The Wretched of the Earth

by Frantz Fanon

The peasants distrust the town dweller. Dressed like a European, speaking his language, working alongside him, sometimes living in his neighborhood, he is considered by the peasant to be a renegade who has given up everything which constitutes the national heritage. The town dweller is a “traitor, a mercenary” who apparently gets along very well with the occupier and strives to succeed in the context of the colonial system. Hence the reason why we often hear the peasant say that the town dwellers have no moral standards. This is not the traditional opposition between town and country. It is the opposition between the colonized excluded from the benefits of colonialism and their counterparts who manage to turn the colonial system to their advantage. The colonialists, moreover, use this antagonism in their opposition to the nationalist parties. They mobilize the population in the mountains and the interior against the urban population. They set the back country against the coast, they revive tribal identities,