Passage

Why Re-read Colonialism?

1．Colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably．The word colonialism is defined by OED as:“a settlement in a new country．．．a body of people who settle in a new locality，forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state;the community so formed，consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors，as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up．”

2．This definition，quite remarkably，avoids any reference to people other than the colonisers，people who might already have been living in those places where colonies were established．Hence it evacuates the word“colonialism”of any implication of an encounter between peoples，or of conquest and domination．There is no hint that the“new locality”may not be so“new”and that the process of“forming a community”might be somewhat unfair．Colonialism was not an identical process in different parts of the world but everywhere it locked the original inhabitants and the newcomers into the most complex and traumatic relationships in human history．For instance，“forming a community”in the new land necessarily meant unforming or re-forming the communities that existed there already，and involved a wide range of practices including trade，plunder，negotiation，warfare，genocide，enslavement and rebellions．Such practices produced and were produced through a variety of writings—public and private records，letters，trade documents，government papers，fiction and scientific literature．These practices and writings are an important part of all that contemporary studies of colonialism and postcolonialism try to make sense of．In The Tempest，for example，Shakespeare's single major addition to the story he found in certain pamphlets about a shipwreck in the Bermudas was to make the island inhabited before Prospero's arrival．That single addition turned the adventure story into an allegory of the colonial encounter．

3．So colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people's land and goods．But colonialism in this sense is not merely the expansion of various European powers into Asia，Africa or the Americas from the sixteenth century onwards;it has been a recurrent and widespread feature of human history．At its height in the second century AD，the Roman Empire stretched from Armenia to the Atlantic．Under Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century，the Mongols conquered the Middle East as well as China．The Aztec Empire was established when，from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries，one of the various ethnic groups who settled in the valley of Mexico subjugated the others．Aztecs extracted tributes in services and goods from conquered regions，as did the Inca Empire which was the largest pre-industrial state in the Americas．In the fifteenth century too，various kingdoms in southern India came under the control of the Vijaynagara Empire，and the Ottoman Empire，which began as a minor Islamic principality in what is now western Turkey，extended itself over most of Asia Minor and the Balkans．At the beginning of the eighteenth century，it still extended from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean，and the Chinese Empire was larger than anything Europe had seen．Modern European colonialism cannot be sealed off from these earlier histories of contact—the Crusades，or the Moorish invasion of Spain，the legendary exploits of Mongol rulers or the fabled wealth of the Incas or the Mughals were real or imagined fuel for the European journeys to different parts of the world．And yet，these newer European travels ushered in new and different kinds of colonial practices which altered the whole globe in a way that these other colonialisms did not．

Questions for Understanding

1．Why is OED's definition of“colonialism”quoted at the beginning?

2．According to paragraph 2，what is wrong or improper with the quoted definition?

3．What does the example about“Tempest”by Shakespeare intend to justify?

4．If you compare the old colonialism with the new European colonialism，what features can you find of the old colonialism?

5．Why is it necessary to redefine colonialism?