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Colonialism Quotes

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Colonialism Quotes

“They would come with languages that sounded like dog bark; with a childish hunger for animal fur. They would forever fence land, ship whole trees to faraway countries, take any woman for quick pleasure, ruin soil, befoul sacred places and worship a dull, unimaginative god. They let their hogs browse the ocean shore turning it into dunes of sand where nothing green can ever grow again. Cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable. It was their destiny to chew up the world and spit out a horribleness that would destroy all primary peoples.”

RacismColonialismWhite PeopleSlavery History
Book:A Mercy
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“A warrior confronts colonialism with the truth in order to regenerate authenticity and recreate a life worth living and principles worth dying for. The struggle is to restore connections severed by the colonial machine. The victory is an integrated personality, a cohesive community, and the restoration of respectful and harmonious relationships.”

StruggleColonialismIndigenousResurgence
Book:Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom
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“Geen beter middel om het minderwaardigheidsgevoel bij een ras aan te kweken, dan dit geschiedenisonderwijs waarbij uitsluitend de zonen van een ander volk worden genoemd en geprezen. Het heeft lang geduurd voor ik mijzelf geheel van de obsessie bevrijd had, dat een neger altijd en onvoorwaardelijk de mindere zijn moest van iedere blanke.”

RacismSlaveryColonialismRacismeSlavernijKolonialismeSuriname
Book:Wij slaven van Suriname
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“As a movement (rather than a preference), the goal of antinatalism is that no humans should have children. What ambassadors, then, are we to send to the Brazilian Amazonian Pirahã people to persuade them to stop reproducing? According, at least, to Professor Daniel Everett, here is a people who have no knowledge of regret, depression or suicide. Are we to enlighten them in order to appease a group of discontented intellectuals in the first world? The Pirahã would appear to be one pocket of humanity to whom the sickness unto death does not apply, and this reveals a crack, which may grow, in the antinatalist edifice.”

WestColonialismAntinatalismModernity Is A Sickness
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
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“Before we commence this guided tour of Mozambiquan paradise of the proletariat, this shining gem of African socialism, will you bear with me while I give you a few facts and figures. Nobody protested, so he went on. Until 1975 Mozambique was a Portuguese colony. For almost five hundred years it had been under Portuguese control and had been a reasonably happy and prosperous community of some fifteen million souls. The Portugese unlike the British or German colonists had a relaxed attitude towards miscegenation and the result was a large mulatto population, and an official policy of 'Assimilado' under which any person of colour , if he attained certain civilised standards, was considered to be white and enjoyed Portugese nationality. It all worked very well, as indeed did most colonial administrations, especially those of the British.' 'Bullshit,' said Claudia demurely. 'That's limey propaganda. 'Limey?" Sean smiled thinly. 'Carefull, your prejudice is showing, nonetheless your average Indian or African living today in a former British colony is a damned sight worse off now than he was then. Certainly that goes one hundred times more for your average black man living in Mozambique.' 'At least they are free,' Claudia cut in, and Sean laughed. 'This is freedom? an economy managed under the well-known socialist principles of chaos and ruination which has resulted in a negative growth rate of up to ten per cent per annum every year since the Portuguese withdrawal, a foreign debt amounting to double the gross national product, a total breakdown in the education system, and only five per cent of children regularly attending a recognised school, one doctor per forty five thousand persons, only one person in ten with access to purified drinking water, infant mortality at 340 per 1000 births. The only worse countries in the world are Afghanistan and Angola, but as you say, at least they are free. In America, where everyone eats three huge meals a day, freedom may be a big deal, but in Africa a full belly counts a hell of alot more'. 'It can't be as bad as that,' she protested. 'No,' he agreed. It's a lot worse. I haven't mentioned two other factors, the civil war and aids. When the Portugese were pushed out, they handed over to a dictator named Samaro Machel and his Frelimo party. Machel was an avowed Marxist. He didn't believe in the nonsense of elections, and his rule was directly responsible for the present condition of the country, and for the emergence of the National Mozambiquan resistance or as it is known to its freinds and admirers, Renamo. Nobody knows much about it, what its objectives are, who its leaders are, all we know it that it controls most of the country, especially the north, and that it made up of a pretty ruthless bunch of characters.' 'Renamo is a South African front organisation, directed, supplied and controlled from Pretoria,' Claudia helped him out. 'Committed to the overthrow of sovereign government and the destabilisation of the southern continent.' 'Well done, ducky, ' Sean nodded approval. 'You've been studying the wisdom and erudition of the Organisation of African Unity and the non-aligned nations. You have even mastered their jargon. If only South Africa had the military and technological capacity to commit half the skulduggery it is accused of, it would not be simply the most powerful country in Africa.”

Historical FictionColonialismSouth AfricaAfricaApartheidMozambique
Book:A Time to Die
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“Reginald Wingate… wrote that “Moslems in general have hitherto regarded the Hejaz revolt, and our share in it, with suspicion or dislike”; an that it was important to make Hussein look as though he had not been a failure in order to keep Britain from looking bad.”

ColonialismBritianArab Revolt
Book:A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East
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“But GOD was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven: Thus were the Stout Hearted spoiled, having slept their last Sleep, and none of their Men could find their Hands: Thus did the LORD judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies!”

WarReligionProvidenceColonialismMassacrePuritanismWar And SocietyReligion And KindnessMystic Massacre
Book:Brief History of the Pequot War
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“Let the whole Earth be filled with his Glory! Thus the LORD was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their Land for an Inheritance: Who remembred us in our low Estate, and redeemed us out of our Enemies Hands: Let us therefore praise the LORD for his Goodness and his wonderful Works to the Children of Men!”

WarReligionProvidenceColonialismPuritanismWar And SocietyReligion And KindnessPequot War
Book:Brief History of the Pequot War
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“The Union of South Africa divided the functionality of government between Cape Town and Pretoria. Cape Town was the Administrative Capital and Pretoria served as the Legislative Capital. Consequently, many of the politicians divided their time between the two cities and there were always gala events in both cities. Lucia was the perfect hostess at home and the belle of the ball at Events of State and formal holiday parties. The dividing line between the “swells” and those of a lower standing was very apparent. The blacks were at the very bottom of the list and the privileged few were at the top. Apartheid was alive and well! The social structure was very much the same as it was in the American Deep South in Antebellum days and in both cases became accepted as normal. For Uncle Mannie and Aunty Lucia life was beyond good. They lived in a beautiful home and their every need was tended to by their servants, who were always treated well, but were never the less thought of as subservient to them. It was the established way of life and it was just the way it was. Written and unwritten rules regarding their interaction were strict but accepted and no one objected to them. Every day the commuter trains brought the black laborers into the city to work, mostly in the mines. The more privileged Caucasian men planed their ongoing business transactions and expansion in wealth at their exclusive clubs, while their wives socialized, organizing charitable events. Frequently to break the monotony of their daily lives they colluded clandestinely with lovers, thereby enhancing an otherwise affluent but shallow existence.”

ColonialismSouth African History
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Suppresed I Rise"
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“That seductive aroma of unchecked power was more than enough to commit genocide and mass sexual assault while unashamedly carrying their nation’s flag draped around a crucifix. People completely devoid of introspection, flaunting their entitlement and a self-importance that masked an endless pit of dejection that demanded more gold, land, and power. The Spanish crown was a plague of miserable dimensions for Chamorros.”

PowerColonialismSpainGuamChamorroCnmi
Book:The Desert Warrior
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“I was born on an island, a very small island, twelve miles long and eight miles wide; yet when I left it at nineteen years of age I had never set foot on three-quarters of it. I had recently met someone who was born on the other side of the world from me but had visited this island on which my family had lived for generations; this person, a woman, had said to me, ‘What a beautiful place,’ and she named a village by the sea and then went on to describe a view that was unknown to me. At the time I was so ashamed I could hardly make a reply, for I had come to believe that people in my position in the world should know everything about the place they are from. I know this: it was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493; Columbus never set foot there but only named it in passing, after a church in Spain. He could not have known that he would have so many things to name, and I imagined how hard he had to rack his brain after he ran out of names honoring his benefactors, the saints he cherished, events important to him. A task like that would have killed a thoughtful person, but he went on to live a very long life.”

ColonialismTourismColumbusCaribe
Book:Lucy
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“Jeg går ikke rundt til daglig og føler bitterhed over at det forholder sig sådan. Men i dag, mens jeg ser den forlorne ceremoni og mærker lugten af krudtrøg fra kanonerne, er det som om noget gærer i mig. En vrede som jeg ikke kan rette mod noget bestemt, kun mod en fortid som var uretfærdig, og en fremtid der virker usikker. Vores skæbne som magtfulde mænds omsættelige valuta.”

HistorySlaveryColonialismDenmarkVirgin Islands
Book:Faith
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“The global Indigenous cause reached a major milestone in 2007 when the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only four members of the assembly voted in opposition, all of them Anglo settler-states - the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.”

CanadaAustraliaColonialismUnited States Of AmericaUnited NationsNew ZealandSettlersIndigenous Peoples
Book:An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
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“The Irish moral economy was only as old as the potato itself—it was not an ancient way of life but an adaptation to conquest and capitalism. The potatoes given as charity during the day were sometimes stolen back at night. A poor farmer taking conacre was expected to give potatoes without an eye on his own inventory, but widespread theft of potatoes shows that open-handed generosity could have been genuine but could also have been an act to save face and preserve a good name. Or it could have been both. Human beings struggle with contradiction far less than the social sciences predict. [...] The gift economy of the potato was both beyond the market and profoundly influenced by market pressures—for land, for food security, and for rent.”

HistoryColonialismIrish Famine
Book:Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
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“Ainsi, j'avais appris comment mon pays avait été conquis par la France. On ne m'en avait jamais parlé. Ce n'était pas que nos aînés voulaient dissimuler ce pan de notre histoire peu glorieux mais ils en étaient ignorants. Un coup d'éventail. Le dey Hussein d'Alger - sorte d'administrateur -, qui gérait l'Algérie pour le compte de l'empire ottoman, avait exigé du représentant du roi Charles X qu'il honore la dette de son pays. À l'époque, l'Algérie était le premier exportateur de céréales pour la France. Le représentant de Charles X avait méprisé Hussein, arguant qu'un sous-fifre ne donnait pas d'ordre au roi de France. Hussein, humilié et ridiculisé devant sa cour, l'avait souffleté trois fois avec son éventail. Quelques mois plus tard, Charles X envoyait son armada corriger la piètre armée du Dey Hussein. Battu sans livrer combat, il avait été chassé comme un malpropre d'Alger. Quatre-vingt-dix ans plus tard, des hommes comme moi se retrouvaient à porter l'uniforme pour défendre cette France qui nous avait mis à genoux.”

ColonialismAlgérieCharles X
Book:D'amour et de guerre
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“Arabs & Garbage" Strange is the Arab story with garbage— who told them, who taught them to toss waste carelessly, wherever and however they please? When will Arabs understand that putting garbage in its proper place could solve half of their environmental and societal woes? And the other half? That too would vanish if they stopped casting away their human gems— their brightest minds, forced to serve others abroad. When will they stop discarding their best in favor of foreign refuse they glorify simply because it comes draped in white skin and blue eyes, boasting skills they claim Arabs can’t survive without? When will they grasp that real change lies in placing all garbage— be it those who govern them or those they import— exactly where it belongs?”

EnvironmentAwarenessPollutionColonialismImperialismArabic PoetryInferiority ComplexArabic LiteratureBrain Drain
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“For ages the Aborigines had relied heavily on isolation. It was their asset and their liability, and gave them long-term control of the continent. But if their isolation were to end, as it ultimately had to end with a shrinking world, their whole way of life could be fractured. Even the arrival of a few thousand permanent settlers, whether from Europe or Asia, would be like the first tremors of an earthquake.”

HistoryIsolationColonialismAboriginal CultureAboriginalsAboriginal AustraliansEuropean Expansion
Book:The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia
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“Colonialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of under-development and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply.”

HistoryColonialismPost Colonial Theory
Book:The Wretched of the Earth
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“The Englishmen in the Middle East divided into two classes. Class one, subtle and insinuating, caught the characteristics of the people about him, their speech, their conventions of thought, almost their manner. He directed men secretly, guiding them as he would. In such frictionless habit of influence his own nature lay hid, unnoticed. Class two, the John Bull of the books, became the more rampantly English the longer he was away from England. He invented an Old Country for himself, a home of all remembered virtues, so splendid in the distance that, on return, he often found reality a sad falling off and withdrew his muddle-headed self into fractious advocacy of the good old times. Abroad, through his armoured certainty, he was a rounded sample of our traits. He showed the complete Englishman. There was friction in his track, and his direction was less smooth than that of the intellectual type: yet his stout example cut wider swathe. Both sorts took the same direction in example, one vociferously, the other by implication. Each assumed the Englishman a chosen being, inimitable, and the copying him blasphemous or impertinent. In this conceit they urged on people the next best thing. God had not given it them to be English; a duty remained to be good of their type. Consequently we admired native custom; studied the language; wrote books about its architecture, folklore, and dying industries. Then one day, we woke up to find this chthonic spirit turned political, and shook our heads with sorrow over its ungrateful nationalism - truly the fine flower of our innocent efforts. The French, though they started with a similar doctrine of the Frenchman as the perfection of mankind (dogma amongst them, not secret instinct), went on, contrarily, to encourage their subjects to imitate them; since, even if they could never attain the true level, yet their virtue would be greater as they approached it. We looked upon imitation as a parody; they as a compliment.”

ColonialismAcculturationEnglish ColonistsFrench Colonists
Book:The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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“He realised that the destruction of the forest symbolised the predicament of the entire continent. In a few fleeting decades, Africa had been over taken by its own inherent savagery. The checks that had been placed on it by a century of colonialism had been struck off. Chains perhaps those checks had been, but once freed of them, the peoples of Africa were rushing headlong, with almost suicidal abandon, towards their own destruction.”

ColonialismAfricaRhodesiaAparthied
Book:A Time to Die
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“When you look at it objectively, that’s what most colonists do—they land then find a way of wiping out their competition. In America is was blankets covered with smallpox and in Australia it was permits to hunt aborigines. If you wipe a whole people from the face of the earth, then there’s no one to point fingers at you. It’s just their spirits that haunt you and spirits can’t do shit.”

AmericaRacismAustraliaGenocideColonialismSpiritsNative AmericansAborigines
Book:The Space Race
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“There has been much talk about the alleged exploitation of the debtor nations by the creditor nations. But if the concept of exploitation is to be applied to these relations, it is rather an exploitation of the investing by the receiving nations. These loans and investments were not intended as gifts. The loans were made upon solemn stipulation of payment of principal and interest. The investments were made in the expectation that property rights would be respected. With the exception of the bulk of the investments made in the United States, in some of the British dominions, and in some smaller countries, these expectations have been disappointed. Bonds have been defaulted or will be in the next few years. Direct investments have been confiscated or soon will be. The capital-exporting countries can do nothing but wipe off their balances.”

CapitalismColonialismThird WorldEconomic DevelopmentCreditor NationsDebtor NationsInternational Capitalism
Book:Omnipotent Government
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“As such, phrases like ‘first world problems’ assume that those in the first world live such stress-free and luxurious lives that any problems they have are considered when compared with those from the rest of the world. Not only are such assumptions false, but they also function as myth generators by giving the people of the first world the impression that they – and their problems – are superior to everyone else around the world. Likewise, it misleads people outside the first world into thinking that the first world is full of joy and happiness, which is false by all measures.”

PowerRacismPropagandaColonialismImperialismDecolonizationLanguages And CultureFirst World ProblemsMythmaking
Author:Louis Yako
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“The brits made a career out of oppressing people, they made a lifestyle out of oppressing people, but oppression itself is not a british thing - the Brits did it, the Nazis did it, the Brahmins did it, and today the neonazis do it.”

TyrannyOppressionOccupationColonialismBritish EmpireBritish ImperialismImperialist
Book:Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race
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