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Colonial mentality


A colonial mentality is the attitude that colonized people feel themselves to be inferior to their colonizers based on the fact of colonization.

Critics claimed that Rudyard Kipling's portrayals of Indian characters generally supported the colonialist view that colonized people were incapable of surviving without the help of Europeans, describing these portrayals as racist. Examples of this racism are mentioning "lesser breeds without the Law" in Recessional and referring to colonized people in general as "half-devil and half-child" in the poem The White Man's Burden.

The term "Macaulay's Children" refers to people of Indian ancestry who adopt Western culture. The term is usually used in a derogatory fashion, connoting disloyalty to India. It derives from 19th century British historian and colonial administrator Thomas Macaulay, who regarded British culture as superior to Indian culture and who was the prime mover in replacing Indian languages/dialects with English as the medium of instruction. This process is often referred to as Macaulayism.

Spanish conquistadors, the first European settlers in the New World, divided the conquered lands among themselves and ruled as feudal lords, treating their Amerindian subjects as something between serfs and slaves.

Many Spaniards, however, objected to this encomienda system, notably Bartolomé de Las Casas, who insisted that the American indígenas (natives) were human beings with souls and rights and were, in the words of Queen Isabella I, "to be treated with justice and fairness". Serfs stayed to work the land and imported African slaves were exported to the mines, where large numbers died. Largely due to the efforts of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the New Laws were adopted in 1542 to protect the Amerindians, but the abuses were not entirely or permanently abolished.


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