From Salvation To Servanthood

The seventeenth century is an age when many settlers in colonies managed their settlements in the first stage of the early modern British colonial expansion.Along with the development of social economy and the rise of British national consciousness in addition to cultural conflicts of multi-dimensional values,English people as pioneer colonizers in the early modern period started their expansions over large segments of the world.Oroonoko reflects early British colonial settlements in the Americas.A white woman,the first-person narrator,unfolds the narrative framework which sets the story with the experience that an African prince is sold to Surinam as slave.The novel's narrative patterns,characters,ownership of slave have much to do with moral values and political significance of the colonial literature.Oroonoko has provided a prerequisite and a necessary basis for later overseas expansion and hegemony of the British Empire.The English colonizers make a great contribution to the generation of colonial legitimacy in the New World,which in turn reveals the truth that the essence of the so-called salvation is in effect to enslave the other.The Introduction includes a literature view,the thesis statement as well as analytic methods for this thesis.Many critics have noticed a series of physical and mental sufferings and identity crisis the protagonist experiences when he is brought to America from Africa,and have discussed the spirit of abolitionism and anti-slavery from multiple perspectives.The issue of colonial legitimacy has not yet caught critical attention,which leaves some space for the present study.The First Chapter traces the colonial legitimacy in cultural tradition,which,in depth,declares English settlers' religious motivation and ideological awareness in the course of developing in overseas expansions.Based on traditional sources of British colonial expansion,this present thesis approaches in series the legitimacy from Arthurian empire,which provides the tradition of exploration,to a golden age ruled by Elizabeth I of England,which retains the tradition of dominion,down to early modern period needed to be critiqued.The Second Chapter is mainly engaged in a discussion of the colonial legitimacy in geographic space,which mirrors global and contested spaces over the world.The legitimacy for spatial occupation is manifest in the formidable dominance of colonial economy.There are two different geographical spaces in the novel—native geographical space in Africa and colonial geographical space in Surinam.As the spatial occupation of English settlers,the global hegemony is established after a great historic transition in the Restoration era.English colonizers claim to be the rightful regulator in geographic space.Chapter Three focuses on the essence of salvation which is to serve for English colonizers in Surinam under absolute sovereign in Oroonoko.There are two contrasting forces discussed in this novel.One is the origin of colonial economy,and the other is the different religions.Eventually,the interactions among the colonizers and the colonized form a dominant role of the British empire in the global world.The Conclusion summarizes the justifications of the British colonial expansion in Oroonoko from two perspectives,which presents the grounds of the British colonial legitimacy.Meanwhile,it mirrors Behn's inner doubts.On the one hand,Behn,as a pioneer colonist,do not oppose slavery per se;on the other hand,the writer has to accept anti-slavery and the New World setting of the historical trend.Under a specific period,the author builds an idealized colony in Oroonoko for English colonists' settlement and indicates the direction and movement of the British empire in the seventeenth century.The aim of this thesis is to explore the colonial legitimacy of British empire in early modern world,so as to give a critical assessment about the right authority of the colonial government and the trend of empire in the seventeenth century.