Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels: An Anti-Colonial Reading

I had another reason which made me less forward to enlarge his majesties dominions by my discoveries: to say the truth, I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions.--Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels (292)

What if Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is not a strict political parody of his modern times but an anti-colonial message dressed in the revelatory satire of a travel journal? True there are moments Swift attacks the Tory/Whig bilateral paradigm and the political power structure of the current English Empire yet, taken in its entirety, the form of Gulliver's Travels takes a grander scope rather than the accepted view of the work as a bifurcated collection of four ill-fated journeys. If we look at Gulliver as a semi-autobiographical extension of Swift complete with human neurosis and misanthropy, one may mistake the narrative voice of the work as a satirical commentary on modern politics. Gulliver, however, if we depoliticize the character from Swift, becomes an extension of the British Empire and finds himself immersed in the otherness of disconnectedness that characterizes colonialism. (Hawes)

Swift's authorial genius lays in the complexity of the story line and the overlaying narrative arc of Gulliver's Travels. In Steven Tobias's critical essay on Amos Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard, Tobias surmises "Swift, Melville, and Rabelais all wrote in order to challenge and subvert the dominant morality, culture, and language of their respective eras, in the process trying to reinvent their societies' normative values." (71) Gulliver's Travels explores colonialism without attacking it with the "customary literary weapons." (71) Instead, Swift creates an otherness in the character of Gulliver that transcends common apocalyptical satire and creates a work that critics argue at length over Swift's exact intent. (Sutherland) In Gulliver's form, Swift is implying the immorality of colonialism through the use of an overt colonial otherness.

Clement Hawes proposes "emphasis must therefore be given to the fact that the publication of Gulliver in 1726 comes within thirteen years of a key turning point in the history of British colonialism, the English acquisition in 1713 of the Asiento." (188) The Asiento is an exclusive contract with the Spanish possessions to provide slaves from the British Empire. (Said) Swift, therefore, is challenging a transvaluation of attitudes toward human commoditization and colonialism through creating a colonial otherness in the Lilliputians, Brobdingnag, and the Houyhnhnms and by marrying the cultural and physical differences in their sameness or connectedness to Gulliver's human experience. This marriage of differences creates a cultural empathy that highlights the immorality of colonialism.

What clues does Swift leave the reader to find the anti-colonialist tract in Gulliver's? How does he render the character Gulliver as a misanthropic amalgam of English colonialist policy? How does he structure the narrative to elucidate empathy within the reader allowing the reader to decipher the colonial tropes that create the otherness that separates the mes from the thems? First, we have to look at the structural differentiation of the self Swift develops in the character of Gulliver.

Earlier anti-colonial tracts such as Aphra Behn's Oroonoko attempt to marry the appearances of colonized peoples as European to create a shared empathy between the conqueror and conquered. Behn's Oroonoko "was pretty tall, but of a Shape the most exact that can be fansy'd: The most famous Statuary cou'd not form the Figure of a Man more admirably from Head to Foot. His Nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His Mouth, the finest shap'd that cou'd be seen; far from those great turn'd Lips, which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes." (44) Swift, however, in Books I, II, and IV, develops and exploits the physical structure of the otherness that we must examine in the differences of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnag, and the Houyhnhnms versus the humanness of Gulliver. Unlike Behn's 'European' African structured to create a common ground of empathy between the colonized and colonizer, Swift's Lilliputians, Brobdingnag, and Houyhnhnms are humanoid beings alienated from the humanness of Gulliver through their diminutiveness, largesse, or in the case of the Houyhnhnms, species.

Through the development of this otherness, Swift then foists Gulliver into colonial policy when Gulliver's ship is lost at sea and he awakes bound by the diminutive Lilliputians. Book I's most critical constructs are argued as a social criticism of the cost of supporting a standing English army. (Said) The narrative structure of Gulliver's, however, suggests Swift is not criticizing a standing army but the costs and challenges aligned with supporting a growing imperialist empire and the requisite naval vehicle.

Swift provides convincing evidence the body of Gulliver represents a British Naval ship, the vehicle of British Imperialism, rather than a standing army by describing the Lilliputians as 'boarding' his body and bearing meats and foods. The bindings and tie downs that hold Gulliver's body 'fast' to the ground are reminiscent of a ship moored in harbor. (30) The descriptions of the Lilliputians as curious creatures timidly approaching the giant that has washed ashore hints to the behavior of the Tahitians and Hawaiians that paddled out to greet the ships of early colonial explorers Captains Cook and Bligh.

In Mutiny on the Bounty, Nordhoff describes the curiosity of the Tahitians as "Bounty and the character Gulliver as safe, the higher classes appear to quench their natural curiosities. Just as the Bounty crew witnessed "a double canoe, which had brought out a handsome gift of pigs from some chief ashore," the Lilliputians bring the moored Gulliver beef to eat and delivered their Aristocracy to make speeches over the largesse of Gulliver's body. (Nordhoff, 85)

The treatment of Gulliver's body as an ocean vessel, however, is more decisive when he is used as the vanquisher of the Blefuscu Navy. Swift, however, as he establishes the body Gulliver as a sailing ship, announces the intentions of Gulliver's Travels as an anti-colonist tract when Gulliver pleads "no" when the Lilliputian council attempts to persuade him to bring the entire naval force of Blefuscu into the Ports of Lilliput.

"His Majesty desired I would take some other opportunity of bringing all the rest of his enemy's ships into his ports. And so unmeasureable is the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of nothing less than reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province, and governing it by a viceroy." (58)

Here, Swift's descriptions and satire of the Big-Endians and Little-Endians, which scholars propose is Swift's comment on the schism between the English Anglican and the Catholic Churches, suggests colonialism as Swift's desired target. (Seidel) Gulliver after the interjection of Swift's narrative voice continues, "I plainly protested, that I would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery." (58) The astute reader has to question Swift's usage of the words Big-Endians and Little-Endians. Although in Gulliver's Travels the name refers to which end of an egg the Endians break, Swift's true meaning may rest in the linguistic use of the word Endian that translates phonetically into Indian. During the time Swift was writing Gulliver's Travels, the natives of the western Pacific, the West Indies, and Hawaiian Island chains were referred to as Indians. (Said & Nordhoff)

Swift completes his anti-colonial vision as he develops the otherness of Gulliver's largesse and juxtaposes it to the diminutiveness of the Lilliputians. The giantness of the body Gulliver witnesses as a paradigmatic amalgam of colonial expansion and the overwhelming sensation of difference and helplessness a conquered people would feel in the encroaching rule of an incoming, overpowering colonial force. Swift defines and expands the otherness too by contrasting the fine features of the Lilliputians to the gross features of the Brobdingnag in respects to the perceptions of them by Gulliver.

In Mutiny on the Bounty, the Tahitians are portrayed as a people "Their countenances, like those of children, mirrored every passing mood, and when they smiled, which was often, I was astonished at the whiteness and perfection of their teeth." (82) Swift, in Book II, describes the ugliness of the Brobdingnag in contrast to the fineness of the Lilliputians' features and comments on the perfection of the Lilliputians' teeth versus the yellowed, uneven teeth of the Brobdingnag. The otherness developed by these physical descriptions of the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnags glaze over the psychological glint of authorial intent. If we look at Swift's construct of the physical differences of the us versus the them in Gulliver's Travels, the empathetic notion of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnag and the humanness of Gulliver at once distances each race from the other yet, in their human features and traits, maintain a human interconnectedness. How and why has Swift attempted to create this connected otherness?

The Lilliputians we read as the psychological inferior smallness of a conquered people that stand in awe of their conquerors. (Said) Swift's comments on the Lilliputians' fineness, warring prowess, and grasp of science and technology hints to the reverence for sovereign cultural richness Swift holds for these foreign, conquered cultures. This narrative reverence connects the humanness of Gulliver to the otherness of the Lilliputians and equalizes their cultural differences, all the while, allowing the criticism of colonist policy to remain intact by creating a bifurcated difference in the experience.

The Brobdingnag, furthermore, complete Swift's otherness of anti-colonial sentiment and transports Gulliver from the psychological standpoint of a conqueror to that of the conquered. This transference levies empathy for the psychological state of the conquered to that of the original conqueror in Gulliver. The power and fear he commanded amongst the Lilliputians is now embodied in his fear and fascination of the Brobdingnag. Gulliver, moreover, throughout his travels repeats this transference of conqueror/conquered empathy while he "reflect[s] how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour doing himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him." (127-128)

Swift utilizes Gulliver's empathy to connect the disconnectedness of the us versus the them through the assimilation of Gulliver into the societies of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnag, and the Houyhnhnms. In the introduction to Gulliver's Travels, Michael Seidel comments that Gulliver "loses the perspective and judgment that allow him any sense of contentment in remaining who he is." (xxii) Seidel, however, misses the subtle clues that Swift is attempting to marry the oneness of the Gulliver's human experience with the Lilliputians, Brobdingnag, and the Houyhnhnms rather than divorcing it from Gulliver. If Gulliver were to remain "who he is" as Seidel suggests, the object of Swift's satirical commentary would be missed. Swift's message is the inherent immorality of colonialism and the deconstruction of human connectedness that accompanies colonialism.

Once Swift establishes this sense of human connectedness through the narrative, he begins his attack on the policy of colonialism. In Book IV, remaining true to his parody of travel texts, Swift places Gulliver once again in a foreign land due to an unfortunate shipwreck. Gulliver finds himself stranded in the idyllic world of Houyhnhnmland. Houyhnhnmland's flora and fauna are described much like the Hawaiian Island Exchanges and Tahitian Islands the early English colonizers explored. These early conquered lands of British colonization are referred to as Edens on earth when described in literature. (Said) Eden represents the Utopias of perfection of Sir Thomas More's literature which find godlike, perfect creatures in idyllic environmental, political, and social conditions. The godlike perfection of reason and the world of the Houyhnhnms is a paradisiacal garden until the arrival of the human-like Yahoos. Gulliver's equine master relates one day two Yahoos appeared on the mountain and then ran rampant over the continent.

Swift here creates a technical split in the narrative and employs complex satirical tools to invert the reader's opinion of the Yahoos and renders the Yahoos humanness to the lowest common denominator of bestiality inherent in human nature. Swift's Gulliver states he was merely studying the Houyhnhnms as a social experiment by noting their ways and community. While Gulliver, however, is examining the ways of the Houyhnhnms, he is analyzing the ethical constructs of colonialism and places the onus of wrongfully directed morality upon the Houyhnhnms which represent the reasoned man of the Enlightenment and English colonial expansion. Swift's subtle narrative switch finds Gulliver witnessing the Houyhnhnms as beasts through the prism of his European eye. This form of specism through the ethnocentricity of Gulliver's race as being superior over that of the Houyhnhnms is the beginning of the satirical narrative switch where Swift attempts to eradicate the otherness of the reasoned man's sense of morality and what Joseph Conrad termed the "white man's burden" to educate and civilize foreign 'beasts.' Swift is encouraging a transvaluation of the reader's opinion of the Houyhnhnms to that of his fellow countrymen. The significance of the horse as a beast of burden and a lower construct of social morality allows Swift to cling to the precept of the colonial otherness but also use the reference to define the attitudes of those that support colonialism as beastly and condescending.

Swift now turns his didactic eye and shows the fallacy of the assumed superiority of the Yahoo's race, read human in Gulliver's, and satirizes the innate beastly nature of humans. To expound upon the brutal nature of Man, Gulliver says, "a Yahoo is a soldier hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species; who have never offended him, as possibly he can." (247)

Swift's final condemnation of colonist policy comes as he attacks the British nation and the barbarous practices of those sent to do the King's bidding on foreign shores. Swift admonishes the inhumanity of the thieves and beggars that man the Royal Navy by subliminally attaching them to the humanness of the Yahoos. The kings and knaves that man the navies and armies are not justified in "[commencing] a new dominion acquired by Divine Right." Gulliver continues that "[s]hips are sent with the first opportunity, the natives driven out or destroyed, their princes tortured to discover their gold, a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people." (292)

Swift's subtle subterfuge of the colonial other masks the anti-colonial treatise Gulliver's Travels intended. Gulliver's Travels taken as an entire work rather than as four books satirizing various governmental or humankind's vices or follies transcends the argument of the book as a simple parody of modern times. The reading is more complex than that. By defining the otherness of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnag, the Houyhnhnms, and Gulliver, Swift highlights the differentiation and alienation of the otherness of colonialism. Through Gulliver's attempted assimilation into the respective societies, Swift illustrates the connectedness of the human experience while maintaining the sovereignty of cultural and physical differences.

Works Cited

Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. Ed. Catherine Gallagher. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2000.

Hawes, Clement. "Three Times Round the Globe: Gulliver and Colonial Discourse." Cultural Critique (1991): 187-214.

Nordhoff, Charles, and James N. Hall. Mutiny on the Bounty. New York: The Heritage Press, 1947.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Sutherland, W.O.S. "The Anatomy of the Art." The Art of the Satirist. Austin: The University of Texas P. 9-22.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

Tobias, Steven M. "Amos Tutuola and the Colonial Carnival." Research in African Literatures 30 (1999): 66-74.