Wolfgang Reinhard. A Short History of Colonialism. Translated by Kate Sturge. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011. 308 pp., 24 maps. ISBN: 9780719083280 (pbk.). $38.95 (original) (raw)
Related papers
(Comparativ 3_4/2020): Comparing Colonialism: Beyond European Exceptionalism
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.
Historical Colonialism in Contemporary Perspective
Public Culture, 2002
Imperialism and colonialism insistently intrude upon political and cultural discussion despite the disappearance of imperialism from political language except as a term of critical approbation, and formal repudiation of colonialism as a legitimate or acceptable practice in world politics. Within the context of an international order based upon globally recognized norms of national sovereignty, the relationships these terms refer to seem much more problematic than they were in the heyday of a Euromodern order in the early twentieth century, when "empire" was born as a badge of honor, and colonial possessions were proudly displayed in world's fairs as signs of civilizational ascendancy. 1 As imperialism and colonialism were disavowed after 1945, the persistence of the inequalities they had shaped and the struggles of postcolonial states for development rendered them much more complicated as concepts than simple descriptions of domination and submission, Scholarship on imperialism and colonialism, especially the latter, has proliferated since the early 1950s, albeit with fluctuations in interest, as well as shifting pardigms. 2 The relationships suggested by those terms, and how we understand them, have been blurred further by economic and cultural globalization, which may account for the extensive interest in the subject the last two decades.
Colonialism (Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd ed.)
Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020
European colonialisms (circa. Late 1400) are complex, particularized, and changing political- economic-social-religious systems of domination. In the pursuit of capital accumulation and appropriation, Western European colonialisms generated and benefited from racialized and racist logics. Following the “formal” decolonization of much, but not all, of the colonized world—from Haiti in 1804, to Cameroon in 1960, to Papua New Guinea in 1975, to Timor-Leste in 2002—colonial structures, relations, and imaginaries often persisted in altered forms. Social scientists draw variously from political economy and historical materialism as well as postcolonial thought and cultural materialism within the broader field of colonial studies to both critique European colonialisms of the past and reveal the persistence(s) of colonial relations/structures in the present. Colonial “durabilities” and the “coloniality of being” continue to inform post-colonial political economies, social relations, and knowledge productions, creations, circulations, and contestations. The protraction of colonial domination(s) into the early 21st Century have given rise to reinvigorations of anti-colonial and postcolonial critique, including decolonial options and polygonal projects of decolonization. Widespread discontent regarding the persistence of “colonialism in the present” are manifested in the vocal and visible debates within early 21st Century universities around decolonizing knowledge, including struggles to decolonize the discipline of geography.
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...
Colonialism and postcolonialism
Much of the history of international relations is characterized by the violent attempts of one community to subjugate another. In 1955, Aimé Césaire wrote of the "great historical tragedy" that befell Africa in its encounter with European colonialism, an encounter that led Césaire to conclude that "Europe is responsible before the human community for the highest heap of corpses in human history " (2000: 45). A range of important ethical issues emerges from a consideration of the past interaction between colonizing and colonized peoples, both in the African context and elsewhere in the world. This article first seeks to describe the key characteristics of colonialism as a system of domination and subjugation, before considering the legitimacy of contemporary judgments on the morality of historical colonialism. It then examines how the particular character of colonialism complicates arguments relating to the rectification of injustice. It concludes by asking what lessons those interested in ethics can learn from the diverse body of work produced by writers in the postcolonial tradition.
Colonialism (Review Article of Textbook Analyses)
The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies, 2018
Recent years have brought increased interest in issues around representations of colonialism. This chapter provides an overview of textbook analyses on this subject published in the last two decades, to the end of identifying trends and pinpointing gaps in the research. Extant studies approach textbooks from perspectives relating to the Self and the Other or to Memory Studies or via the Concept of Knowledge. Many of them focus on European colonialism of the nineteenth century, with history textbooks predominating as objects of analysis. I will argue that there is a need to overcome these specific preoccupations and carry out a greater number of systematically proceeding comparative studies. Further approaches with potential for future research include taking the visual elements of textbooks into consideration in analysis and conducting comparative analyses of textbooks and other media. in: The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies, pp 281-292.