Week 1: Colonial
This week was an introduction to the course, how it will be run and expectations around work and assessment.
We also started discussing what colonialism looks like and how it was described by Western writers.
We discussed how the writings of colonialists focused around three themes: nature (existing), economics (prospective gain), civilization (prospective delivery). Nature was described as ‘wild’ and abundant, ignoring native development. Economics permeated the writings, describing the opportunities for exploitation. Civilization showed up as a way of minimizing native culture and placing the Europeans as superior, with a duty to develop and religiously convert the “savages”.