Written in 1956 when Morocco and Tunisia gained independence from France and soon after the Algerian war had started, this book describes the inescapable bonds between colonizer and colonized. Born in Tunis, Memmi is one of the colonized, but as a Jew, he identified culturally with the colonizer. He moved to France in 1956 and draws on his experience to analyze vividly how colonizer and colonized are mutually dependent, and ultimately both victims of colonialism. “The Colonizer and the Colonized [is] now regarded as a classic description of the inner dynamics of racism and colonialism, a work that in its economic and political sophistication, its sober perceptions of the interdependence of colonizer and colonized, rivals Franz Fanon’s more famous but more romantic Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.” — Richard Locke, The New York Times “The subject of colonialism has rarely been treated more lucidly and devastatingly than in this book.” — Library Journal “Widely influential.” — New Yorker “Confiscated by colonial police throughout the world since its 1957 publication, The Colonizer and the Colonized is an important document of our times, an invaluable warning for all future generations.” — Los Angeles Times “Albert Memmi’s characterology of master and servant has a personal as well as a social dimension. The pecking order he describes has its accurate analogues in the lives of middle-class Americans.” — Emile Capouya, Saturday Review

Over the last two decades, the experiences of colonization and decolonization, once safely relegated to the margins of what occupied students of history and literature, have shifted into the latter's center of attention, in the West as elsewhere. This attention does not restrict itself to the historical dimension of colonization and decolonization, but also focuses upon their impact upon the present, for both colonizers and colonized. The nearly fifty essays here gathered examine how literature, now and in the past, keeps and has kept alive the experiences - both individual and collective - of colonization and decolonization. The contributors to this volume hail from the four corners of the earth, East and West, North and South. The authors discussed range from international luminaries past and present such as Aphra Behn, Racine, Blaise Cendrars, Salman Rushdie, Graham Greene, Derek Walcott, Guimarães Rosa, J.M. Coetzee, André Brink, and Assia Djebar, to less known but certainly not lesser authors like Gioconda Belli, René Depestre, Amadou Koné, Elisa Chimenti, Sapho, Arthur Nortje, Es'kia Mphahlele, Mark Behr, Viktor Paskov, Evelyn Wilwert, and Leïla Houari. Issues addressed include the role of travel writing in forging images of foreign lands for domestic consumption, the reception and translation of Western classics in the East, the impact of contemporary Chinese cinema upon both native and Western audiences, and the use of Western generic novel conventions in modern Egyptian literature.

Written in 1957, when North African independence movements were gaining momentum, The Colonizer and the Colonized studies the enduring legacy, political as much as psychological, of colonisation throughout the world. Albert Memmi depicts colonialism as a disease of the European but crucially he demonstrates that colonialism destroys both the colonizer and the colonized, providing penetrating insights into colonial inheritance and resistance that remain as relevant today. One of the great works of twentieth-century political thought, The Colonizer and the Colonized speaks to experiences in the Global South as well as European countries such as Britain and France, who are still struggling with their imperial pasts. In revealing the mechanisms of colonial oppression, it also highlights the origins of all oppression of one group by another. This edition includes introductions by two of the greatest writers of the twentieth-century: South African novelist and Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Memmi examines the manifold causes of the failure of decolonization efforts throughout the world. As outspoken and controversial as ever, he initiates a much-needed discussion of the ex-colonized and refuses to idealize those who are too often painted as hapless victims.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The economic motives of colonial enterprises are clear today. The cultural and moral mission of a colonizer, even in the beginning, is no longer tenable. Europeans in the colonies want to go home because their lives there are not as good as they were in their own countries. #2 The settler who has become rich during his time in the colony will not leave until his advantages have run out. He will continue to live there until his livelihood is threatened, at which point he will seriously consider returning to his own land. #3 The colonizer is in charge of the entire colonial system, from the laws that grant him exorbitant rights, to the systems that exploit the colonized. He cannot help but notice how everything is rigged in his favor, and he cannot avoid living in relation to the two sides of the scale. #4 A colonial is a European living in a colony who has no privileges. A colonizer is a European living in a colony who has privileges, and a colonialist is a European living in a colony who has both privileges and an attitude of superiority towards other colonists.

"Reverse colonization narratives are stories like H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds (where technologically superior Martians invade and colonize England) that ask Western audiences to imagine what it's like to be the colonized rather than the colonizers. In this book, David M. Higgins argues that although some reverse colonization stories are thoughtful and provocative (because they ask us to think critically about what empire feels like from the receiving end), reverse colonization fantasy has also led to the prevalence of a very dangerous kind of science fictional thinking in our current political culture. Everyone, now (including anti-feminists, white supremacists, and far-right reactionaries) likes to imagine themselves as the Rebel Alliance fighting against the Empire (or Neo trying to escape the Matrix, or Katniss Everdeen waging war against the Capitol). Reverse colonization fantasy, in other words, has a dangerous tendency to enable white men (and other subjects of privilege) to appropriate a sense of victimhood for their own social and political advantage"--

Animals were vital to the British colonization of Myanmar. In this pathbreaking history of British imperialism in Myanmar from the early nineteenth century to 1942, Jonathan Saha argues that animals were impacted and transformed by colonial subjugation. By examining the writings of Burmese nationalists and the experiences of subaltern groups, he also shows how animals were mobilized by Burmese anticolonial activists in opposition to imperial rule. In demonstrating how animals - such as elephants, crocodiles, and rats - were important actors never fully under the control of humans, Saha uncovers a history of how British colonialism transformed ecologies and fostered new relationships with animals in Myanmar. Colonizing Animals introduces the reader to an innovative historical methodology for exploring interspecies relationships in the imperial past, using innovative concepts for studying interspecies empires that draw on postcolonial theory and critical animal studies.