Madoc's Pantisocracy

Most readers and critics believe Madoc to be a poetic materialization of a Pantisocracy, a utopian community based on the principles of egalitarianism and Aspheterism that Southey and Coleridge unsuccessfully strived to establish on the banks of river Susquehanna in America. Strains of their Pantisocratic vision are visible in the initial drafts of Madoc, where the Welsh contingent, headed by prince Madoc settles among the ‘noble savages’ in Peru forming an egalitarian republic. But the final published version of Madoc presents a very different, convoluted version of the Pantisocracy first portrayed in the initial draft, with the ‘Britons’ establishing a ‘peaceful colony’ in North America only after dominating the ‘weak’ Hoamen and the ‘evil’
Madoc is the speaker of this short stanza and he stands against his brother’s tyranny and strives for peace. However, he does not exile himself through his voyage but chooses to extend his empire ‘far over the ocean’ by ‘rearing Cambrias flag’. Therefore, the intention behind Madoc’s journey is not merely to establish an equal society but to conquer a foreign shore. However, Southey calls Madoc a ‘blameless warrior’ in the same stanza, indicating that the fault of colonization lies not within Madoc but in his external environment, which forces him to establish his own kingdom on foreign shores. Another indication within the 1794 manuscript of Madoc’s colonial interests is his return from his American colony, giving reason to Southey’s geographic division of the poem. Much like all quests of colonial acquisition in history, Madoc too plunders the wealth of the foreign colony and brings it back to Wales to mark the success of his conquest. This is apparent when he
When the Azteca king retaliates by saying that their Gods of ‘irresistible might’ are not ‘feeble’, Madoc declares war on their tribe so that the Aztecas may accept the Christian God who ‘they know not, but who is also their own’. Therefore, the Welsh bring the American Indian tribe under their tyranny by utilizing Christianity as an imperialistic weapon. Also, by stating that the American Indian tribe is unaware of the nature of their own Gods, the Welsh, who are representatives of the Occidental world, trivialize the religious faith of the Aztecas by implying that they have more knowledge about the Aztec faith and are therefore, religiously superior. Edward Said in Orientalism uses Foucault’s discourse on power and control to explain the Occident’s assertion of supremacy through its accumulated knowledge about the Orient. By equalizing knowledge with power, the Occident justifies its colonialism by declaring that ‘the subject races did not have it in them to know what was good for them.’ Therefore, the Occident, in this case the Welsh contingent claim control over the American Indians through knowledge. ideas of Christian militarism are visible in Southey’s declaration at the very outset of the poem,