Environmental ethics and the politics of survival in Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe creates a considerable literary context for the discussion of environmental ethics in the context of the politics of survival from the perspective of colonial ideology from the pre-modern era. This study uses ecocritical and postcolonial approach to analyse Crusoe’s interaction with the island as a site of both ecological dependence and environmental domination. Practices of cultivation, resource control, and spatial ownership reveal an anthropocentric ethic that legitimizes exploitation under the imperative of survival. The island emerges as a politically constructed environment where nature is subordinated to human authority and colonial rationality. By situating Robinson Crusoe within contemporary environmental discourse, the paper argues that the novel anticipates modern debates on ecological ethics and survival politics. The study contributes to ecocritical scholarship by re-evaluating Defoe’s text as an early articulation of environmental governance intertwined with colonial power structures.