In my setting, 90% of the world is uninhabited wilderness due to monsters, and inhabited lands must be cleansed and then inhabited(with most political units being large city states or republics). My setting is also entering a colonial era of exploration, but I'm wondering how to portray colonization when any colonizers would naturally settle and build on unoccupied land, and wouldn't take over entire continents and dominate indigenous peoples, and I'm wondering if that might be separating
(2/2) colonialism from it’s realistic brutal history, as even if colonizers tried to take over natives and exploit them for resources, they simply wouldn’t be able to conquer/subjugate them and their entire land, which makes me wonder how I should portray colonization/worldwide expansion at all(especially since trying to represent future developments like Afro-American culture or poc with European religions/names divorced from their violent original history seems like whitewashing colonialism)
Monsters and Fantasy Colonization
It is whitewashing colonialism, but perhaps not for the reason you think. And that reason is that colonizers thought the lands they colonized were uninhabitable untamed wilderness due to “monsters”: Indigenous peoples.
A major goal of colonialism was to hunt and kill and enslave and generally “cleanse” the “monsters” in order to make room for white Europeans. It’s one of the reasons the concept of race was invented: to classify not white-Europeans as less human, therefore more monstrous, therefore perfectly fine to hunt and kill and enslave.
You legitimately cannot make this scenario not hurtful the way it is. If they really are monsters and lack sentience, then you codify the concept that colonizers are justified in taking over everything to “civilize” the “wilderness” (hint: colonized lands were never “untamed wilderness” and were actually very carefully curated, constantly-managed ecosystems. Yes this is anywhere humans lived). If you give them even a little bit of sentience, then you have 100% recreated Earth colonialism. And all animals have some degree of sentience, working under their own rules for how they behave.
Attack on Titan as example
A really, really good example of how subtle but how insidiously evil this “the only safe place is this small area” attitude can be is Attack on Titan. If you’re unfamiliar, Attack on Titan has people live in walled cities because outside of the walls are full of “monsters”, the Titans, who eat people. A major goal of the cities’ government is to kill as many of these “monsters” as possible, to make sure humans can expand back out and stop living in walled cities. This is even after it’s revealed Titans have human forms.
Now toss in the knowledge that the author is a Nazi sympathizer and the “monsters” stop being monsters and start being Jewish (as the series progresses, all people who have the ability to shift into Titans are marked with star patches on arm bands. I should not need to explain why this is bad).
Dehumanization and Eugenics
The concept you can’t co-exist with monsters is a very… colonizer thing. It’s rooted in various xenophobic attitudes that colonizing nations around the globe have perpetuated to justify their goals of taking over everything. There’s a reason that one of the steps for genocide is dehumanization: colonization leads to genocide. So by setting up this world as “out there is nothing but monsters, we can’t go there unless we destroy things and make this safe”, you’re living up to centuries of colonizer attitudes that have been passed down through culture as “necessary”. When it’s not.
The fact you use the word “cleanse” is very much a dogwhistle for Nazi (/generally eugenic) ideals. I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but when you start using such clinical, dehumanizing, genocidal words… marginalized people especially are going to draw parallels to various supremacists who have used that word in the past. A “population cleanse” is eugenics, full stop.
Co-existing with the monsters
You have the option to make it so they learn to live with the monsters and treat the monsters as part of the world, a necessary part of the world, and have rules in place to protect everyone the majority of the time. Maybe always have a fire roaring at camp so they know to stay away. Maybe leave out offerings so the monsters don’t feel the need to hunt you and learn it’s better to leave you alone because you help. Clear paths that make it easier for everyone to navigate the world. Hunt only what you need, making sure to leave plenty to go around, both plant and animal.
You don’t have to see outsiders as monsters. They can just exist, under their own rules, and all of those rules can coexist. Because monsters or not, they are part of the planet’s biodiversity, and just for that sole reason, they deserve respect.
~Mod Lesya
More on this Story’s Parallels to Colonization
I need to ask this question - are these colonizers the protagonists, or in any way portrayed as the “good guys”? Because in that case, I’m sitting here wondering why the word “colonial” needs to preface the idea of “era of exploration” at all.
As Mod Lesya so thoughtfully and thoroughly explained above, the current scenario is very hurtful. The very idea of “uninhabited wilderness” existing is rooted in the idea that if some place doesn’t have the “humans” aka colonizers living there, then it’s unoccupied and free real estate. This is frankly untrue if anything is living there, even if said inhabitants are seemingly monstrous. That place is not wilderness and is not uninhabited, it is already occupied and the territory of others and humans are the guests at best and intruders at worst. That should give you perspective that this is not people just taking over free land that no one else is using, this is people taking over with force a land that the natives were already living on, and it’s hard to see this as anything other than an aggressive takeover with dehumanization and genocide.
Plot and Characterization
If these humans want or need to explore the world and spread out due to sympathetic reasons (aka they are supposed to be the good guys), then take out colonialism. People can leave their homes and go to different continents and make a place for themselves without colonialism. Let them be immigrants, let them be travelling merchants, let them be ambitious explorers, whatever you want them to be, as long as they respect the natives. Let your humans remember that they do not have any inherent right to what the land has to offer. If they’re going out to the world, they should learn that they have no right to take over and “fix things” to their tastes, and instead must learn how to be part of what is already there.
-Mod Rune
