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Colonialism in Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe

Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe was known as a colonization novel. It was considered as the first novel in English literature written in prose narrative. This novel was well received in the literary world and it made the foundation for the realistic fiction genre. Defoe 's novel was based partly on one of the British ships ' sailors ' tale. This Scottish sailor is Alexander Selkirk who refused to go on sailing on the ship after it leaked badly. But the difference between these two stories is obvious. Selkirk chose to be on the island. On that island was not any people while Defoe 's Crusoe was forced to be on the island after the shipwreck, and there were people on the island like Friday and some other ones who released later from the cannibals. The other difference is that the time they spent on the island. So Defoe used at least a part of Selkirk 's story which gave the inspiration for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Some other critics claimed that this novel was influenced by Ibn Al-Tufayl 's Story Hay ben Yaqzan without going in deep details, it had almost the same story. Ibn Al-Tufayl story had a great influence on the Arabic literature, Persian literature and the European literature. This work also had a profound influence on both classical Islamic philosophy and modern western philosophy. This novel is also considered a precursor to the European bildungsroman. So these critics based their claim according to the influence of this novel on the eighteenth century novel genre. The Irish writer James Joyce 's suffering of colonization, since Ireland is the first colony Britain colonized, made him say that Crusoe is the symbol of the British conquest. Crusoe is the prototype of the colonist. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe which is clear in the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, and the calculating taciturnity. So it is clear that from Joyce 's perspective this novel is a deep depiction of the colonialism. Another opinion can shed light on the origin of Defoe 's novel Robinson Crusoe. According to the British explorer, historical and writer Timothy Severin 's book Seeking Robinson Crusoe unraveled a much wider and more reasonable range of potential sources of inspiration, and concluded by identifying castaway surgeon Henry Pitman as the most likely in the Monmouth Rebellion. An employee of the Duke of Monmouth, Pitman played a part. His short book about his desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony, followed by his shipwrecking and subsequent desert island misadventures, was published by J. Taylor of Paternoster Row, whose son William Taylor later published Defoe 's novel. Severin argues that since Pitman appears to have lived in the lodgings above the father 's publishing house and that Defoe himself was a mercer in the area at the time, Defoe may have met Pitman in person and learned of his experiences first hand, or possibly through submission of a draft. So this essay will focus on the island episode and how Crusoe made his colony to find out to what extend Robinson Crusoe is a colonization novel. The colonial imagery has to be regarded the context of Defoe 's novel, since it serves an archetypal text of the colonial enterprise. In a way Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe to be considered a perfect example for the spirit of the time it was written in. The way Robinson cultivates and reign the island and also the slave-master relationship between him and Friday represented the attitude of the colonial rule which is white European men, come to a foreign and uninhabited island and turn it into fertile and livable environment through their intelligence and hard labour. In a sense Crusoe attempts to replicate his society on the island. This is achieved through the use of European technology, agriculture and even an elementary political hierarchy. Several times in the novel Crusoe refers to himself as the king of the island, whilst the captain describes him as the governor to the mutineers. At the very end of the novel the island is explicitly referred to as a colony. The idealized master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen in terms of cultural imperialism. Crusoe represents the enlightened European whereas Friday is the savage who can only be redeemed from his barbarous way of life through assimilation into Crusoe 's culture. Crusoe’s labor gives him a powerful sense of ownership. When he first arrives on the island, he makes provisions for himself in order that he may be secure from savages and wild animals. He creates a small “fence or fortress” (Defoe 52). where he can protect himself during the night Later in the novel, there is evidence that Crusoe’s view of the island has changed. Because he must labor in order to survive, he develops a sense of ownership over the entire island and the island itself becomes a sort of fortress in that the surrounding ocean is a barrier from the rest of the world. After Crusoe sees the first foreign footprint in the beach, he did not only work to secure a small fortress for himself again, but he also organizes his weaponry and gunpowder so that he is capable both defense and offense. Crusoe’s response is almost insane in that he is nearly paralyzed by fear and stockpiles weaponry obsessively. Due to his apprehensions, he is even unable to sleep the first night after discovering the footprint and admits that his fear has taken over: “I foresaw nothing at the time more than my mere fear suggested to me" (Defoe 145). The amount of gunpowder and rifles he has collected are enough to outfit a small army. Crusoe’s behavior towards the island shifts and he labors for his livelihood. Although he begins to feel as if he owns the entire island, Cruse hasn’t actually labored over its entirety and thus violates Locke’s theory that ownership comes directly from labor.

According to Ian Watt who claimed in his book Myths of modern individualism that Crusoe " He himself has acquired a semi-historical status" (Watt 96). Defoe 's novel functions as archetypal story and his protagonist had become more than a fictive character, "This novel extended so far beyond the author 's intention. It is not the author, but the society, that metamorphoses a story into a Myth"(Watt 97). "Defoe 's novel seems to fall more naturally into place with Faust, Don Juan and Don Quixote, the great myths of our civilization." (Watt95). Thus the general notion of Crusoe, his character as well as companion Friday, serves rather as a preconception of a certain cultural phenomenon. Since Robinson Crusoe has turned into a myth. As it is noticed that Robinson Crusoe represents "characteristic aspirations of western man"(watt 97). More specifically " Crusoe lives in the imagination mainly as a triumph of human achievement and enterprise, and as a favorite example of the elementary process of political economy " (Watt97). In Robert P. Marzec 's Enclosures, Colonization, and the Robinson Crusoe Syndrome he claimed that "Defoe’s handling of the land in his Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain and in Robinson Crusoe indicates a more global structure of feeling coming into existence during this preimperial historical occasion. It is a structure that stands as a formal diagram for future colonial developments. Before England began to colonize open, wild, and uncultivated land and subjects abroad, it created an apparatus for colonizing its open land and subjects at home an apparatus that could readily be transplanted to distant territories. Enabling the British subject to establish a sovereign sense of identity, enclosures precipitate and prepare the way for England’s relocation in the expanding circle of the colonial world map. It was in the enclosure act that the ideology of imperialism became a material reality, with enclosures creating a new problematic that formed a nexus between the growing colonial cultural order, the domestication of foreign lands and peoples, monopoly capital, and the novel."(P135). Here Robert in his book wanted to say that England started to make use of the land belongs to Britain first by cultivating that land to plan later the expand of the colonization of the British empire for the uncultivated lands. So Defoe in this novel tried to depict the imperialism, and how Britain domesticate the land and people. It shows the relation between the new colonial cultural growing system and the colonizing the lands and the people.

Most of the English novels from the eighteenth to the twentieth century has references to enclosure and the chaotic nature of unenclosed savage common lands. This reference is very important to indicate the extent to which the English novel itself inscribed in the midst of a new imperial formation of land. This fact is very clear in Henry Fielding 's Tom Jones. When Jones couldn 't claim a legal and moral connection to the land. He lived as a vagabond without any form of identity, but after the truth of Jones 's blood relation to Al worthy, he became a landowner. The novel 's hero reached his maturation by domesticating false tendencies. So it is clear that Fielding replicate Defoe 's narrative and the development of Crusoe from a wayward who has no identity to a landowner who could make use of the land and own it. This relation between identity and land appeared repeatedly in the form of the anxiety that overwhelms the pre imperial subject.

The colonialist or imperial opposition between a self who is governed by an unruly nomadic impulse and one who has domesticated this impulse by becoming an agriculturalist or settler is a structural imperative of Western teleological narratives of identity formation. The movement of nomadic desire must come under control through the commodification of that desire in a colonialist apparatus. The specific form of that commodification is the enclosure act, the grounding of a previously open subjectivity in a fabricated or colonized land.

Exploring Crusoe 's experience on the island can be depicted as a reflection of the civilization and society growth. Regarding the religion prominent role that played in the novel, it would be worthwhile to examine the progression of religious and political thought in Crusoe 's society. Through the experiences of one man, we can observe the progression of religion from the private realm to the public realm, the conflicts inherent in such a progression, and the resolution to these conflicts.

It seems that Defoe was concerned with religious toleration for more than selfish reasons; he saw religious toleration as a moral responsibility of all Christians, including Catholics and Protestants, and as the only resolution to the conflict between the personal and public realms of religion. So Robinson Crusoe turns out to be just as concerned about toleration in general as it is about the virtues of Protestantism. At least in Robinson Crusoe, Defoe turned out to be fairly open-minded. Defoe used religion in his novel to reveal that colonialism exploitation of the religion as an excuse to reach its target. The target of colonialism is to enslave people and exploit them and confiscate their lands under the cover of the religion. This novel’s form, itself, is part of the very logic of the Crusoe syndrome we have been interrogating. The novel achieves its resolution, and the hero his true identity, by formulating individuation through the erasure of inhabitation. He sets himself up on the island by refusing to inhabit it, planting enclosures in order to colonize a savage land that paradoxically contains the same unruly forces that give Crusoe his excessive drive to constantly explore new territory. The two processes of individuation and the constant expansion of physical enclosures upon uncultivated space cannot be separated. It is in this taming of an excessive nomadic drive that we find the connection between imperial identity formation, the land, and capitalism. The ability to enclose will become the saving grace, that which will mark the difference between a civilized zeal and a savage walking.

Partly because he thinks he is the sole rule on the island, Crusoe eventually believes that he has the right to kill savages that land there. At first he questions his place in doing so: "What authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminal. How far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood, which they shed so promiscuously one upon another" (Defoe 153).

However, Crusoe goes on to kill a number of savages and makes Friday and his father his servants. In doing so, Crusoe exercises authoritarian political power on the island and he increases his power when others arrive there. Because he has inhabited it and labored there, he acts upon his feelings of ownership. Even Crusoe’s use of personal pronouns suggests his sense of authority. As Gustaf Lannert pointed out in his book An investigation into the language of Robinson Crusoe as compared with that of other 18th century works, "Crusoe’s use of thou sometimes give a touch of superiority or condescension towards the persons spoken to and expressing sometimes the highest degree of ‘Contempt, Anger, Disdain’” (Lannert 48). In this quotation we see that Crusoe behave as he is the king of the island. The way he talks to the others make the reader feels in his superiority. This kingship and superiority he got all because he labored the land and acquired the ownership on it. Also this quotation proves that the colonist only thinks about himself and his benefits.

According to the debates that mentioned above we can conclude that Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe is a depiction of the colonization system of the eighteenth century. Defoe 's view of the colonialism is presented in the character of Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe in his way of planting the land, protecting himself, dealing with Friday as a Master to slave, and how he taught Friday only the words that needs as a slave all are a sign of colonialism in Defoe 's mentality. Even converting Friday to Christianity gave a clue of the missionaries used through the colonization. So Crusoe never represent himself . He represented the whole system of colonialism at that time.

References

[1] Defoe. Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Dumat Ofset. 2013.

[2] Watt. Ian. MYTHS OF MODERN INDIVIDUALISM. New York. Cambridge University Press. 1996.

[3] Marzec. Robert. P. Enclosures, Colonization, and the Robinson Crusoe Syndrome. Ebsco publishing. Duke University Press.2002.

[4] Lannert. Gustaf. Lson. An investigation into the language of Robinson Crusoe as compared with that of other 18th century works. Cambridge. Cornell University Library. 1910

References: [1] Defoe. Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Dumat Ofset. 2013. [2] Watt. Ian. MYTHS OF MODERN INDIVIDUALISM. New York. Cambridge University Press. 1996. [3] Marzec. Robert. P. Enclosures, Colonization, and the Robinson Crusoe Syndrome. Ebsco publishing. Duke University Press.2002. [4] Lannert. Gustaf. Lson. An investigation into the language of Robinson Crusoe as compared with that of other 18th century works. Cambridge. Cornell University Library. 1910