"A Small Place": Colonialism in the 21st century.

Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is a short and simple-written book narrating her own story as she traveled to her homeland of Antigua.  Inside this exotic and fascinating Caribbean island, Kincaid portrays her bitter and disappointing attitude towards the “new Antigua”. She criticizes the loss of social values and the corruption involving the government and the higher classes in Antigua’s society. Jamaica Kincaid clearly articulates the crisis plaguing other developing nations as well, such as African and Caribbean countries that have yet to overcome issues involving the negative legacies of colonialism and slavery.

The topic of corruption is, by all means, the most discussed and influential topic of Kincaid’s novel. It’s impossible to compare powerful nations such as the United States and Great Britain, to developing countries in South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Africa. We are currently living in a world where wealthy nations exploit, control and enslave other countries by economic practices instead of using whips and chains. This term, also referred to as “Neo-colonialism”, was coined by Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to describe the economic, social, cultural and political practice of using capitalism, business globalization, cultural imperialism and –international– economic arrangements to maintain colonial control. In other words, the essence of neo-colonialism is that sovereign states, although theoretically independent, are still subjected to economic systems and political policies directed from outside, mostly by powerful and greedy nations.

Despite the decolonization that occurred after World War II (1939-1945) was over, former colonial powers continued to apply economic arrangements with their former colonies to maintain political and economic control. Imperial practices were mostly done by the United States, and the empires of Great Britain, France, and other European countries. However, these practices can also be traced back to the discovery of America, where Spain, Great Britain and Portugal colonized and exploited countries by bringing slavery and taking all the natural resources back to Europe.

Neo-colonialism is also based upon the idea of breaking up large and united territories into small, non-viable states which are incapable of independent development. Therefore, these territories must rely upon imperialist nations for internal security and even international affairs. This idea can be traced to the separation of the former Yugoslavia, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, where socialist and communist regimes were in control. It’s no surprise the United States, and other capitalist nations, were involved in these issues. The Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union is the perfect example, mostly because it wasn’t a war between two powerful nations, but rather between socialist regimes and capitalist democracies.

Lastly, another facet of neo-colonialism is the disproportionate involvement of multinational corporations in developing countries. Many capitalist businesses invest an immediate and large amount of capital, but instead, these corporations just exploit the natural resources of developing countries. Privatizing and restricting national resources –and their access– has an influential role on local and national scales, such as unemployment and poverty, which results in the underdevelopment of these countries. Therefore, corruption and crimes involving the government of developing countries, such as Antigua in “A Small Place”, isn’t a local issue, but rather a web of economic interests linked to wealthy, imperialist countries.