Colonialism In The Tempest Essay

Evidently, no other literary work has been revised and deconstructed as The Tempest. Shakespeare’s Caliban represents the most identifiable example of Western colonialism. From the beginning, it is evident that the events are happening at some place in the Mediterranean, which tends to be the most popular body of water in Europe. Moreover, the Mediterranean served as the boundary that defines Western culture many years before even The Tempest was written. Although actions take place mainly on the island, Alonso’s daughter’s wedding in Carthage causes the movement of the major characters. In particular, Prospero’s banishment makes the plot more interesting while the scope of action is limited by the distance between Carthage and Milan (Act …show more content…
It starts as the British were getting jealous from the Spanish who created colonies in central and South America and they took over the lands of Native Americans. The British try to copy the Spanish and they try to build their colonies over North America. Europeans are the ones who discovered Virginia in the late 1600s and Native Americans were living there at that time. At the same time, English colonists’ lands at Jamestown which locates in Virginia in 1609 (Charry 178). Many of the Indian tribes are dying of the diseases, hunger, and the war which decreases their numbers by more than half. Most of the people who are living in Virginia are rich and not have knowledge about farming nor agriculture. They face a lot of difficulties on the Jamestown such as starvation and they are not able to grow any crops. The British think they will have the same life as Spanish where there is easy wealth and Native Americans will be serving them with food and shelter. They are wrong and they are not preparing at all and that is the reason they face starvation and fighting with the Indians. They decide to build a community which named Jamestown. However, an enormous amount of people die from sickness and hunger since they lived in an unhealthy area of the Chesapeake because the river which they got the water from have a lot of germs. All those conditions …show more content…
Virginians’ society is built upon violence. Slaves are being treated so badly, as animals. Sometimes they use to distort their bodies so they can obey to the orders, so their life was threatened. They would only free the people who survive their years of being enslaved. What Virginians did affected them rather negatively. They made a big difference between white and black people so they treated their white servants in a better way than the black ones. They treating them as slaves, they did not even consider them humans. They believe that racism is the case of the creation of racism. Virginia has the right soil and climate to grow tobacco so they start growing it but it required a lot of efforts so they needed lots of land in order to grow tobacco. They made a deal with the Virginia Company which is for every colonist; they will give 50 acres of land (Marquez 159). So the lands needed a lot of more people and since that time slavery has created. Native Americans rejected the offer of involving in farm work because they thought it is not the right fit for them. Virginians traded the people who work in the land so badly no one was able to run away and whoever dares doing that they used to get beaten up and insulted. The slaves who came to Virginia were sold into slavery in Africa. Racism spread in Virginia; in 1660 they declared a law which states that