Empire, geopolitics and development (original) (raw)

2007, Development and Change

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires (Edward Said, 2003) OVERVIEW From redundancy, since the end of direct European rule in the mid-twentieth century, to taboo, the term 'empire' is being resurrected and may even be superseding globalization, the much-used term of the past two decades. This resurgence can be traced in part to Hardt and Negri's best-selling tome, Empire, with its concept of a multitude operating in a 'decentered and deterritorializing' globe (Hardt and Negri, 2000). Yet the events of 9/11 and the subsequent US-led military coalitions into Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with the consolidation of international development around the Millennium Development Goals and global justice movements for broad-based participation in poverty reduction, have brought to the fore a changing dynamic between geopolitics, empire and development. At least two divergent approaches can be distinguished in the growing empire literature. The first 'establishment' discourse on empire invokes a triumphalist return to the nineteenth century view of its grand civilizing mission. A number of recent studies revisiting British imperialism have provided not just apologia but justification for colonial rule. For instance, Cannadine's book makes a parody of Said's major analysis of culture and imperialism in Orientalism (Said, 1978), challenges his construction of the racial other in imperial rule and states that inequality was dealt with in a better way in the encounter between the British and Indians in the colonial period than in contemporary times (Cannadine, 2001; see also Ferguson, 2003). The most aggressive advocates for the US to declare itself an imperial power