87 Imperialism of European Ideas and Values
Imposition of European Ideas and Values
As European countries established empires in Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century, they marked their presence in a number of ways. One of the most lasting was their attempt to imprint their culture onto their colonial subjects, or their cultural imperialism. As a result of their conquest of much of the world, Europeans believed that they were not merely militarily superior but culturally superior as well. It was necessary, Europeans believed, to replace these inferior cultures with their own and, thus, “civilize” the peoples of the rest of the world. Interestingly, this process of cultural assimilation and homogenization also took place in Europe, both in the colonizing countries themselves as well as in the Eastern European borderlands where Germany and Russia were independently embarking upon imperialist projects.
Rather than a thematic presentation, this reading will examine various cases of cultural assimilation and imperialism. Some of the examples are basic to the study of cultural contact and assimilation: the British in India, the French in Algeria, and the Americans and Canadians on the western frontier. While these are the customary examples of European (or Western) cultural dominance over non-European societies, the last three sections will widen your understanding of imperial contact. First, a section on Eastern Europe shows that cultural imperialism was not limited to extra-European territories; the people of Eastern Europe also experienced attempts at cultural assimilation under the Russian and German empires. Second, the example of Italian colonization in Ethiopia is an example of a mostly unsuccessful attempt at an imperialist takeover and cultural imperialism. Finally, while European imperialists attempted to impose cultural uniformity upon their imperial possessions, they were shaped by those cultures in return.
British India
Cultural imperialism in British India had two major characteristics: first, it exemplified the British desire to remake Indians into more civilized people and second, it was a means of control. The British could not raise an army of enough size to control their Indian subjects by force, so they relied partly on their culture of empire, into which they co-opted not only their representatives in India but also segments of the Indian population itself.
The development of the English language in India was an important marker of cultural imperialism, as the British used their native tongue to set the social standard. In India, as in England, being able to speak “The Queen’s English” became a mark of great distinction, one that was more difficult to attain for Indians with little prior knowledge of the language. The British colonizers, in essence, controlled access to the language; and since mastery of English was desirable for any Indians who wanted to succeed under the colonial administration, they needed to go to the Briti