Expansionism and Imperialism Essay

The purpose of this article is to analyze the short story “Civil Peace” by the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, in the light of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The story happens in Nigeria, which has a long history of being colonized by English troops till 1960, when the Nigerians eventually gained their independence. Achebe uses English language as a postcolonial tool to defend his people. The story “Civil Peace” opens right after the Civil War and ends after so much blood shedding and brutality.…

Amitav Ghosh throws light on the imperialist modes of social, cultural and ecological dominance in his fourth novel The Glass Palace. The novel points out that how colonialization has brutally exploded in the South Asia and results into the environmental degradation. The novel is interlocked in the various historical events like colonization of Burma by the British, the First World War, and conquest of Japan over Russia, the intense changes wrought by World War II etc. It’s a story that…

In “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, the author writes about his experience with dealing a rampant elephant in British Colonial Burma. Privilege is usually viewed as a positive attribute, however Orwell explores all of the negatives that privileges can bring, which can be applied to modern day social expectations and politics. In order to highlight its effects on a personal and a widespread level, he uses the rhetorical device of figurative language. The figurative language__________…

In The Pearl, Steinbeck captures the destructive effect of colonialism on the indigenous people. This parable includes many motifs that depicts how greed and corruption can be a destructive force and overwhelm an individual. The novella portrays two contrasting forces that shape a person’s future. It depicts a world in which humans shape their own destinies. However, forces beyond human control can sweep at any moment and completely change the course of an individual’s life. It can be…

The novel « Things Fall Apart » by Chinua Achebe is written in English. However, there are some Ibo expressions set in this novel to introduce the reader’s mind into a more authentic and unique African atmosphere. The author, Chinua Achebe, is the first to write a novel about colonialism in the perspective of a colonized tribe from within. Furthermore, he is the only African who has ever described the African culture before and after the settlement of the Christians. This essay will examine how…

Introduction: In this essay the Frontier Wars will be discussed. This topic will be discussed with the main focus on the wars itself, their impact upon the Xhosa tribal structure, leading to the eventual subjugation of The Xhosa. According to Ryan Merkley, the Xhosa Wars, also known as the Cape Frontier Wars, or “Africa’s 100 years war”, were a series of nine wars between the Xhosa tribes and European settlers in what is now the Eastern Cape in South Africa (Jay, 2010). The Frontier or Xhosa…

the ideals of liberty, the rights of man, republicanism, and so forth. But America exhibited symptoms of imperialism - both hard imperialism and soft imperialism - in their growth and expansion west. Whilst before about 1840 and the rise of Manifest Destiny America could claim to be to some extent separate from the European empires, it maintained fundamental similarities to British imperialism both before and especially after this date. Some historians have…

When Edward Said wrote an article on Imperialism in the LA Times, titled Blind Imperialism Arrogance, he opened his argument by saying that: “every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.” During the 19th and 20th centuries, countries began to seek colonies out of interest once again, in the New Imperialism era. The majority of Africa was carved up by the European powers at the…

Rosaldo’s Theory of Imperialist Nostalgia explains, among other things, how a group of people can remove themselves from a situation in order to conceal guilt. This accompanies people mourning for what they destroyed themselves. This process establish innocence while still bragging about what has been done. Imperialist nostalgia also allows the guilty party to become “impartial detached observers” (121) and helps to conceal guilt (109). Rosaldo’s theory of imperialist nostalgia explains the…

Shooting an Elephant An Analysis of the Three Main Messages from Shooting an Elephant Everything that you do in your life cannot be undone. Everything that you say, do, or think, cannot be taken back or be done over again. Everybody that has lived on this earth has made a decision that they later regret. Sometimes, the pain of having regrets can hurt people substantially. George Orwell, early in his life, made a mistake that ultimately affected him for the rest of his life. In Orwell’s Shooting…