Cultural Imperialism

The Ancient World

While the term cultural imperialism did not emerge in scholarly or popular discourse until the 1960s, the phenomenon has a long record. Historically, practices of cultural imperialism have almost always been linked with military intervention and conquest. The rise and spread of the Roman Empire provides some of the earliest examples of cultural imperialism in the history of Western civilization and highlights both negative and positive aspects of the phenomenon. In an effort to assimilate the Etruscan people into Roman culture, the Romans replaced the Etruscan language with Latin, which led to the demise and virtual extinction of that language and many other aspects of Etruscan civilization. Rome spent the next several centuries expanding its empire, culminating in a period known as the Pax Romana. During this time, through a unified legal system, technological developments, and a well-established infrastructure, the Romans secured a fairly long period of relative peace and stability among previously war-torn territories. However, this peace was secured, in part, by the forced acculturation of the culturally diverse populations Rome had conquered.

Cultural Imperialism and Colonization

During the modern period, cultural imperialism became one of the primary instruments of colonization. Colonization is the forced extension of a nation's authority over people outside its own boundaries to expand economic domination over their labor force and resources and political control of their territory. While colonization was almost always initiated by some kind of military intervention, its full effects were achieved through practices of cultural imperialism. Fueled by a belief in the superiority of their own way of life, colonizers used law, education, and/or military force to impose various aspects of their own culture onto the target population. Motivated, in part, by a desire to purge local populations of allegedly barbaric, uncivilized customs and mores, colonizers also knew that the best way to mitigate resistance by the colonized was to eradicate as far as possible all traces of the former way of life.

One of the clearest examples of the forced acculturation of a colonized population was the Spanish influence in Latin America, beginning with the conquest of the Aztec empire by Hernan Cortes during the early 16th century. After securing their physical presence in the region, the Spanish suppressed Mesoamerican culture, forbidding the Indians to learn and transmit their culture while simultaneously requiring them to read and write Spanish and convert to Christianity. This behavior was certainly not unique to the Spanish; other examples include the British influence in India and the Dutch and French presence in the Caribbean. Today, charges of cultural imperialism often still carry this legacy of association with the historical experience of colonization.

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