H. G. Wells Arguement For The Invasion Of British Colonialism?

Throughout history, humanity has struggled with conflict and war. The true enemy being greed, corruption and the disregard of life. In The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, this enemy resurfaces in the form of Martians, not humans, who launch a war of extermination and enslavement. This is the most barbaric type of war and is waged by a far technologically superior race. Intelligent Martians do not exist but extraterrestrial intelligence from other stars might. Just as humans do not act like cavemen, these beings surely would not hold the same tendencies and history as a species that is still limited to its own planet and can barely traverse its own star system. If humanity is to last for hundreds or thousands of more years, then they must band …show more content…
While the comparison of a technological difference is valid, since the aliens would have to traverse the stars, the assumption that they would be colonial and ruthless, like humans have been, is not. Steven Spielberg agrees that “‘Wells’s book was a political statement about the invasion of British colonialism.’” (Smith 52). H.G. Wells often uses his books as a political statement and in The War of the Worlds he makes the argument that aliens would be as ruthless as Britain was in his day. Achenbach also says that “In The War of the Worlds (1898), Wells reminded his countrymen, guilty of their own imperialist conquests, that there might someday be a power greater than the British empire.” (Achenbach 110). Achenbach is referencing to where the narrator in The War of the Worlds thinks to himself “Surely, if we have learnt nothing else, this war has taught us pity- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion” (Wells 239). H.G. Wells is trying to demonstrate the cruelty of colonialism and how Britain 's colonial subjects are helpless to stop their oppression, just as the humans are incapable of stopping the aliens. In The Time Machine “Wells’s Time Traveler voyages 800,000 years into the future… the class divisions of England have led, disastrously, to two distinct human species: the childlike, incompetent Eloi, and the monstrous, subterranean Morlocks” (Achenbach 110). This is another example in which Wells incorporates his socialist views into his fictional stories. He would often do this without considering the possible development of technology. The need of the Morlocks for physical labor, as portrayed in The Time Machine, would not be necessary in the future since, with the advancement of technology, machines will likely take their place since they