The New Imperial Histories Reader

Stephen Howe, Stephen Howe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000158403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

In recent years, imperial history has experienced a newfound vigour, dynamism and diversity. There has been an explosion of new work in the field, which has been driven into even greater prominence by contemporary world events. However, this resurgence has brought with it disputes between those who are labelled as exponents of a 'new imperial history' and those who can, by default, be termed old imperial historians.

This collection not only gathers together some of the most important, influential and controversial work which has come to be labelled 'new imperial history', but also presents key examples of innovative recent writing across the broader fields of imperial and colonial studies.

This book is the perfect companion for any student interested in empires and global history.

PART 1
Promoting and explaining ‘new imperial history’

Chapter 1
THE COLONIAL SITUATION: A THEORETICAL APPROACH

George Balandier

Georges Balandier, born in 1920, is among France’s most distinguished anthropologists. This essay, written as a young man in 1951, was in many ways astonishingly ahead of its intellectual time. To a remarkable degree, it anticipated many of the themes which were – over ensuing decades and in some cases not until the 1990s and since – to become major preoccupations of colonial studies and of the ‘new imperial history’. Perhaps above all, it goes to the heart of the too-little posed question: ‘What’s so special about colonialism anyway?’ It is thus a fitting ‘opener’ for this collection, as well as much deserving to be brought to the attention of a new generation of readers in English.

Stephen Howe

ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING EVENTS in the recent history of mankind is the expansion throughout the entire world of most European peoples. It has brought about the subjugation and, in some instances, the disappearance of virtually every people regarded as backward, archaic, or primitive. The colonial movement of the nineteenth century was the most important in magnitude, the most fraught with consequences, resulting from this European expansion. It overturned in a brutal manner the history of the peoples it subjugated. Colonialism, in establishing itself, imposed on subject peoples a very special type of situation. We cannot ignore this fact. It not only conditioned the reactions of ‘dependent’ peoples, but is still responsible for certain reactions of peoples recently emancipated.

The colonial situation poses problems for a conquered people – who respond to these problems to the degree that a certain latitude is granted to them – problems for the administration representing the so-called protective power (which also defends that power’s local interests), problems for the newly-created state on which still rests the burden of colonial liabilities. Whether currently present or in process of liquidation, this situation involves specific problems, which must arrest the attention of a sociologist. The postwar period has clearly indicated the urgency and importance of the colonial problem in its totality. It has been characterized by difficult attempts at reconquest, by the granting of independence to some, and by more or less conditional concessions to others. It has announced a technical phase in colonialism in the wake of a political-administrative phase.

It was only a few years ago that a rough but significant estimate noted the fact that colonial territories covered at that time one-third of the world’s surface and that seven hundred million individuals out of a total population of some two billion were subject peoples.¹ Until very recently the greater part of the world’s population, not belonging to the white race (if we exclude China and Japan), knew only a status of dependency on one or another of the European colonial powers. These subject peoples, distributed throughout Asia, Africa, and Oceania, all belonged to cultures designated ‘backward’ or ‘pre-industrial.’ They constituted the field of research within which anthropologists or ethnologists carried on – and still carry on – their investigations. And the scientific knowledge that we have of colonial peoples is due in large part to the efforts of these scholarly investigators. Such studies, in principle, could not (or should not) ignore such an important fact as colonialism, a phenomenon which has imposed, for a century or more, a certain type of evolution on subjugated populations. It seemed impossible not to take into account certain concrete situations in which the recent history of these peoples evolved. And yet it is only now and then that anthropologists have taken into consideration this specific context inherent in the colonial situation. (We have substantiating evidence to present in a study presently in preparation.) On the one hand, we find researchers obsessed with the pursuit of the ethnologically pure, with the unaltered fact miraculously preserved in its primitive state, or else investigators entirely absorbed with theoretical speculations regarding the destiny of civilizations or the origins of society. And, on the other hand, we find researchers engaged in numerous practical investigations of very limited scope, satisfied with a comfortable empiricism scarcely surpassing the level of using a technique. Between the two extremes the distance is great – it leads from the confines of a so-called ‘cultural’ anthropology to the confines of one described as ‘applied’ anthropology. In one case, the colonial situation is rejected as being a disturbing factor or is seen as only one of the causes of cultural change. In the other case, the colonial situation is viewed only in certain aspects – those immediately and obviously relating to the problem under investigation – and never appears as a force acting in terms of its own totality. Yet any present-day study of colonial societies striving for an understanding of current realities and not a reconstitution of a purely historical nature, a study aiming at a comprehension of conditions as they are, not sacrificing facts for the convenience of some dogmatic schematization, can only be accomplished by taking into account this complex we have called the colonial situation. It is precisely this situation that we wish to describe. But first it is necessary to sketch the essential outlines of this system of reference that we have invoked.

Among recent studies undertaken in France, only those of O. Mannoni assign an important role to the notion of colonial situation.² But as Mannoni was intent on treating the subject from a purely psychological or psychoanalytical point of view, he offers only an imprecise definition of the phenomenon we refer to. He presents it as ‘a situation of incomprehension,’ as ‘a misunderstanding,’ and, accordingly, he analyzes the psychological attitudes that characterize the ‘colonizer’ and the ‘colonized,’ attitudes that permit an understanding of the relationship maintained on both sides.³ This is not enough, and Mannoni seems to recognize the fact when he cautions against ‘under-estimating the (capital) importance of economic relationships.’ Moreover, he concedes having selected a rather ill-defined aspect of the colonial situation. We, for our part, assume an opposite position from his. We are biased in favor of dealing with the question as a whole, believing there is something deceitful in examining only one of the many facts implied in this situation.

Such a situation as that created by the colonial expansion of European states during the last century can be examined from different points of view. Each one constitutes an individual approach to the subject, a separate analysis with a different orientation depending on whether the point of view is that of a colonial historian, an economist, a politician and administrator, a sociologist preoccupied with the relationships of foreign cultures, a psychologist concerned with a study of race relations, etc. And if one is to hazard an overall view of the problem, it seems indispensable to discover what can be gleaned from each of these individual specialties.

The historian examines the various periods of colonization with respect to the colonial power. He enables us to grasp the changes that occur in the existing relationships between that power and its territorial dependencies. He shows us how the isolation of colonial peoples was shattered by a caprice of history over which these peoples had had no control. He evokes the ideologies which, at different times, have been used to justify colonialism and have created the ‘role’ adopted by the colonial power, and he reveals the discrepancies separating facts from theories. He analyzes the administrative and economic systems which have guaranteed ‘colonial peace’ and permitted an economic profit (for the metropole) from the colonial enterprise. In short, the historian makes us understand how, in the course of time, the colonial power implanted itself in the heart of its colonial societies. Acting in this manner he furnishes the sociologist with his first and indispensable frame of reference. He reminds the sociologist that the history of a colonial people has developed as a result of a foreign presence, while at the same time he elucidates the different aspects of the latter’s role and influence.

Most historians have insisted on the fact that the pacification, the organization, and the development of colonial territories were carried out ‘with respect to the interests of the western powers and not with local interests in mind … by assigning (the needs) of native producers to a position of secondary importance.’⁴ They have shown how, in less than a century, the European absorption of Asia, Africa, and Oceania ‘transformed the shape of human society through force and the imposition of reforms, often bold reforms.’ They have shown how such upheavals were made necessary by ‘colonial imperialism’ (which is merely one manifestation of economic imperialism).⁵ They have reminded us that economic exploitation is based on the seizure of political power – the two characteristic features of colonialism.⁶ Thus historians enable us to see to what extent a colonial society is an instrumentality of the colonial power. We can observe this instrumental function in the politics practised by the European power, which consists in compromising the native aristocracy by tempting it with inducements calculated to appeal to its self-interest: ‘Enlist the ruling class in our cause,’ said Lyautey;⁷ reduce the native chiefs to the role of ‘mere creatures,’ said R. Kennedy; and the evidence is even more obvious in the policies pursued in transplanting populations and in the recruitment of workers, all based exclusively on the economic interests of the colonial power.⁸ By reminding us of certain ‘bold’ measures – population transfers and the policy of ‘reserves,’ the transformation of traditional laws, and questioning the ownership of resources, policies requiring a certain level of productivity, etc., the historian draws our attention to the fact that ‘colonialism was literally at times an act of social surgery.’⁹ And this observation, more or less valid, according to the peoples and areas under consideration, is of great interest to a sociologist studying colonial societies. It indicates to him that these societies are, in varying degrees, in a state of latent crisis, that they are involved to some extent in a kind of social pathology. It is valuable evidence of the special features of the sociology of colonial peoples and suggests the practical and theoretical results one may expect from such a discipline. We shall have occasion to note its importance elsewhere in our analysis.

But after having noted this external pressure applied to colonial societies, the historian points out the various kinds of reactions that have resulted. The reactions of Far Eastern peoples, the Arab world, and Black Africa have often been the subject of comparative studies. In general terms we learn of the opposition of ‘closed societies’ in the Far East, despite outward appearances of westernization; the tense relations with Islamic society which refuses to abandon a notion of superiority and maintains ‘a competitive spirit that can be veiled and silent but nevertheless remains at the heart of the problem’; the ‘openness’ of the black world which is explained by ‘the African readiness to imitate,’ by a lack of ‘confidence in the depths and resources of its own past.’¹⁰ And in a rather special case, the history of Africa, the colonial continent par excellence, reveals important differences in ways of resisting the ascendancy of European nations within the very heart of Black Africa. After having exposed the importance of ‘the external factor’ with respect to transformations affecting colonial societies, the history of colonialism confronts us with an ‘internal factor’ inherent in social structures and subjugated societies. At this point the history of colonialism touches on territory familiar to the anthropologist. But in offering a picture of the varied responses to the colonial situation, history shows us how much that situation can reveal to us. Colonialism appears as a trial, a kind of test imposed on certain societies or, if we may call it such, as a crude sociological experiment. An analysis of colonial societies cannot overlook these specific conditions. As certain anthropologists have perceived,¹¹ they reveal not only the processes of adaptation or rejection, the new guideposts set up for a society whose traditional models have been destroyed (the ‘patterns’ of Anglo-American authors), but they also disclose ‘the points of resistance’ among colonial peoples, the fundamental structure and behavior of such a people. They touch society’s bedrock. Such information offers unmistakable theoretical interest (if we consider the colonial situation as a fact calling for scientific observation, independent of any moral judgments it may provoke), and it has a truly practical importance: it shows the fundamental premises in terms of which each problem must be conceived.

The historian reveals the way in which the colonial system was established and transformed. He describes, according to differing circumstances, the various political, juridical, and administrative aspects of the system. He also enables us to take due note of the ideologies used to justify colonialism.¹² Numerous studies emphasize the gap that has exis...