As the novel progresses, it stresses the superiority of Christian teachings to the ways of the Caribbean people. Crusoe’s belief in this superiority directs his behavior toward Friday, whom he feels he has a moral duty to convert to both Christianity and a Western way of life broadly. The novel thus reflects an early imperialist worldview, anticipating the later emphasis European governments would place on the supposedly humanitarian nature of their conquests. 

The novel establishes the purported need to bring “civilization” to the rest of the world via its portrayal of the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. Defoe particularly dwells on the cannibalism that was rumored to be practiced there. One of Crusoe’s greatest fears is being eaten by the tribes that he’s heard live on the islands; later, Crusoe is appalled by the cannibal scene he observes at a beach filled with scorched human torsos and bones. Simultaneously, the novel positions Crusoe as the solution to this violence, first when he dreams of a man who escapes from a cannibal sacrifice and runs his way in need of help, and then when he saves Friday from being eaten. This physical rescue of Friday soon becomes intertwined with the project of educating him in Western culture: Crusoe teaches Friday that it is wrong to eat human flesh, instructs him in English, and, after learning about Benamuckee, the god of Friday’s tribe’s religion, tells him about Christianity:

I told him that the great maker of all things liv’d up there, pointing up towards Heaven: That he governs the world by the same power and Providence by which he had made it: That he was omnipotent, could do everything for us […] take every thing from us; and thus by degrees I opened his eyes. He listened with great attention […] and receiv’d with pleasure the notion of Jesus Christ being sent to redeem us (158).

The closing sentence depicts Friday as grateful for Crusoe’s intervention, further reinforcing discourse that framed colonialism as an unmitigated good to the colonized. That Crusoe says he teaches Friday about evil, the Devil, and the work of God against evil similarly portrays Friday and his people as desperately in need of education by suggesting they possess no moral code of their own. 

Crusoe’s depiction of this process as nearly effortless complements this depiction. “Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence him” (159) Crusoe assures. This sense of superiority is also reflected in comments Crusoe makes about the superiority of his weapons and tools when he shows them to Friday. Just as the novel portrays Friday’s culture as obviously deficient, it portrays Crusoe’s as self-evidently superior.

That said, the novel’s ideas about what constitutes civilization are not entirely cut-and-dry. For one, Defoe complicates the novel’s imperialist message through Crusoe’s scathing critiques of the Spanish Inquisition and the Spanish enslavement of African and South American peoples. Moreover, Crusoe’s many inner explorations lead him to logically conclude that the people he calls “savages” ultimately act in ways that further God’s providence. However, this suggestion that God uses Friday and his fellow islanders for his own purposes is not a true defense of their way of life, particularly in a novel that repeatedly depicts God as working through various “evils.” It also situates them within a Christian worldview presumed to be correct. The novel’s advocacy for the humane treatment of people of other cultures, ethnicities, religions, etc., therefore does not ultimately override its imperialist message.