To what extent is Todorov's analysis of the first colonial encounter relevant for 20th century colonial history?

His interest being that of the moralist rather than the historian, Todorov's The Conquest of America says in many ways more about the present day than it does about the issues dealt with in the book. Talking about the discovery self makes of the other, of the colonial view of difference as lack or absence, of the Foucauldian power-knowledge matrix that often accompanies colonial rule, and of the assimilationism vs. inferiority debate, Todorov's analysis of the first colonial encounter could not be more relevant for twentieth-century colonial history and beyond.

For Todorov, what took place in America after 1492 was not merely the invasion and progressive subjugation of one group of peoples by another, but an encounter between two ways of interpreting the world, between two systems of signs. In his history of cross-cultural communication, Todorov narrates how the Spaniards defeated the Indians 'by means of signs,' being in a higher plane of human communication in which logos had won over mythos, writing over oral culture. But through brutal conquest and borderline genocide, the Spanish conquest of America did away with external alterity: it is this discovery that self makes of the other and its subsequent eradication that Todorov considers 'heralds and establishes our present identity.' Indeed, the despreoccupation and neglect for the colonized other is recurrent in colonial history, and this other is often constructed in opposition to an imaginary self as books such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Said's Orientalism illustrate. The process of othering undertaken by the Spaniards in America as described by Todorov can be seen as quintessential to processes of mass killing and of the civilizing missions that follow the binary definition of oneself as superior or civilized.


This process of binary codification and othering is tied to a colonial view of difference as absence or lack, a recurrent feature in twentieth-century colonial history and after as argued by Chakrabarty. The 'savage' Indians are thus characterised by the Spaniards, who made no efforts whatsoever to learn their languages, as lacking custom, rites, and religion; a different system of exchange was equivalent for Columbus to the absence of a system, from which he inferred the 'bestial' character of the Indians. The danger of viewing difference as lack was as much present in Columbus' era as it was in the European scramble for Africa during the 1884-5 Berlin Conference (absence of a European-style nation-state as lack of sovereignty) or in more recent American 'nation-building' projects (absence of an American-style political system as lack of one).


This view of difference as absence led, according to Todorov, to two responses by the Spaniards, which parallel later responses by European colonial powers: the assimilationism of Las Casas vs. the inferiority of Sepúlveda. While Las Casas, in his 'humane' (what today would be called humanitarian) approach to the natives was that their lack of any structures could be solved through the propagation of the Christian faith, Sepúlveda argued that their lack derived in an inferiority that justified their submission to 'natural slavery' as formulated originally by Aristotle. But the problem in both cases, although today Las Casas may seem the go-for scenario, is that in both the colonized other remains to be truly discovered, his/her voice to be heard. What is denied is the existence of a human substance truly other, something capable of being not merely an imperfect state of oneself. This was a common problem in twentieth-century colonialism: although by the second half of the century most colonial powers had abandoned the rhetoric of biological inferiority for that of the modernizing mission (akin to Las Casas' propagation of the faith), the colonized other was seen as identical. This means that it became the projection of the colonial values on the other, and was rejected an otherness that was both equal and different, as evidenced by the American distaste for South Vietnam's premier Diem when he did not follow American guidelines and 'Americanization' programmes. In fact, as much as in Columbus' mind, according to Todorov, the propagation of the faith and the submission to slavery were seen as indissolubly linked, for many colonial powers of the twentieth century forced labour and the confiscation of property and introduction of waged work were seen as inseparable from the 'civilizing mission.' In the same way that 'Columbus had discovered America but not the Americans,'  the colonial projects of the twentieth-century invaded places whose populations they could not be bothered to understand or attend to.


Cortes' 'understanding-that-kills,' as described by Todorov, can also be roughly connected with the Foucauldian power-knowledge matrix so important in twentieth-century colonial contexts, in which the gathering of information of colonized peoples increased the power of the colonisers and viceversa, and became ever more so crucial during the counterinsurgency programmes of British, French and Americans in places such as Malaya, Algeria and Vietnam respectively. This was especially the case in the modernizing missions of the later half of the century, in which colonial interstitial power recreated its own field of exercise through the knowledge of the social sciences. Todorov shows how this understanding of knowledge, albeit in a less developed form, was already present at the time of the conquest of America: knowledge is never neutral, as it determines force relations. As Todorov puts it: '[for Columbus] nomination was equivalent to taking possession.'


There are however some limitations to Todorov's insights into twentieth-century colonial history. First, his reliance on Spanish sources gives a one-sided approach to the narrative, and the increased availability of sources from the colonized as we get closer to our own present time should ensure a more balanced approach to twentieth-century colonial history which is still in many ways lacking. Second, his overall theory occasionally underplays (although he does identify them) the differing Spanish approaches to the Indians and viceversa, and how both coloniser and colonised are not always monolithic entities. For example, the efficiency with which the Aztecs conquered their neighbours and incorporated them ideologically raises doubts about Todorov's notion that they were ineffective communicators. This leads him to verge on Orientalism or essentialism at times, but his ideas remain nonetheless thought-provoking and worth asking of twentieth century colonial history and beyond.