1. What is it?

Colonial literature concerns encounters between colonialists and native populations. It is usually based on, or written during, real historical events.

The majority of colonialist works are written by written by writers from colonial powers.

2. How is it made?

3. Examples in literature

The Last of the Mohicans 
by James Fenimore Cooper

Excerpt from Chapter 23:

At length one whose hair was beginning to be sprinkled with gray, but whose sinewy limbs and firm tread announced that he was still equal to the duties of manhood, advanced out of the gloom of a corner, whither he had probably posted himself to make his observations unseen, and spoke. He used the language of the Wyandots, or Hurons; his words were, consequently, unintelligible to Heyward, though they seemed, by the gestures that accompanied them, to be uttered more in courtesy than anger. The latter shook his head, and made a gesture indicative of his inability to reply.
“Do none of my brothers speak the French or the English?” he said, in the former language, looking about him from countenance to countenance, in hopes of finding a nod of assent.
Though more than one had turned, as if to catch the meaning of his words, they remained unanswered.
“I should be grieved to think,” continued Duncan, speaking slowly, and using the simplest French of which he was the master, “to believe that none of this wise and brave nation understand the language that the ‘Grand Monarque’ uses when he talks to his children. His heart would be heavy did he believe his red warriors paid him so little  respect!”
A long and grave pause succeeded, during which no movement of a limb, nor any expression of an eye,betrayed the expression produced by his remark. Duncan, who knew that silence was a virtue among his hosts, gladly had recourse to the custom, in order to arrange his ideas. At length the same warrior who had before addressed him replied, by dryly demanding, in the language of the Canadas:
“When our Great Father speaks to his people, is it with the tongue of a Huron?”
“He knows no difference in his children, whether the color of the skin be red, or black, or white,” returned Duncan, evasively; “though chiefly is he satisfied with the brave Hurons.”
“In what manner will he speak,” demanded the wary chief, “when the runners count to him the scalps which five nights ago grew on the heads of the Yengeese?”
“They were his enemies,” said Duncan, shuddering involuntarily; “and doubtless, he will say, it is good; my Hurons are very gallant.”

Shooting an Elephant 
by George Orwell

Excerpt:

In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically — and secretly, of course — I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos — all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.