Welcome again to this series of lectures on
postcolonial literature.
Now, in our previous lecture, we discussed
Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness
and how that novel provides a contrapuntal
reading of the colonial discourse on Africa.
But we ended our previous lecture with a very
important question.
And the question was - can there be a contrapuntal
reading of the novel itself?
Can there be a contrapuntal reading of Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the text?
Now, you will have to understand here that,
in spite of the sharp criticism of the colonial
discourse which was emanating from the West
and the kind of sharp criticism of that discourse
that we find in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart
of Darkness, we will have to remember that
Joseph Conrad himself was finally a Western
author who was situated in England, which
was one of the biggest colonial metropolis
of the last century.
And his novel Heart of Darkness, in spite
of its criticism, was itself published by
a publisher situated in the metropolis.
And, in spite again of all its criticism of
the West, its primary readership was a western
audience, was people located in the colonial
metropolis.
So on the one hand, we have Heart of Darkness
as a very sharp and incisive criticism of
western ideologies and on the other hand,
we find that this criticism too is emanating
from the same centre which is also forging
the colonial discourse.
Therefore, the question is, is it not possible
that Heart of Darkness, though it is critical
of the metropolitan colonial discourse, is
not radically separated from the bias and
the prejudices of the metropolitan societies
which were based on colonial exploitation?
The answer to this question, as we shall see
during the course of this lecture, is a big
YES.
Indeed, Conrad and his novel Heart of Darkness
can be found sharing certain important ideological
premises with the colonial discourse, in spite
of its criticism of the colonial enterprise.
And this becomes evident if you try and read
the novel contrapuntally.
Or, in other words, if we try and read the
novel from a perspective from which its novelist,
from which the novelist Joseph Conrad never
intended it to be read.
So what can this other perspective be?
What can this alternative perspective be?
Well, it is a perspective of the colonised
Africans.
A perspective, that is, as again, we will
see during the course of our lectures, following
lectures, that this perspective, the perspective
of the colonised Africans is crucially lacking
in the novel.
And, therefore, this can give us that alternative
perspective from which we can have a contrapuntal
reading of the novel itself.
Because the novel was never meant to be read,
at least by Joseph Conrad, by the colonised
Africans.
You will of course remember that all we get,
if you read the novel carefully, you will
see that there is a lot of talk about oppression
in Africa, there is a lot of sympathy even
for the Africans who are oppressed but all
we get to hear about Africa is ultimately
the voice of Marlow.
And, we cannot forget that Marlow, in spite
of all his dislike for how colonialism was
operating in the Congo region, was himself
working there as an agent of the Belgian colonial
authority.
Therefore, if you read the novel from a genuine
African perspective rather than from the perspective
of a Westerner, who was sympathetic, we might
arrive at a contrapuntal understanding of
the novel and how it is itself informed by
the very same prejudices that also informs
the colonial discourse on Africa.
But before trying to read the novel from this
African perspective, we first need to better
acquaint ourselves with some major points
in African history.
And not only the history of colonial rule
in Africa but also the history of precolonial
Africa.
And for this, I turn to this wonderful book
titled African Perspectives on Colonialism
which was written by the Ghanaian academician
and political leader Albert Adu Boahen.
And the reason I choose this book is not only
because of the quality of scholarship that
is there to be found in this book but also
because it is short and really very easily
readable.
So if you manage to get your hands on this
book, I would definitely encourage you to
read this book in its entirety.
Now coming back to the African historical
context, one of the most important dates which
will help us explore this African context,
both colonial and precolonial history, is
the date 15th of November 1884.
And what happened on this date?
Well on this date a conference started in
Berlin, Germany and this conference was organised
to decide the fate of the Africans and their
territories.
And it lasted till the 31st of January 1885.
Now the decisions that were taken during these
few months of the conference were so momentous
that it changed the political geography of
the entire African continent forever.
And to get an idea about how big this change
was, let us look at these two maps.
So on the left side, the map on the left side,
which shows how Africa looked politically
just a few years before the Berlin conference,
you can see that most of the continent is
divided into small tribal kingdoms.
Barring the large green patch here, at the
top, which of course is a part of the Ottoman
Empire and the blue portion here, at the top
marked Algeria, which was a French colony.
Apart from this, if you look down near the
south of the continent, you can see a pink
portion marked Cape Colony and this was the
colony of the British.
Now look at the map on the right and the date.
Both these maps, they have the dates on top
of them.
So the first map is how Africa looked in 1880
and the second map gives you the date 1913.
And if you compare the first map with the
second map, the difference is really startling
because as you can see here, most of Africa,
is now in 1913, divided into large chunks
of territories.
And each of these large chunks of colour patches,
each of them represent the colony of one or
the other European power.
So, for instance, the large blue patch which
starts from the north where Algeria is located
and which continues down almost to the centre
of the continent, represents the French colony
in Africa.
The pink patches throughout the continent,
they represent the British colonies in Africa.
And, of course, this portion marked in violet
is the Congo region which was the Belgian
colony in Africa.
And this is the place where Conrad situates
his Heart of Darkness.
So and apart from two areas, one marked in
yellow here in the East of Africa - so apart
from these two areas, one here, which represents
the Kingdom of Ethiopia and the other one
here which is marked in a light blue which
represents Liberia - apart from these two
regions, the whole of Africa, by 1913, was
neatly parcelled out as colonies of various
European powers.
Now the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, in
which this decision to parcel out this entire
continent was taken, was attended by almost
all the major western countries except America
and Switzerland.
But what is more important to note here is
and this is very ironic that in this conference,
which decided the fate of the African continent
for decades to come, not a single African
representative was present.
So no single African person was present during
the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.
Now I am sure that such a situation today
hits us as absurd.
How can you decide the fate of an entire continent
without any representative from that continent
being there?
But I mean yes it is absurd, there is no denying
that fact, but it is also, this fact also
gives us a very important clue about how colonialism
operates.
We repeatedly refer to colonialism as a form
of exploitation and oppression precisely because
it does not enter into any form of consultation
with the people whose resources and labour
it uses to sustain its profit making enterprises.
Thus within colonialism the colonised subjects
are always left without a voice.
Now, as far as the Berlin conference was concerned,
we also need to keep in mind that, though
it decided the fate of Africa and its inhabitants,
the conference was never really motivated
by any special concern about Africans.
Rather, what the conference sought to achieve
was a balance of power in Europe and a resolution
of what is known as the scramble for Africa
that had broken out in the 1880’s.
And this scramble for Africa is an important
term for us, which will help us understand
the African context better.
And in order to explore these terms, scramble
for Africa, we need to go behind the capitalist
motives that guided the kind of colonialism
that we are discussing in this course.
So from the very beginning, I have been associating
colonialism and colonial enterprise with capitalism.
Right?
So here, I would be talking briefly about
this connection between capitalism and colonialism
as it related to Africa, African colonialism.
So let us start by asking ourselves the basic
question - what is capitalism?
Now, very simply put, capitalism can be defined
as investment of money or capital to make
more money, that is, profit.
Now, Europe had started moving from a feudal
mode of economy to a capitalist mode of economy
from say around the 15th century.
And it was of course a very gradual progress.
And this progress towards capitalism, and
this progress of capitalism has passed through
various phases.
And, indeed even today, capitalism is a force
that is continuously renewing itself and taking
newer forms.
But in our discussion of the African context,
the kind of capitalism that is most important
is the one that is associated with the rise
of the industrial mode of production.
Right.
So by the 18th-century Europe had witnessed
what is known as the industrial revolution
whereby the capacity of various European nations
to produce commodities far surpassed the capacity
of these nations to consume these commodities
domestically.
But these surplus products, these surplus
commodities, were nevertheless produced to
rake in huge amounts of profit.
Now, when we are talking about profit and
capitalism, I want you to note a very interesting
aspect of this profit, which is, that in capitalism,
the profit margin is something which is forever
going down.
What do I mean by this?
Let us suppose that I am producing shirts
in my industry.
And I am selling one shirt for 100 rupees.
Now in capitalism there is always competition,
which means that, say tomorrow, another person
might start producing the same shirt and might
reduce his profit margin to 50 rupees and
start selling that shirt to cut me out of
the competition.
Which means that, in future, I will have to
reduce my profit margin further below 50 Rupees
to stay in the race.
As a result, therefore, the profit margin
within the capitalist mode of production,
industrial mode of production, is seen to
be continuously deteriorating.
Now you can only sustain this ever lowering
profit margin by two ways.
One way is if you can keep increasing the
market for your commodity.
So, in other words, if earlier you got Rs
100 profit by selling one shirt to one person,
in the changed circumstances, where your profit
margin has come down to 50, say for instance,
in order to make that same profit you will
have to sell the shirt to two persons.
You will have to make two shirts and you will
have to sell it to two people in order to
get that profit.
If your profit margin further declines, if
it goes down to say Rupee 1, then of course,
you will have to find a larger market.
Which means that you will have to, in order
to make Rs 100 profit, you will have to sell
it to 100 people.
Right.
So by continuously increasing the size of
your market, you can still rake in the same
amount of profit that you were doing earlier
before the competition.
But another way, there is also another way,
which is usually coupled with this first way
to sustain the business, in spite of a deteriorating
profit margin, and that is if you can find
some way to reduce the price of raw material
that goes into the making of a commodity.
So, for instance, if you can somehow procure
cotton at a reduced price then even if the
final price of your shirt has fallen down
due to competition you will still be able
to make a profit.
Because ultimately, what is profit?
Profit is the difference between the price
of the raw material plus the labour charges
that are required to make a commodity and
the final selling price of the commodity.
So if you can find some way to reduce the
price of the raw material and the labour input,
then even if your final price is coming down
the difference is maintained and profit is
maintained.
Now, according to Albert Adu Boahen, the quest
for a larger market and for cheap raw materials
to feed the industries were the primary causes
why Africa was colonised by the West.
So by the 19th-century, industrial mode of
production had become the norm for most of
the European countries who were as a result,
because industrial mode of production had
become a norm for them, they were perpetually
searching for cheap raw materials as well
as for a larger market for their produced
goods.
This made the continent of Africa especially
alluring to the European countries both for
its resources, which till the 1880’s had
largely remained untapped by the European
industries, and for its potential as a market
for European commodities.
Now at this point, I would like to point out
that Africa, since long, had been a place
from where the West had acquired slave labour
for its industries.
And this kept on going till slavery was banned
in the West in the 1830’s and the slave
trade from Africa ended.
But, therefore, Europe was involved in one
particular kind of trade with Africa even
before 1880’s - the trade of humans.
Now it is important to keep in mind that during
this period of slave trade the direct influence
of Western powers largely remained limited
to the fringes of the African continent.
But during the late 1870’s something new
started happening.
Two countries, France and Belgium, they started
showing interest in expanding their colonial
influence deeper within the continent.
And this expansionist agenda of France and
Belgium started causing a great deal of alarm
amongst other major European powers like Britain
for instance, like Portugal, like Germany.
Because we will have to remember that all
of them by 1870’s were major industrial
nations and they were therefore always in
search for larger markets and cheaper raw
material.
And Africa, therefore, they could not allow
only two countries to colonise the entire
continent,so they also moved in.
And this, therefore, set out a kind of race
between these Western countries, all of them,
France, Belgium, Britain, Portugal, Germany,
all of these countries became involved in
a race to colonise Africa, from say around
1880’s.
And this race is what is known as the Scramble
for Africa.
The Berlin Conference held in 1884-1885 was
an attempt by the European powers to settle
amicably between themselves the conflict that
inevitably accompanied this competition.
Therefore, it is not entirely surprising that
no African representative was present there
at the conference.
Because the conference, as I have told you
earlier, was ultimately a way to resolve the
competition between European nations and the
way that the conflict was resolved was by
amicably cutting up Africa, the continent
of Africa, between themselves and sharing
the large African cake, as it were.
But that is only one side of the story.
Isn’t it?
We also have to ask how did the Africans react
to this European attempt to divide up their
lands into European colonies.
Well the reactions, African reactions, were
of course varied.
And some African kingdoms did establish alliances
with various competing European forces and
they did that primarily to protect themselves,
safeguard themselves against other hostile
African kingdoms.
But though there are these stories of alliances,
the overwhelming African response to this
European colonisation was of military resistance.
And this resistance was met in the battlefield
by advanced European military technology,
in the form of things like the Gras repeater
rifle, things like the Maxim gun, which the
Europeans had, the Africans did not.
And this really decimated the African military
that the Europeans encountered in the battlefield.
And as a result, within a decade of the Berlin
Conference, all major African kingdoms, except
Ethiopia and Liberia, lost their independence
and became European colonies.
Now as we know from our earlier discussion,
this military colonisation which characterises
colonialism, is inevitably accompanied by
a colonial discourse which transforms the
bloody process of colonisation into a civilising
mission wherein Africans were presented not
as victims of European oppression, rather
they were portrayed as immature savages and
barbarians who were about to benefit from
the light of civilisation that the European
colonisers were bringing with them.
Now this is of course very well-known to us,
this is the colonial discourse as civilising
mission.
However, Boahen points out in his book that
contrary to this colonial discourse, the Africans,
who were subjugated by the Europeans, were
far from being savages and barbarians.
Not only did they have a very long and rich
cultural tradition, they were also thriving
economically and socially till before 1880’s,
when the Scramble for Africa began and when
their independence ended.
Now, indeed by the 1870’s, African kingdoms
had largely shaken themselves out of the ill
effects of slave trade that had plagued them
till the 1830’s and they had started prospering
in terms of trade, for instance.
African societies were witnessing a more equitable
distribution of wealth.
The necessity of commerce had also started
resulting in the development of infrastructure,
for instance, wherein land and river routes
were being linked to form large trade networks.
African population was also increasing till
before 1880’s.
And this was a sign of progress because the
slave trade had considerably depleted the
African population.
And of course colonialism post 1880’s was
again going to reverse this population trend.
The population was again going to go in decline
which of course points at a general impoverishment
of Africa and Africans.
And finally a lot of interesting experiments
with constitutional politics was also going
on in pre-colonial Africa, especially in places
like Ghana, before the Europeans forcibly
came in to claim the whole of Africa for themselves
and declaring the Africans as savages and
brushing all these signs of progress and development
aside.
Now, in our next lecture, we will return to
the novel Heart of Darkness but with this
new awareness of the colonial and precolonial
African context.
And we will see how this African perspective
can lead to a powerful contrapuntal reading
of one of the most celebrated novels in British
literature.
Thank you.
