Culture shock is a term that was invented in 1958 and has come to signify the experience of encountering people in other parts of the world who have a different way of life and a different set of customs, values and traditions from the ones you are used to at home. You can’t put your finger on it, but it hits you in very practical ways especially when you visit a non-industrialised country. It’s not just a difference of language, dress, food or religion though these are manifestations of it; it’s a totality thing. People have a different way of life from you, and you are the foreigner when you visit them.
This is not how the pioneers of the age of empire saw it. The British civil servants who administered India were legendary for importing their English ways of doing things. Prospectors in north America cleared native Americans off their lands by force of arms. The Crusades were mounted on the notion that the native peoples of the holy land were pagans or ‘infidels’, lacking the true religion, Christianity. Explorers who ‘discovered’ Africa and Australia treated the indigenous peoples as savages and lacking in ‘civilisation’. This undercurrent of disrespect goes back a long way but the effects are with us still in the 21st century. A whole book could be written about the roots of racism and the destructive nature of imperialism ignorance, but that‟s not the purpose of this one.
This chapter is concerned with the practical aspects of meeting people of different cultures in modern times and treating them with respect, courtesy and you might say equality.
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