Colonizers constructed elaborate ideological justifications rather than confronting their seizure as banditry

Evidence

You do not walk in, seize the land, the person, the history of another, and then sit back and compose hymns of praise in his honor. To do that would amount to calling yourself a bandit. So what do you do? You construct very elaborate excuses for your action. You say, for instance, that the man in question is worthless and quite unfit to manage himself and his affairs. If there are valuable things like gold or diamonds which you are carting away from his territory, you proceed to prove that he doesn’t own them in the real sense of the word – that he and they just happened to be lying around the same place when you arrived. Finally, if worse comes to the worst, you will be prepared to question whether such as he can be, like you, fully human. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism and his ‘colonization = thingification’ thesis; also resonates with how the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ essay treats ideology masking economic/political realities. — connects to: The colonized were cast as both evil and childlike to justify western intervention