Modernity and Globalisation

1. Modernity and Globalisation Gurminder K. Bhambra

2. The Modern State as the Imperial State Week 9

3. Overview • The dominant idea in addressing the relationship of modernity to ‘others’ is that it provides a resource for their emancipation • Decolonization and the abolition of slavery are seen as an expansion of Enlightenment ideals central to modernity • What is missed, is an address of the ways in which colonization and slavery were themselves constitutive of modernity • In this lecture we address the standard narrative of the emergence of nation-states and then situate its emergence globally

4. Nation-States • The emergence of nation-states in non-European parts of the world are seen to be part of a ‘natural’ progression of world history • This conflates the processes of colonialism and imperialism with the ‘neutral’ processes of modernization • National identity in the world beyond Europe is usually associated with the struggle against colonialism • However, the colonial question needs to be considered as integral to the development of the nation-state within Europe as well

5. Theories of Nationalism • Anthony Smith: ethnicities exist everywhere and so each nation has its origin in its own shared culture and history • EricHobsbawm: the ‘invention’ of mass-national traditions to create cohesive communities is an inevitable consequence of the divisions generated by modern capitalism • Benedict Anderson: the nationalist demand for a sovereign, limited community arises out of the modern processes of print capitalism • Emergence in the UK and France, followed by Germany and Italy, then the rest of the world

6. Emergence of Nation-States • The gradual administrative unification of territories in medieval Europe is not sufficient in itself to lead to the formation of nations • This also required:  • the transition to capitalism • a change in the control of administration • a revolution in cultural co-ordination (linked to decline in religion) • Territorial centralization and consolidation, together with cultural standardization, led to the emergence of culturally homogeneous states

7. ‘Imagined Communities’ • When immediate contact does not occur then the community that exists is an imagined one – this is not to imply that it is imaginary • People imagine others doing things similar to themselves within the same temporal space • The new development that led to nationalism was the emergence of communities based around printed vernacular languages • Later versions of nationalism are seen to be pirated/ modeled on earlier ones

8. ‘Imagined Communities’ • Latin and North America • ‘Creole’ nationalism where print-men created the idea of the nation in relation to travels to Europe • Europe • ‘Vernacular’ nationalism based on history and language, creating dictionaries, grammars, ‘national’ literatures • Eastern Europe and Asia • ‘Official’ nationalisms created by dynastic rulers in an attempt to reassert control in the face of vernacular movements • Africa and Asia • ‘Colonial’ nationalism is ‘pirated’ from all of the above

9. Postcolonial Response • Partha Chatterjee asks: • If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain ‘modular’ forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? • Those in the postcolonial world are condemned only to be the consumers of modernity, never its creators, or authors: • ‘Even our imaginations must remain forever colonized’ (Chatterjee 1996: 216)

10. The Project of the Nation-State • The nation-state is constituted, and represented, by the forms of knowledge created and accumulated by the state in its attempt to measure aspects of its citizens’ lives • The emergence of ‘governmentality’ is linked to the shift from legislation to administration that occurred in the aftermath of the French Revolution • This is related to the transformation of the social into an entity to be controlled through surveillance • The colonies were often the ‘laboratories’ of the repressive social policies instituted in the ‘home’ countries

11. Colonial Governmentality • Colonial populations were routinely seen as subordinated subjects whose health and resources were objects of legitimate interest to the colonial government • The first application of finger printing was in India in the1860s where it was used by the colonial government in Bengal • Vaccination / immunisation programmes were first instituted in the colonies • English literature appeared as a subject in the curriculum of the colonies long before it was ever institutionalized in the home country (see Viswanathan1989)

12. Pre-Colonial Governmentality • The reign of the Mughal emperor, Akbar, in 17th century India was underpinned by modes of surveillance that are generally attributed to having first emerged in Europe • Intelligence gathering, report writing, and surveillance of the general population are modes of governance that are not unique to Europe nor did they only emerge elsewhere after the impact of colonialism • They were used by other empires for their own purposes; purposes that were not unrelated to those of the subsequent European empires (see Bayly 1993)

13. The Nation-State as Colonial • Great Britain • 1603 conquest of Ireland, plantation colonialism • 1612 East India Company’s presence in India started • 1704 acquired Gibraltar as an early colony • 1707 Treaty of Union signed between England (incl. Wales) and Scotland • 1800 Act of Union signed between United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland • France • 1605 first successful colony established in North America / Canada • 1624 colonies in Senegal and West Africa • 1664 acquired Saint Domingue (Haiti) • 1789 French Revolution • 1830 colonised Algeria • 1852 Second French Empire

14. Reconsiderations • The interpretation of Britain and France as independently originary, and others as imitation, is not the only way of understanding the phenomenon of the modern nation-state • The nation-state emerged in the context of the colonial state and developments that are generally ascribed to one are done so by abstracting phenomena out of the relationships and interconnections between them • By locating the nation-state within the context of the wider interconnections would enrich our understandings of particular events as well as the wider contexts in which they occur

15. Original and the Copy • With the assumption of a particular version of the nation-state having emerged in 18th century Europe, and then being modelled or copied by others, there is no option but to theorize others in relation to that original model and as being imitations of it • as Charles Taylor (1999) argues, all ‘they’ (that is, non-Europeans) want to do is what has already been done in the West • Thus, distinguishing between the ‘original’ and the ‘copy’ has implications for the way in which different histories are understood and analyzed

16. Original and the Copy • Following Foucault (1969) in describing the original, what is taken as important is the history of changes and transformations • the ways in which new forms rose up to produce new landscapes • The copy is understood in terms of inertia • a slow accumulation of the past • a sedimentation of things in which what is addressed is what is held in common as opposed to what is unique • This maps onto the way in which things are valued with the original being more highly regarded than the copy, which is mere imitation

17. In sum … • When nationalism emerged in the rest of Europe there was no feeling that the nation was not culturally equipped to reach the standards set out by the pace-makers, Britain and France • Yet, with the emergence of nationalism in other parts of the world, it was often suggested that some time of development and civilization – usually colonial rule and education – had to pass before these countries could be considered prepared for self-rule • The refrain of ‘not yet’ emanates from a historical conception of cultural progress that justifies colonial intervention in the name of that progress and, in doing so, denies coevalness with others

18. The difference between being European and being Europeanized is the difference that produces knowledge as a form of social control in which to be Europeanized is emphatically not to be European (Bhabha) • The nation-state emerged as a colonial state • The writing out of the colonial relationship from understandings of its emergence impoverishes our analyses of it • The failure to address this complex relationship is key to the continuing misapprehension about the ‘singularity of modernity’ and its dispersal globally from Europe outwards

19. Questions for Reading: • What does it mean to say that modern state formation is a cultural project? • In which ways is colonialism implicated in the project of the nation state? • In your reading groups, research one example of something that you would imagine occurred first in Europe, but actually has its roots elsewhere • e.g. fingerprinting