Culture and Imperialism

“One of imperialism’s achievements was to bring the world closer together, and although in the process the separation between Europeans and natives was an insidious and fundamentally unjust one, most of us should now regard the historical experience of empire as a common one.”

With early and ongoing advancements in travel and communications technology, empire is made more possible, as is globalization with its more positive promise of more equal opportunities worldwide—though this is, as of yet, unrealized potential. Said’s point is that the modern experience of the world is fundamentally shaped—as is the geopolitical map—by the forces of imperialism. Even if the average reader is unaware of this history, it can be seen everywhere once one starts looking.

“What I have tried to do is a kind of geographical inquiry into historical experience, and I have kept in mind the idea that the earth is in effect one world, in which empty, uninhabited spaces virtually do not exist. Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography.”

This quote implies that all peoples everywhere are implicated in the imperial project. Said suggests that in order to move beyond the facts of imperialism, cultural, political, and literary scholars must acknowledge the idea that there must be such a thing as a global community wherein people from different places can contribute with equally weighted voices. This also gestures to the fact that this struggle is not just a military one but also one “about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings” (7).

“At a time when the older filaments and organizations that bound pre-modern societies internally were beginning to fray, and when the social pressures of administering numerous overseas territories and large new domestic constituencies mounted, the ruling elites of Europe felt the clear need to project their power backward in time, giving it a history and legitimacy that only tradition and longevity could impart.”

This is another way in imperialism justifies itself. Said uses the example of the celebration of Queen Victoria’s official enshrinement as “Empress of India”: Her Viceroy participated in numerous “traditional” Indian festivals and activities, as if Queen Victoria and her British subjects had been as much a part of these traditions as the Indians themselves.