Anti-Conquest: Civilization’s would-be Savior

Anti-Conquest: Civilization’s would-be Savior

Starting with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, Europe thought of itself as a supremely rational people who could ultimately conquer the world around them with nothing more than the vaulting powers of their own reason. Indeed, this attitude would dominate European thought for centuries. Working under this ethos, Europe built up a massive colonial empire and realized the dream that was global hegemony. In many tangible ways, the road to this massive global empire was paved by European science in the form of the naturalist movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most early expeditions to foreign continents were conducted in the hopes of exhaustively classifying local flora and fauna, though the purely scientific nature of these trips is often called into question. Regardless of their initial motivation however, these naturalists fanned out across the globe, their trusty European reason in hand and a confident air of rational superiority about them. Each scientist would, once his journeys were complete, send back to Europe his semi-factual, semi-adventurous musings. Over time the greater majority of these works built up to become the genre of ‘travel writing.’ A modern scholar may well be inclined to look back on these works as evidence of the racism and egocentrism that defined the European consciousness at this period in history, as the works themselves evidenced a strong belief in the prevailing stereotypes of the time. Focusing specifically on European imperialism, Mary Louise Pratt notes how the psychological effects of travel writing on the European populace contributed to the later acceptance of imperial policies. While accur...

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...ad would literally articulate this fear of Nature, much to the acceptance of popular morals, and it seems highly unlikely that no foundation existed in Darwin’s time for the intellectual paradigm used in Heart of Darkness. Though this is mere speculation, it can be said, using Darwin to gauge European behavior, that Europe’s aggressive imperialism, spawned by the writings of its naturalists, drew its more brutal, racist undertones from an innate fear of Nature and the power it ultimately holds over the entire civilized world.

Works Cited

Darwin, Charles. Voyage of the Beagle. Eds. Browne, Janet, and Michael Neve. London: Penguin Books, 1989.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Science, planetary consciousness, interiors.” Imperial Eyes. NY: Routledge Books, 1992. 15-37.

---. “Narrating the anti-conquest.” Imperial Eyes. NY: Routledge Books, 1992. 38-68.