The Inhabitants of Jamaica are for the most part Europeans, some Creolians, born and bred in the Island Barbados, the Windward Islands, or Surinam, who are the Masters, and Indians, Negros, Mulatos, Alcatrazes, Mestises, Quarterons &c. who are the Slaves. […]
The Houses of considerable Planters are usually removed from their Sugar, or other Works, that they may be free from the noise and smells of them, which are very offensive.
The Negroes Houses are likewise at a distance from their Masters, and are small, oblong, thatch’d Huts, in which they have all their Moveables or Goods, which are generally a Mat to lie on, a Pot of earth to boil their Victuals in, either Yams, Plantains, or Potatoes, with a little salt Mackarel, and a Calabash or two for Cups and Spoons. […]
The Negroes from some Countries think they return to their own Country when they die in Jamaica, and therefore regard death but little, imagining they shall change their condition by that means from servile to free, and so for this reason often cut their own Throats. Whether they die thus, or naturally, their Country people make great lamentations, mournings and howlings about them expiring, and at their Funeral throw in Rum and Victuals into their Graves, to serve them in the other world. […]
The Negros are much given to Venery, and although hard wrought, will at nights or on Feast days Dance and Sing; their Songs are all bawdy, and leading that way. They have several sorts of Instruments in imitation of Lutes, made of small Gourds fitted with Necks strung with Horse hairs, or the peeled stalks of climbing plants or Withs. These Instruments are sometimes made of hollow’d Timber covered with Parchment or other Skin wetted, having a Bow for its Neck, the strings ty’d longer or shorter, as they would alter their sounds … The have likewise in their Dances rattles ty’d to their Legs and Wrists, and in their Hands, with which they make a noise, keeping time with one who makes a sound answering it on the mouth of an empty Gourd or Jar with his Hand. Their Dances consist in great activity and strength of Body, and keeping time, if it can be. They very often tie Cows Tails to their Rumps, and add such other odd things to their Bodies in several places, as gives them a very extraordinary appearance.
IIB2 Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) from Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift’s satire on colonialism appears at the very end of his masterwork, best known ever since as Gulliver’s Travels but originally titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, described on the title page of the first edition as ‘first a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships’. Swift is clearly parodying William Dampier (cf. IB13) when he has Gulliver, after his expulsion from the land of the benign Houyhnhnms, cast ashore on the ‘south west coast of New Holland’ (i.e. Australia). Here he encounters a group of Aboriginal inhabitants, ‘stark naked, men, women and children, around a fire’ (p. 333). His first response is to flee, but from his canoe he spies a distant sail and heads back to the beach ‘choosing rather to trust myself among these barbarians, than live with European Yahoos’ (p. 334). Swift’s book was first published in London in 1726. Even though bowdlerized by the publisher, it was an instant success, quickly serialized in the weekly reviews and translated into French and Dutch. Swift published a corrected version in Dublin in 1734–5. Gulliver was subsequently pilloried by establishment figures who misrepresented its satire of the status quo as evidence of misanthropy. By contrast, it has remained a benchmark for radical attacks on what Hazlitt called ‘imposture’ in all its forms, political, social, intellectual, moral. Swift’s writing proceeds not so much from a hatred of humanity as from a critique of power. For his view of colonialism as the work of pirates backed up by claims on the divine right of kings, it probably helped that Swift was Irish. The present short extract is taken from Gulliver’s Travels, edited by Peter Dixon and John Chalker with an introduction by Michael Foot, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967, pp. 342–4.
I confess, it was whispered to me, that I was bound in duty as a subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a Secretary of State, at my first coming over; because, whatever lands are discovered by a subject belong to the Crown. But I doubt whether our conquests in the countries I treat of, would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over the naked Americans. The Lilliputians, I think, are hardly worth the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them, and I question whether it might be prudent or safe to attempt the Brobdingnagians. Or whether an English army would be much at their ease with the Flying Island over their heads. The Houyhnhnms, indeed, appear not to be so well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially against missive weapons. However, supposing myself to be a Minister of State, I could never give my advice for invading them. Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country would amply supply all defects in the military art. Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors’ faces into mummy, by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs. For they would well deserve the character given to Augustus; Recalcitrat undique tutus. But instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, I rather wish they were in a capacity or disposition to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for civilizing Europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour, justice, truth, temperance, public spirit, fortitude, chastity, friendship, benevolence, and fidelity. The names of all which virtues are still retained among us in most languages, and are to be met with in modern as well as ancient authors; which I am able to assert from my own small reading.
But I had another reason which made me less forward to enlarge his Majesty’s dominions by my discoveries. To say the truth, I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions. For instance, a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither, at length a boy discovers land from the topmast, they go on shore to rob and plunder; they see an harmless people, are entertained with kindness, they give the country a new name, they take formal possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial, they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity, the natives driven out or destroyed, their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free licence given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people.
But this description, I confess, doth by no means affect the British nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in supplying the civil administration through all their Colonies with officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous Governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the King their master.
But, as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered, and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar or tobacco; I did humbly conceive they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour, or our interest.
IIB3 Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811) On Tahiti
The first European encounter with the island of Tahiti was by the English navigator Samuel Wallis in 1767, but the most resonant was that by the French admiral Bougainville less than a year later. Bougainville’s lyrical, not to say romanticized, account had a considerable impact on French radical thought. The tension between two conflicting ideas of the human past, as between a ‘war of all against