The politics of dignity and colonialism’s moral high ground
12 Min Read
Over the hundreds of years of Western Colonialism and dominance, the West's moral high ground and its Othering of anyone it deemed different were the two constants of its colonialist attitude, both of which persist to this very day.
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The politics of dignity and colonialism’s moral high ground
Following the defeat of the Amandebele tribe by British forces circa late 1890s, their chief, Somabulano wished to “pay respect” to the British chief magistrate in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The chief took his attendants and servants with him, as was customary for a man of his position, and arrived early in the morning.
Chief Somabulano was made to wait until nighttime, and until then, he and his people were not given anything to eat.
As per his customs “when white men came to see me it was my custom to kill that they might eat;” as the chief’s men had been starved, he was compelled to ask the chief magistrate for food, albeit through channels, as he had not been allowed to meet the magistrate yet.
The town was full of stray dogs, the magistrate’s reply came, “dog to dog”. They were free to kill the dogs and eat them if they could catch them.
It’s safe to say that a reply like this will get you fired, sued, and disgraced in today’s world, because today’s world, as we’re constantly told, is one of respect and dignity, and human rights. Right? Because respect for human rights is reflective of a nation’s moral compass.
But that’s just it: It’s always been about the moral compass for the West, it’s always been about the moral high ground. Colonialism, despite all of its atrocities, was built on the convenience of being set on that high ground, where you can look down on everyone in glee, constantly reminding them that you’re free to hand out criticism while they should be left to wallow in their own backwardness.
It was in fact this very moral high ground, along with the othering of the colonized, that constituted the staple of the West’s alternating colonialist narratives throughout the past few centuries. Because naturally, if you’re talking about humanity and love at home while some strangers in some faraway continent aren’t getting the blunt end of your love from a rifle upside their heads, or aren’t receiving their daily 25 lashes of humanity, then you and your friendly neighborhood conquerors are bound to feel badly about yourselves at some point.
Religious Conversion
But today’s narrative of globalization and humanity didn’t evolve out of nowhere. From the 16th to the 18th century, Western Colonialism’s main go-to rhetoric was religion, as it was necessary to bring the light of civilization, the light of God as they put it, to the colonized.
The colonized were not just inferior to their conquerors, they were inferior because they had not accepted their colonizers’ religion. Examine the words of Reverend J. F. Schon, an Anglican missionary to modern-day Nigeria in the 19th century, who said that “the people of Africa, with few exceptions, whether Mohammedans or Pagans, are yet in the most degrading bondage, both of body and mind. Their land is still in great darkness.”
Or how about David Livingstone, also a 19th-century missionary to Nigeria, who said “We come among these people as members of a superior race and servants of a Government that desires to elevate the more degraded portions of the human family.”
A clearer example would be that of Fr. Edouard Biehler, a Jesuit priest who said of the Shona of Zimbabwe, according to one of his missionaries who wrote in January 1897, “Father Biehler is so convinced of the hopelessness of regenerating the Mashonas whom he regards as the most hopeless of mankind…that he states that the only chance for the future of the race is to exterminate the whole people, both male and female, over the age of 14!”
Although it is true that not all missionaries had reached the same conclusions, imperial missionaries in fact believed themselves to be acting in the interest of the empowerment of their empires back home and were considered by these empires to be part of their colonial system, a necessary tool to spread their influence.
Civilizing Mission
Though no one imperialist narrative was dominant at any one time, a number of secondary ones were employed by colonialist powers in order to justify their expansionism. Though the narrative of religious conversion continued to be employed in Western empires, the discourse shifted to suit the mood of the metropolis and intellectual salons. Some of the 19th century’s most influential narratives were in fact so influential that their remnants continue to survive in other forms to this very day.
Among those is the West’s “civilizing mission”, for just as the missionaries sought to civilize other peoples through religious conversion (as Scottish missionary Robert Moffat said, “the gospel has proved the source of civilization, and it is civilization alone that can raise the African in the scale of social existence”), this delusion of bringing civilization to other peoples persisted through other means, whether it be through economic development, by which colonizers justified their actions by saying they were developing the economies of civilized areas (i.e looting them of anything of value), or through good old eugenics.
The narrative of the civilizing mission firmly took root in colonies and occupied territories as well, as by this time the more ‘learned’ (i.e indoctrinated) among the colonized had come to believe that it was in fact they who were backward and began to spread the delusion that they could only achieve true development by emulating the West. But they could never reach that end goal, because try as they might, there was no cure for their affliction. They could talk like the white man, walk like the white man, and even speak like the white man, but they could never shed their skin, which had been enough for any white man to brand them with the label of inferiority that they could never remove.
It was also during this period that Europe became so drunk with power that its ideologues brought Darwinism into the social sphere, with Herbert Spencer coining the phrase “survival of the fittest”, which is actually misattributed to Darwin. It was through the likes of Spencer that Europe and the United States came to hold a deep-seated belief that they could commit genocide against entire peoples.
That’s not to say that Darwin didn’t hold such convictions himself, because he clearly says in “The Descent of Man” that the intermediate forms between primates and civilized man include gorillas and “savages”, but these forms are dying out, and as such in the future, civilized man “will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”
You need to understand though, this ideology didn’t come about because Western Imperialism was bereft of humanity (yes, sarcasm). Far from it, it in fact gained such advanced knowledge of biology that it understood you better than you understood yourself.
Sure, he’s using the whip on you, but you have thick skin, it’s how God and nature made you: You can handle it. But did you ever really stop being so insensitive for just one second and notice the man holding the whip who had his heart broken from the constant whipping? I mean frankly, you’re just screaming because the chemicals in your body are telling you that you’re hurt, but he actually has to deal with wrist pain and see flesh and blood and bone and…ugh. A very ghastly thing to look at!
Thus, the religious explanations took second place to biological ones, and in turn, the fact that the other races were being exterminated by the whites clearly meant that other races were at an earlier stage of the development of man. In fact, this period marked a new high in Western brutality in the colonies, as whole tribes and peoples were exterminated in accordance with this ideology.
Naturally, clinging to the high ground with one hand while committing massacres against thousands of peoples isn’t an easy task, but fear not, for imperialism’s mighty hand held onto the high-ground cliff using its magic vocabulary: Mercy, necessity.
Western imperialism hadn’t committed these atrocities because they liked it, far from it. Mercy dictates that they hurry along the extinction of the savages, this was a biological imperative. Not only was the West merciful, but it was in fact responding to the diktats of nature, being the awesome developed superman of civilization that it was.
Terra Nullius
Consider the following: You’re a cool, hip, European with a mustache and an awesome cane looking for some fresh real estate to call dibs on and expand your empire. After weeks and months of braving the high seas, crossing uncrossable plateau-like territory, and braving the unbearable Spring weather, having to fight off dangerous airborne fruit bats and life-threatening raccoons and quokkas, you find a scrumptious piece of land, but it’s inhabited by humanoid creatures called Homo sapiens.
Dilemma!
But fear not! Our Latin-savvy friends back home have a ready-made answer for you that will set your mind at ease: Terra Nullius.
These lands are inhabited by people, you say? Quite the contrary!
- Do these alleged “people” have centralized government and political institutions?
- Do they lead a sedentary lifestyle?
- Are their farming patterns sophisticated like ours or do they still practice some archaic forms of agriculture to achieve self-sufficiency, or are they hunter-gatherers that go out on expeditions for food instead of going out to the local market to buy meat?
- Do they have some form of written language, or do they actually use their mouths and tongues to transmit knowledge and culture?
- And most importantly, is their religion "European" or at least something we Europeans can relate to?
If you’ve ticked any of the aforementioned checkboxes then you, my friend, can set your mind at ease knowing that these lands aren’t inhabited by people, but by people-like creatures, and as such the lands can in fact be considered uninhabited, or empty lands, ripe for the taking!
Funny enough, it was this kind of rhetoric that the West also used to justify its late-stage colonization and occupation of land that wasn’t its own, and thus preserve its moral high ground, at least as far as its own people are concerned, the reason being that if it was taking land away from actual people then it would have been considered theft, a crime, something morally corrupt and thus unbecoming of it (not very civilized and very unsportsmanlike!). But skew the perspective just enough and you’ve vindicated yourself by taking land away from creatures, not actual people.
Also, funnily enough, this was the exact narrative used to take the land away from the Palestinians. Theodor Herzl, Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon, David Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Bezalel Smotrich, and in fact, the vast majority of prominent Israeli officials have stated in one way or another that the land was uninhabited, empty, or barren before the Zionists began their migration, or that the Palestinian people were never a people to begin with.
Dignity
Despite all of this, despite the last two-three centuries of the world being under nothing but Western dominance and rendered subservient to its will, and despite all that we know today of what went on of the world back then, the collective West still insists that it acts as a force for good in the world. Nothing’s changed, the perspective might have been skewed a little perhaps, but only just so that you wouldn’t notice that you’re looking at the same mosaic.
Back to the beginning, if Somabulano had been disgraced and referred to as a dog in today’s world, things would have probably ended badly for the chief magistrate, albeit on the condition that such an incident would take place on British soil. But if the same is said today in a faraway jungle, like say, anywhere that’s not Europe, then it’s open season. You can kill in the jungle and get away with it, but Europe, being the pioneer of civilization as it is, won’t stand for this on its own soil.
“You came, you conquered. The strongest takes the land. We accepted your rule. We lived under you. But not as dogs! If we are to be dogs it is better to be dead. You can never make the Amandabele dogs. You may wipe them out but the Children of the Stars can never be dogs.”
- Somabulano, chief of the Amandebele (Zimbabwe, 1897)
