Imperialism, Colonialism and Research Science

Colonialism and imperialism are two dominating characteristics associated to the 19^th Century Europeans and American colonists. In order to establish power internationally, Europeans used various methods that were decided solely by rich folk who funded the research. Most, if not all, of it was biased in order to keep a hierarchy where Europeans were at the top.

I want to come back to what we read in a class handout. The sheet included a few excerpts from Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism. Here’s the excerpt I want to focus on: ‘Empire is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social, or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire. In our time, direct colonialism has largely ended; imperialism, as we shall see, lingers where it has always been, in a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, economic, and social practices.”[1]

This quote is fairly straight forward in that you understand that European colonialists, in other countries, tend to want to gain power through any means possible. Many times, in order to support their intentions of imperialism and colonialism, using science is the best way of establishing a hierarchy where Europeans are at the top. I came across a text that also deals with the matters Said deals with in his book; instead of Oriental countries, Native Americans are discussed.

In the case of the Native American’s and Africans, it is quite similar in comparison to the treatment of the Orientals: “The word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary. When mentioned in many indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, it conjures up bad memories, [and] it raises a smile that is knowing and distrustful. It is so powerful that indigenous people even write poetry about research. The ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world’s colonized peoples. It is a history for many of the world’s colonized peoples. It is a history that still offends the deepest sense of our humanity. Just knowing that someone measured our ‘faculties’ by filling the skulls of our ancestors with millet seeds and compared the amount of millet seed to the capacity foe mental thought offends our sense of who and what we are. It galls us that Western researchers and intellectuals can assume to know all that it is possible to know of us, on the basis of their brief encounters with some of us. It appalls us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of our ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas and seek to deny them further opportunities to be creators of their own culture and own nations.”[2]

This excerpt from Smith’s book, not only reiterates what Said said, but it explains that racist research is what kept imperialism and colonialism thriving. From this research, hierarchies were made; obviously the Europeans were at the top, with Native Americans and Africans at the bottom. The main focus is that the imperialism and colonialism relies heavily on biased science and research. European and American colonialism power relied greatly on racist science.

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[1] Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.

[2] Smith, Linda T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 1999. Print.