The colonised were cast as ‘primitive’ precisely because they refused to accept the principles of human-nature dualism.44 In the writings of European colonisers and missionaries we see they were dismayed that so many of the people they encountered insisted on seeing the world as alive – seeing mountains, rivers, animals, plants, and even the land as sentient beings with agency and spirit. Europe’s elites saw animist thought as an obstacle to capitalism – in the colonies just as in Europe itself – and sought to eradicate it. This was conducted in the name of ‘civilisation.’
