism on the mental psyche of Africans and the employment of the mind as a means to seize control. I will outline how the mental hierarchy inculcated by the Europeans paved the way for their “divide and conquer” tactic, a tool essential for European success. Through evidence from a primary source by Edgar Canisius and the novel, King Leopold’s Ghost, I will show how colonial influences heightened the victimization of Africans through psychological means. I will culminate by showing how Robert Collins fails to provide a holistic account of colonialism, due to his inability to factor in the use of psychological warfare as a means to the end. By dissecting the minds of both the colonizer and the colonized, I hope to illustrate the susceptibility of African minds to European influences and how psychological warfare transformed Africans from survivors to victims during colonialism.
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