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Cultures of Colonialism (F8030) Prof. Alan Lester

Cultures of Colonialism (F8030) Prof. Alan Lester. J. R. Seely, The Expansion of England , 1883, p. 13:. ‘The history of England was not in England but in America and Asia’. Four Foundations of Empire (Darwin 2009). Britain’s industrial economy (coal)

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Cultures of Colonialism (F8030) Prof. Alan Lester

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  1. Cultures of Colonialism (F8030)Prof. Alan Lester

  2. J. R. Seely, The Expansion of England, 1883, p. 13: ‘The history of England was not in England but in America and Asia’

  3. Four Foundations of Empire (Darwin 2009) • Britain’s industrial economy (coal) • The City of London’s financial service reach: shipping insurance, harbour, railway, telegraph dividends etc. • India: powerhouse of Asia, rent, military might and reach. • The settler colonies/Dominions: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa – imports and exports, military strength, finance.

  4. Traditional Imperial History: The Causes of Expansion Robinson and Gallagher: • Informal imperialism preferred • Peripheral crises and intervention • The ‘official mind’ • Collaborators

  5. Marxists: industrial capitalism and crises of accumulation

  6. Cain and Hopkins: gentlemanly capitalists

  7. Postcolonial Approaches to Empire: Said Postcolonial studies in English and Imperial History’s rejection

  8. Said’s Orientalism: Imperialism about culture as much as politics and economics The western self and the oriental other: mutually constituted Binary opposites: civilization/savagery; enlightened/ignorant, rational/irrational; democratic/despotic; elevation of women/oppression of women etc.

  9. Colonial discourse and the geographical imagination: past and present

  10. Postcolonial Approaches to Empire: Bhabha and Spivak Bhabha: critiquing Said’s binaries: • Ambivalence • Hybridity • Mimicry

  11. Spivak: Can the subaltern speak? The example of sati

  12. Critiques of Postcolonial Theory i) Critiques of Said: Marxists, Historians, postcolonial admirers ii) Critiques of Bhabha: obtuse, but generalisable iii) Critiques of Spivak: • powerlessness and political inaction • the alternatives of oral history and ‘reading against the grain’ iv) Critiques of postcolonialism as a whole from ‘atheoretical’ imperial historians

  13. The ‘New’ Imperial History The best of both worlds: Culture and identity as well as politics and economics Empirical attention to place and period as well as theoretical generalisation British History and Imperial History: inextricable

  14. Example: Hall on Jamaica and Britain The making of ‘race’, class and gender The politics of inclusion and exclusion The making of masculinities and femininities

  15. Imperial Networks

  16. The Cape and Britain: projects, discourses and networks: • Governmentality • Humanitarianism • Settler capitalism

  17. How settlers ‘won’: • Free trade and self-government • Resistance and public opinion in Britain • Scientific racism • The ‘failure’ of emancipation • The consolidation of the middle classes ‘at home’

  18. American Empire • i) Ferguson: how Britain gave up its empire in the interests of the world, and the USA took over its civilizing mission? • ii) American imperialism and its differences • iii) The neoconservative project and the radical critique: • Harvey and Smith: the geopolitics of oil • Gregory: colonial discourses in the present

  19. The Uses of Britain’s History i) Ferguson’s appeal to the USA ii) Gregory: colonial Amnesia and nostalgia - in Britain iii) ‘Race’ and postcolonial Britain

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