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The Colonial Complex: The Creation of Superiority and Inferiority Through European Imperialism in

Africa

It is no secret that European influence over the world has been significant

and widespread. According to Edward Said, “from 1815 to 1914 European direct

colonial dominion expanded from about 35 percent of the earth's surface to about

85 percent of it.”1 European hegemony in colonial society can be attributed not

only to their technological dominance, but also to the carefully and thoroughly

constructed legal and cultural colonial framework. Such institutionalized tactics

gave rise to the superiority and inferiority complex, which was propagated not

only to immobilize the colonial subjects within society, but also to psychologically

degrade them to the point of feeling subhuman. In the following paper, I intend to

dissect the colonial experience, both from the viewpoint of the colonizers and the

colonized, and attempt to understand how the cultural, as well as legal facets of

colonization contributed to not only the construction of the colonial world, but how

it continues to influence recently independent African states in the present day.

Finally, I will give brief observations of how I perceived the colonial complex in

modern-day Cameroon, where I studied abroad for nearly five months.

Central to understanding the functionality of the colonial world is what I am

calling the colonial complex. Colonization was based on the assumption of a

more technologically advanced, ‘civilized’ power (Europeans), imposing their

values and market systems on more primitive, ‘traditional’ societies (non-

Europeans).2 In order for the colonial mechanism to operate effectively,

1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 41. See Appendix.2 See Appendix

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therefore, clear, separate, and ultimately unequal roles in society needed to be

established. According to Mahmood Mamdani in his book Citizen and Subject:

Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, this was the concept

behind the creation of the bifurcated state. This was a world “in which the dividing

line between those human and the rest less human is a line between those who

labor on the land and those” who profit off of it. It is between those whose life “is

regulated by customary law on the one side,” and ‘modern,’ European-based law

on the other.3 More often than not, the basis of this distinction lay not in one’s

perceived ‘civilized’ nature, but simply in racial assumptions and projections. By

analyzing the various apparati that upheld, enforced and cemented the colonial

reality, one can gain significant insight into the creation of the complexes

comprising the colonial situation.

In an ancient context, colonization meant the acquisition of “new territory

into use by an expanding society, including settlements for trade and agriculture.”

This antiquated definition, however, took on new meaning in the modern (1870s

onward) context, when the term came to involve people as well as land: a

“coercive incorporation into an expansionist state and invidious distinction.”4 As is

the case with any despotic, dominating power, the power of the colonial was “an

object of struggle and depended on the material, social, and cultural resources”

of every party involved.5 Furthermore, in order to create an efficient (but not

mutually beneficial) colonial society, the colonial state “existed in relation to

3 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 61.4 Thomas Pakenham. The Scramble for Africa, 1876-1912 . (New York: Random House, 1991), 27.5 Ibid, 17.

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different modes of production, each animated by people distinct from each other.”

It was these distinctions, whether real, perceived, or fabricated, that were critical

if “order was to be preserved” and the colonized labor was to be effectively

capitalized upon.6 Therefore, to effectively incorporate the large swathes of land

and diverse mixes of people into a single, formalized empire, different methods

were created so as to sustain order. Domination could not rely solely on

technological and monetary superiority; different legal codes needed to be

established so as to cement the colonizers place in society. The first of these

was direct rule.

When initially confronted with the ‘native question,’ many European

powers, particularly France, Germany, Belgium, and Portugal, first turned to

direct rule. This meant “there would be a single legal order, defined by the

‘civilized’ laws of Europe.” Under direct rule, no native institutions would be

recognized, and although the ‘natives’ would have to conform to European law

codes, only those assimilated or ‘civilized’ would have access to European

rights.”7 However, as Albert Memmi, a Tunisian Jew living in the limbo between

citizen and subject during the colonial period points out in his unique critique, The

Colonizer and the Colonized, the colonized “can never succeed in becoming

identified with the colonizer,” not even if the subject learns to speak the colonial

language and dress the colonial way; the advertized equality with the colonizer

was always on the other side of a very thick glass ceiling. Therefore, in practice,

direct rule more accurately meant “the reintegration and domination of natives in

6 Ibid 51.7 Mamdani 16.

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the institutional context of semiservile and semicapitalist agrarian relations.” In

other words, it entailed the subjugation of the vast majority of the native

population solely for their usefulness as a source of labor. Such distinctions were

entwined with an incredible amount of cultural degradation and hopelessness,

since they were largely based off the assumption African racial inferiority. Simply

put, in direct rule, “natives were ruled by proclamation and magistrates held

absolute power,” thereby cutting natives off from any form of authority. However,

this was eventually augmented by the shift from the direct, racialized system of

despotism to a decentralized, similarly repressive, tribal-based system of indirect

rule.8

Fashioned by the High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Nigeria,

Frederick Lugard9, indirect rule served to further stratify the colonial lattice. As

Frederick Cooper points out, this option was more attractive for powers who

“lacked the institutions and above all the revenue” to orchestrate direct rule, as

well as allowing them to disguise their intentions behind the Native Authorities,

providing them a cultural shield of sorts.10 According to Lord Lugard, the first step

of implementing indirect rule is to “endeavour to find a man of influence as chief

and to put under him as many villages and districts as possible.“ Second, the

colonials must teach him to delegate powers, and to take an interest in his

‘Native Treasury,’ to support his authority.” Finally, they must instill in him a

sense of purpose and responsibility, so as to keep him loyal to his colonial

8 Mamdani 65.9 See Appendix.10 Cooper, 167.

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‘benefactors.’11 For the British in particular, “the more ‘traditional’ Africans were,

the better,” for the most conservative chiefs were more inclined to keep their rural

kingdoms in check. After all, indirect rule was, at its core, a conservative

undertaking, requiring chiefs who would follow colonial orders as long as the

price was high enough.12

Indirect rule was also important in attempting to segregate the white-

dominated urban centers from the native-dominated rural expanses. “A European

is as strictly prohibited from living in the native reservation,” Lugard states with

transparent innocence, “as a native is from living in the European quarter.”13 In

order to halt the perceived “rural disintegration occurring before their eyes,”

Europeans encouraged “’tribal authorities’ to use ‘tribal sanctions’ in exercising

control over the rural areas to counter the forces of social decay.”14 This rural

tribal authority would be the bastion of the colonizer’s rule; they would be “the

law,” according to George Padmore, “subject only to one higher authority, the

white official stationed in his state as an advisor.”15 While on the surface, this may

appear to be giving a bit more agency to the ‘natives,’ in reality, it simply reduced

these chiefs to the status of colonial minions. Furthermore, indirect rule

established in many places unnatural, even artificial connections to tribalism and

ethnic identity. While these could, at times, give Africans a sense of connection

11 Mamdani, 53.12Leroy Vail. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa . (Berkeley: California, 1989), 169.13 Mamdani, 16.14 Vail, 13.15 Mamdani, 53.

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(or opposition) to one another, its primary function was to further ensure

European dominance.

According to the grand architect Lugard, the “implementation of indirect

rule would be greatly facilitated by the prior existence of a native state

apparatus,” i.e. a tribe. However, one did not always exist in the communities in

question, creating a potential administrative deadlock. If there were no chiefs to

control a chiefdom, how would the colonists exert their power? In times such as

these, according to Mamdani, the best way “to install a state apparatus among

communities whose lives had never before been shaped by one was literally to

invent tribes!”16 Therefore, the colonists needed to be able to maneuver the

‘tribal’ structure of African societies and effectiveness in relation to European

concerns, in turn manipulating Africans’ relation to one another as well.

According to the Native Administration Memorandum on Native Courts in

Tanganyika, tribes are defined as “cultural units possessing a common language,

a single social system, and an established customary law.” Tribal structure

created order and hierarchy necessary for the implementation of indirect rule,

and so in places where “there did not exist a clearly demarcated tribe with a

distinct central authority…one had to be created in the interest of order.”17 The

most extreme example comes from Rwanda and Burundi. While the international

media boiled the horrific events of those dreadful 100 days in 1994 down to

‘ethnic tensions,’ the root of the genocide dates back to the 1930s, during

Belgium’s colonial administration. The practice of tracing “official Bahutu, Batusi,

16 Mamdani, 79.17 Ibid, 79.

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and Batwa identities through the male line was initially an administrative device

introduced for convenience” by the colonial power. During pre-colonial times,

these terms were used “in relation to one another,” instead of in opposition, “and

more flexibly than came to be the case.” However the Belgians used the terms to

create a social and political hierarchy, placing the more ‘civilized’ Tutsi-minority at

the top, and the more ‘primitive’ Hutu-majority at the bottom.18 Years of tension

between these artificial enemies culminated in nearly 800,000 Rwandans being

slaughtered, for little more than colonially indoctrinated and perpetuated

‘differences.’ The Europeans occupiers not only manipulated the legal

parameters of tribal systems, but also enforced their oppression and segregation

through laws on the land.

In pre-colonial times, the arable land in the more densely dpopulated parts

of Africa had “been turned into estates controlled by descent groups,” allowing for

flexible interpretations between “notions of community rights and corporate and

individual rights” to land. However, when the colonial powers arrived, they

brought with them the assumption that, according to anthropologist Elizabeth

Colson, “the full range of land rights covered by the concept of proprietary

ownership must exist in Africa as in Europe.19 Such legislative shifts gave them

power not only to define where the natives were permitted (or forced) to live, but

who, in fact, owned the land they toiled away on for meager pay each day. For

the African under European rule, land “could not be a private possession, of

either landlords or peasants.” Instead, land was legally defined as “a customary

18 Helen Hintjens. "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda." The Journal of Modern African Studies 37.2 (1999): 241-286. Jstor. 249. 19 Mamdani ,139.

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communal holding, to which every peasant household had a customary access,

defined by state-appointed customary authorities.”20 In other words, since the

European authority was at the top of the indirect rule food chain, they ultimately

controlled all the land, and subsequently how it was exploited. These and other

aspects of indirect rule worked to create a birdcage of oppression, where no

matter which way the natives turned, there was no escape from their

marginalization. The culmination of such despotic colonialist policies, therefore,

can be found in form of apartheid.

While commonly associated solely with the South African example,

apartheid was, in fact, the status quo for all colonial Africa, just becoming more

officially enshrined in South Africa due to its unusually large settler population.

Not surprisingly, Nelson Mandela, in his renowned autobiography Long Walk to

Freedom, succinctly deconstructs apartheid, which “literally means ‘apartness’” in

Afrikaans. Apartheid “represented the codification in one oppressive system of all

laws and regulations that had kept Africans in an inferior position to whites for

centuries.”21 In fact, as Mamdani aruges, it is “precisely because the South

African historical experience is so different that it dramatically underlines what is

common in the African colonial experience.”22 Apartheid and institutional

segregation “idealized a form of rule that the British Colonial Office dubbed

‘indirect rule,’ and the French ‘association.’”23 Colonialism itself was anchored in

racial dualism, difference, and inherent inequality. According to Lord Malcolm

20 Ibid, 22.21 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, (Little, Brown and Company, Boston: 1994), 97.22 Mamdani, 31.23 Ibid, 7.

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Hailey, who worked extensively in the British Raj but was influential in African

colonial administration for the Empire, “the doctrine of differentiation aims at the

evolution of separate institutions appropriate to African conditions and differing

both in spirit and form from those of Europeans.”24 Such was the precise aim of

apartheid. It made what was “more or less de facto…de jure,” creating separate

and unequal worlds, reinforcing difference and inferiority so as to protect the

Whites’ minority-majority position in the country.25

As we have seen, apartheid was simply a more advanced manifestation of

indirect rule, yet there were specific circumstances that set the South African

example apart. The most significant of these was South Africa’s “semi-

industrialization, semi-proletarianization, semi-urbanization, capped by a strong

civil society.”26 The need for cheap, plentiful labor to turn the cogs of this

modernizing state, however, was countered by the institutionalized ethnic

inequalities imposed by the bifurcated state. Industrialization increased Black

urbanization, yet according to the White minority, “the Native should only be

allowed to enter urban areas, which are essentially the white man’s creation,

when he is willing to enter and to minister to the needs of the white man,” and

should leave upon finishing his service to his superiors.27 To curb the influx of

black workers to urban areas, the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act was passed,

formally crystallizing “not only residential segregation but a comprehensive

administration of urban Africans along separate racial lines,” thus creating

24 Ibid, 7.25 Mandela, ibid. 26 Ibid 28.27 Ibid 93.

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concrete barriers between native and white civil society.28 The foundation of

these and other such laws and regulations throughout European-controlled Africa

lay in and were perpetuated by the deeply engrained colonial complex, based on

the assumptions of superiority and inferiority between the colonizers and the

colonized.

European expansion and dominance in Africa and Southeast Asia was a

carefully constructed, massive undertaking that relied on intellectual, cultural,

economic and even scientific justification for their conquest. In order to

understand Europe’s initial reasoning for their imperialist ambitions, one need not

look farther than Dr. David Livingstone, the famous Scottish explorer and

Victorian hero, whose dying wish was for Europe to introduce the 3 Cs,

Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization, into Africa to “heal this open sore of the

world.”29 While, in the context of the day, Livingstone’s intentions with this call to

action may have been genuine (in order to stop the Arab slave trade which was

ravaging East and Central Africa at the time), his dramatic charge to the

European community to ‘fix’ the continent served to intensify feelings of

paternalism and superiority over the ‘savages,’ simply through their

‘responsibility’ of instilling these ‘universal’ values onto the less-fortunate

Africans. Moreover, in a time of increasing tensions between European states

due to the rise of industrialization and nationalism, the colonization of Africa

presented a unique opportunity: “not only would [Europeans] save Africa from

itself. Africa would be the saving of their own countries.”30 Europe’s civilizing

28 Ibid, 94.29 Pakenham, pre-title page.30 Ibid, xxii.

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quest, full to the brim with national prestige and pride, disguised more sinister,

self-serving elements whose only validations could be found in the constructed

ideal of supremacy over their subjects, and in the vast amount of resources that

would be put at the disposals of their individual empires.

The concept of European superiority was a colonial phenomenon, not just

restricted to Africa. In his groundbreaking critique Orientalism, Edward Said

investigates the intellectual justifications that Europeans used to denigrate and

dehumanize ‘Orientals,’ which, in many cases, is easily interchangeable with

‘Africans.’ In the eyes of the colonizing Europeans, “there are Westerners, and

there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter must be dominated, which

usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled,”

and their resources put at the complete and unquestionable disposal of one or

another civilizing power.31 The Westerner rationalized this ‘natural’ domination

by, once again, constructing a glass ceiling over the non-European, for

regardless of how ‘advanced’ or ‘civilized’ an inferior subject is, he or she “is first

an Oriental, second a human being, and last again an Oriental.”32 Such

statements speak to the cultural methods by which the European powers

normalized and validated their ‘natural’ privilege over the ‘darker races,’ which

emanated from the presidents of the mother countries all the way to the poorest

white settler.

The creation of the European ‘colonial mystique’ has been propagated

throughout Western culture for a long time. Ever since the times of Rome, when

31 Said, 36.32 Ibid, 102.

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nearly an entire continent (and then some) was colonized for the sake of just one

city, Europe has been rife with high-culture contradictions. During the period of

modern-day colonization, Frederick Cooper observes, European publics “claimed

rights and citizenship for themselves, [while defining] a sharper division between

a metropolitan polity…and an external sphere” in which these rights were not

available. Naturally, this created a feeling of superiority based on the notion of

being inherently more ‘civilized’ than their empire’s subjects.33 Furthermore, the

colonial period, as stated earlier, coincided with the rapid rise of European

nationalism, that beautiful disease of the modern world, which had a large hand

in the propagation of superiority. “Patriotism” General Charles de Gualle was

once famously quoted as saying, “is when love of your own people comes first;

nationalism” on the other hand, is when “hate for other people other than yours

comes first.”34 This sort of attitude drove the politics of differentiation and race

theory in the colonial era.

Such violent and forceful impositions into a foreign culture had to be

supported by provable, even scientifically based ‘knowledge’ about the

colonialist’s privilege. “At the heart of colonization, Partha Chatterjee has argued,

is the rule of difference.” In order to uphold their power, European empires had to

be explicit about “codifying difference—particularly codifying race” in order to give

credibility to why their subjects were not rights-bearing citizens, even if they were

part of the same empire. In other words, in order to hold onto power they had to

convince their subjects that they were not worthy of a voice in the political

33 Cooper, 28.34 Charles de Gualle, 9 May 1969. http://www.quoteworld.org/quotes/3480

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structure.35 One of the most effective methods of doing so was through race

theory.

Ever since the slave trade, Europeans have justified their subjugation and

subordination of African peoples through one excuse or another. During the time

of colonization, theories began to evolve about “primitive origins and primitive

classifications, modern decadence, the progress of civilization, the destiny of the

white (or Aryan) races, the need for colonial territories,” and a host of other lofty

claims of European hegemony.36 Numerous books were written on the subject,

such as Robert Knox’s The Dark Races of Man and Gobineau’s Essai sur

l'inegalite des races humaines,37 in which ‘scientific’ studies were done, “whose

drift[s], almost without exception, was always to raise Europe or a European race

to dominion over non-European portions of mankind.”38 In fact, such a culture of

racism even used Darwinian theories to justify the oppression or, as in the case

of the Herero of German Southwest Africa (presently Namibia), outright genocide

and extermination.39

Racism has long been a sore on the quest for the ambiguous ‘modernity,’

yet rarely does racism denote absolute extinction. While Charles Darwin’s theory

of evolution and natural selection did not explicitly condone the extermination of

one human ‘race’ by another, the intellectual following that his work created

sought to justify their racialized violence as “natural and inevitable—indeed, even

35 Cooper, 23.36 Said, 232.37 Ibid, 206.38 Ibid, 232.39 For further reading on the Herero genocide, see Sarkin, Jeremy. Germany's Genocide of the Herero Why Kaiser Wilhelm II Gave the Order.. London: James Currey, 2011.

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beneficial and progressive.”40 Such attitudes lead to the infamous “attempted

genocide of the Hereros…in which over 80 percent of the Hereros were

annihilated.”41 The Herero people had been a thorn in the German colonial

government’s side, and so the colonial government sent for General Lothar von

Trotha42, who, upon arrival, issued the notorious annihilation decree, the

Vernichtungsbefehl, of 2 October 1904. In his order, he threatened that every

Herero within German-occupied boundaries, “whether found armed or unarmed,

with or without cattle, will be shot.”43 Those who were not killed were driven into

the waterless Omaheke desert or put into squalid and isolated concentration

camps, a frightening foreshadowing of the Third Reich just four decades later.

Trotha, when asked to account for his actions, cited Darwinian principles, stating

that “he believed that the contest between the Germans and the Hereros was a

racial struggle that must ultimately end in the extermination of one party or the

other.”44 A sense of superiority was cemented among the Europeans, beliefs that

created the adverse reaction in their subjects, that of an inferiority complex.

The mere existence of a superiority complex sculpted by the colonizing

powers demands the subsequent existence of an inferiority complex. “The lack of

human dignity expressed by Africans,” proclaimed Nelson Mandela in his famous

Rivonia speech of 1964, “is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy.

40 Weikart, Richard. "Progress through Racial Extermination: Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and Pacifism in Germany, 1860-1918." German Studies Review 26.2 (2003): 273-294. 275.41 Ibid, 288.42 See Appendix43 Pakenham, 611.44 Weikart, 288.

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White supremacy implies black inferiority.”45 The inferiority complex, while

intricately entangled with the superiority complex, manifests distinctively in the

colonized subject. As an inherently oppressed group, the colonized were faced

with the infamous “double bind—situations in which options are reduced to a very

few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation.”46 Out of these

inescapable realities facing the colonized, the inferiority complex took shape. The

first measure of inferiority comes from the aforementioned glass ceiling imposed

by all forms of colonization, whether direct, indirect, or apartheid.

In a society where racially imposed structures were the inescapable norm,

for those at the bottom of the ladder, life did not offer many choices. Under direct

rule, the option of assimilation presented a clear double bind; either attempt

(inevitably without complete success) to become like the colonizer, and lose

connection to your own culture, or sit in idleness and wait to be wiped out by the

colonizer. In his book Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon analyses how the

inferiority complex plays out in those trying to navigate the complexities of

colonial society. According to him, every subject under colonial rule, “in other

words, people in whom an inferiority complex has taken root, whose local cultural

originality has been committed to the grave” are judged, and judge themselves,

“in relation to the civilizing language: i.e. the metropolitan culture.”47 He depicts

this struggle as the quest for whiteness, since that is what the colonized has

45 Nelson Mandela. “Statement from the Dock at the Opening of theDefense Case in the Rivonia Trial.” Pretoria Supreme Court, South Africa.20th April, 1964 http://www.anc.org.za/343046 Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality. (Tramansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press, 1983)47 Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 2.

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been indoctrinated to believe is civilized and pure in the world. He gives the

example of a Black man from Martinique, such as himself, who departs for

France for the first time. In his mind, he is leaving behind the lack of opportunity

and culture for something better. He feels the “call of Europe like a breath of

fresh air,” with its high (white) culture and advanced (white) civilization. In order

to prepare himself, he must first learn to differentiate between his ‘Black self’ and

his ‘White self’ if he is to survive in the metropole.48

In order to be taken seriously in the ‘mother country,’ the subject must

differentiate between his two opposing dimensions: the “one with his fellow

Blacks, the other with the Whites.” This means that he must cease speaking

Creole, practice his diction constantly, and not give the white man any fodder to

call him uncivilized or savage; a sizeable task to say the least. Especially in

countries such as France, where a heavy emphasis is placed on the language as

a measure of cultural adeptness, the pressure to behave like a ‘civilized’ (i.e.

White) person is increased exponentially.49 Therefore, the Black is expected to

forego his identity in order to become, in essence, White. To do so, he must “stop

behaving as an actional person” for his actions are “destined for ‘the Other’ (in

the guise of the white man), since only ‘the Other’ can enhance his status and

give him self-esteem at the ethical level.”50 However, even after making his trip to

France, he has isolated himself from his own culture. Upon his return, Fanon

notes, “he can no longer understand Creole; he talks of the Opera House, which

he has probably seen only from a distance,” and assumes an air of

48 Ibid, 1.49 Ibid, 1.50 Ibid, 132.

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condescension towards his fellow islanders, which alienates him from his friends

and family.51 This desperate desire to disguise his core identity in order to

achieve a higher status was also exhibited in the politics of sexual relationships

between the colonizer and the colonized.

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon details the nuances of relationships

between a man of color and a white woman, as well as a woman of color and a

white man. For the purposes of this study, the latter is better suited to exemplify

the inferiority expressed by the colonial situation. Fanon uses the testimony of

Mayotte Capécia, whose book Je Suis Martiniquaise (I Am A Martinicuan

Woman) is, in the eyes of Fanon, “a third rate book, advocating unhealthy

behavior.” Nevertheless, her autobiography provides numerous examples of how

Blacks were indoctrinated to aspire towards Whiteness while harboring distain for

their own skin. She expresses the various perceived virtues of being white, such

as the general acceptance that “one is white if one has a certain amount of

money,” giving an economic imperative for assimilation, and touching on a root

justification for claims of white supremacy.52 Additionally, Capécia takes pride in

the fact that her grandmother was White, meaning that her affair “was a gift and

not a rape,” as so many others were within the métisse population.53 However,

despite this, she “decided that I would love only a white man, a blonde with blue

eyes, a Frenchman,”54 showing an unwillingness to see the beauty (let alone the

value) in her own countrymen. Capécia’s comments are reinforced by a

51 Ibid, 7.52 Ibid, 26.53 Ibid, 28, fn.54 Ibid, 29.

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conversation Fanon had with another woman from Martinique who said “there is

a white potential in every one of us; some want to ignore it or quite simply

reverse it. Me, I would never accept to marry a nigger for anything in the world.”55

Such disgust for one’s own people compounds the inferiority complex by

devaluing their brethren to being inescapably unequal to Whites, regardless of

their virtues. However, in any case where the Blacks attempt to assimilate to

what they believe will improve their status in the world end up contending with

the infamous double bind of oppression. “Rejection of self,” says Albert Memmi,

“and love of another” are common traits to any aspiring assimilé.56 Therefore, no

matter how hard they try to escape their roots, what they aspire towards will

never be fully achieved. Meanwhile the connection to their people will slowly

fade, leaving the subject in a cultural limbo.

Within the colonial structure, assimilation was intentionally placed just on

the other side of the glass ceiling; enticing yet barely out of reach. In the French

Empire, for example, “subjecthood existed alongside citizenship, a category in

theory attainable but in practice withheld.” The prerequisites for becoming a

citizen were intentionally “narrow, culturally specific notions of Frenchness” that

made the possibility of their attainment almost absurd, even, in reality, for many

French people.57 This tactic was intentional, for as Memmi wisely notes, to expect

the “colonizer [to] accept assimilation and, hence, the colonized’s emancipation,

means to topple the colonial relationship.”58 If the subjects could be made equal

55 Ibid, 30.56 Memmi, 121.57 Cooper, 175.58 Ibid, 126.

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to their colonial masters, then what use would colonization serve any longer?

How could the Great Powers justify their absurd exploitation? Unable to gain

political rights through any means, whether it be in a colony of direct, indirect, or

apartheid rule, the choices of the colonized soon narrowed to just one: violence.

Colonization was a system of complete and total humiliation and

degradation for the colonized. The colonized’s situation cannot improve unless it

be by “doing away with the colonial relationship” altogether.59 The colonial

relationship is not a negotiable network; “like an iron collar, it can only be

broken.”60 In his book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon talks extensively

about how violence was used as a reaction against the debasement of the

colonial subjects. “The determination to have the last move up to the front” says

Fanon, “can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course,

violence.”61 The colonized subject has been “reduced to the state of an animal”

by the colonizer, which wears on his self worth and, ultimately, his patience. The

example of the Herero is useful in this context. They started a revolt against the

German colonial government because they were being marginalized and treated

like “dogs, slaves, worse than baboons on the rocks,” according to a Herero

speaking to a German settler.62 Unfortunately, the turn to violence only made the

situation worse for the Herero, who fell victim to the German’s superior

technology and numbers, therefore ingraining further the sense of inferiority

59 Memmi, 126.60 Ibid, 128.61 Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 3.62 Pakenham, 602.

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against the colonial adversaries.63 Whether in German South West Africa or

Algeria, South Africa or the Gold Coast, the prospect of violence was another

example of how, even with superior numbers, the colonial subjects were caught

in a double bind.

Since the colonizer’s world was built upon conquest and artificial power,

the colonized represented a constant threat to their dominance. The colonizer

degrades and insults the colonized, accusing him of cowardice and savagery,

hoping to break his spirit completely. Providing further reinforcement, the

colonized knows that, upon even the slightest infraction, “all the resources of

science…would be placed at [the colonizer’s] disposal and, within a few minutes,

terrible weapons of defense and destruction” would be used liberally on the

‘subhuman’ population without remorse, posing a grossly asymmetrical struggle.

This meant, “for each colonizer killed, hundreds or thousands of the colonized…

would be exterminated,” so as to ‘break even.’64 Such a deadly double standard

was expertly portrayed in Gillo Pontecorvo’s groundbreaking film The Battle of

Algiers. In one scene, the French commander, Colonel Mathieu, is in a press

conference with Ben M’Hidi, a captured leader of the FLN. A French journalist

asks Mr. M’Hidi, “don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and

handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?,”

referring to an earlier scene in which women were used to plant bombs at various

locations in the Kasbah. In response, M’Hidi coolly and calmly retorts, “And

63 For more information on how technology affected the feelings of superiority and inferiority, see Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.64 Memmi, 93

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doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on

defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims?

Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your

bombers, and you can have our baskets.”65 To this, Colonel Mathieu says

nothing, showing the inhumanity and cowardice behind the colonial mission, yet

also the bind in which violence puts the populace. If they do not act, their

destruction will be slow, long, without dignity, and mired in their perceived

inferiority. However, even if unsuccessful, “violence is a cleansing force. It rids

the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing

attitude.”66 And throughout the continent (let alone the colonized world), violence

became a force so powerful, whether realized or threatened, that the wave of

independence washed Europe’s empires from the map. However, despite the

flag-independence that followed the numerous revolutions and movements of the

1950s and 1960s, the legacy of colonialism, particularly the colonial complex

lives on through neocolonialism and unbalanced market capitalism, or as it is

more commonly known, globalization. From my experience in Cameroon, where I

lived and studied for nearly 5 months, evidence of this colonial residue was

plentiful, and speaks volumes to the grip Western culture has on this country and

its people.

Cameroon67, a country nestled literally at the intersection of West and

Central Africa, became a German colony on July 14, 1884, and remained so until

65 Battle of Algiers. Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. Perf. Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi. Rhino / Wea, 1966. DVD.66 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth. 51.67 See Appendix

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Germany lost the First World War, and were forced to cede it’s colonies to the

other Great Powers.68 Since Britain and France were the dominant powers on the

continent, they partitioned (unequally) the former German possession, with

Britain controlling the Western 1/5 of the country from Nigeria, and France taking

over the vast remainder. Officially, Cameroon was a League of Nations Mandate,

yet it was still treated by the Powers as a colony. In both the French and British

sections, “colonialists had come to rely on the peasant farmer to produce large

quantities of agricultural produce” to be exported to the mother country. Both

ruled through indirect rule, where they had “attempted to build a rural bourgeoisie

as a leading elite, conservative in nature, which would provide a bulwark” for the

facilitation of their colonial administration. By the time independence came

around, Cameroon “had become an economic appendage of the European and

—especially French—industrial economy.”69

Independence for Cameroon was a complicated matter. French

Cameroons gained independence on January 1, 1960. The following year, there

was a referendum in British Cameroons, in which the largely Muslim Northern

British Cameroons decided to join Nigeria, while the Southern British Cameroons

decided to attach itself to the former French Cameroons on October 1, 1961.

While the country is officially bilingual (with over 275 different mother tounges),

French is used predominantly, and the smaller Anglophone section is

increasingly marginalized by the administration in Yaoundé. In it’s nearly 50

years of independence, Cameroon has had just two presidents, Amadou Ahidjo

68 Mark W. DeLancey, Cameroon: Dependence and Independence. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989.), 8.69 Ibid, 27.

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(1960-1982), and Paul Biya (1983-present), a testament to the crooked politics of

the country. Today, Cameroon is considered one of the most corrupt countries in

the world, and while it remains relatively stable, the political and cultural situation,

as well as the still incredibly close ties with France, have created a neocolonial

situation that keeps much of the population feeling relatively helpless and

hopeless.

During my time in Cameroon, I noticed numerous examples of how the

inferiority complex still plays out in every day life. Most evident to me during my

first weeks there was how much of an influence Western culture and styles had

in Yaoundé. I was surprised by how many men I saw walking around with baggy

jeans and doo-rags, appropriating hip-hop style from the United States, let alone

the number of shirts I saw with President Obama on them. The older people that

I talked to said that many of the younger people were loosing touch with their

Cameroonian heritage, and preferred to assimilate to the Western images they

were bombarded with constantly through the media. This rejection of their

Cameroonian identity went so far as for many of them to desire to leave the

country, since they saw no opportunities there due to corruption and bad

governance. “How is it,” my host father, Gaston, asked me one day, “that the

richest businessmen in the country are still poorer than most higher level civil

servants and government workers? That does not sound like a fair system to

me.” What I saw as untapped potential, Cameroonians saw as a dead end,

where the only chance of success was to find a way out of their country. Most

often, their ideal destination would be the United States.

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Many Cameroonians romanticized the United States, and oftentimes

became quite excited when they found out where we were from. “In the United

States, racism does not exist any longer because of Obama,” my French

professor, Abraham, claimed one day. Many believed that the United States was

a country full of New York City’s and Los Angeles’s, where everyone is beautiful,

rich, and talented, and where no one suffered. Of course, we Americans were

quick to refute their claims, yet it was hard to blame them for their

misconceptions. Our media, the most powerful and prevalent in the world, gives

the impression that the United States is just like “Friends” or “The Adventures of

Zach and Cody;” that everyone looks like Brad Pitt and has a voice like John

Legend. In essence, the common consensus between many Cameroonians was

that the USA was a paradise where anyone could make their dreams come true.

Such slanted beliefs served only to further perpetuate the inferiority complex

through reminding them of their lack of access to economic resources, one of the

chief ways the colonizing (and neo-colonizing powers) justified their presumed

superiority. However, the complex was not just expressed through desire for

monetary gains, but by cultural assumptions and beliefs as well.

One of the most striking examples of how the inferiority complex was

displayed in Cameroon was through television commercials. One commercial I

saw often was for skin whitening cream. The commercial showed a very light-

skinned woman, soaked in bright, almost blinding light, rubbing skin-whitening

cream on herself. The commercial, which broadcasted in both French and

English, never explicitly said that the cream was for decreasing pigment, but said

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the product helped to achieve a “beautiful, healthy glow.” This is an example of

the color complex, which “privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in

areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market.”70 The

culprit, once again, is the global media, led by the United States and Europe,

which propagates the image of the “good life, of white beauty, white affluence,

white heroes, and brown and black entertainers/criminals” as the societal norm.

Cameroonians, as well as many other people in the non-white world, feel their

only hope for advancing their status is to continue aspiring towards whiteness

through any means necessary, a frightening reminiscence of Mayotte Capécia’s

desperate desire for whiteness mentioned earlier.71 In another commercial (for

beer, I believe), a Cameroonian male was throwing a party, which he seemingly

intended on keeping small. However, Cameroonian after Cameroonian shows up

at his door, and making him feel noticeably distressed until, out of nowhere, a

white man, holding a six-pack of the beer, arrives, which instantly brings a smile

to everyone’s face. While this may not be as blatant as the skin whitening cream

example, the change in attitude upon the white man’s arrival speaks to the

cultural perception that, with whiteness comes money, agency and stability. Both

of these commercials, as well as the many other manifestations of the inferiority

complex in contemporary Cameroon, deeply disturbed me, giving me the impetus

to write this paper.

Colonization, in all its forms, represents one of the most complicated,

coercive, and callous institutions ever created. Intentionally founded upon

70 Margaret Hunter. "The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality." Sociology Compass 1.1 (2007): 237-254. Wiley Online Library, 71 Ibid.

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artificial assumptions of supremacy over those perceived as different or less-

human simply because of their appearance and geographic location, the societal

and cultural fallout has remained engrained in post-colonial society to this day, in

former colonies and mother countries alike. Not until the global conceptions of

power, agency, and self-worth are radically redefined will the world see an end to

the colonial complex, which continues to infiltrate nearly every aspect of

contemporary life.

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Appendix

Image 1: Colonial World, 1900

(http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/

KISH_25_578.gif)

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Image 2: “The Colonial Squeeze” From an early 20th century German newspaper,

with the subtitle “Thus Colonize the English.”

(http://www.edteck.com/dbq/dbquest/quest10.htm)

Image 3: Frederick Lugard, architect of Indirect rule.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/LordLugard.jpg/

225px-LordLugard.jpg)

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Image 4: General Lothar Von Trotha, the ruthless general behind the genocide of

the Herero people from 1904-1907. (http://www.google.com/imgres?

imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/

5/55/20060312010950!Lothar_von_Trotha.jpg&imgrefurl=http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

File:Lothar_von_Trotha.jpg&h=600&w=311&sz=25&tbnid=IEQR74J1YHzSoM:&t

bnh=135&tbnw=70&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLothar%2Bvon

%2BTrotha&zoom=1&q=Lothar+von+Trotha&usg=__cmKTw_1gaxvLeG33h7Yo

RzEVMxk=&sa=X&ei=DTQJTaGVFIWisQOKw-GgDg&ved=0CC4Q9QEwAw)

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Image 5: Cameroon

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