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    International Relations: Colonialism

    S y e d A l i R a z a : 2 0 0 9 - 1 - 9 0 - 9 9 6 3

    Submitted to

    Sir. Sahib Khan ChannaSection E

    6thDecember 2010

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 3

    Colonialism

    Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people toanother. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is difficult to distinguish itfrom imperialism.Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism,imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. Turningto the etymology of the two terms, however, provides some suggestion about how they differ.The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds usthat the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory,where the new arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance totheir country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium,meaning to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one countryexercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirectmechanisms of control.

    The legitimacy of colonialism has been a longstanding concern for political and moral philosophers in the Western tradition. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of theAmericas, political theorists have struggled with the difficulty of reconciling ideas about

    justice and natural law with the practice ofEuropean sovereignty over non-Western peoples.In the nineteenth century, the tension between liberal thought and colonial practice became

    particularly acute, as dominion ofEurope over the rest of the world reached its zenith.Ironically, in the same period when most political philosophers began to defend the principlesof universalism and equality, the same individuals still defended the legitimacy of colonialismand imperialism. One way of reconciling those apparently opposed principles was theargument known as the civilizing mission, which suggested that a temporary period of

    political dependence or tutelage was necessary in order for uncivilized societies to advanceto the point where they were capable of sustaining liberal institutions and self-government.

    The goal of this entry is to analyze the relationship between Western political theory and the project of colonialism. After providing a more thorough discussion of the concept ofcolonialism, the third and forth sections of the entry will address the question of howEuropean thinkers justified, legitimize, and challenged political domination. The fifth section

    briefly discusses the Marxist tradition, including Marx's own defense of British colonialism inIndia and Lenin's anti-imperialist writings. The final section provides an introduction tocontemporary post-colonial theory. This approach has been particularly influential inliterary studies because it draws attention to the diverse ways that postcolonial subjectivitiesare constituted and resisted through discursive practices. The goal of the entry is to provide an

    overview of the vast and complex literature that explores the theoretical issues emerging outof the experience ofEuropean colonization.

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 5

    The confusion about the meaning of the term imperialism reflects the way that the concept haschanged over time. Although the English word imperialism was not commonly used beforethe nineteenth century, Elizabethans already described the United Kingdom as the BritishEmpire. As Britain began to acquire overseas dependencies, the concept of empire wasemployed more frequently. Thus, the traditional understanding of imperialism was a systemof military domination and sovereignty over territories. The day to day work of government

    might be exercised indirectly through local assemblies or indigenous rulers who paid tributebut sovereignty rested with the British. The shift away from this traditional understanding ofempire was influenced by the Leninist analysis of imperialism as a system oriented towardseconomic exploitation. According to Lenin, imperialism was the necessary and inevitableresult of the logic of accumulation in late capitalism. Thus, for Lenin and subsequentMarxists, imperialism described a historical stage of capitalism rather than a trans-historical

    practice of political and military domination. The lasting impact of the Marxist approach isapparent in contemporary debates about American imperialism, a term which usually meansAmerican economic hegemony, regardless of whether such power is exercised directly orindirectly (Young 2001).

    Given the difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use

    colonialism as a broad concept that refers to the project of European political dominationfrom the sixteenth to the twentieth centurys that ended with the national liberationmovements of the 1960s. Post-colonialism will be used to describe the political andtheoretical struggles of societies that experienced the transition from political dependence tosovereignty. This entry will use imperialism as a broad term that refers to economic, military,

    political domination that is achieved without significant permanent European settlement.

    THE THIRTEEN COLONIESterm used for the colonies of British North America thatjoined together in the American Revolution against the mother country, adopted the

    Declaration of Independence in 1776, and became the United States. They were New

    Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,

    Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, andGeorgia. They are also called the Thirteen Original States.

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    6 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM

    Why Study Colonialism?

    ProfessorLeela Fernandes - Rutgers University

    DepartmentofPoliticalScience & Women'sandGenderStudies

    The study of colonialism represents one of the most important ways of understanding theroots of contemporary global political and economic processes. Some of the most pressingissues that affect the world today, including political conflicts such as the Israeli-Arabconflict, the India-Pakistan conflict and nuclear arms race and the rise of "Third World"nationalisms are the historical legacies of colonialism. Meanwhile, some argue that the

    persistence of vast global economic disparities between and within nations can be traced backto both the effects of past forms of colonialism and the emergence of new forms of economiccolonialism in the current world order in which we live. Is nationalism a threat to global peaceor a necessary counteracting force to colonialism? Do multinational corporations represent anew form of economic colonialism? What models of nationalism and of economicdevelopment can lead to political stability and economic inequality? The study of colonialism

    is crucial in helping students to understand such questions and to begin to develop practicalsolutions that can bring about peace and stability in the world.

    The module enables students to move beyond superficial answers and dig deeper into thecomplex historical factors that shape the central political and economic issues of today'sworld. It seeks to give students the tools both to understand the detailed histories of particularregions of the world as well to analyze broader international issues. The module is aimed atempowering students to become global citizens who can effectively navigate and respond tothe very real complexities of an interconnected, globalized world.

    Colonialism, as a historical phenomenon, conventionally refers to the expansion ofEuropeanpolitical influence and control over most of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America

    that took place from the seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Suchexpansion first began through informal contacts and travel as European traders, missionariesand travelers began to establish a presence in the non-Western world. These informal relationssoon evolved into formal political, economic and military control of these regions. Themodule enables students to understand the motives of the European powers, the differingstrategies which these powers used to rule the native populations and the devastating effectsthat such rule had for these subjugated populations.European strategies of rule often differedin striking ways. Some forms of rule were direct forms of control over local populations whileothers were more indirect through native rulers who were selected or supported by thecolonial powers. Some strategies such as those ofPortuguese colonizers tried to substantiallytransform the local societies which they ruled, for instance through forced religiousconversion, while others such as the British tried to use native religious and legal traditions as

    part of their system of colonial rule. All of the various strategies had critical effects on thecolonized populations. The strategies of rule changed local social and economic practices and

    politicized cultural traditions as the colonized populations began to resist European rule.Some of the public issues which we see today such as debates over veiling and the rise ofreligious nationalism can be traced back to these dynamics during the colonial period.

    A central issue which the module addresses is the rise of such resistance and of nationalism inresponse to colonialism. By focusing on this issue, the module begins to show students theintricate connections between the historical legacies of colonialism and the various forms of

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 7

    nationalism that emerged in response to colonialism and that continue to shape current globalpolitics. Nationalist movements that led to decolonization and the emergence of independentnation-states in what became known as the "Third World," varied greatly, ranging fromGandhi's non-violent nationalism in India to more militant cases such as the Algeriannationalist resistance to France. The module helps students to understand different cases ofnationalism and provides students with the tools to understand and assess the ongoing

    significance of nationalist politics in regions such as the Middle East. The module avoidssimplistic responses and seeks to help students to carefully analyze the causes andimplications of nationalism in different regions of the world.

    Finally, the module addresses colonialism in terms of its economic dimensions. Colonialismhad devastating economic effects on the colonized regions.European colonial powers wereable to use the colonies as sources of raw materials and resources that fueled Europeanindustrialization. The colonies were thus kept in an economically dependent relationship withEurope that many have argued led to continued poverty and economic backwardness evenafter decolonization. More recently, some critics have argued that this kind of economiccolonization continues today in new ways, such as through multinational corporationsexploiting cheap labor and resources in non-Western countries and through international

    organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that have keptthese countries weighed down by large debts. The module seeks to explore such dynamics inorder to give students the tools to understand and debate global economic processes and tounderstand the ways in which such important international financial organizations work. Inthis process, students are also given the foundation to understand and assess the growing

    political resistance to these international organizations and the models of economicglobalization that they advocate. Finally, the module enables students to devise practicalsolutions to these issues, for instance by working on projects to develop business strategiesand models of development that can respond to the problems of past and present economiccolonialism.

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    8 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM

    COLONIALISM IN THE LIGHT OFAUTHORS

    According to DRAVID CRONENBERG,

    I don't think that the flesh is necessarily treacherous, evil, bad. It is cantankerous, and it is independent. The idea of

    independence is the key. It really is like colonialism. The colonies suddenly decide that they can and should exist with

    their own personality and should detach from the control of the mother country. At first the colony is perceived as

    being treacherous. It's a betrayal. Ultimately, it can be seen as the separation of a partner that could be very valuable

    as an equal rather than as something you dominate.

    According to ANDREW COHEN,

    To campaign against colonialism is like barking up a tree that has already been cut down.

    According to AHMED BEN BELLA,

    Colonialism is an idea born in the West that drives Western countries - like France, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain - to

    occupy countries outside of Europe.

    According to EMILY G.BALCHThese wars appear also to have given its death blow to colonialism and to imperialism in its colonial form, under

    which weaker peoples were treated as possessions to be economically exploited. At least we hope that such colonialism

    is on the way out.

    According to Kim Jong,The liquidation of colonialism is a trend of the times which no force can hold back.

    According to IAN SMITHI would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language,

    no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 9

    Types of Colonies:

    Historians often distinguish between two forms of colonialism, chiefly based on the numberof people from the colonising country who settle in the colony:

    y Settler colonialism involved a large number of colonists, typically seeking fertile landto farm.

    y Exploitation colonialism involved fewer colonists, typically interested in extractingresources to export to the metropole. This category includes trading posts but it alsoincludes much larger colonies where the colonists would provide much of theadministration and own much of the land and other capital but rely on indigenous

    people for labour.

    Several types of colonies may be distinguished, reflecting different colonial objectives.

    y Settlercolonies refer to a variety of ancient and more recent examples whereby ethnicallydistinct groups settle in areas other than their original settlement that are either adjacent oracross land or sea.From about 750 BC the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settlingcolonies in all directions. Other examples range from large empire like the Roman Empire,the Arab Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire or small movements like ancientScots moving from Hibernia to Caledonia and Magyars into Pannonia (modern-day Hungary).Turkic peoples spread across most of Central Asia into Europe and the Middle East betweenthe 6th and 11th centuries. Recent research suggests that Madagascar was uninhabited untilMalay seafarers from Indonesia arrived during the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. Subsequentmigrations from both the Pacific and Africa further consolidated this original mixture, andMalagasy people emerged.

    Before the expansion of the Bantu languages and their speakers, the southern half of Africa isbelieved to have been populated by Pygmies and Khoisan speaking people, today occupyingthe arid regions around the Kalahari and the forest of Central Africa. By about 1000 ADBantu migration had reached modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa . The Banu Hilal andBanu Ma'qil were a collection of ArabBedouin tribes from the Arabian peninsula whomigrated westwards via Egypt between the 11th and 13th centuries. Their migration stronglycontributed to the arabization and islamization of the western Maghreb, which was until thendominated by Berber tribes. Ostsiedlung was the medieval eastward migration and settlementof Germans. The 13th century was the time of the great Mongol and Turkic migrations acrossEurasia. Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese expanded southward in a

    process known as nam tin (southward expansion)

    More recent examples of internal colonialism are the movement of ethnic Chinese into Tibetand Eastern Turkestan, ethnic Javanese into Western New Guinea and Kalimantan (seeTransmigration program), Brazilians into Amazonia, Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza,ethnic Arabs into Iraqi Kurdistan, and ethnic Russians into Siberia and Central Asia. The local

    populations or tribes, such as the aboriginal people in Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil,Japan, Siberia and the United States, were usually far overwhelmed numerically by thesettlers.

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    10 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM

    Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemicdisease was theoverwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.Forcible populationtransfers, usually to areas of poorer-quality land or resources, often led to the permanentdetriment of indigenous peoples. Whilst commonplace in the past, in today's languagecolonialism and colonization are seen as state-sponsored illegal immigration that was criminalin nature and intent, achieved essentially with the use of violence and terror.

    In some cases, for example the Vandals, Huguenots, Boers, Matabeles and Sioux, thecolonizers were fleeing more powerful enemies, as part of a chain reaction of colonization.

    Settler colonies may be contrasted with dependencies, where the colonizers did not arrive as part of a mass emigration, but rather as administrators over existing sizable nativepopulations.Examples in this category include the Persian Empire, the British Raj, Egyptafter the Twenty-sixth dynasty, the Dutch East Indies, and the Japanese colonial empire. Insome cases large-scale colonial settlement was attempted in substantially pre-populated areasand the result was either an ethnically mixed population (such as the mestizos of theAmericas), or racially divided, such as in French Algeria or Southern Rhodesia.

    y Plantation colonies such as Barbados, Saint-Domingue and Jamaica, the white colonizersimported black slaves who rapidly began to outnumber their owners, leading to minorityrule, similar to a dependency. Trading posts, such as Hong Kong, Macau, Malacca,Deshima, Portuguese India and Singapore constitute a fifth category, where the primary

    purpose of the colony was to engage in trade rather than as a staging post for furthercolonization of the hinterland.

    There is a certain amount of overlap between these models of colonialism. In both casespeople moved to the colony and goods were exported to the metropole..

    In some cases, settler colonialism took place in substantially pre-populated areas and the

    result was either an ethnically mixed population (such as the mestizos of the Americas), or aracially divided population, such as in French Algeria or Southern Rhodesia.

    A League of Nations mandate was legally very different from a colony.However, there wassome similarity with exploitation colonialism in the mandate system.

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    IN

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    : COLONIALISM 1

    1

    Types of colonies In t e Li t ofM ps

    T E i T i

    T i E i

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    12 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM

    The Mongol Empire and its successor Khanates.

    Conquests of the Ottoman Empire

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 13

    History of Colonialism:

    The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and acrosstime, including such disparate peoples as the Hittites, the Incas and the British, although the

    term colonialism is normally used with reference to discontiguousE

    uropean overseas empiresrather than contiguous land-based empires, European or otherwise.

    Land-based empires are conventionally described by the term imperialism, such as Age ofImperialism which includes Colonialism as a sub-topic, but in the main refers to conquest anddomination of nearby lesser geographic powers.Examples of land-based empires include theMongol Empire, a large empire stretching from the Western Pacific to Eastern Europe, theEmpire of Alexander the Great, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Persian Empire, the RomanEmpire, the Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire was created across Mediterranean, NorthAfrica and into South-Eastern Europe and existed during the time ofEuropean colonization ofthe other parts of the world.

    After the PortugueseReconquista period when the Kingdom of Portugal fought against theMuslim domination of Iberia, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Portuguese started to expandoverseas.European colonialism began in 1415, with Portugal's conquest of the Muslim port ofCeuta, Northern Africa. In the following decades Portugal braved the coast of Africaestablishing, trading posts, ports and fortresses. Colonialism was led by Portuguese andSpanish exploration of the Americas, and the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, andEast Asia.

    On June 7, 1494, Pope Alexander VI divided the world in half, bestowing the western portionon Spain, and the eastern on Portugal, a move never accepted by the rulers of England orFrance. (See also the Treaty of Tordesillas that followed the papal decree.)

    The latter half of the sixteenth century witnessed the expansion of the English colonial statethroughout Ireland. Despite some earlier attempts, it was not until the 17th century thatBritain, France and the Netherlands successfully established overseas empires outside Europe,in direct competition with Spain and Portugal and with each other. In the 19th century theBritish Empire grew to become the largest empire yet seen (see list of largest empires).

    The end of the 18th and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization when most ofthe European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metro

    poles. Spain and Portugal were irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New Worldcolonies, but Britain (after the union ofEngland and Scotland), France and the Netherlandsturned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia,where coastal enclaves had already been established. The German Empire (now Republic),created by most of Germany being united underPrussia (omitting Austria, and other ethnic-German areas) also sought colonies in German East Africa. Territories in other parts of theworld were also added to the trans-oceanic, or extra-European, German colonial empire. Italyoccupied Eritrea, Somalia and Libya.During the First and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War,Italy invaded Abyssinia, and in 1936 the Italian Empire was created.

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    The industrialization of the 19th century led to what has been termed the era of NewImperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was theScramble for Africa.

    In 1823, the United States, while expanding westward for the Pacific, had published theMonroe Doctrine in which it gave fair warning to western European expansionists to stay out

    of American affairs. Originally, the document targeted the spread of colonialism in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, deeming it oppressive and intolerable. By the end of the 19thcentury, interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine by individuals such as Theodore Roosevelt,viewed it as an American responsibility to ensure Central American, Caribbean, and SouthAmerican economic stability that would allow those nations to repay their debts to theircolonizers. In fact, under Roosevelts presidency in 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to theMonroe Doctrine was added to the original document in order to justify colonial expansionist

    policies and actions by the U.S. under Roosevelt (Marks, 1979). Roosevelt defended theamendment to congress in 1904 when he expressed:

    All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous.Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a

    nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social andpolitical matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference fromthe United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general looseningof the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention

    by some civilized nation, and in theWestern Hemisphere the adherence of the United Statesto the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases ofsuch wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power (Roosevelt,1904).Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases ofsuch wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power (Roosevelt,1904).

    In this case imperialism would now, for the first time in American history, begin to manifestitself across the bordering waters and incorporating the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, PuertoRico, and Hawaii as American territories.

    America was successful in liberating the territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and thePhilippines. U.S. government replaced the existing government in Hawaii in 1893; it wasannexed into the American union as an offshore territory in 1898. Between 1898 and 1902,Cuba was a territory of the United States along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines,which were all colonies gained by the United States from Spain. In 1946, the Philippines wasgranted independence from the United States and Puerto Rico still to this day remains aterritory of the United States along with America Samoa, Guam, and The U.S. Virgin Islands.In Cuba, the Platt Amendment was replaced in 1934 by the Treaty of Relations which granted

    Cuba less intervention by U.S. government on matters of economy and international relations.1934 would also be the year that, under the presidency ofFranklin D. Roosevelt, that theGood Neighbor Policy was adopted in order to limit American intervention in South andCentral America.

    During the 20th century, the overseas colonies of the losers ofWorld War I were distributedamongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until the end ofWorld War II that the second

    phase of decolonization began in earnest.

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 15

    The Imperial Civilizing Mission

    In the reign of Empress Catherine II (r. 1762 - 1796), the empire's leadership began toexperiment with new approaches to govern these peoples. These policies drew uponEnlightenment concepts of government that redefined the object of colonial conquests. They

    became the basis of Russian colonialism.Previously, the Russian state had extended to theprinces and nobles of newly conquered eastern territories the chance to collaborate in imperialrule. It had required their conversion to Orthodox Christianity, and had periodicallyencouraged Orthodox missionaries to conduct campaigns of mass conversion, if necessary byforce. Before Catherine II's time, the state had made no concerted effort to alter the social,economic, and cultural practices of the peoples on its southern and eastern borderlands . Thisauthoritarian method of borderland rule demanded only obedience from the native

    populations.

    In the late eighteenth century, some educated Russians began to argue that their empire,which they believed a civilized Western land, had the duty to spread civilization, as theyunderstood it, to its backward peoples. They had two principal objectives. By spreading

    Russian culture, legal practices, and opportunities for economic enrichment, the empire couldhope to recruit a progressive group from these peoples who would become willingcollaborators in Russian domination. Equally important was their belief that Russia's ownhistorical development made the spread of its newly acquired Western culture among"savage" peoples a moral obligation.

    Catherine II herself traveled among the empire's eastern peoples at the beginning of her reign.Impressed by what she described as the "differences of peoples, customs, and even ideas" inAsian land, she looked for new ways to win the loyalty of the population.Encouragement oftrade, education, and religious toleration appeared to her desirable and useful tools tostrengthen the bonds between these colonial peoples and their imperial rulers. These goalssuggested practical guidelines by which she and her advisers could build their empire onmodern political foundations. These also confirmed in their eyes the legitimacy of theirimperial domination of backward peoples.

    Catherine II shared the Enlightenment conviction that reason, not religious faith, lay at thecore of enlightened government. She did not abandon the policy of maintaining OrthodoxChristianity as the state religion of the empire, but ended forced conversion of Muslim

    peoples to Christianity. In 1773, she formally accorded religious toleration to Islam. Hersuccessors on the imperial throne maintained this fundamental right, which proved a valuablemeans of maintaining peaceful relations with the empire's growing Muslim population. Theyencouraged the conversion to Christianity of peoples holding to animist beliefs, for they

    believed that their duty was to favor the spread of Christianity. They also promoted the

    commercial exploitation of colonial resources and the increased sale of Russian manufacturedgoods in their colonial territories. The Western colonialists' slogan of "Commerce andChristianity" described one important aspect to Russia's civilizing mission. Self-interest aswell as the belief in spreading the benefits ofWestern civilization provided the ideological

    basis for Russian colonialism. This new policy never fully supplanted the old practices ofauthoritarian rule and discrimination against non-Russians, which had strong defendersamong army officers on the borderlands. But it, too, enjoyed powerful backing in the highest

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    government circles. In the nineteenth century, their vision of an imperial civilizing missionbrought Russia into the ranks of great Western empires.

    Commerce and Christianity in Colonial Alaska

    Alaska was the first area where Russian colonialism guided imperial rule. In the lateeighteenth century Russian trappers had appeared there, having crossed the Pacific Oceanalong the Aleutian Islands from Siberia in their hunt for fur-bearing sea mammals. The seaotter, whose fur was so highly prized that it was called "soft gold," was their chosen prey.They forced native peoples skilled at the dangerous craft of hunting at sea (mainly Aleutiantribesmen) to trap the animals, whose range extended from the Aleutians along the Alaskancoast and down to California. In 1800, the Russian government created a special colonialadministration, the Russian-American Company, to take charge of "the Russian colonies inAmerica." Its main tasks were to expand the commercially profitable fur-gathering activities,and to spread Orthodox Christianity and Russian culture among the subject peoples of thisvast territory.

    "Commerce and Christianity" defined the Russian Empire's objectives there. It operated in amanner somewhat similar to that of the British Hudson's Bay Company, also established incolonial North America. And like other overseas colonies ofEuropean empires, the Russiansexploited Alaska's valuable resources (killing off almost all the sea otters), in the processconfronting periodic revolts from their subject peoples. Faced with these difficulties, theRussian government finally abandoned its distant colony, too expensive and too distant toretain. In 1867, it sold the entire territory to the United States.

    Colonial Turkestan and Imperial Citizenship

    In seeking to create a unified, modern state, the Russian Empire moved toward establishing acommon citizenship for the peoples in its multiethnic, multireligious borderlands in the latenineteenth century. It began this effort in 1860s and 1870s, at the time when it freed its

    peasant serf population from conditions of virtual slavery to its nobility. Reformers in thegovernment conceived of an empire founded on a sort of imperial citizenship, extended toformer serfs and to native peoples.

    That was the period of the empire's last major colonial expansion, when its military forcesconquered a large part of Central Asia. The settled and nomadic populations of Turkestan (asthe area was then called) spoke Turkic languages and were faithful Muslims who looked tothe Ottoman Empire, not Russia, for cultural and religious leadership. The Russian colonialadministration was deeply divided on the proper treatment of their unwilling new subjects .

    Some preferred to rely on the old policies of authoritarian rule, restrictions of the Muslimreligion, and the encouragement of Russian colonization. Others took their inspiration fromCatherine II's colonialist policies. The latter argued for progressive colonial policies includingreligious toleration of Islam, respect for the ethnic customs and moral practices of Turkestan's

    peoples, and the development of new crops (especially cotton) and commercial trade withRussia. They hoped that, as the powerful Minister ofFinance Sergei Witte argued in 1900,full equality of rights with other subjects, freedom in the conduct of their religious needs, andnon-intervention in their private lives, would ensure the unification of the Russian state.

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    This progressive colonialist program was notable by according (in theory) "equality of rights"to these imperial subjects. Colonial officials of this persuasion believed that they couldextend, within their autocratic state, a sort of imperial citizenship to all the colonial peoples.They withheld, however, the full implementation of this reform until these peoples were"ready," that is, proved themselves loyal, patriotic subjects of the emperor-tsar. Opposition totheir policy came from influential civilian leaders who judged that the state's need to support

    Russian peasants colonizing Turkestan territories had to come first. Their reckless decisionled to the seizure from nomadic tribes of vast regions of Turkestan given to the peasant

    pioneers. Colonization meant violating the right of these subjects to the use of their land,which led directly to the Turkestan uprising of 1916. Coming before the 1917 revolution, thisrebellion revealed that the empire's colonialist policies had failed to unify its peoples.

    Orientalism in the Caucasus Region

    To the end of the empire's existence, colonialism rested on the assumption of Russian culturalsuperiority and often expressed itself in disdain for colonial peoples.Yet not all of thesesubject groups were treated with equal disregard. In the territories of the Caucasus Mountains

    (between the Black and Caspian Seas), imperial rule won the support of some peoples, butfaced repeated revolts from others. Resistance came especially from Muslim mountain tribes,who bitterly opposed domination by this Christian state. They sustained a half-century waruntil their defeat in the 1860s, when many were forced into exile or emigrated willingly to theOttoman Empire. The conquest of the region produced an abundance of heroic tales of exoticadventures pitting valorous Russians against barbaric, cruel, and courageous enemies. Thesetales created enduring images of "oriental" peoples, sometimes admired for their "noblesavagery" but usually disparaged for their alleged moral and cultural decadence.

    Russian colonialism had a powerful impact on the population there. The Christian peoples(Georgians and Armenians) of the region found particular benefits from the empire'seconomic and cultural policies. Armenians created profitable commercial enterprises in thegrowing towns and cities of the Caucasus region, and were joined by large numbers ofArmenian migrants from surrounding Muslim states. Some Georgians used the empire'scultural window on modern Western culture to create their own national literature and history.These quickly became tools in the Georgians' nationalist oppositional movement. In theMuslim lands along the Caspian Sea where Azeri Turks lived, investors from Russia andEurope developed the rich oil deposits into one of the first major sources of petroleum for theEuropean economy, a source of immense profit to them. The port of Baku became a

    boomtown, where unskilled Azeri laborers worked in the dangerous oil fields. They formed acolonial proletariat living among Russian officials and capitalists, and Armenian merchantsand traders. The new colonial cities such as Baku were deeply divided both socially andethnically, and became places in the early twentieth century of riots and bloodshed provoked

    by the hostility among these peoples.

    Nationalist opposition to empire and ethnic conflictamong its peoples were both products of Russian colonialism.

    Colonialism in the Soviet Union

    The fall of the empire in 1917 ended Russian colonialism as a publicly defended ideal andpolicy. The triumph of the communist revolutionary movement in most of the lands once a

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    part of the empire put in place a new political order, called the Union of Soviet SocialistRepublics. The communist leaders of the new Soviet state preached the Marxist-Leninist

    program for human progress. They persecuted all religious movements, and denouncedimperialism and colonialism, in Russia as elsewhere in the Western world. Their promise wasliberation of all colonial peoples. But they did not permit their own peoples, previously in theempire's colonial lands, to escape their domination. Their idea of "colonial liberation"

    consisted of organizing these peoples into discreet ethno-territorial units by drawing territorialborders for every distinct people. The biggest of these received their own national republics.Each of these nations of the Soviet Union had its own political leaders and its own languageand culture, but the "union" to which they belonged remained under the domination of theCommunist Party, itself controlled from party headquarters in the Kremlin in Moscow.

    The empire's eastern peoples experienced a new, communist civilizing mission, whichproclaimed the greatest good for backward peoples to be working-class liberation, nationalculture, and rapid economic development under state control. Colonization reappeared as wellwhen, in the 1950s and 1960s, millions of settlers from European areas moved into Siberiaand regions of Central Asia to cultivate, in enormous state-run farms, most of the remaininglands of the nomadic peoples. Colonialism within the lands of the former Russian Empire did

    not disappear until the Soviet Union in its turn collapsed in 1991.

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    European powers and persons representing them undertook a vast program of overseascolonization extending throughout the early modern period, which had the effects ofenergizing a world economy by encompassing the New World within it and of stimulating amassive emigration ofEuropeans.

    The Atlantic Islands

    In the course of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese and the Spaniards discovered,conquered, colonized, and administered a series of island possessions that became earlyexperiments in imperialism. In the 1480s and 1490s, the Spanish crown conquered GranCanaria, Tenerife, and La Palma, the richest of the seven Canary Islands. The administrativeapparatus set up to govern the colony anticipated aspects of the administration of the futureempire.First there was a survey and apportionment of land in arepartimiento; there was nodividing up of nativesthe form thatrepartimiento later took in the New World.Each islandwas considered a municipality, administered by acabildo, or 'city council'. The islands weresettled by soldiers and by immigrants from Castile and Andalusia, many of them single menwho married indigenous women. The economy of the Canaries in the sixteenth century was

    based on sugar, a monoculture.

    The Portuguese had a papal grant to settle Madeira, an uninhabited island, in 1425. Its prosperity after the middle years of the fifteenth century was based on the production ofsugar, wheat, and wine good enough to be exported.Henry the Navigator (13941460) wasauthorized to settle the Azores in 1439, by which time the Portuguese had already placedsheep on several islands to provide food for passing ships. By the end of the 1440s, the islandof Santa Maria was already exporting wheat to Portugal. The colonization of the central andwestern isles took longer.Foreigners, particularly Flemings, were recruited to settle there inthe 1460s and 1470s.Pico, one of the westernmost islands, became a leading wine producerand was important in the three-cornered trade with North America and the West Indies of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the key products of which were New England barrelstaves, Caribbean molasses, and Atlantic Island wine.

    Italians in the service of the Portuguese crown sailing offWest Africa discovered the aridCape Verde islands. The Portuguese established a plantation and pastoral economy run byslaves from Africa and a small group of white colonists as landlords, merchants, and civil andchurch officials. After the discovery of the New World, the Portuguese islands served asnodal points in the great web of interoceanic shipping routes that soon developed.

    Spanish Colonization

    The Spaniards' strategy of colonization in the NewW

    orld was to found cities: They founded190 towns and cities by 1620. These were built uniformly on a Roman grid plan. They wereself-governing entities governed bycabildos, had scant commercial functions, were populated

    by plantation owners and an Indian underclass, and had no industry to speak of. The mostimportant cities were viceregal capitals such as Mexico and Lima. In 1630, 58 percent of theSpanish population of the Audiencia of New Spain lived in Mexico City, and 55 percent ofthe population of the Audiencia of Lima lived in Lima City.Exploration and settlement of theinterior regions were organized from viceregal capitals such as Mexico, Lima, and Bogot.

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    The Spanish New World colonies were hypercentralized because the crown ruled theterritories directly and created appropriate institutions of control, issuing some 400,000decrees pertaining to American colonial affairs between 1492 and 1635, or around 2,500annually. In an administrative sense, they were not colonies but kingdoms; hence they weregoverned by viceroys.

    This urban colonial network required large numbers of settlers. A total of at least 150,000 persons moved from Spain to America before 1550. Throughout the sixteenth century,between 250,000 and 300,000 Spaniards emigrated. The Amerindians were forced, throughthe repartimiento system, to work in enterprises (either farming or mining) calledencomiendas, feudal estates that were inheritable. Africans came as slaves, first from Europe,then, by the mid-1550s, imported directly from Africa for service on sugar plantations or inthe mines.

    Spanish colonization efforts in Asia centered upon Manila, the center both of trade with Chinaand Japan and of the effort to Christianize the Filipinos.Evangelization was made easier bythe political decentralization ofPhilippine society, which made armed resistance to Spain all

    but impossible. The Spanish colonists, a few thousand people in the seventeenth century,

    lived off the Manila galleon trade and left the direction of the country mainly to missionariesand a few bureaucrats.

    Portuguese Colonization

    The most striking aspect of the Portuguese seaborne empire was its extreme dispersion inchains of forts along various continental coastlines and islands. By the time ofPrince Henry'sdeath in 1460, the Portuguese had reached Sierra Leone, which was 1,500 miles down thewest African coast. There they established fortified trading posts, feitorias, close to the sea,guarded by caravels bearing canons. This style of settlement, which the Portuguese laterintroduced into Asia, required few settlers and was designed to facilitate trade.

    Brazil was settled in the sixteenth century (after 1530) by a mixed feudal-commercial systemwherein coastal lands were placed under the control of hereditary proprietors. Settlers weretaken there and introduced cattle raising and sugar cultivation. Sugar was the ideal crop forcoastal Brazil, which had quick access to Europe and the capacity to outprice the Atlanticislands. Thousands ofPortuguese arrived as settlers, attracted by quick money in the sugarindustry.When the Amerindians of the coast, who had been conscripted to work on sugar

    plantations, perished, they were replaced by African slaves who were already resistant to mostOldWorld diseases.

    The Portuguese crown began to take back governance of Brazil from the hereditary

    landholders as early as 1549, when it reacquired the Bahia captaincy and named a governorgeneral. Settlements were widely dispersed, with a Portuguese population of only 30,000 in1600, scattered among fourteen captaincies along 4,000 miles of coastline.

    The Portuguese empire in Asia was established between 1509 and 1515 by capturing the seapassages leading to and from the Indian Ocean. Goa, on the Malabar coast of India, was themain naval base, followed in importance by Maco, off the Chinese mainland near Canton.The Portuguese empire in Asia was tiny in extent, consisting of only a few strategic islandsand coastal trading posts that controlled most Asian trade routes . The territory of a trading

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    post was negotiated with local authorities to achieve a form of colonization, but one of apurely commercial nature. The Portuguese settled near the centers of production and marketsand at the intersection of trade routes, taking advantage of trading networks alreadyestablished before their arrival. This system could run efficiently with few settlers, who didnot require an infrastructure of public services, and it left local trade in the hands of theindigenous communities. The majority ofPortuguese settlers in Asia were soldiers, while the

    Spanish empire, after the conquests of Mexico and Peru, was by and large a civilian empire.

    Colonies in the Caribbean

    Europeans of different origins established colonies of different styles. Spanish settlements inCuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo were based on ranching, mining, and, in theseventeenth century, sugar. The English and French established plantations on their islands to

    produce labor-intensive crops like sugarcane, worked by indentured servants and, later,African slaves. The Dutch established trading posts, such as Curaao. In 1600, all NewWorldsettlements were still Spanish. The English and French begin to colonize in the first quarter ofthe seventeenth century in part because the Dutch Navy in the Caribbean protected them from

    the Spanish. At the same time, the British began to colonize the outer islands, starting with St.Kitts and Barbados, which served as bases for further expansion. The French then establisheda Compagnie des Isles d'Amrique and settled Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1635. It waseasy (both forFrench and English settlers) to obtain grants because the islands were thoughtfairly worthless before sugar was introduced. In the first phase of settlement, tobacco andcotton were the main crops.

    British Colonization

    British colonial development in the New World was focused both on the Caribbean and theNorth American mainland. The disinterest of the English government in direct management ofthe colonies was matched by the penchant of settlers in the thirteen colonies for self-government, inasmuch as distaste for central authority had played an important role in theirdecision to emigrate. The economic life of the colonies was differentiated early on, with

    plantations in the south, which grew cereals, cotton, and, later, tobacco, and a more variedeconomy in the north, characterized in New England by commercial shipping, fishing, andtimber. In the eighteenth century, large numbers of immigrants, first from Germany and laterfrom Ireland, were attracted by the prosperity of the British colonies, only to submit to thelure of the frontier once they had arrived.

    The British had a colonial stake in Asia since the formation in 1600 of the East IndiaCompany, a trading organization whose business grew steadily at the expense of theP

    ortuguese.

    In the eighteenth century the company had its own army; its rapacious rule inBengal stimulated Parliament to appoint a governor general in 1773. Over the next halfcentury the British steadily occupied the whole of India, but the company continued in anadministrative capacity until it was finally dissolved in 1858.

    French Colonizaton

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    In 1534, Jacques Cartier (14911557) established a fort on the site of what is now QuebecCity. The French settled Acadia in 1604 and Quebec in 1608. The entire early Frenchenterprise in Canada was based on a single product: fur. Beaver pelts, the best material for hatfelt, could not be found in France, were light in weight, had a high value relative to bulk, andwere easily transported. Quebec was organized along feudal lines, divided into huge ruralestates, orseigneuries, many of which persisted after the British absorbed the colony in 1763 .

    Further south the French established plantations along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, acolony that prospered from the late seventeenth century (with an interval of Spanish rule)until the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. A number ofFrench efforts to establish trading coloniesin Brazil (Fort Coligny/Rio de Janeiro in 15551560, Ibiapaba in 15901604, and So Luis doMarano in 16121615) were all squelched by Portugal.

    Dutch Colonization

    Dutch expansion was slow, steady, and on the whole peaceful. The Dutch East IndiaCompany, chartered in 1602, acted like a state within a state and imposed sole control overHolland's Asian interests. The first solid Dutch base was obtained in 1605 with the capture of

    the Portuguese fortress at Amboyna in the Moluccas. In 1619, the Dutch founded the city ofBatavia (now Jakarta, on Java), which became the center ofDutch power in Asia. The Dutchalso acquired a series of factories on the Indian coast and in 1638 a foothold in Ceylon, whichthey called the "Cinnamon Isle." By 1661 the Dutch were effectively in control of the entireisland. The Dutch empire, like the Portuguese one it largely replaced, was protected by itsvery size and the way it was scattered all over the map .

    Between 1624 and 1664 the Dutch established a colony in the Hudson Valley, called NieuwNetherlands, with its capital at Nieuw Amsterdam, on Manhattan island; it was a shipping andfarming colony whose total population reached 10,000 persons. In 1657, the Dutchestablished Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa, to protect its seas lanes to Asia. It was atiny colony, reaching a population of 15,000 only in the eighteenth century. Less successfulwas the colony of New Sweden along the South River in Delaware, which had beenestablished by a joint stock company in 1632 and was overrun by the Dutch in the early1650s. In 1624, the Dutch Company temporarily acquired a huge empire in the Brazilian"bulge" when they captured Bahia, which they held for thirty years.

    A Comparative Overview

    In comparative perspective, British and Dutch empires were decentralized and heavilyprivatized. Companies were the preferred form of colonization. The Spanish empire, whosecolonial administration was highly centralized, was just the opposite. The Portuguese likedthe centralization model but lacked the administrative infrastructure to overcome the problemscreated by distance (Asia) and scale (Brazil). The French were unsuccessful for politicalreasons and because of the weakness of their navy compared to those of the English andDutch.Where possible, they established plantations (Louisiana, the Caribbean) or feudal-likedomains (the Quebecseigneuries). They were out-maneuvered in North America and lost the

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    richest of their Caribbean islands, Saint Domingue (now Haiti), to a revolution. In economicterms the Spanish colonies constituted a kind of experiment in mercantilism whereby colonieswere to become productive entities that trade with the motherland. The Portuguese and Dutchcolonies were purely economic outposts, with only a few exceptions like Brazil or the CapeColony. The southern colonies of the future United States were, in their inception, plantationeconomies organized by companies; the northern colonies were increasingly drawn into

    commercial shipping networks of the New World economy.

    Natural Law and the Age ofDiscovery:

    The Spanish conquest of the Americas sparked a theological, political, and ethical debateabout the legitimacy of using military force in order to acquire control over foreign lands.This debate took place within the framework of a religious discourse that legitimized militaryconquest as a way to facilitate the conversion and salvation of indigenous peoples. The idea ofa civilizing mission was by no means the invention of the British in the nineteenth century.The Spanish conquistadores and colonists explicitly justified their activities in the Americas

    in terms of a religious mission to bring Christianity to the native peoples. The Crusadesprovided the initial impetus for developing a legal doctrine that rationalized the conquest andpossession of infidel lands.Whereas the Crusades were initially framed as defensive wars toreclaim Christian lands that had been conquered by non-Christians, the resulting theoreticalinnovations played an important role in subsequent attempts to justify the conquest of theAmericas. The core claim was that the Petrine mandate to care for the souls of Christ'shuman flock required Papal jurisdiction over temporal as well as spiritual matters, and thiscontrol extended to non-believers as well as believers.

    Even the spread of Christianity, however, did not provide an unproblematic justification forthe project of overseas conquest. The Spanish conquest of the Americas was taking placeduring a period of reform when humanist scholars within the Church were increasingly

    influenced by the natural law theories of theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas. Accordingto Pope Innocent IV, war could not be waged against infidels and they could not be deprivedof their property simply because of their non-belief. Under the influence of Thomism,Innocent IV concluded that force was legitimate only in cases where infidels violated naturallaw. Thus nonbelievers had legitimate dominion over themselves and their property, but thisdominion was abrogated if they proved incapable of governing themselves according to

    principles that every reasonable being would recognize. The Spanish quickly concluded thatthe habits of the native Americans, from nakedness to unwillingness to labor to allegedcannibalism, clearly demonstrated their inability to recognize natural law.From this, theylegitimized the widespread enslavement of the Indians as the only way of teaching themcivilization and introducing them to Christianity.

    Many of the Spanish missionaries sent to the New World, however, immediately noticed thatthe brutal exploitation of slave labor was widespread while any serious commitment toreligious instruction was absent. Members of the Dominican order in particular noted thehypocrisy of enslaving the Indians because of their alleged barbarity while practicing a formof conquest, warfare, and slavery that reduced the indigenous population ofHispaniola from250,000 to 15,000 in two decades of Spanish rule. Given the genocidal result of Spanishcivilization, they began to question vocally the idea of a civilizing mission. Bartolom de

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    Las Casas and Franciscus de Victoria were two of the most influential critics of Spanishcolonial practice. Victoria gave a series of lectures on Indian rights that applied Thomistichumanism to the practice of Spanish rule.He argued that all human beings share the capacityfor rationality and have natural rights that stem from this capacity. From this premise, hededuced that the Papal decision to grant Spain title to the Americas was illegitimate. Unlikethe position ofPope Innocent IV, Victoria argued that neither the Pope nor the Spaniards

    could subjugate the Indians in order to punish violations of natural law, such as fornication oradultery. He noted that the Pope has no right to make war on Christians and take their

    property simply because they are fornicators or thieves. If this were the case, then noEuropean king's dominion would ever be safe.Furthermore, according to Victoria, the popeand Christian rulers acting on his mandate have even less right to enforce laws againstunbelievers, because they are outside of the Christian community, which is the domain ofPapal authority (Williams 1990).

    Despite this strongly worded critique of the dominant modes of justifying Spanishconquest, Victoria concluded that the use of force in the New World was legitimate in caseswhen Indian communities violated the Law of Nations, a set of principles derivable fromreason and therefore universally binding. At first it might sound contradictory that Victoria

    concluded that the Indians' supposed violation of the law of nature did not justify conquest buttheir violation of the Law of Nations, itself derived from natural law, did. Victoriaemphasized that the Law of Nations is binding because there exists clearly enough aconsensus of the greater part of the whole world (391) and because the principles benefitthe common good of all. This distinction seems to rely on the assumption that other

    principles usually associated with natural law (such as the prohibitions on adultery andidolatry) only affect those who consent to the practices, whereas violations of the Law of

    Nations (e.g. prohibitions on peaceful travel and trade) have consequences for those who donot consent. Ultimately, Victoria's understanding of the Law of Nations led him to defend the

    practice of Spanish colonialism, even as he emphasized that the Spanish remedy of warfareshould be limited to minimal measures required to attain the legitimate objectives of peacefultrade and missionary work.Within Victoria's critique of the legality and morality of Spanishcolonialism was a rationalization for conquest, albeit a restrictive one.

    Post-colonial Theory:

    From the perspective of world-system theory, the economic exploitation of the periphery doesnot necessarily require direct political or military domination. In a similar vein, contemporaryliterary theorists have drawn attention to practices of representation that reproduce a logic ofsubordination that endures even after former colonies gain independence. The field of

    postcolonial studies was established byEdward Said in his path-breaking bookOrientalism.In Orientalism Said applied Michel Foucault's technique of discourse analysis to the

    production of knowledge about the MiddleE

    ast.

    The term orientalism described a structuredset of concepts, assumptions, and discursive practices that were used to produce, interpret, andevaluate knowledge about non-European peoples. Said's analysis made it possible for scholarsto deconstruct literary and historical texts in order to understand how they reflected andreinforced the imperialist project. Unlike previous studies that focused on the economic or

    political logics of colonialism, Said drew attention to the relationship between knowledge andpower. By foregrounding the cultural and epistemological work of imperialism, Said was ableto undermine the ideological assumption of value-free knowledge and show that knowing theOrient was part of the project of dominating it. Thus, Orientalism can be seen as an attempt

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    to extend the geographical and historical terrain of the poststructuralist critique ofWesternepistemology.

    Said uses the term Orientalism in several different ways.First, Orientalism is a specific fieldof academic study about the Middle East and Asia, albeit one that Said conceives quiteexpansively as including history, sociology, literature, anthropology and especially philology.

    He also identifies it as a practice that helps define Europe by creating a stable depiction of itsother, its constitutive outside. Orientalism is a way of characterizing Europe by drawing acontrasting image or idea, based on a series of binary oppositions (rational/irrational,mind/body, order/chaos) that manage and displace European anxieties. Finally, Saidemphasizes that it is also a mode of exercising authority by organizing and classifyingknowledge about the Orient. This discursive approach is distinct both from a vulgarmaterialist assumption that knowledge is simply a reflection of economic or political interestsand from an idealist conviction that scholarship is disinterested and neutral. FollowingFoucault, Said's concept of discourse identifies a way in which knowledge is not usedinstrumentally in service of power but rather is itself a form of power.

    The second quasi-canonical contribution to the field of post-colonial theory is Gayatri

    Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak? Spivak works within Said's problematic ofrepresentation but extends it to the contemporary academy. By posing the question Can thesubaltern speak? she asks whether the scholarly interest in non-Western cultures mayunwittingly reproduce a new kind of orientalism, whereby academic theorists mine non-Western sources in order to speak authoritatively in their place.Even though the goal is tochallenge the existing Eurocentrism of the academy, post-colonial studies is particularlyvulnerable to the risks associated with any claim to speak authoritatively on behalf of thesubaltern. Thus the field of post-colonial studies is haunted by its own impossibility. It was

    born out of the recognition that representation is inevitably implicated in power anddomination yet struggles to reconfigure representation as an act of resistance. In order to doso, it introduces new strategies of reading and interpretation while recognizing the limitationsof this endeavor.

    The core problematic of post-colonial theory is an examination of the relationship between power and knowledge in the non-Western world. Some scholars have approached this topicthrough historical research rather than literary or discursive analysis. The most influentialmovement is the Subaltern Studies group, which was originally made up of South Asianhistorians who explored the contribution of non-elites to Indian politics and culture. The termsubaltern suggests an interest in social class but more generally it is also a methodologicalorientation that opens up the study of logics of subordination.Whereas Said raised the broadissue of Orientalism, the Subaltern Studies group dismantled particular hegemonic narrativesof Indian colonial history. According to Spivak, the Subaltern Studies group developed twoimportant challenges to the narrative of Indian colonial history as a change from semi-

    feudalism to capitalist domination.First, they showed that the moment of change must be pluralized as a story of multiple confrontations involving domination and resistance ratherthan a simple great modes-of-production narrative. Second, these epochal shifts are marked

    by a multidimensional change in sign-system from the religious to the militant, crime toinsurgency, bondsman to worker (Guha and Spivak 1988: 3)

    The work of the Subaltern Studies group is emblematic of the way that post-colonial theoryoften inhabits the terrain between post-structuralism and Marxism, two traditions that have

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 27

    century, due in large part to infectious diseases brought by Japanese settlers pouring intoHokkaido.

    Researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe afterColumbus's voyages. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenerealtropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the

    different conditions ofEurope. The disease was more frequently fatal than it is today. Syphiliswas a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance. The first cholera pandemic began inBengal, then spread across India by 1820. 10,000 British troops and countless Indians diedduring this pandemic. Between 1736 and 1834 only some 10% of East India Company'sofficers survived to take the final voyage home.WaldemarHaffkine, who mainly worked inIndia, was the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and

    bubonic plague.

    As early as 1803, the Spanish Crown organized a mission (the Balmis expedition) to transportthe smallpox vaccine to the Spanish colonies, and establish mass vaccination programs there.By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination

    program for Native Americans. Under the direction of Mountstuart Elphinstone a program

    was launched to propagate smallpox vaccination in India.From the beginning of the 20thcentury onwards, the elimination or control of disease in tropical countries became a drivingforce for all colonial powers. The sleeping sickness epidemic in Africa was arrested due tomobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk. In the 20th century, theworld saw the biggest increase in its population in human history due to lessening of themortality rate in many countries due to medical advances.World population has grown from1.6 billion in 1900 to an estimated 6.7 billion today.

    SLAVE TRADE

    Slavery has existed to varying extents, forms and periods in almost all cultures and continents.

    Between the 7th and 20th centuries, Arab slave trade (also known as slavery in the East) tookapproximately 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes.Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took up to 12 million slavesto the New World.

    From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of the present UnitedStates. According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total

    population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal. Of all1,515,605 families in the 15 slave states, 393,967 held slaves (roughly one in four),amounting to 8% of all American families.

    In 1807, the United Kingdom became one of the first nations to end its own participation in

    the slave trade. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seizedapproximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action wasalso taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade,for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851 . Anti-slavery treatieswere signed with over 50 African rulers. In 1827, Britain declared the slave trade piracy,

    punishable by death.

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 29

    History of colonialism Around theglobe

    World map of colonialism in 180

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    30 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM

    This map of the world in 1900 shows the large

    colonialempires that powerful nations established

    across the globe.

    World map of colonialism at theend of the Second

    World War in 1945.

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    INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM 31

    World Colonization 1492-2008.

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    32 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: COLONIALISM

    Bibliography

    Brower, Daniel. (2003). Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire. London:Routledge/Curzon.

    Brower, Daniel, and Lazzerini, Edward, eds. (1997).Russia'sOrient: ImperialBorderlandsandPeoples, 1700 - 1917. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

    Jersild, Austin. (2002).OrientalismandEmpire: The North Caucasus Mountain Peoplesandthe Georgian Frontier, 1845 - 1917. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

    Khodarkovsky, Michael. (2002).Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Makingofa ColonialEmpire,1500 - 1800. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

    Layton, Susan. (1994).Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the CaucasusfromPushkin toTolstoy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Slezkine, Yuri. (1994).Arctic Mirrors: Russiaand the Small Peoples ofthe North. Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press.

    Suny, Ronald Grigor, and Martin, Terry, eds.A StateofNations: EmpireandNation-Makingin theAgeofLeninandStalin. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Boxer, C. R.The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 16001800. London, 1990.

    .The Portuguese Seaborne Empire. New York, 1969.

    Gibson, Charles. SpaininAmerica. New York, 1966.

    Parry, J.H.The Spanish Seaborne Empire. London, 1966.

    Vliz, Claudio.The CentralistTraditionofLatinAmerica.Princeton,

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    Reference:

    www.google.com

    www.msn.com

    www.encylcopedia.com

    www.Rutgers.edu

    www.politcalaffairs.net

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    Conclusion:To conclude, it is worth noting that some scholars have begun to question the usefulness ofthe concept post-colonial theory. Like the idea of the Scottish four stages theory, a theory with

    which it would appear to have little in common, the very concept of post-colonialism seems torely on a progressive understanding of history (McClintock 1992)). It suggests, perhapsunwittingly, that the core concepts of hybridity, alterity, particularly, and multiplicity maylead to a kind of methodological dogmatism or developmental logic. Moreover, the termcolonial as a marker of this domain of inquiry is also problematic in so far as it suggestshistorically implausible commonalities across territories that experienced very differenttechniques of domination. Thus, the critical impulse behind post-colonial theory has turned onitself, drawing attention to the way that it may itself be marked by the utopian desire totranscend the trauma of colonialism (Gandhi 1998).The study of colonialism can providestudents with critical tools both to understand and respond to some of the pressing politicaland economic questions of the world. Such tools can empower students to develop practicalsolutions to problems that hinder global peace, stability and economic equality. In this way,

    the study of colonialism provides a central foundation for today's global citizen


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