Violence of Decolonization

719 Words2 Pages

Violence of Decolonization Frantz Fanon argues the decolonization must always be a violent phenomenon because resisting a colonizing power using only politics will not work. Europeans justified colonization by treating it as gods work. They believed that god wanted then to occupy all lands and spread the word of god to savages of darker skin color. Fanon joined the Algerian Nationalist Movement when the Algeria was being colonized be the French. Many examples of violence written of in The Wretched of the Earth were taken from the struggle for independence in Algeria. Also the writing is sympathetic towards colonized natives. Fanon claims decolonization causes violent actions from both settlers and natives and creates intolerant views toward the opposite party. Violence from Europeans during the colonization is a tactic used to keep the natives oppressed and a resistance minimal. The police officers and soldiers of the settlers used excessive force to show dominance and create an "atmosphere of submission" in native communities (Fanon, 38). European schools, churches, and economic societies were set up on colonized people's land. These acts of segregation and practices of European values were an insult to natives and helped fuel violent protests. Officers who would patrol the boarders between the two groups and political leaders would serve as a "go-between" person for negotiations (Fanon 62). Negotiations involving larger masses of bodies were feared to lead to aggression. Although the politic between these groups was a slow moving process, when native political or independence parties begin to immerge, the colonial governments will allow concede to some writes demanded by natives. Settlers did this to contr... ... middle of paper ... ...ent of psychiatry and included Psychiatrist's notes about the effects the war was having on the native people. Lack of dignity, depression, inferiority complex, suicidal and homicidal tendencies were psychiatric disorders developed by colonized people resulting from the forces lifestyle change, extreme violence, raping, and murder of the native people. Decolonization causes violence and aggression form both settlers and natives. It also harvests hatred and extreme prejudice toward the opposite party. Settlers see violence as the most effective method of conquering new land where the colonized see violence as the most effective way to regain their freedom. Violence from both settlers and natives simultaneously during a period of decolonization reinforces Fanon's argument. Work Cited Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Film 'La Última Cena'

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Jamestown Vs Plymouth

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Jamestown, the settlers had to deal with the Powhatan Indians. The relationships with them were unstable. John Smith, whom was the leader of Jamestown, was captured by these Indians while he was on a little trip with some of his men. As he left two of his men, he came back to find them dead and himself surrounded by two hundred members of the tribe, finding himself being captured. “Six or seven weeks those barbarians kept him prisoner…” 87). After this event, the relationship only grew worse and there was constant fighting between the settlers and Indians. The Indians practiced many methods in capturing settlers such as “scalping” and other dreadful techniques. The settlers did many negative practices also which is the reason they fought so many wars and battles against each other. Later on, the Indians killed the English for their weapons that were rare to them. In contrast to the Plymouth colony, these settlers dealt with the Pequot Indians and the relations were much more peaceful for a certain time frame. At one point, one Indian was brave enough to approach them and spoke to them (in broken English). He taught them the ways of the land, and developed a peace with the man. The settlers from the Plymouth colony learned many ways to grow food from these Indians. “He directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities, and was also their

    Read More

  • Shaun Gabbidon Race Ethnicity Crime And Justice Summary

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tatum’s colonial model is comprised of four stages. First, one racial group invades another, normally a minority group (whites) takes control of a majority population (people of color). Second, a colonial society is formed and the culture of the colonized people is subordinated. Next, the colonized people are governed and controlled by the colonizer. Finally, a caste system is devolved based on white supremacy. After the minority group is subordinated, the psychological consequences of colonization manifest themselves in the colonized population. The early histories and colonization of these countries were very similar. After colonization occurred in each of the studied countries, the native population was deemed inferior, their cultures were trivialized, and the natives lost many of their political rights. The natives and ethnic minorities were seen as “the problem,” and the criminal justice system was used to control these groups. Using the colonial model, Gabbidon examines the effects of colonization on the present day criminal justice

    Read More

  • Looking out for number one

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main focus of Breen's essay the focus is on the fact that colonists in Virginia were driven and motivated to come to the New World, predominantly for monetary reasons. Virginia's soil was found to be unusually well suited for growing tobacco, which is why it drove such a variety of people to migrate there. The colonists, though said to be religious, were extremely individualistic, selfish, as well as primarily drawn in by the economic opportunity in Virginia. These attitudes and ideals are what consequently resulted in numerous military defeats and massacres. They avoided their military obligations, thus naming them the vulnerable “poorly defended white settlements.” These settlements were very easy for the Indians to take advantage of, as Breen writes.

    Read More

  • Decolonization in the Hawaiian Islands

    785 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first step in legitimizing the take over of an indigenous person was to make them less human. In Stannard's article he says the way that this was achieved was by a ""blotting out of knowledge" of native people or the making of them into "people without history." Once the natives have thus been banished from collective memory, at least as people of numerical and cultural consequence, the settler group's moral and intellectual right to conquest is claimed to be established without question." (Stannard, 382) "The fact that indigenous societies had their own system of order was dismissed...they were not fully human, they were not civilized enough to have systems, they were not literate, and their languages and modes of thought were inadequate." (Smith, 28)

    Read More

  • Oppression of Imperialism in Poisonwood Bible and Heart of Darkness

    1448 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ion of imperialism has evolved. In both Heart of Darkness by Conrad, and The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, Africa is invaded and altered to conform to the desires of more “civilized” people. While this oppression in the Congo never seems to cease, the natives are consistently able to overcome the obstacles, and the tyrants, and thus prove to be civilized in their own regard and as capable of development as the white nations. As Orleanna says herself: “Call it oppression, complicity, stupefaction, call it what you’d like…Africa swallowed the conqueror’s music and sang a new song of her own” (Kingsolver 385). Kingsolver illustrates that though individuals may always seek to control and alter the region, the inhabitants and victims of the tyranny and oppression live on and continue past it, making the state of the area almost as perpetual as the desire to control it.

    Read More

  • Native American Sovereignty Research Paper

    694 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout history the attacks on Native American sovereignty proved to be too much and eventually tribes had to submit. The problems Native American tribes faced when fighting for and dealing with sovereignty in the 18th century are identical to the problems they are facing today. These

    Read More

  • The Inevitable War between Native Americans and Colonial English Settlers

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    Conflicts between the Native American Indians and English settlers was inevitable. James Axtell wrote the article, “After Columbus,” which explains the Powhatan Empire’s conflicts and wars with the English settlers in Virginia. Virginia Dejohn Anderson wrote, “King Philip’s Herds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England,” which illustrates the issue of English customs, such as livestock, which was new and alien to the Native Americans. William L. Ramsey’s article, “’Something Cloudy in Their Looks’: The Origins of the Yamasee War Reconsidered,” was about the cultural and political differences between the Native Americans and the English settlers. The one thing these three articles have in common is that they consist of conflicts and wars between the Native Americans and English settlers and how it was inevitable for both sides due to two opposite cultures colliding without compromise.

    Read More

  • Decolonization In The Battle Of Algiers

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    The beginning of colonization also marks the beginning of decolonization. From the day the colonists start exploiting the colonized people and belittling the colonized people for the colonists' self-aggrandizement, the colonized ones have been prepared to use violence at any moment to end the colonists' exploitation (Fanon, 3).Decolonization is violent, there is a necessity for violence. This is a point that is repeated again and again throughout The Battle of Algiers and The Wretched of the Earth. Here, the focus will be on The Battle of Algiers to discuss the violence of

    Read More

  • Fanon And Freud: The Relationship Between The Individual And Society

    1121 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fanon focuses on two related desires that constitute the pathology of the colonial situation: “The Black man wants to be white. The white man is desperately trying to achieve the rank of man” (p. xiii). As an unconscious desire, this can result in a series of irrational behaviors and beliefs, such as the Antillean speaking French, the desire for a white

    Read More

  • the development of slavery in America

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    It was a difficult life for the first colonists; they had limited labor and were constantly raided by Native Americans. Colonists tried to use the Native Americans as a source of slavery. Most of the colonist’s farms were in forest areas so Native Americans would just leave in to the woods. Colonists were afraid of pressuring them from the fear of getting ambushed by gangs of Native Americans. Another reason Native American men made bad slaves was because the women in the tribes did the agricultural work in the Native American villages.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Colonization Of Turtle Island

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the colonization of Turtle Island (North America), the United States government policy set out to eliminate the Indigenous populations; in essence to “destroy all things Indian”.2 Indigenous Nations were to relocate to unknown lands and forced into an assimilation of the white man 's view of the world. The early American settlers were detrimental, and their process became exterminatory.3 Colonization exemplified by violent confrontations, deliberate massacres, and in some cases, total annihilations of a People.4 The culture of conquest was developed and practiced by Europeans well before they landed on Turtle Island and was perfected well before the fifteenth century.5 Taking land and imposing values and ways of life on the social landscape

    Read More

  • Fanon's Anti-Black Racism

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    In both of his major works, Fanon describes the active involvement in this process as an essential part of the liberation of the self; as in his view, agency was central to self-actualization. However, in Fanon’s model, violence, which could plausibly be manifested on a symbolic rather than physical level, is only the beginning; the first step of a painful and lifelong struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by the colonial aggressor. Hence, violence is not a release of accumulated tension, but rather a reclaiming of subjectivity that moves the colonized from a zone of nonbeing to the zone of being through an act of active self-assertion. Fanon does not promote violence for its own sake. For him violence in never a Selbstzweck; it is a last resort to eliminate a system created and maintained through violence. Moreover, Fanon makes clear that this use of violence could negatively affect the colonized. In the final part of the book, in which he describes the psychological long-term effects violence has on both victims and

    Read More

  • Eastern Woodland Indians and the Seven Years' War

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Europeans invaded America with every intention of occupying the land, the bountiful natural resources as well as the complete domination of the native people. The Europeans desire for the land created an explosive situation for the native peoples as they witnessed their land and right to freedom being stripped from them. They often found themselves having to choose sides of which to pledge their allegiance to. The Europeans depended upon Indian allies to secure the land and their dominance as well as trade relations with the Indians. The Indians were in competition with one another for European trade causing conflict among the different tribes altering the relationships where friends became enemies and vice versa (Calloway, 2012, p. 163). These relationships often became embittered and broke into bloody brawls where it involved, "Indian warriors fighting on both sides, alongside the European forces as well as against European forces invad...

    Read More

  • Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    Paton is able to convey the idea of racial injustice and tension thoroughly throughout the novel as he writes about the tragedy of “Christian reconciliation” of the races in the face of almost unforgivable sin in which the whites treat the blacks unjustly and in return the blacks create chaos leaving both sides uneasy with one another. The whites push the natives down because they do no want to pay or educate them, for they fear “ a better-paid labor will also read more, think more, ask more, and will not be conten...

    Read More

More about Violence of Decolonization

Open Document