N*akedness and colonialism

N*akedness and colonialism

Nakedness and colonialism is about the role of the unclothed bodies of Indigenous peoples in the history of contact with Western cultures and the emergence of concepts of race. In all human societies, bodily adornments of many kinds are part of nonverbal communications, indicating social status, wealth, and individuality. In climates which do not require clothing, Indigenous adornments are more often body paint, modifications such as tattoos and scarification, and jewelry, but serve the same social functions as clothing.

Europeans made interpretations of indigenous nakedness based upon their own culture and experiences, which were ambivalent regarding nudity. In classical Greek and Roman cultures nudity was normal in many situations, which were depicted in art.

In classical antiquity, only the Abrahamic religions viewed the body as shameful, requiring modest dress except in private spaces or when segregated by sex. In the post-classical period, public nakedness became associated not only with low status, but with moral decay based upon Christian beliefs. With the rediscovery of Greek culture by the West during the Renaissance, the nude in art became idealized, but distinct from nakedness in everyday life.

In the tropical regions of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, responses to encounters between Indigenous and Western cultures varied, and changed during the centuries of colonization, but were generally based upon the assumption of Western peoples and culture being more advanced. The effects of colonialism continue in contemporary non-Western societies. Outside urban areas, some retain or seek to reestablishing Indigenous cultural practices that include traditional nakedness, while in cities residents have generally adopted Western concepts of modest dress.

Colonialism and undress

Colonialism is the domination of one culture by another, which has occurred throughout history as one society extended control over neighboring territories. This process expanded as technologies for navigation and transport allowed for contact with more distant parts of the world.

The justifications of European expansion began in the 1500s in the context of religion and folklore that included beliefs in demons and half-human monsters. By the 18th century European thought was embracing ideas of social progress from primitive to agriculture to industrialization. Many Europeans justified colonization as spreading civilization rather than as conquest.

Because clothing and body adornments are such an important part of non-verbal communications, the relative lack of body coverings was one of the first things explorers noticed when they encountered Indigenous peoples of the tropics. From the beginning with Columbus in the 15th century until the British in India in the 19th century, Europeans were concerned with attributing meaning to states of undress, which they did not see as a natural state for humans.

Being properly dressed in Western cultures was so full of meanings that the scanty dress or nudity of others needed an explanation, which was generally provided by religion. One of the enduring stereotypes of non-western others is the naked savage based upon the belief that clothes being the signifier of membership in a civilized society, the lack of clothes represented the complete lack of culture.

In Victorian England, the naked body was a potential source of moral decay, which was domesticated by proper dress. Any glimpse of the body through improper clothing was a danger to sobriety, chastity, and social order. In The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin wrote of the indifference to nakedness among the natives of Tierra del Fuego, who "one can hardly make oneself believe are fellow creatures, and inhabitants of the same world".

Non-western cultures during the early modern period were naked only by comparison to Western norms. The genitals or entire lower body of adults might be covered in many situations, while the upper body of both men and women would usually be unclothed. However, lacking the western concept of shame regarding the body, complete nudity in public for practical or ceremonial purposes was common. Children until puberty and sometimes women until marriage might be naked as having "nothing to hide".

Western ambivalence

Contact effected not only non-European cultures, but caused European cultures to reevaluate what it means to be human. From the Ancient Greeks to the Medieval period, there had been a distinction between two types, civilized humans and barbarians who were human, but lacking in culture.

The variety of human societies that became known in the early modern era produced additional distinctions, including those that colonizers saw as sub-human. Savages could be considered fully human, and thus capable of being brought into civilization by religious conversion; or an inferior breed to be enslaved or exterminated.

Western ambivalence about the human body could be expressed by responding to the nakedness of natives as either a sign of rampant sexuality or of the innocence that preceded the fall of man. The ambivalence of the West included geography and biology. Some imagined the tropics as "paradise" but others viewed it as primitive, and temperate climates as more complex. In the 19th century, with the acceptance of evolutionary theory, it was recognized that humanity had originated in the tropics based upon anatomical similarities to apes.

Charles Darwin thought that it was migration to less hospitable climates that offered the challenges that promoted development of modern humans. Lacking knowledge of genetics, beliefs regarding the origin of humans tended toward polygenism, that each race of humans had been a separate creation, which fit with belief in Europeans being a distinct and superior race. Darwin favored monogenism, that humans had a single common ancestor. Monogenism in the form of the recent African origin of modern humans is the dominant theory among contemporary paleoanthropologists

Changing concepts of race

From the 17th century, European explorers viewed the lack of clothing they encountered in Africa and Oceania as representative of a primitive state of nature, justifying their own superiority, even as they continued to admire the beauty of Greek statues. A distinction was made by Europeans between idealized nudity in art and the nakedness of Indigenous people, which was uncivilized and indicative of racial inferiority.

In the late 19th century, British scientists including Thomas Henry Huxley were using nude photographs of natives supplied by the British Colonial Office as evidence for theories of race based upon comparative anatomy.

Photographing naked natives also became popular with non-scientists such as travel writers and missionaries, who used the link between indigenous nudity and science to justify the display of images that would otherwise be classified as obscene. Eventually such images became widely distributed as curiosities, spreading the idea that colonized peoples were naked savages.