Discourse on Colonialism is an essay written by Martinique writer, Aimé Césaire, and was first published by Éditions Réclame in Paris in 1950. The publishing house was affiliated at the time with the French Communist Party.
The essay introduces the idea that colonialism did not improve the lives of those colonized – it only sought to cause devastation in the lives of those affected. Césaire argues that colonizers sought to economically exploit countries, under the pretense of saving them from becoming savages. Instead it was the European colonizers that behaved like savages by stealing people’s autonomy and the land they lived on.
The essay was an addition to Césaire’s poem “Cahier d'un retour au pays natal” (1939), in which he describes his return from France to his native Martinique. Césaire also argues against the Marxist theory that “that capitalism would always disintegrate into Nazism” and instead advocates “it is a new society that we must create.”
