The Injustices Of Captain Van Toch

The late 19th century on to the start of World War I is a period characterized by a mad rush by the Western Powers and the Empire of Japan to conquer overseas territories. Dubbed the age of New Imperialism, this rapid expansion reflects both the ongoing tensions between world powers and the all-consuming desire for new resources. These hasty acquisitions were largely made without consideration for the preexisting cultures and people, often resulting in the systematic exploitation of locals. The most common rationalization of these injustices took the form of a “civilizing mission”. Although seemingly humanitarian, this ethos dangerously places the supposedly civilized statesmen in a self-confirming paternal relationship with the savages abroad.

Upon finding the newts, Captain Van Toch immediately took on a fatherly role, equating the newts to his “children” (Čapek 36). Despite this apparent sense of responsibility, he begun only rewarding them when they brought him oysters with a pearl inside – already beginning to seek out a profit. Similar to how many developing countries faced a host of actual problems like disease, the newts face their own problems: a population of lizard-eating sharks and a current strong enough to wash away their eggs. Captain Van Toch very meaningfully “promises that he will help [them]” – ascribing himself the role of a savior (Čapek 38). Although this may seem admirable on the surface, he later uses their susceptibility as prey as leverage for their continued service to him by trading them harpoons and knives with which they could defend themselves in exchange for “thousands [of] pearls of all sizes” while making deals to expand his business venture (Čapek 41). The resulting company, Salamander Syndicate, promises to “cultivate and employ the newts in the best possible way” yet is primarily interested in using the millions of newts to benefit humans (Čapek 104). By juxtaposing these apparent good deeds towards newts with the clinical detachment of terms like “labor units”, Čapek criticizes the

Indeed, it would have been hard to imagine such a large decolonization during Čapek’s time, which might help explain Čapek’s macabre ending versus Fanon’s near-utopian view of a future free of racism and class oppression. Then again, considering that Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth with months left to live, his inattention to argumentation in favor of impassioned poetry is understood. Čapek seems to more closely attribute the horrors of imperialism to the distance between the profiting individual who pushes colonization from afar and their operatives on the ground. For example, Čapek says that while one may expect to find thousands of newts with buyers like a slave market, in reality, the salamander market is filled instead with “smartly dressed clerks in white suits, accepting orders by telephone”, where exploitation hides behind business jargon and transactions (Čapek 125). Although the people that personally deal with the newts seem equally indifferent, Čapek goes out of his way to paint the oppression of the newts as removed, hidden away from the decisions that further enslave them. After providing numerous concrete cases of humanity’s attempts to justify their treatment of the newts, Čapek shows that these civilizing missions