ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the first differentia of colonialism is a state of mind in the colonizers and the colonized, a colonial consciousness which includes the sometimes unrealizable wish to make economic and political profits from the colonies, but other elements too. It is becoming increasingly obvious that colonialism as we have come to know it during the last two hundred years cannot be identified with only economic gain and political power. In Manchuria, Japan consistently lost money and for many years colonial Indochina, Algeria and Angola, instead of increasing the political power of France and Portugal, sapped it. Colonialism is also a psychological state rooted in earlier forms of social consciousness in both the colonizers and the colonized. It represents a certain cultural continuity and carries a certain cultural baggage. The homology between sexual and political dominance which Western colonialism invariably used – in Asia, Africa and Latin America – was not an accidental by-product of colonial history.
