Colonial Modernity
MSA 180 SQ 2013
Analytic paper two
Colonial Modernity and Human Differences
Colonization is the process through which one nation asserts its sovereignty over another for the following reasons. This process is both a mental and physical process that affects both the colonizer and the colonized. The first reason mentioned here for a nation to pursue a policy of colonialism is economic incentive. The imperial state could require more resources to continue its growth. Military incentives are another reason for nations to establish a colony as was observed during the peak of colonization, where matters of national security were paramount and it was a race to gain resources of all types to display a states might and power. The last reason for imperialism stated here is social incentives. In the social sphere of colonialism, colonizers claimed to bring modernity or “civilization” to the so-called “savages” through political technologies, missionaries, educators and etc. I define colonial modernity here as the colonizer’s policy of using a combination of rational thought, european liberalism, capitalism and technology to enact reforms in the traditional,so-called barbaric and unenlightened states of pre-colonial India, Algeria, and Egypt. Despite the colonizer’s claim to bring freedom, equality and rational thought to their South Asian and the Middle Eastern colonies I argue that colonial modernity was based on the exploitation of human differences such as age, gender, race, caste, class and tradition through the colonizers establishment of new social, political, and economic hierarchies that clashed with the pre-existing traditional socio-cultural structure of order. The cases I will use to support this claim in South Asia are British India’s issue of the land-tenure system that established a new class hierarchy of landowner and tenant and the British handling of the controversial Hindu religious tradition of Sati that classified women as a weaker
Analytic paper two
Colonial Modernity and Human Differences
Colonization is the process through which one nation asserts its sovereignty over another for the following reasons. This process is both a mental and physical process that affects both the colonizer and the colonized. The first reason mentioned here for a nation to pursue a policy of colonialism is economic incentive. The imperial state could require more resources to continue its growth. Military incentives are another reason for nations to establish a colony as was observed during the peak of colonization, where matters of national security were paramount and it was a race to gain resources of all types to display a states might and power. The last reason for imperialism stated here is social incentives. In the social sphere of colonialism, colonizers claimed to bring modernity or “civilization” to the so-called “savages” through political technologies, missionaries, educators and etc. I define colonial modernity here as the colonizer’s policy of using a combination of rational thought, european liberalism, capitalism and technology to enact reforms in the traditional,so-called barbaric and unenlightened states of pre-colonial India, Algeria, and Egypt. Despite the colonizer’s claim to bring freedom, equality and rational thought to their South Asian and the Middle Eastern colonies I argue that colonial modernity was based on the exploitation of human differences such as age, gender, race, caste, class and tradition through the colonizers establishment of new social, political, and economic hierarchies that clashed with the pre-existing traditional socio-cultural structure of order. The cases I will use to support this claim in South Asia are British India’s issue of the land-tenure system that established a new class hierarchy of landowner and tenant and the British handling of the controversial Hindu religious tradition of Sati that classified women as a weaker