The Alchemy of Conquest

What is conquest? It can be seen through many lenses: academic conquest, sexual conquest, political conquest. We conquest in our lives. We push to achieve, and we want to dominate our fears. We persevere with force. But what I am fascinated by is conquest on a macro-scale and since I am am exploring post colonial dilemma we must look at conquest with a colonial/ post-colonial lens that way we can be mindful of history, describe the present, and look to the future for insight on post-colonial themes.

Colonialism: A definition used in Cross Cultural Communication is:(a). the system by which groups with diverse languages, cultures, regions, and identities were united to form one states, usually but not limited to European power (b). the system by which a country maintains power over other countries or groups of people to exploit them politically, economically, and culturally (Martin and Nakayama, 28)

History has provided us examples and patterns of conquest over time. Whether it be the conquest of Meso-America, India, Africa, or the Pacific Islands, Conquest follows the following pattern (someone layed out in Todorov's Conquest of America:

1. When the exogenous party is in the environment of a native or home population, the party considers those who are around them as flora and fauna of the new landscape. The outside group is impressed by the natural resouces around them and are curious of the inhabitants. Due to the lack of understanding of the local culture, often the natives are considered by the new group as primitive or lacking of culture such as a language or religion. The natives are often not considered fully human. Because of this ethnocentric conclusion that the indigenous population is sub-human, the exogenous party finds it acceptable to assert cultural dominance by setting up missionaries as a way of "civilizing" the natives.

2. The new group is interested and inspired by the resources around them. Often these resources are not abundant in exogenous group's region of origin. Resources include but not limited to: cocoa, land, spices, silks, furs, wood, and precious metals and gems. Due to economic, personal, religious, and economic reasons, threats of violence or violence occurs and harms and disrupts the demographics of native population. Communication not utilized to understand the indigenous population, but to exploit it.

TRANSITION TO POST-COLONIAL IN STEPS 3-4 MORE OR LESS

3. This occurs when the non-exogenous party is dying/ losing identity/ losing face. There is a movement to preserve what is dying of the culture in terms of collecting pottery, recording songs, saving medicine rituals. But there is little done to preserve the people itself. It is as though the non-native group feels as though the people are not the culture. The culture is found within the objects used by the people. During this time, more and more native people are taking up practices or ideals of the dominant culture such as religion/ language/ and dress.

4. The now dispersed and mixed native group wonders what exactly its identity is and whether to preserve its old practices before the disruption of conquest in colonial terms. The exogenous members, often due to guilt, personal reasons, may be compassion even(this might be a very panglossian stance on my part), and other reasons, set up a government that works with the locals to 'develop' the local communities. Even though governments try to develop regions, a gap grows between native/ dispersed population and historically colonial government on a micro-level and/ or on an international level. Although countries such as Congo or India have been colonialized and then gained its independence, both countries have a long way to go in order to bgidge divide between Congolese or Indian societies and western society.

So looking at the patterns in conquest, you must wonder, DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN? Does remorse have to happen after conquest? Then why then does it happen? Can we prevent conquest then if we have so many examples of conquest and destruction to a culture. Well I think there is one more step we need to take and delve deeper in what exactly is conquest as we peel the skin further. Conquest is a manifistation of power. Conquest enables power to be asserted. The Spanish conquistadors asserted their power through colonialism. Remember when I said we conquer in our lives? Well we do so by asserting our power on a daily basis. Power is on a spectrum. We are constantly in the fluxes of it.

What is power? The oldest definition of power in the Oxford English Dictionary is "ability to act or affect something stongly; physical or mental strenth, might, vigour, energy, effectiveness. Power to me is like energy. It is constant. It can not be created or destroyed. It can be transferred. The Aztecs once were the most powerful civilization on the world. It was the most influential in Meso-America. But the Aztecs were conquered by the Spaniards and the conquistadors had the power to assert their dominance. You see, power shifts and moves.

What I am saying, in summation, is that I am not arguing if conquest is inevitable or not because what I am arguing is that power is always present and conquest is a manifestation or a forum for asserting power. Looking at history the pattern is certainly not optimistic. But what we know is that power is a dialectic. One can have all of the power and none of the power at the same time in response to conquest. Power is in a constant movement between parties who are conflicting. This is why social movements such as the Civil Rights movement or Women's Rights movement or even movements to move from colonialism such as independent and sovereign movements (Gandhi, Zapatista, American Revolution, American Indian/ Red Power movement) were possible. A dominative culture was overpowered by the following but are not limited to: words, actions, thoughts, message (verbal/ non-verbal), utilizing of the media. The issues that post-colonial societies face today are about reconstruction of identity through POWER so that they are heard and acknowledged. So that their voices could bridge the gap between western and occidental/ afro/ oriental societies maybe in economics and maybe in other ways as well. This is why conquest is important: so we are mindful of history.

And that was the alchemy of conquest.