Gomes Lovanxa
1313260
COLONIALISM
Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance,
acquisition, and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is
a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and
often between the colonists and the indigenous population.The European colonial period was the era from the 16th century to the mid-20th century
when several European powers (particularly, but not exclusively, Portugal, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy and France) established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first the countries followed mercantilist
policies designed to strengthen the home economy at the expense of
rivals, so the colonies were usually allowed to trade only with the mother
country. By the mid-19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up
mercantilism and trade restrictions and introduced the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.Colonialism was always
portrayed in the colonizing country (in public) as bringing benefits for the colony.
They included: increased standard of living, benefits of Christianity, improved
health and education, establishing law and order, etc. The sincerity with which
and the extent to which these benefits were provided are often at the very
least questionable. Also, many now-independent colonies have not yet recovered
from the psychological impact of colonialism.
The epistolary novel thrived at the height of the British
imperial ambitions, at the end of the first empire and the establishment of the
second after the American War of Independence. This is a history that still
bears weight in Celie’s story, which takes place after the First World War as
racial discrimination persists in the United States; it ends with the rise of
the Second World War heralding the fall of the colonial empires and the
emergence of the Civil Rights Movement. Walker refers heavily to the most
successfully lasting example of the epistolary novels of the era, and the
narrative connects Celie's story to the place where her troubles began. The
British Empire is a looming shadow in The Color Purple, never explicitly
debated but alluded to at a number of places, most brutally in the English
rubber planters that demolish the village of the Olinka, destroy the roof leaf
that they worship and use to shield their homes, and leave them no choice but
to either flee into the jungle, or survive by working for the plantation and
getting the means of accepting tokens of the “modern” life at the mercy of what
the plantation owners will grant them. The missionary work of Corrine and
Samuel is also administered through London: while both French and Dutch
imperialism is mentioned in the novel, it is the British Empire that works the
most direct, and the most devastating, violence against the Olinka. The
imperial past of the United States is explicitly brought up in the final scene
of the novel, where Celie's extended family has a reunion on July 4, and Harpo
remarks that they have this opportunity because the white Americans are
celebrating their independence from England, “so most black folks don't have to
work. We can spend the day celebrating each other”. The barb is aimed at the
white understanding of American history and white definition of patriotism:
Harpo, descendant of slaves, has little reason to seemeaning in a celebration
of nationhood that is defined entirely by the actions of white men against
other white men, with the exclusion of black people. A less direct connection
to Eighteenth century Britain is the presence of manufacturing industry in the
novel. It was with the appearance of machines for spinning and weaving cotton that
the Industrial Revolution grew, with a gradual demand of supplies and
infrastructure to a growing variety of factories. The first machinery for
production of fabric was invented in the middle of the Eighteenth century. This
dawning industrialisation relied on cotton from the colonies overseas, produced
with slave labour and ultimately responsible for the displacement of Africans
onto the American continent. Celie and Harpo farm cotton on the land of
Albert's father, bearing the name of a “______ plantation” (72), and another
character connected to this industry is Sofia. Her unwanted charge grows up to
marry a man more interested in his father's cotton gin than in his family, and
Miss Eleanor Jane complains about this to a less than sympathetic Sofia. The
novel highlights the naiveté of this woman by passing her complaints through
Sofia's mouth, as Sofia's sons are drafted to war in Europe while Miss Eleanor
Jane's husband stays with his family, because he has to “run his daddy's cotton
gin” (262). Ruth Perry has discussed how women in the rapidly growing middle
classes did not have any purposeful occupations except keeping homes, a consequence
of how the industrial entrepreneurs were occupied with work involving managing
the labour of others – a kind of work that was not performed by women except in
the home. The industrialisation of Britain helped fuel the brutal slave trade,
and it was also the force that slowly deprived women of their economic
influence and, in the case of the middle classes, their social inclusion. For
the women of what was to become the working class, the consequence was
alienation from their work similar to that of men: spinning and weaving had
been typical industries that before the industrial revolution took place in the
family home, and which now was removed to factories. Miss Eleanor Jane is the
modern reincarnation of this woman who first lives on her father's earnings and
later finds that marriage does not give her the bliss she expected. Her
complaints are filtered through Celie, however, and neither Celie nor Sofia has
much sympathy for the perceived suffering of someone speaking from a position
of extreme privilege. Fittingly, sewing is a symbol of the salvaging power of
feminine values in The Color Purple. Quilting is the bond between several
female characters; Shug first shows her sympathetic side as she sits down to
sew with Celie, and Albert’s friendship with Celie grows as she teaches him to
sew. Quilting works as an allegory for Walker’s revisionism in the novel, for
quilts are made by taking old material that no longer can be used for its
intended purpose, and use it to make something new that still carries the
memories of the old inside it (it is with old dress fabric in a quilt that
Nettie makes Corrine remember meeting Celie). Celie’s first pair of trousers is
sewn from a pair of army issue, passed down from Sofia’s brother in law. The
women in The Color Purple perform in the same industry that their British sisters
were excluded from, but they do so in a communal, American crafting tradition.
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