The Sociology of the Colonies [Part 1]

An Introduction to the Study of Race Contact

Rene Maunier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415863407
• eBook ISBN: 9781136245299
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998. This is part I of the sociology of colonies, and Volume XVII of the twenty-one in the Race, Class and Social Structure series. Written in the language in the 1932, this part provides an introduction to the study of race contact, and the social problems involved in expansion of peoples.

PART I

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF RACE CONTACT

Sociologie Coloniale; Introduction à L'Étude du Contact des Races

First published in Paris 1932–1942

BOOK I

THE CONCEPTION OF RACE CONTACT

CHAPTER I

DEFINITION OF COLONIES : EMIGRATION

Some people have a conventional conception of colonies ¹ which they have in mind when in the newspaper they condemn “the misuse of colonies”. They hold the belief that colonisation is only one form of conquest,² that is to say the subjection of others by armed force, that the founding and expanding of colonies is only one form of aggression. In this belief they have coined the words “Imperialism” and “Colonialism” and damned these things as infamous.

Are colonisation and conquest then synonymous ? Are these people not allowing themselves to be deceived by imagining a historic and dogmatic connection between conquest and colonisation, without actually going so far as to assert that colonisation without violent conquest is impossible ? Occupation, but not necessarily fighting, must precede colonisation.

First, the historic connection.³ In olden days the occupation of new countries and the domination of new peoples was usually achieved by conquest: usually, but yet not always; colonisation was then a work of violence. We cannot forget how the Spaniards conquered America; how they extinguished in fire and blood the mighty native Empires of the Aztecs and the Incas. We cannot forget how the exploitation of the New World caused the extension of slavery throughout the globe, and the trade in negro slaves from Africa to America. That is why, even under the Old French Monarchy, the colonisation of America evoked protests against the cruelties of slavery—protests which do honour to philosophy—the protests of Montesquieu, of Rousseau and, above all, of Abbe Raynal whose Histoire des etablissements des Europeens dans les Deux-Indes eloquently, often grandiloquently, denounced the destructive doings of the colonisers of his day. It may well be that it is the memory of these protests which in many minds inseparably associates colonisation with violence.

Secondly, the dogmatic connection. Philosophical theory has intimately linked conquest and colonisation. The doctrinaires of the Old Regime, some Physiocrats in particular, propounded the theory of annexation in general, without making exception of colonisation, a form of annexation sui generis. The modern doctrinaires, in particular some Socialists, have evolved the theory of the emancipation of all peoples and their right to “self-determination”, on the ground that conquest is illegitimate and inhuman.

But this dogmatic association of ideas is not a definition. Though it is often true that expansion demands conquest, it is not always true. Expansion may be arrived at by two other methods: by occupation or by acquisition.

Occupation takes place when unoccupied and hitherto uninhabited territory, virgin soil in the true sense of the term, is occupied without conflict. Like the Robinson Crusoe of story who took possession of a desert island, colonisers have sometimes been able to find a footing in new countries—“new” in the full sense of the word—unoccupied and uninhabited, where their only foes have been the climate and the soil. This was the case of Reunion Island in 1642 and of the Kerguelen Islands in 1774.

In other cases there has been Acquisition. This is the procedure of the “Social Contract”, where the new arrivals, coming up against the “earlier occupiers”, make an agreement or treaty with them, and thus obtain with more or less good will the right to settle.¹ There is a solemn, ceremonial, ritual contract, with oaths, embraces, exchange of gifts, the pipe of peace… salvos of cannon: such a ceremony as has been described by the Jesuit Father Charlevoix in 1701 between the French and the Algonquins. This method of acquisition by contract was used in the 17th century by the Quakers who founded Pennsylvania. When William Penn wished to plant his colony in the forests in 1681, on the spot where Philadelphia was later to spring up, he earnestly desired that no harm should accrue to the inhabitants; he established peaceful relations with them; he was able to conclude a genuine treaty of peace with them whereby the natives willingly agreed to the settlement of the emigrants.

As early as 1636 Roger Williams laid it down that a Royal Charter was not enough to give its holders a right of occupation; they required also the consent of the first occupiers, the Indians, who alone had the right to dispose of the soil. Manhattan Island, where skyscrapers have since sprouted like mushrooms, was bought from the Indians for 120 francs ! Later, between 1800 and 1820, the “Westward Drive” was carried through by means of sixty conventions with the natives. Even during the course of last century, protectorates were proclaimed without opposition, with the full concurrence of the first occupiers. The most typical of these agreements was surely that concluded in 1839 with “King Denis” for the cession of the estuary of the Gabun River, in what is now French Equatorial Africa, in exchange for a pension, an embroidered coat and the cross of the Legion of Honour. King Denis died decorated by the Pope for his services as protector of missions. The French were even requested to establish other protectorates, such as those of Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in 1842 and 1843. Acquisition by contract is not the rule; the fact that it has occurred, however, disposes of the contention that there is an inevitable connection between colonisation and violence.¹

Let us then set aside this conventional idea and seek to formulate the historical and sociological conception of colonisation.² First, the historical: We must determine what colonisation has been in the past and what it is in the present, in order to ascertain its distinctive characteristics. We must define colonisation, as it has been and as it is, and not as we could wish that it had been or might be. Secondly, the sociological: We must treat colonisation as a collective fact, a great mass phenomenon, an action which has brought entire peoples into contact; that is, we must see it as the source of relationships between human groups: as a social fact, the study of which falls within the scope of sociology.

Colonisation is a contact of peoples. Apart from cases where wholly uninhabited territory has been occupied, the colonisers have come up against the earlier occupants, and have necessarily entered into relations with them: colonisation involves intercommunication. A colony is called a “new country”, that is to say a country not yet developed in accordance with our industrial methods—a country which, to us at least, appears exotic—where colonisers and colonised enter into relations with each other. As new countries, the colonies form a contrast to our old countries: first, in the economic sense, by our bringing into play the hitherto undeveloped resources of the land; secondly, in the sociological sense, by bringing into contact human groups hitherto separated. Two social entities are brought into touch, and two differing civilisations, or in other words, two differing traditions, are pitted against each other. In every colony we therefore find the colonisers as the conquerors, the governors, the exploiters, the progeny of old countries, coming from afar, and claiming to bestow on the new countries the benefits of the development of their riches. And we find the earlier occupiers, the dominated, the governed or the colonised, who, by the very fact of their country's being occupied, are reduced to a position of legal or actual tutelage.

From this point of view, colonisation seems to us both a primitive and a general phenomenon. It is both ancient and universal. At all periods of history, and even in prehistoric times, there have been migratory peoples and emigrant peoples; colonising peoples have swarmed into countries already occupied by others. In the Stone Age, and particularly in Neolithic times, whole peoples have been colonisers, and have crossed the seas to spread their own civilisation among less civilised peoples.¹ With the Ægeans and the Cretans these emigrations led to the founding of maritime Empires—thalassocracies, as the Greeks called them—two millennia before Christ. The royal lawgiver Minos from his throne at Knossos dominated a whole empire.² In the course of time colonisation took place everywhere and in every continent. The Australians, the Malayo-Polynesians, swarmed by sea into America in very ancient times.³ This great social phenomenon is a fundamental and a universal one. Some even speak of Animal Colonies,¹ though the analogy may be challenged. People have even moralised over “slave-owning ants”. The parallel between colonisation and reproduction has also been noted, in so far as there is a transmission, from the mother-country to the colony, of the characteristics of the parent social group: sociological heredity, it is said, is akin to biological heredity. In the Sixth Book of the Laws, Plato already said: “Colonies are like children in whom the life of the city or nation is continued.” This is the idea expressed in the term “mother-country”.

Let us analyse the constituent elements of a colony to see in what circumstances we may talk of colonisation.

If there is to be a penetration or inter-communication of peoples, there must be, first, an emigration of persons, or the occupation of a new country, and secondly, the government of the new country or the subjection of its people. Emigration and government, or, in other words, occupation and legislation: an element of fact and an element of law. When these two factors are present, we have colonisation. Emigration without government is not colonisation, nor is government without emigration. Emigration alone yields only an increase of population, as in the case of Italians in America or Arabs in France. Government alone is annexation or expansion, but not colonisation, which properly consists of occupation, development and administration.

Emigration in itself means only settlement: the fact that a larger or smaller number of persons transfer themselves from one country to another. For a long time this was the only factor taken into account in defining colonisation. Thus in the Encydopédie of 1750, and in the Dictionnaire de l' Académie, colonisation was explained as “the conveyance of a people from one country to another”, and colon...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editor's Note
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I An Introduction To The Study Of Race Contact
• Part II Psychology Of Expansion