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Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies
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Settler Colony
Colonialism
as a direct result of the imperial process took many different forms.
The word ‘colony' has its etymological roots in Latin and Greek. The literal
meaning of the word ‘colonia' is settlement. As is widely known,
settlement is one of the most important characteristics of colonialism,
meaning essentially the movement of people to a peripheral region or a
‘new world' from a metropolitan state. The term ‘settler colony' is often
used to distinguish between two types of European colonies; settler (or
settler invader) colonies and colonies of occupation.
[1]
Others would distinguish
between settlement and exploitation colonies. The primary difference between the two is that settlers tended to stay permanently in settler colonies. In taking possession of the land and cultivating it, there was never much thought to returning home. According to Ashcroft, in settler colonies “the invading Europeans (or their descendants) annihilated, displaced and/or marginalized the indigenes to become a majority non-indigenous population”. [2] In exploitation colonies or colonies of occupation, the European ‘settlers' consisted of a relatively small but powerful group of white planters concerned mainly with managing and supervising the exploitation of resources as well as safeguarding the geo-political interests of the metropolitan state. These seldom remained on after the end of their mission. Nigeria and India are examples of colonies of occupation where although indigenous people were the majority, they were ruled by a foreign power.
According to Ashcroft, Ireland, Kenya, Algeria, Mozambique and South Africa provide examples of colonies whose “patterns of settlement and cultural and racial legacies fall somewhere between the abstract paradigms of settler colony and colony of occupation”. [3] This brings with it a variation and ambivalence surrounding these settlers.
Examples
of settler colonies can be found in Australia,
the Americas, New
Zealand and Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe).
Colonial rule was mainly established by the arrival of metropolitan settlers
in great numbers who gradually gained control over the territory by negotiations
with the original inhabitants as well as cultivating barren sparse populated
areas. In time, the metropolitan settles became the new majority such
as in the case of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. In Southern
Rhodesia they remained a small but powerful majority.
The administration of these lands was exclusively in the hands of the
settlers while the original inhabitants were resettled in reserves as
one commentator put it “little islands of nativeness in a sea of metropolitan
settlers”. Outside these reserves the original populations could not represent
themselves politically. Their autonomy was contained within the confines
of the reserves. Development projects of the settlers exclusively served
the settlers needs. Not only did they fail to benefit the indigenous but
also often reduce them to poverty and structural dependence. Because of
the violent way in which the indigenous were opposed initially, there
was no large-scale organised power to counter the settler regimes.
With time the settlers in these colonies slowly ceased to identify with their metropolitan state and managed to assume their own identity distinct from both the new world and the states they left. Ironically the colonial struggles that resulted were those between whites. America is a prime example of this. The imperial process remained within the new worlds: to continue conquering the original inhabitants and acquire land and wealth.
In most settlement colonies, the colonial process has meant the total take-over of he ‘new world' by the settlers. Australia, the Americas, Canada and New Zealand have seen the reduction of their indigenous populations to a handful of small ‘exotic' minorities whose only role on an international scale is as subjects of ethnographic and anthropological interest for National Geographic.
For
the descendants of the initial settlers, there is a certain amount of
ambivalence surrounding their existence. The sense of displacement provokes
the realisation that they really belong nowhere. They no longer identify
with the metropolitan state they originally came from and they do not
identify easily with the original population. This is especially difficult
in settlements where the indigenous inhabitants are the majority. Examples
of this difficulty felt by both the settlers 
and the indigenous are South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Ashcroft comments
that they are “frequently constructed within a discourse of difference
and inferiority by the colonising power (colonials/colonial) and so suffer
discrimination as colonial subjects themselves”. [4]
In a sense they are simultaneously both coloniser and colonised.
Stephen Slemon in his piece entitled “Unsettling the Empire: Resistance
theory for the Second World”, speaks about the ambivalence surrounding
‘second world' or ex-colonial settler literatures. Should they fit into
the category of the literature of empire, the literature of the first
world or to the category of the postcolonial? The answer proves
difficult “because of its ambivalent position within the First world/Third
world, coloniser/ colonised binary”. [5]
In using Trinh T Minh-ha's suggestion that the imperial centre is
not itself fixed but is marginal, the term ‘postcolonial' can apply to
white settler/invader colonies as much as to the indigenous people (213).
Looking at this ambivalence through a positive lens one can see the naissance of a new culture that is neither that of the imperial structure from which they stem nor that of the native cultures they have lived alongside for so long. As a culture it is obviously of a hybrid nature, with borrowings from both prior groups affecting social and cultural constructs such as language, economics and education. And where this junction takes place, there are excellent possibilities for the inspiration of stimulating literature.
 |
| J. M Coetzee |
It is within this cultural space that we find the Nobel Prize winner J.M Coetzee. As an Afrikaans, his literature deals with the ongoing problems prevalent in today's South Africa including the difficulties inherent in the fractured identities of the descendants of settlers. His many novels include Disgrace,Age of Iron and Foe. Nadine Gordimer another South African deals with similar issues in her work. In Irish literature Elizabeth Bowen can be seen as a writer that also found her inspiration in this junction between two worlds, this time that of the English and the Irish. In her novel The Last September this struggle can be easily identified.
As an interesting side note to settlement colonialism, Gillian Whitlock speaks about the place of women within the specific settler colonies. In the settler colonies in the nineteenth century pro-natalist discourses assumed particular importance. She refers to Mardant who observed in 1916 “in the difference between the number of cradles and the number of coffins lie
the existence and persistence of our empire” (351). European women were valued less in colonies of occupation rather than in settler colonies. Women were seen as wives and not mothers where in settler colonies the welfare and fertility of the mothers was vital to the colonial process. Included in Whitlock's piece is a quote by one imperialist; “the uterus is to the race what the heart is to the individual” (350).
Settler colonies and the ambivalence surrounding the position of the settlers prove to be an interesting field of study. As Whitlock says, “responses to empire in settler societies comprise a site of contesting and conflicting claims, an array of identifications and subjectivities which refuse to cohere neatly into oppositional or complicit post-colonialism” (349). The various issues discussed above prove worthy of sociological, anthropological, political and literary study. The contradictions and difficulties inherent in the existence of settlers manifests itself even still, as is evident in Zimbabwe today.
[1] Ashcroft, Bill., Gareth Griffins, and Helen Tiffin. Eds. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts . London: Routledge, 2003.
[2] Ashcroft, Bill., Gareth Griffin, and Helen Tiffin. Eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routhledge, 1995.
[3] Ibid. p. 211
[4] ibid. p. 211
[5] Ashcroft
This page was written by Elizabeth Laragy. Email me with your comments.
