"The Tempest" as a Colonial and Post-Colonial Text

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“The Tempest” as a Colonial and Post-Colonial Text
Literature is a form of art whose role is to communicate to the society about the values that should be upheld and the vices that should be abandoned. Shakespeare’s text, The Tempest, serves as an excellent example on the concept of exploitation that is prevalent in the modern society. The text espouses the relationship of a master and a slave, a colonizer, and the colonized, and a capitalist and a laborer. In the text, Shakespeare exposes the insatiable nature of humans as they seek to exploit the rest for their selfish gains. Therefore, the text is more about colonialism and post-colonialism.
Colonialism is a political-economic phenomenon that began around 1500 following the European discoveries of a sea route around America and Africa’s southern coast. The practice was a major issue during Shakespeare’s time, which prompted the author to incorporate his experiences with the events that followed the exploration of the new spaces and the scramble to control those lands by the explorers. Those affected perceived the practice as a white man’s burden in which the colonizer sought to impose their culture to their subjects. In the Tempest, Prospero’s capture of Sycorax’s land and his subsequent treatment of the natives of the island has led many analysts to interpret the play as revealing the drama that surrounded colonization. Caliban’s resistance of Prospero’s perpetration of the colonial power through the language that the colonizer taught helps the reader to interpret the play as a post-colonial text.
In the 1700s and 1800s, some European countries that were at the forefront in scrambling for new spaces and advancing colonialism included Britain, French, Spain, and Netherlands. These colonial powers established their colonies in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean (Nimavat 426). Some of these colonial powers displaced the indigenous people from their lands and relocated their citizens to occupy the fertile lands. That takeover was extremely strategic that the colonies assumed the best places where they could harness the most resources. They used these lands for farming different types of crops, planning trees, and even mined precious minerals including metals, and coal. When they became overwhelmed with the work, they opted to force the locals to work on the farms and their factors, exploiting them both mentally and physically. Under extreme cases, these colonialists even sexually assaulted their workers.
World history shows that the colonial practice began with the Greeks and the Romans, who colonized several territories in the past and converted the local tribes into slaves. These colonialists perpetuated different types of colonialism. One of these was secular colonialism, where the colonialists expanded their territories to cover countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. The colonialists chose the best parts to settle and displaced the locals to less fertile areas. Consequently, indigenous populations such as the Maori lost their cultural identity and natural way of life. A second type of colonialism that the colonials used was the dependency colonialism, where a power country would establish an administration system that they would then use to govern the people without being physically present in the areas (Nimavat 426). This approach worked in India by the British, East Indies by the Dutch, and in the Japanese colonial Empire. Then there was the plantation colonies, whereby the colonizer would use the lands of the poor country to grow crops, forcing the locals to become squatters and labors on their farms.
Shakespeare wrote the Tempest in 1611, the time when colonization was rife in Britain. Even though it was a time when colonialism was still expanding, a critical analysis of the text puts it in the context of the post-colonial era. Shakespeare seemed to accurately predict the events that would follow the colonial process through his character called Caliban (Rao 45). The Play’s plot is based on an island with the unfolding events pointing towards the experience among the colonies. The author explains how the colonizers captured the natives’ land and how they controlled them by changing their culture and traditions. Prospero is the protagonist of the play and is the Duke of Milan. He went to exile to an unknown island together with his daughter Miranda. After traveling across the sea, he arrived at an island, which was inhabited by the native called Caliban. He then explores the island keenly using crooked means and after knowing all the information, he uses his wit and power to capture it and then enslave the Caliban. Prospero’s actions are comparable to the colonial events, which makes “The Tempest” a suitable source that covers the key aspects of colonialism.
Prospero embodies the colonialists as...