Robinson Crusoe, an Imperialist

Robinson Crusoe was a consummate Imperialist. This may sound strange since Crusoe was alone for so much of the time in the  novel. However, the relationship between Crusoe and Friday from their initial meeting is cast as a Colonialist and his subaltern.  Crusoe has the hubris that complements his treating Friday as a childlike inferior being.  In 1719 when Defoe wrote the novel our country was still a colony of Great Britain. The Colonialist has hubris; he also has power. Imperialism is an attitude supported with the instruments of power. Jared Diamond, the author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel," argues that hegemony over peoples is not because of inherent genetic superiority of the Colonialist, but because he possesses instruments of power that subdue and arrest those peoples colonized. The Imperialist would prefer compliance without violence, but if necessary violence will be used to enforce compliance.

Rudyard Kipling, a British poet, promoted this colonial attitude in his poetry. In 1899 he wrote the poem “The White Man’s Burden” in support of United States Imperialism in the Philippines.  It was considered the responsibility or burden of White men to educate ignorant savages to the Western institutions and culture. Wikipedia says, “American Imperialists understood the phrase “The white man's burden” to justify imperialism as a noble enterprise of civilization, conceptually related to the American philosophy of Manifest Destiny.”

This is the first stanza of a seven stanza poem---“The White Man’s Burden.”  The reader soon realizes just how condescending the words are and the utter contempt the words express for those peoples that are to be subjugated by the Imperialist power.

Take up the White man's burden --

  Send forth the best ye breed --

Go bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

  On fluttered folk and wild --

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

  Half devil and half child.

There was a saying "the sun never sets on the British Empire.  And there could have been an accompanying saying, "the sun never sets on the violence done by the British Empire." The peak of British Colonialism happened during the reign of Queen Victoria, whose reign was from 1837 to 1901. In the late 1840s in Ireland during the potato famine she let 1.1 million Irish persons starve to death while she continued to export grain and livestock from Ireland. She would not let relief ships from other countries dock in Ireland to deliver food. The British Empire extended to countries like India and even to other continents such as Africa.  Today many people revere England and ignore its violent past. The same people are aghast at the violence of Nazis and are vocal about it. The Guardian article that follows demonstrates how apologists don't deny the atrocities of the British, they ignore them.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities