"Colonialism and Decolonialism" - Rupert Emerson

Comparativ, 2020

link to complete issue: https://www.comparativ.net/v2/issue/view/161 Editorial The topic of empire continues to keep the social sciences at large busy. After it had seemed for a long time as if the topic had definitely been handed over to historians, who are concerned with a past phenomenon that only occurs as a nostalgic reflex in the present, empires are suddenly also of interest again to the social scientists concerned with the present under quite different aspects. The question of whether the United States was and still is an empire and whether such imperial configurations were needed to maintain an international order after the multilateralism of the Cold War had come to an end played a crucial role in relaunching the debate about empires. A second layer of interest was informed by postcolonially inspired interest in the continuing mechanisms of earlier colonial empires now striking back in various ways and thus remaining present in today’s seemingly post-imperial world. At a third level, observations that view empires as a rather loose association of rule with unfinished territorialization came to the fore in interpretations of empire as a more appropriate form of governance under conditions of global or at least transregional weakening or even dissolution of boundaries. While we recently looked back at the similarities and differences between empires for the historical period from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries in a historically comparative thematic issue of this journal (no 3/2019), the current double issue, conceived from the perspective of historical sociology, is concerned with a geographically even broader comparison that seeks to revise the thesis of a European exceptionalism in the history of colonialism and imperialism that is often put forward implicitly rather than explicitly. This makes it necessary, first of all, to look for colonial imperial expansion also outside Europe and not to construct a “non-European world” as the target of expansion, as an overseas history, now out of fashion, did for a long time. This means not only to question the geography of comparative studies of empires, but also to reflect critically on their privileged time frame and to include examples that lie beyond the particular European expansion period that is often portrayed as starting in the fifteenth century. In a third level, the nesting of empires is at stake, because the confrontation with imperial conquest from outside by no means put an end to state-building processes inside the imperially overformed regions, from which a whole complex of new questions about the relationship of the various empire-building processes can be derived. Colonialism, in this perspective, is not a relationship between Europeans and non-Europeans, but a much broader, almost universal kaleidoscope of subjugation, settlement into regions other than the one of origin, and arrangements between external and internal elites. What distinguishes pre-modern forms of imperial rule and colony-building from those since the late eighteenth century, however, are (1) their positioning in struggles for dominance at a global scale, (2) the complicated blending between the formation of nation-states and ongoing attempts at imperial expansion, which can by no means be reduced to a teleology from empire to nation, and (3) the relationship between capitalist adventurism and political projects of empire building, which follow different logics but always interact. To abstract these processes in such a way that they can be made available as theoretical elements to other disciplines requires at the same time a wide range of expertise for many case studies, an important selection of which is brought together in this issue. Specialists will read these case studies as enriching knowledge about individual empires, while the thematic issue as a whole, not least with its introduction by the editors and its afterword by Frederick Cooper, pursues an ambition that goes beyond the individual case and at the same time offers a broadening of perspective beyond meticulously deconstructed European exceptionalism and a contribution to a general theory of empires.

2020

2019

Colonial expansion seems to be a common, nearly universal phenomenon in human history. At the same time, colonialism comes in many varieties, and too often it has been understood solely through the concept of European colonialism. This, as laid out in the conference’s introductory remarks by AXEL T. PAUL (Basel), was the background to the conference, which sought not only to decentre, but also move beyond modern European colonial empires, both spatially and temporally. Paul started by pointing to a number of characteristics which might be specific to modern European ones, among them the fact that they arose out of competition between great powers, that they created a first global economy, and that empire-building simultaneously fostered the nation-state. He then went on to enumerate some aspects which might be universal to all empires. Empires do not seem to strive for cultural homogeneity, but mainly for the loyalty of their subjects. In this context, he asked whether ‘othering’ wa...

2004

History writing about empire is thriving, although few could have predicted this in the 1980s, when the field was moribund. This article examines the history and historiography of post-1945 empires and decolonization, observing how international and economic developments, combined with changes to the history profession, revived the field in the 1990s. From this resurgence emerged the “new imperial history,” with its focus on imperialism and culture, although some debate whether Europe ever developed a “colonial culture.” The essay assesses recent works on the legacies of empire and decolonization that indicate what we know about colonial culture at this juncture, and how it should be studied. It also identifies obstacles like missed collaborations between postcolonial studies and history writing, and terminological issues, including problems with the label “new imperial history.” The essay concludes by indicating directions for future research: into the forms of decolonization; toward greater inclusion of the “smaller” empires; toward fuller comparison of cultures and empires; and into migration’s effects on Europe.

Historical research on colonialist enterprises in different parts of the world is en vogue. One reason for this attention is a new search for the origins of today's globalising processes, of which colonialism is seen as one of the starting points. Having long been designed within the analytic framework of the nation state, historical research has recently suggested that solely national approaches are insufficient to analyse these potentially global relations and has consequently drawn its attention to the exchanges and interactions between colonial regimes, colonising and colonised societies and the common context of a colonial global order. This attention to global entanglements and the search for their early manifestations thus resulted in an adaptation of transnational approaches to the history of colonialism, approaches that try to overcome the nation state as the organising principle of historical narratives. 1 The methodological debate on how transnational histories of colonialisms should be written drew attention to comparisons, transfers and intertwinements between colonies and colonising powers. 2

Itinerario, 2012

Hardt & Negri’s acute analysis of post-Fordist capitalism and contemporary governmentality has been a topic of heated arguments and controversies among critical Latin American scholars since the publication of “Empire”. One of the sectors that has engaged the most with the ideas in the book is one that self-describes as the Modernity/Coloniality group, formed by academics like Santiago Castro-Gomez, Ramon Grosfoguel and Walter Mignolo, among others. For them, Capitalism is a system that took shape and became hegemonic at the dawn of what Immanuel Wallerstein described as the world-system, in the 16th century and has been from the start a structure of heterogeneous elements in terms of forms of control of labour-resources-products as in terms of the peoples and histories articulated in it. From their perspective, the classic Marxist succession of modes of production (slavery, feudalism, imperial capitalism and so forth) is misleading; the modes of production were simultaneous in time and entangled in space. They do not like to use the word Capitalism alone, because it only emphasizes one of the dimensions of the colonial matrix of power. Grosfoguel insists that Capitalism is only one of the multiple entangled constellations of the colonial power matrix of the European / modern / colonial / capitalist / patriarchal world-system. Hardt & Negri’s perspective is seen as innovative because of its emphasis in the central role played by immaterial production and its close links with biopower and biopolitics , but the members of the Modernity/Coloniality group think that “Empire” is nevertheless a Eurocentric critique of modernity, conceived from the hegemonic side of the colonial difference. Only from there one could think that industrial workers are diminishing while immaterial labour is growing (this is the time when industrial work has grown the most in history). The fact that Capital has nearly exhausted the external spaces for its realization and now has to open new terrains in its inside, thriving in the products of immaterial labour does not mean that coloniality has disappeared, but that it is in a process of reorganization. The heterogeneity of racialized modes of production persists, even with the hegemony of post-Fordism. When Hardt and Negri see that globalization and post-Fordism have made geography and colonialism nearly irrelevant and outdated because the market has subsumed every territory, Castro-Gomez and the members of the Modernity/Coloniality group see that capital is now looking for post-territorial colonies to continue expanding. Now, besides the traditional underpriced commodities and the cheap industrial products of the maquilas, capital needs the information contained in genetic codes (expropriated through patents defended by supranational trade institutions) and non-western knowledge systems; traditional knowledge is not searched to destroy it, but to preserve it (and subsume it), although it’s still regarded as of low epistemological value. There’s a reorganization of coloniality in the making, one where the categories created by modernity (race, ethnicity, gender, age and class) continue to be important but are being reconfigured and articulated with others like religion.

Annual Review of Anthropology, 1997

The study of colonialism erases the boundaries between anthropology and history or literary studies, and between the postcolonial present and the colonial past. From the standpoint of anthropology, it is also reflexive, addressing the colonial use and formation of ethnography and its supporting practices of travel. Since the 1960s, the study of colonialism has increasingly presented a view of colonialism as struggle and negotiation, analyzing how the dichotomous representations that Westerners use for colonial rule are the outcome of much more murky and complex practical interactions. By thus treating Western governmentaliry as emergent and particular, it is rewriting our histories of the present. The art of government lies in knowing nothing at the proper moment. Edgar Wallace (1912) [T]here is too much hypocrisy in East Africa today. The European official and the European settler rule and maintain their prestige mainly by hypocrisy, their inner motives would hardly stand examination; the Indian trader makes his living by downright dishonesty or at best by sheer cunning which is hypocrisy; the African clerk or laborer often disregards fulfilling his part of a contract and even a very educated African will pretend to love the European whereas his heart is nearly bursting with envy and hatred. Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1952) 163 0084-6570/97/1015-0163S08.00 164 PELS Allcs Verstehen 1st daher immer zugleich ein Nicht-Verstehen, alle Obereinstimmung in Gedanken und Gefuhlen zugleich ein Auseinandergehen. Wilhelm von Humboldt (quoted in Fabian 1995)

The Economic History Review, 2008