The Deep Depths of Imperialism

Starting in the 1800’s, great economic powers, mainly in Europe, were searching for land, resources, cheap labor, and ports and routes for trade. These powers such as Britain, France, The Netherlands, and Portugal fought for land in Africa, the Middle-East, and Southeast Asia. In the story Shooting An Elephant by George Orwell, Britain has control of a nation called Burma in Southeast Asia. This story maps the journey of a sub-divisional police officer, Orwell himself, as he tries to maintain power over the Burmese people during the attack of an elephant in must. Throughout the story, Orwell tells of the struggles of Imperialism and how it affected him, the main character, and everyone else. Due to Imperialism in Shooting An Elephant, a hierarchy was set in two distinct ways between the imperialist and the imperialized, and the system that was created had both positive and negative effects.

In the story by George Orwell, Orwell talked of himself as being the “lead actor of the piece” and the one who ran everything in his assigned Burmese town. This is true because he did have the weapons and the power to do whatever he pleased in Burma and he was the one who was called when help was needed. He was not the only one who had any power in Burma. All Europeans seemed to look down upon the ragged “yellow faced” Burmese people and it is shown that they had power because people who have power are hated and all the Europeans in Burma were jeered at and called names by the native people. This mentality of looking down upon the natives came from the racism in Europe about all the people who were less civilized than themselves. Although they sometimes felt sorry for the native people because of how they were taken over for the gain of another nation, the Europeans still hated the natives and acted as if they were better than the natives in these places like Burma because of the racism they had been taught. “With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny…upon the will of the prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts.” This quote showed that although Orwell felt pity for the Burmese people, the racism and hatred taught to him as a trained British officer made him hate them and want to treat them like trash.