Email this article 
The Impact of Colonialism in Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle
https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v10i1.72968 Raden Alexander Carlson Medicio(1*), Nur Saktiningrum(2)
(1) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(2)
(*) Corresponding Author
Abstract
The Story of Doctor Dolittle is the first entry in the Doctor Dolittle series, a children’s book series by English author Hugh Lofting. Despite being primarily aimed at children, the series contains mature themes that help it attract the attention of adults. In particular, The Story of Doctor Dolittle contains themes of colonialism that are drawn from the author’s own experiences. This research aims to discover how colonialism in The Story of Doctor Dolittle has impacted the numerous characters found in it. The original 1920 publication of the book was used as the primary data source, in which it was analyzed using a thorough closed reading of its contents, which is then compared with real-life colonial events. Jurgen Osterhammel’s theory of colonialism is used as the primary theory for this research, which details the processes and results of colonialism on both the colonizers and the colonized, as well as the different types of colonies created to serve different purposes for the colonizers. The results have shown that there are multiple instances of colonialism in The Story of Doctor Dolittle, both positive and negative, that have impacted its characters to varying degrees. Characters such as Doctor Dolittle and the monkeys of the Land of the Monkeys benefited from colonialism due to the former’s altruistic motives, while others like the Jolliginki tribe suffered due to reckless exploitation by the unnamed White Man.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Abernethy, D. B. 2000. The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Anderson, S. R. 2006. Doctor Dolittle’s Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Human Language. Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Benhayoun, J. E. 2006. Narration, Navigation, and Colonialism: A Critical Account of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century English Narratives of Adventure and Captivity. Brussels: Peter Lang.
Dear, I.C.B., and Foot, M.R.D., eds. 2002. The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dietler, M. 2010. Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 15-16
Healy, R, and Lago, E. D., eds. 2014. The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Hilu, J. N. 2015. Cultural Issues in the Arabic Translation of Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Baghdad: Al-Mustansiriya University.
Hochschild, A. 1998. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Mariner Books.
Johnston, A. 2003. Missionary writing and empire, 1800-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langan, M. 2017. Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of 'Development' in Africa. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Least Heat-Moon, W. 2002. Columbus in the Americas.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 175.
Lucas, A. L., ed. 2003. The Presence of the Past in Children's Literature. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Nyamnjoh, F. B. 2016. #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa. Cameroon: Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group.
Okoth, A. 2006. A History of Africa: African Nationalism and the De-Colonisation Process. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Vol. 2.
Osterhammel, J. 2005. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. New Jersey: Princeton. 2nd Ed.
Osterhammel, J. 2014. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. New Jersey: Princeton.
Pakenham, T. 1991. The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. London: Abacus.
Robertson, R. G. 2001. Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian. Idaho: Caxton Press.
Rotberg, R. I. 2009. China Into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Schmidt, G. D. 1992. Hugh Lofting. New York: Twayne Publishing.
Shaw, I. 2000. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slobodchikoff, C. N. 2012. Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Thomas, H. 1997. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440 - 1870. London: Picador.
Unoki, K. 2013. Mergers, Acquisitions and Global Empires: Tolerance, Diversity, and the Success of M&A. London: Routledge. pp. 91-93.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v10i1.72968
Article Metrics
Abstract views : 1645
| 
views : 813
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2023 Raden Alexander Carlson Medicio, Nur Saktiningrum
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Lexicon Office
| English Department Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada Soegondo Building, 3rd Floor, Room 306 Yogyakarta, Indonesia 55281 Telephone: +62 274 513096 Email: lexicon.fib@ugm.ac.id ISSN: 2746-2668 (Online) |
 LEXICON is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |
Lexicon is indexed in
