Cultural Erasures and the Emergence of Monoculture: A Discourse Study of British Civilising Mission

Abstract

In the history of human invasions, European colonisation has had a huge impact globally. It colonised almost the whole part of the world. It used various strategies to colonise the nations and exploited those nations for multiple purposes. All the colonised nations were not kept under the same category and were classified as settler colonies, exploitation colonies and plantation colonies according to their utilisation. Moreover, the Europeans followed different strategies to keep those countries under control. The present paper aims to read the strategies used by the Europeans especially the British to colonise and control the Settler colonies by emphasising the concept of ‘civilisation’ used by the British to erase the cultural roots of the indigenous community. It also traces the attempts of the indigenous community in restoring their uniqueness in the present era through the re-writings of the history and communal activities. To do so the paper analyses select short stories from the settler colonies based on the themes of ‘residential schools’ and ‘stolen generation’.