We sometimes enjoy picturing the colonizer as a tall man, bronzed by the sun, wearing Wellington boots, proudly leaning on a shovel—as he rivets his gaze far away on the horizon of his land. When not engaged in battles against nature, we think of him laboring selflessly for mankind, attending the sick, and spreading culture to the nonliterate. In other words, his pose is one of a noble adventurer, a righteous pioneer.
I don’t know whether this portrait ever did correspond to reality or whether it was limited to the engravings on colonial bank notes. Today, the economic motives of colonial undertakings are revealed by every historian of colonialism. The cultural and moral mission of a colonizer, even in the beginning, is no longer tenable.
Today, leaving for a colony is not a choice sought because of its uncertain dangers, nor is it a desire of one tempted by adventure. It is simply a voyage towards an easier life. One need only ask a European living in the colonies what general reasons induced him to expatriate and what particular forces made him persist in his exile. He may mention adventure, the picturesque surroundings or the change of environment. Why then, does he usually seek them where his own language is spoken, where he does not find a large group of his fellow countrymen, an administration to serve him, an army to protect him? The adventure would have been less predictable; but that sort of change, while more definite and of better quality, would have been of doubtful profit. The change involved in moving to a colony, if one can call it a change, must first of all bring a substantial profit. Spontaneously, better than language scholars, our traveler will come up with the best possible definition of a colony: a place where one earns more and spends less. You go to a colony because jobs are guaranteed, wages high, careers more rapid and business more profitable. The young graduate is offered a position, the public servant a higher rank, the businessman substantially lower taxes, the industrialist raw materials and labor at attractive prices.
However, let us suppose that there is a naïve person who lands just by chance, as though he were going to Toulouse or Colmar. Would it take him long to discover the advantages of his new situation? The economic meaning of a colonial venture, even if it is realized after arrival, thrusts itself upon us no less strongly, and quickly. Of course, a European in the colonies can also be fond of this new land and delight in its local color. But if he were repelled by its climate, ill at ease in the midst of its strangely dressed crowds, lonely for his native country, the problem would be whether or not to accept these nuisances and this discomfort in exchange for the advantages of a colony.
Soon he hides it no longer; he is often heard dreaming aloud: a few more years and he will take leave of this profitable purgatory and will buy a house in his own country. From then on, even though fed up, sick of the exotic, at times ill, he hangs on; he will be trapped into retirement or perhaps death. How can he return to his homeland if this would mean cutting his standard of living in half? Go back to the viscous slowness of progress at home?
It is this simple reasoning which delays their return, even though life has become difficult, if not dangerous, during the recent past. Even those who are called birds of passage in the colony do not show too much haste to leave. An unexpected fear of disorientation arises as soon as they begin to plan the return home. Realizing that they have been away from their country long enough to have no more living acquaintances, we can understand them in part. Their children were born in the colony and it is there that their dead are buried. But they exaggerate their anguish. In organizing their daily habits in the colonial community, they imported and imposed the way of life of their own country, where they regularly spend their vacations, from which they draw their administrative, political and cultural inspiration, and on which their eyes are constantly fixed.
Their change of environment is really one of economics: that of a nouveau riche taking a chance on becoming poor.
They will therefore carry on as long as possible, for the more time passes, the longer the advantages last, and these advantages are, after all, worth a little concern. But if one day his livelihood is affected, if “situations” are in real danger, the settler then feels threatened and, seriously this time, thinks of returning to his own land.
The matter is even clearer on a collective plane. Colonial ventures have never had any other avowed meaning. During the French-Tunisian negotiations, a few naïve persons were astonished by the relative good will shown by the French government, particularly in the cultural field, then by the prompt acquiescence of the leaders of the colony. The reason is that the intelligent members of the bourgeoisie and colony had understood that the essence of colonization was not the prestige of the flag, nor cultural expansion, nor even governmental supervision and the preservation of a staff of government employees. They were pleased that concessions could be made in all areas if the basis (in other words, if the economic advantages) were preserved. And if M. Mendès-France was able to make his famous lightning trip, it was with their blessing and under the protection of one of their own. That was exactly his program and the primary content of the agreements.
Having found profit either by choice or by chance, the colonizer has nevertheless not yet become aware of the historic role which will be his. He is lacking one step in understanding his new status; he must also understand the origin and significance of this profit. Actually, this is not long in coming. For how long could he fail to see the misery of the colonized and the relation of that misery to his own comfort? He realizes that this easy profit is so great only because it is wrested from others. In short, he finds two things in one: he discovers the existence of the colonizer as he discovers his own privilege.
He knew, of course, that the colony was not peopled exclusively by colonists or colonizers. He even had some idea of the colonized from his childhood books; he had seen a documentary movie on some of their customs, preferably chosen to show their peculiarity. But the fact remained that those men belonged to the realms of imagination, books or the theater. His concern with them came indirectly—through images which were common to his entire nation, through military epics or vague strategic considerations. He had been a little worried about them when he too had decided to move to a colony, but no more so than he was about the climate, which might be unfavorable, or the water, which was said to contain too much limestone. Suddenly these men were no longer a simple component of geographical or historical décor. They assumed a place in his life.
He cannot even resolve to avoid them. He must constantly live in relation to them, for it is this very alliance which enables him to lead the life which he decided to look for in the colonies; it is this relationship which is lucrative, which creates privilege. He finds himself on one side of a scale, the other side of which bears the colonized man. If his living standards are high, it is because those of the colonized are low; if he can benefit from plentiful and undemanding labor and servants, it is because the colonized can be exploited at will and are not protected by the laws of the colony; if he can easily obtain administrative positions, it is because they are reserved for him and the colonized are excluded from them; the more freely he breathes, the more the colonized are choked. While he cannot help discovering this, there is no danger that official speeches might change his mind, for those speeches are drafted by him or his cousin or his friend. The laws establishing his exorbitant rights and the obligations of the colonized are conceived by him. As for orders which barely veil discrimination, or apportionment after competitive examinations and in hiring, he is necessarily in on the secret of their application, for he is in charge of them. If he preferred to be blind and deaf to the operation of the whole machinery, it would suffice for him to reap the benefits; he is then the beneficiary of the entire enterprise.
It is impossible for him not to be aware of the constant illegitimacy of his status. It is, moreover, in a way, a double illegitimacy. A foreigner, having come to a land by the accidents of history, he has succeeded not merely in creating a place for himself but also in taking away that of the inhabitant, granting himself astounding privileges to the detriment of those rightfully entitled to them. And this not by virtue of local laws, which in a certain way legitimize this inequality by tradition, but by upsetting the established rules and substituting his own. He thus appears doubly unjust. He is a privileged being and an illegitimately privileged one; that is, a usurper. Furthermore, this is so, not only in the eyes of the colonized, but in his own as well. If he occasionally objects that the privileged also exist among the bourgeois colonized, whose affluence equals or exceeds his, he does so without conviction. Not to be the only one guilty can be reassuring, but it cannot absolve. He would readily admit that the privileges of privileged natives are less scandalous than his. He knows also that the most favored colonized will never be anything but colonized people, in other words, that certain rights will forever be refused them, and that certain advantages are reserved strictly for him. In short, he knows, in his own eyes as well as those of his victim, that he is a usurper. He must adjust to both being regarded as such, and to this situation.
Before seeing how these three discoveries—profit, privilege, and usurpation, these three developments of the colonizer’s conscience—will shape his appearance, by what mechanisms they will transform the colonial candidate into a colonizer or colonialist, we must answer a frequent objection. It is often said that a colony does not contain only colonists. Can one talk of privileges with respect to railroad workers, minor civil servants or even small farmers, who will probably live as well as their counterparts back home?
To agree on a convenient terminology, let us distinguish among a colonial, a colonizer and the colonialist. A colonial is a European living in a colony but having no privileges, whose living conditions are not higher than those of a colonized person of equivalent economic and social status. By temperament or ethical conviction, a colonial is a benevolent European who does not have the colonizer’s attitude toward the colonized. All right! Let us say right away, despite the apparently drastic nature of the statement: a colonial so defined does not exist, for all Europeans in the colonies are privileged.
Naturally, not all Europeans in the colonies are potentates or possess thousands of acres or run the government. Many of them are victims of the masters of colonization, exploited by these masters in order to protect interests which do not often coincide with their own. In addition, social relationships are almost never balanced. Contrary to everything which we like to think, the small colonizer is actually, in most cases, a supporter of colonialists and an obstinate defender of colonial privileges. Why?
Solidarity of fellow man with fellow man? A defensive reaction, an expression of anxiety by a minority living in the midst of a hostile majority? Partly. But during the peak of the colonial process, protected by the police, the army, and an air force always ready to step in, Europeans in the colonies were not sufficiently afraid to explain such unanimity. It is certain that they were not just-minded. It is true that the small colonizer himself would have a fight to carry on, a liberation to bring about; if he were not so seriously fooled by his own naïveté and blinded by history. But I do not believe that gullibility can rest on a complete illusion or can completely govern human conduct. If the small colonizer defends the colonial system so vigorously, it is because he benefits from it to some extent. His gullibility lies in the fact that to protect his very limited interests, he protects other infinitely more important ones, of which he is, incidentally, the victim. But, though dupe and victim, he also gets his share.
However, privilege is something relative. To different degrees every colonizer is privileged, at least comparatively so, ultimately to the detriment of the colonized. If the privileges of the masters of colonization are striking, the lesser privileges of the small colonizer, even the smallest, are very numerous. Every act of his daily life places him in a relationship with the colonized, and with each act his fundamental advantage is demonstrated. If he is in trouble with the law, the police and even justice will be more lenient toward him. If he needs assistance from the government, it will not be difficult; red tape will be cut; a window will be reserved for him where there is a shorter line so he will have a shorter wait. Does he need a job? Must he take an examination for it? Jobs and positions will be reserved for him in advance; the tests will be given in his language, causing disqualifying difficulties for the colonized. Can he be so blind or so blinded that he can never see that, given equal material circumstances, economic class or capabilities, he always receives preferred treatment? How could he help looking back from time to time to see all the colonized, sometimes former schoolmates or colleagues, whom he has so greatly outpaced?
Lastly, should he ask for or have need of anything, he need only show his face to be prejudged favorably by those in the colony who count. He enjoys the preference and respect of the colonized themselves, who grant him more than those who are the best of their own people; who, for example, have more faith in his word than in that of their own population. From the time of his birth, he possesses a qualification independent of his personal merits or his actual class. He is part of the group of colonizers whose values are sovereign. The colony follows the cadence of his traditional holidays, even religious holidays, and not those of the inhabitants. The weekly day of rest is that of his native country; it is his nation’s flag which flies over the monuments, his mother tongue which permits social communication. Even his dress, his accent and his manners are eventually imitated by the colonized. The colonizer partakes of an elevated world from which he automatically reaps the privileges.
It is also their concrete economic and psychological position within the colonial society in relation to the colonized on one hand, and to the colonizers on the other hand, which accounts for the traits of the other human groups—those who are neither colonizers nor colonized. Among these are the nationals of other powers (Italians, Maltese of Tunisia), candidates for assimilation (the majority of Jews), the recently assimilated (Corsicans in Tunisia, Spaniards in Algeria). To these can be added the representatives of the authorities recruited among the colonized themselves.
The poverty of the Italians or Maltese is such that it may seem ludicrous to speak of privileges in connection with them. Nonetheless, if they are often in want, the small crumbs which are automatically accorded them contribute toward differentiating them—substantially separating them from the colonized. To whatever extent favored as compared to the colonized masses, they tend to establish relationships of the colonizer-colonized nature. At the same time, not corresponding to the colonizing group, not having the same role as theirs in colonial society, they each stand out in their own way.
All these nuances are easily understandable in an analysis of their relationship with colonial life. If the Italians in Tunisia have always envied the French for their legal and administrative privileges, they are nevertheless in a better situation than the colonized. They are protected by international laws and an extremely watchful consulate under constant observation by an attentive mother country. Often, far from being rejected by the colonizer, it is they who hesitate between integration and loyalty to their homeland. Moreover, the same European origin, a common religion and a majority of identical customs bring them sentimentally closer to the colonizer. The results are definite advantages which the colonized certainly does not have: better job opportunities; less insecurity against total misery and illness; less precarious schooling; and a certain esteem on the part of the colonizer accompanied by an almost respectable dignity. It will be understood that, as much as they may be outcasts in an absolute sense, their behavior vis-à-vis the colonized has much in common with that of the colonizer.
On the other hand, benefiting from colonization by proxy only, the Italians are much less removed from the colonized people than are the French. They do not have that stilted, formal relationship with them, that tone which always smacks of a master addressing his slave, which the French cannot entirely shed. In contrast to the French, almost all the Italians speak the language of the colonized, make long-lasting friendships with them and even—a particularly revealing sign—mixed marriages. To sum up, having no special reason to do so, Italians do not maintain a great distance between themselves and the colonized. The same analysis would apply, subject to some minor differences, to the Maltese.
The situation of the Jewish population—eternally hesitant candidates refusing assimilation—can be viewed in a similar light. Their constant and very justifiable ambition is to escape from their colonized condition, an additional burden in an already oppressive status. To that end, they endeavor to resemble the colonizer in the frank hope that he may cease to consider them different from him. Hence their efforts to forget the past, to change collective habits, and their enthusiastic adoption of Western language, culture and customs. But if the colonizer does not always openly discourage these candidates to develop that resemblance, he never permits them to attain it either. Thus, they live in painful and constant ambiguity. Rejected by the colonizer, they share in part the physical conditions of the colonized and have a communion of interests with him; on the other hand, they reject the values of the colonized as belonging to a decayed world from which they eventually hope to escape.
The recently assimilated place themselves in a considerably superior position to the average colonizer. They push a colonial mentality to excess, display proud disdain for the colonized and continually show off their borrowed rank, which often belies a vulgar brutality and avidity. Still too impressed by their privileges, they savor them and defend them with fear and harshness; and when colonization is imperilled, they provide it with its most dynamic defenders, its shock troops, and sometimes its instigators.
The representatives of the authorities, cadres, policemen, etc., recruited from among the colonized, form a category of the colonized which attempts to escape from its political and social condition. But in so doing, by choosing to place themselves in the colonizer’s service to protect his interests exclusively, they end up by adopting his ideology, even with regard to their own values and their own lives.
Having been fooled to the point of accepting the inequities of his position, even at times profiting from this unjust system, the colonized still finds his situation more of a burden than anything else. Their contempt may be only a compensation for their misery, just as European anti-Semitism is so often a convenient outlet for misery. Such is the history of the pyramid of petty tyrants: each one, being socially oppressed by one more powerful than he, always finds a less powerful one on whom to lean, and becomes a tyrant in his turn. What revenge and what pride for a noncolonized small-time carpenter to walk side by side with an Arab laborer carrying a board and a few nails on his head! All have at least this profound satisfaction of being negatively better than the colonized: they are never completely engulfed in the abasement into which colonialism drives them.
The colonial does not exist, because it is not up to the European in the colonies to remain a colonial, even if he had so intended. Whether he expressly wishes it or not, he is received as a privileged person by the institutions, customs and people. From the time he lands or is born, he finds himself in a factual position which is common to all Europeans living in a colony, a position which turns him into a colonizer. But it is not really at this level that the fundamental ethical problem of the colonizer exists; the problem of involvement of his freedom and thus of his responsibility. He could not, of course, have sought a colonial experience, but as soon as the venture is begun, it is not up to him to refuse its conditions. If he was born in the colonies of parents who are colonizers themselves, or if, at the time of his decision, he really was not aware of the true meaning of colonization, he could find himself subject to those conditions, independent of any previous choice.
The fundamental questions are directed to the colonizer on another level. Once he has discovered the import of colonization and is conscious of his own position (that of the colonized and their necessary relationship), is he going to accept them? Will he agree to be a privileged man, and to underscore the distress of the colonized? Will he be a usurper and affirm the oppression and injustice to the true inhabitant of the colony? Will he accept being a colonizer under the growing habit of privilege and illegitimacy, under the constant gaze of the usurped? Will he adjust to this position and his inevitable self-censure?