?? notes

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION 15

4 min read

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION 15:

Obsession with the exotic nude (on sexuality)

  • TAHITI & BALI: characterized by beautiful women by westerners
  • use of pictures to sexualize oppressed women
  • Victorian era: oppressed European sexuality
  • nakedness was understood as openness to sex, etc. Women walked around with their breasts out for cultural reasons.
  • Polygamy - also understood as ‘primitive’

RELATIONS (centered around the MALE):
relations were homogenized and regulated

  • many colonizers: bachelors. more dispensible, women could develop trade relations, break from social structures, children may become ‘sickly’, theyre harder to transport, etc.
  • Bachelors: start relations with local women
  • toleration of extramarital relations: Java, Sumatra, Indochina. Men stay in better health.
  • colonial women: fewer financial/emotional demands; useful as guides/domestic servers
  • relations with local women is better than prostitution or homosexuality
    Legal Dimension: VOC selected only male bachelors for over 200 years. Local women couldn’t travel back to the metropole with their husbands (even with thier kids). In India: for first 3 years of their stay in the colony, men couldn’t marry. Indies Civil Code: women have 0 right over mixed race kids.

Consequences:

  • local women dependent on European colonizer men
  • local men now compete with ‘superior’ Europeans
  • mixed race children (too white and not white enough)
    Belgian metis children (kidnapped form the Congo)

Late 19th Century:

  • women are introduced into the colonies (technological advancements)
  • colonies become more segregated (housing, compounds, dress codes, social taboos - these were relatively new)
  • this was done to ‘protect’ women. This was done by males, not women themselves, they were afraid of the sexuality of black men.
  • militias, rifle clubs (to protect wives from indigenous men), stricter rape laws, but they’re race-specific (white man - black woman sexual abuse is ignored; black man - white woman sexual abuse is punished severly)

MISSIONARIES [this is the professor’s field of research]:

  1. CHRONOLOGY:
    14th Century: China & India
    St. Francis Xavier (1550s) - from Lisbon to East Africa, India, Japan, China, Goa (Portugese India)
    15th Century: Christianity in Congo (Jao of Congo is Chritianized); Kongo Kingdom later gives up Christianity

18TH CENTURY (enlightenment):

  • Decline in the 18th Century (Missionary activity & Christianity)
  • The Enlightenment lead to less mission work, even the Jesuits were abolished from 1773-1814
  • BRITISH INDIA (1750-60 main era of colonial expansion) - missionaries banned in BI until 1830. Brits there are more fascinated with local culture, with Indian religion, language and philosophy. Instead of suppression of local culture, there was a desire to learn about it (IT WAS UP TO BRITS TO LEARN LOCAL LANGUAGE, NOT UP TO INDIANS TO LEARN ENGLISH); indirect rule, no shift in political structures
  • Gentoo Laws: gentile + hindu law
  • Rousseau’s Noble Savage (savage is noble, i.e. untouched by EU influences, like a beautiful innocent child)

19TH CENTURY (new paradigm; civilization):

  • Christianity popular again; Romanticism; new congregations
  • New missionary activities due to commerce, due to free trade
  • before: monopoly, control; now: free trade, free movement, more freedom for missionaries
  • Abolitionism (end of slavery); new goals boost missionary actions
  • End of fascination with local cultures; newfound ideas of superiority in Social Darwinism (no longer noble, but underdeveloped)
  • 1810s; British India: English slowly imposed on the elites (language, morality, etc.); English language colleges;
  • 1835: English replaces Persian as official language in BI
  • Fight against ‘barbaric customs’ (Sati women; Thuggs/Thuggee who kill travelers in the name of Kali)
  • 1813: Missionaries allowed in BI; fighting barbarism, spreading English, spreading weastern Victorian culture, etc.
  • A lot of Belgian missionaries (not important to know these names):
    Placide Tempels (Congo); Raphael Ryhove (Congo); Pieter-Jan De Smet (America); Franz Van De Velde (Canada); Pertrus Vertenten (Papa Nu Guinea); Paul Goethals (British India); Marie-Louise De Meester (??)
  • Congo most important colony for Belgian missionaries; British India is also important for Belgian missionaries; colonies divided by religious boundaries
    New Catholic Institutions:
  • Society for the Propagation of Faith, France
  • Scheut, Belgium (established by Verbiste): China, Inner Mongolia, Philippines, Congo…
  • White Fathers, France: Algiers, Congo
    New Protestant Institutions also come about
    [we don’t need to know these names]
  • also female congregations (sisters, nuns);
    Chinese Fransiscan nuns, native people accepted
  • They built churches, chapels, cathedrals, monestaries, villages, etc.
  • SOCIAL WORK: hospitals, leper houses, dispensaries (open air pharmacy), orphanages, beggars’ homes, vagrant colonies
  • they help people in bad positions for 2 reasons: because of Christian religious thinking, but ALSO, because poorer people are easier to convert (not purely selfless reasons)
  • missionaries also do research (ethonography, dictionaries, linguistics); they educate people (schools); printing and publishing ventures (religious propaganda)
  • in Congo: only primary education; in British India: desire to create elite, but ignoring the masses
    Important questions:
  • Was the effect positive?: 1. No, white superiority. 2. Yes, helpful and compassionate. Over 20th Century the approach changed greatly.
  • Monologue or dialogue? Eurocentric worldview was taught in schools. Local culture effected greatly.
    Colonizing work or not? Partially, yes.

Graph View