"The White Man's Burden:" Slavery, Imperialism, and Colonialism

David Orlović

Take up the White Man's burden--Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exileTo serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness,On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,Half-devil and half-child.

Rudyard Kipling, 1899.

RACISM IN EUROPE 1870-1914

•Racist prejudices present although minimal contacts with Africans. How did that happen?

•By the 19th century the blacks already represented a paradigm of racial otherness – phisically, mentally, culturally from the “civilized” European.

Stereotypes and Race

•Racial stereotypes convey perceptions of the Other that bear no relationship to external reality.

•Defensive mechanism for protection of conservative beliefs.

•Term “black” as a vague category for all darker skinned peoples.

European Expansion Overseas, Slavery and Anti-Black Racism

•15th century onwards, charting of African coast, contact with indigenous people.•Christian view: the African was the embodiment of all that was most heathen.•17th century, systematic slavery starts. “By the eighteenth century the association between slavery and the Afro-Carribean was so deeply entrenched that the colour black was taken as an automatic signifier of slavery”.•Abolitionist period 1750-1850: humanitarian and liberal movement for slave emancipation (Quakers, Enlightenment)•Around 1870 the liberal view was reversed.

The Growth of Anti-Black Racism from c.1870

•American Civil War arose deep anxieties about an imminent slave war. Sensational accounts on alleged black atrocities were reported in the British press.

•Race connection with the labour class.

•Need for “benevolent guardianship” over alleged ex-slaves’ return to primitivism.

The Partition of Africa and Racism

The Partition of Africa and Racism

•Anti-black racist stereotypes enforced by official and informal propaganda, in schools and press, as well as from the work of missionaries and colonial exhibitors.

•IN THE COLONIES:• Forced labour and brutality, violent repression of rebellions• Belgian Congo most publicized example.• Policies in colonies would be intolerable in Europe (two-track

deployment of power)• Idea that blacks were more resistant to pain and hardship – led to

harsher physical punishment.• Ex-colonials brought deep entrenched racial attitudes to Europe.

Belgian Congo

Belgian Congo

The Black Presence in Europe

•Slaves already present in the Iberian Penisula in the 16th century.•18th century – more Atlantic ports have slaves.•After the end of slave trade, shipping lines hired cheap labour, and black and Asian people visited the European ports.

•Inland from ports – a rare sight.• Black actors, entarteiners etc.• Servants at royal courts – symbol of wealth.• Abram Gannibal – great-grandfather of A. Pushkin

The Black Presence in Europe

REACTIONS: •workers: saw those low-paid workers as a competition

generally a naive curiosity towards them

•elites: absorbed prejudices from the Carribean plantocracyracism incriesad at the age of colonial expansionRussia/Austria-Hungary/Germany – little traces.

Exhibiting Blacks in Europe

Exhibiting Blacks in Europe

Exhibiting Blacks in Europe

Italian Fascism and Racism

Italian Fascism and Racism

Italian Fascism and Racism

Italian Fascism and Racism

Se prenderemo il Negus,gliene farem di belle,se lui farà il testardonoi gli farem la pelle!

Dai, dai, dai, l'abissino vincerai,

se l'abissino è nerogli cambierem colore

a colpi di legnate,o gli verrà il pallor!

If we catch the Negus,We will do “good” things to him,

If he behaves stubbornlyWe will fix his skin!

C’mon, c’mon, you will prevail over the Abyssinian,

If the Abyssinian is blackWe will change his colour

Under strokes of blow,Oh, he will earn a pallor!

Italian Fascism and Racism

Conclusion

•After liberal ideas somehow eased racism in the period 1750-1850, the “New Imperial” conquest of Africa created a new wave of even harsher racist rhetoric and practice.•The message was white superiority.•The main discourse going for imperial expansion was the “civilizing mission”.•The true reasons for it were probably internal.