Discourse on Colonialism

Wow! Aimé Césaire lets European philosophers speak for themselves. This reveals some quite disturbing internalizations.

He quotes Ernest Renan, a French humanist philosopher:
"We aspire not to equality but to domination. The country of a foreign race must become once again a country of serfs, of agricultural laborers, or industrial workers. It is not a question of eliminating the inequalities among men but of widening them and making them into a law."

"With us, the common man is nearly always a declasse nobleman, his heavy hand is better suited to handling the sword than the menial tool. Rather than work, he chooses to fight, that is, he returns to his first estate. Regere imperio populos, that is our vocation. Pour forth this show more all-consuming activity onto countries which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum, a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role. Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble race to working in the ergastulum like Negroes and Chinese, and they rebel. In Europe, every rebel is, more or less, a soldier who has missed his calling, a creature made for the heroic life, before whom you are setting a task that is contrary to his race, a poor worker, too good a soldier. But the life at which our workers rebel would make a Chinese or a fellah happy, as they are not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he is made for, and all will be well."

He deconstructs typical pro-colonialist arguments, interwoven with countless historical and gruesome events and the thoughts of the so-called civilized Europeans.

He reveals that Hitler’s rise was deeply grounded in Europe’s own past. Gruesome and systematic crimes against Brown, Black, and Yellow people were not only tolerated but enforced and exploited for profit. Hitler's regime did not emerge in a vacuum. If we had respected different peoples and cultures all along, our own European culture might have been different and more peaceful.

Our whole world might have been different! I dream of a world where hatred toward different cultures and religions cannot take root. Where it withers the moment we remember that we are all human, all deserving of dignity, no matter our origin.

You can’t sow violence and expect to reap peace. Hitler's regime internalized global patterns of hatred and redirected them inward, toward domestic targets. We have to stop the cycle of violence. show less

This was incredible. Exploring the contradiction and hypocrisy of Europe after the horrors of Nazism are revealed and arguing, successfully at that too, that Hitler wasn't the anomaly that he was–and is still, painted to be. Cesaire mostly uses French colonial history and the horrors done in Algeria, Madagascar, Vietnam as examples. No doubt it must have been a shock and a joke to the communities that had experienced and lived with the trauma European colonialism had wrought on them, when their colonizers were condemning Germany. The ironic tone of the writing, at parts strangely funny while showing contradiction, gave an even greater effect to the work the writing was supposed to do. Even though half the planet was still colonized show more when it was published (1950), and colonial exploitation has taken stealthier and more insidious forms since then, this book still remains both fortunately and unfortunately fresh and required reading. show less

An angry snarl of resentment and righteous anger, an indictment of centuries of crimes. It hides under the rather innocuous title 'Discourse of Colonialism', but instead might be appropriate 'Damn you and damn your hypocrisy and hate that led to hundreds of years of atrocities', or something like that.

The book moves from condemnation of wars and injustice, to attacks on now-obscure colonial theorists and 'racialists'. Cesaire makes the bold statement that Nazism is so infamous in Europe because it committed the same atrocities that the Europeans did to other, non-white nations. Slavery, mass extermination, economic exploitation, racial/social engineering, and so forth.

Cesaire does stray into a few grey areas, though. He cites the show more Soviet Union as a possible source of post-colonial liberation. That state is just imperialism with a new coat of paint. He also does make a few wrong statements which modern anthropology has corrected, but he'd likely be fine with that. In fact, he'd be proud to see the advances in some of these fields.

These little nitpicks do not detract from the overall strength of his feeling. The book itself is not without flaws, but it helped to spark a movement, of peoples rising up and a radical change in intellectual discourse. That alone gives it a place in history. show less

A passionate and an apt assessment of the crimes and atrocities committed by the European colonisers against the colonised for centuries that continued to be committed in Indochina, Madagascar and elsewhere, even after World War II. Aimé Césaire also denounces what he terms the "pseudo-humanism" of the Europeans, for they only realised the horrors of Nazism when they were the direct victims of it.

Imagine if Thomas Bernhard had had personal injustice to complain about, instead of poor health: you'd get this book. I'm not sure the thinking is all that coherent, but the indignation is glorious.

A short, passionate read that outlines how colonialism paved the way for fascism, and that colonialism is an intrinsic part of European "humanization". Essential literature for anyone who wants to educate themselves on decolonisation - not just of the world, but also of the mind.

I read Césaire's essay in preparation for a paper I'm going to write on the novel Mexican Gothic and how colonialism is portrayed in the novel. I'm not sure if I will rate the book because of that, as it was not an assigned reading for school, but I still read it for school.

I found his thesis interesting, the idea that colonialism is a dehumanizing force on Europeans, and on the U.S. His writing is a little confusing at times, and I think that comes from the fact that it is translated from French. From what I understand about French writing is that it is not like English. No translations capture that true feeling from the author's intent. That is probably my only major complaint about the essay beyond that. I recommend it, but if you show more can read French I think you should. show less