The Importance Of Colonialism In America

Colonialism is when a country overtakes other subjects or country in need for land, labor, and profit (Bernstein 242). It structured the economy because majority of colonies were formed based on capitalist needs. They needed profit and in turn decided to exploit the labor and land of other nations through power and control. Because of colonialism it led to new regimes of labor including forced labor (253). The foreign nations that controlled these new colonies took the indigenous people and forced them and used them as labor. Also it led to a rise of semi-polertatinaztion a form of debt bondage, tying people to the land with debt. It also led to petty commodity production which is when the people have no choice but to take part in the new

The first element regarding discourse is there is a “regime of truth,” which is the accepted dominant representation. Next there is a production of knowledge, which are the ways things are known. The next element is that discourse comes with power and those in power will determine what knowledge is hegemonic. The last element is that discourse always comes with contestation and is always changing with time (208-209). The “discursive formations” that come with colonialism include the white man’s burden, paternalism, and the need to modernize the savages. They legitimize colonialism because the ones in power believed they had the right and need to help the backward countries. They truly believed the ideas of Christianity, democracy and other dominant ideologies were the right and otherness was savageness (Bernstein 267). Because of colonialism, the Others are acknowledged as savages, backwards, and their society is in need of modernization. Once this knowledge becomes hegemonic, the colonizers gain the power. Using the facade of helping and modernizing them, colonizers used the colonies as a source of profit and

Colonialism is based on the ideology that the colonizer, the one with power, is “developed...desirable,” and the one being colonized is “underdeveloped...bad” (Hall 186). In the Lesotho case, the large agencies represent the colonizer as they come into third world countries with profit in mind. They come in thinking of the profits and the riches, without taking in account the livelihood of the people previously occupying this land. When the Europeans came to the Americas, they regarded the Indians as savages and the religion they believed in, to be vulgar. They did not choose to understand, instead chose to upheave, and similarly that’s how many agencies regard poverty. They are using development as an upheaval tool. Instead of going in and understand the nuances of the society, they are forcing their ideologies onto these poverty stricken villages. How their economy and politics work can be completely different to how our modern system works, but it does not mean it is wrong. Development can be seen as a discourse since it depicts a certain image of the land that needs “development.” The certain depiction is usually negative as we have said before; they are in need of development because they are backwards (Ferguson 225). It is a discourse once again creating a set of statements regarding the indigenous land and people and the ones