Welcome Lunch and Well-being Event

Wednesday 22nd October 2014

12.30 pm – 2 pm
Come along to the first Succeed with Social Sciences event of
the new academic year!
• Find out more well-being and the career opportunities that it offers to
Social Scientists.
• Enjoy lunch and meet students and staff from other courses in the
School.
Booking is essential
Please visit: https://futurehub.ntu.ac.uk
Placement and Graduate Recruitment Fair 2014
Wednesday 29th October 2014
10 am – 3 pm
Come and visit our largest annual Recruitment Fair at NTU!
• Meet potential employers and find out about placement and graduate
opportunities
• There will be live CV checks and the opportunity to take part in speed
networking activities with employers.
More event details including the latest list of exhibitors and their opportunities
are listed on our Futurehub events page.
Planning and Managing Your Career
Friday 31st October 2014
1 pm – 2.30 pm
This event will focus on planning your career, focusing on issues such
as making career decisions, information about what careers people go
into from your degree and creating an action plan that leads to positive
action in 2014!

Booking is essential
Please visit:
https://futurehub.ntu.ac.uk
Planning and Managing Your Career
Thursday 6th November 2014
10 am – 11 pm and 2pm – 3pm

This event will focus on planning your career, focusing on issues such
as making career decisions, information about what careers people go
into from your degree and creating an action plan that leads to positive
action in 2014!

Booking is essential
Please visit:
https://futurehub.ntu.ac.uk
LECTURE 3: COLONIAL
EMPIRES
INTR10615/10625: International Relations and Global
History
Dr Marie Gibert
OUTLINE
 The Process of Colonisation
 Facilitating and Driving Forces

 Definition and Features

 Empire: An Obsolete Concept in International Relations?

FROM NATION-STATES TO COLONIAL
METROPOLES?

Regions that belonged once to a colonial empire.

COLONISATION
 See the Interactive Map on Wikipedia.
1550
1800
1898
THE CHRONOLOGY OF COLONISATION
 Timeframe spanning from the Age of Exploration to the early
20th century, with a peak towards the end of the 19 th century.
 Age of Exploration (15th-17th centuries): follows the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, motivated by the trade of gold, silver,
spices and opium + humanism and intellectual and scientific
curiosity (facilitated by the advent of printing).
 16-18th centuries:

 Conquest of the Americas;

 Establishment of trading posts on the African and Asian coasts;

 Portuguese, French and British competition in India;

 Exploration and colonisation of Australia in the late 18th century.

 Late 19th century-Early 20th century: Colonisation of the

Australasian and African hinterlands (‘Scramble for Africa’,
1870s-1914) + transfer of decision-making powers from trading
companies/individuals to states.
HOW?
 Territorial discoveries;
 Military conquest and violence;

 Trade and economic relations (and buying of territories)

 insidious colonisation through trade companies (see
Satyajit Ray’s The Chess Players);
 Diplomatic negotiations and agreements with local and
other colonial powers;
 Demographic colonisation through settlers (Latin
America, Australia, Algeria, etc.).
DRIVING AND FACILITATING FORCES
BEHIND COLONISATION
 Military conflicts and expansion;
 Competition for political power and influence in Europe;

 Geostrategic location;

 Industrial Revolution and search for raw materials;

 International normative evolution: Imperial ideology;

 Technological and scientific progress (means of

transport, mapping tools, conservation of food, access to
new medicines such as quinine, etc.);
 Religious proselytising.
MAIN FEATURES (1/2): (GEO)POLITICAL
 An unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship based on
domination and subordination.
 Important geographical distances between the “metropole” and the
colonies;
 Dominated populations are culturally and ethnically distinct from the
ruling ethnic group and its culture  very loose links.
 Centre-periphery structure and vast colonial territories  some
political instability (explains regular rebellions, redrawing of
boundaries, re-negotiation of the colonial contracts, diversity of
colonial experiences);
 Complex (not always formalised) systems of governance including
colonial representatives (direct rule), local “traditional” and
“educated” elites (indirect rule), company representatives, adventurers
and settlers (see Claire Denis’ Chocolat and Sydney Pollack’s Out of
Africa).
 MAIN FEATURES (2/2): COLONIAL
IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC
 Religious and ideological justifications,
such as:
 British White Man’s Burden;

 French civilising mission;

 Portuguese Lusotropicalism.

 Scientific and philosophical discovery

Banania advert, 1915-1974
of “the Other” (the colonised):
 Debates over their humanity, freedom and soul: see
the Valladolid debate (1550-1551).
 Use of scientific “evidence”, terminology and taxonomy: notion of
“race”.
 More generally, the Other pictured as exotic, threatening, in need of
salvation… generally “inferior”.
 “When one race shows itself superior to another in the
various externals of domestic life, it inevitably in the long
run gets the upper hand in public life and establishes its
predominance. Whether this predominance is asserted by
peaceable means or feats of arms, it is none the less, when
the proper time comes, officially established, and
afterwards unreservedly acknowledged. I have said that
this law is the only thing which accounts for the history of
the human race and the revolutions of empires, and that,
moreover, it explains and justifies the appropriation by
Europeans of territories in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and
the whole of our colonial development.”
(Edmond Demolins, 1900)
EMPIRES: AN OBSOLETE CONCEPT?
 Have empires disappeared with colonisation, or have
they simply changed?
 What of the American empire? Or an emerging Chinese
empire? What are/would be their main features?
 Do we need to revise the definition of empire to
encompass less material features? Can we talk about
cultural, linguistic, ideological, economic hegemony?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 D. Birmingham (1999), Portugal and Africa, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
 P. H. Boulle (1970), ‘Eighteenth-Century French Policies Toward Senegal: The Ministry
of Choiseul’, Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études
Africaines (4, 3), pp. 305-320.
 P. J. Cain and A. G Hopkins (1993), British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction,
1914-1990, London: Longman.
 A. L. Conklin (1997), A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France
and West Africa, 1895-1930, Stanford, California : Stanford University Press.
 F. Cooper (2005), Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
 F. Cooper (2004), ‘Empire Multiplied: A Review’, Comparative Studies in Society and
History (46, 2), pp. 247-272.
 R. Gott (2011), Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt, London: Verso.

 F. Fanon (1967), The Wretched of the Earth, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

 R. Hassig (1994), Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, London: Longman.

 A. Hochschild (1998), King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in
Colonial Africa, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
 H. Thomas (2003), Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson.
FILMOGRAPHY
 S. Ray (1977), Shatranj Ke Khilari: The Chess Players, starring Sanjeev
Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Shabana Azmi et al.
 R. Joffé (1986), The Mission, starring Robert de Niro, Jeremy Irons et al.

 B. Tavernier (1981), Coup de Torchon, starring Philippe Noiret, Isabelle

Huppert, et al.
 Z. Korda (1939), The Four Feathers, starring John Clements, Ralph
Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith, et al.
 D. Lean (1962), Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness,
Anthony Quinn, et al.
 F. Ford Coppola (1979), Apocalypse Now, starring Marlon Brando, Robert
Duvall, Martin Sheen et al.
 S. Pollack (1985), Out of Africa, starring Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Klaus
Maria Brandauer et al.
 C. Denis (1988), Chocolat, starring François Cluzet, Isaach De Bankolé,
Giulia Boschi et al. (and read the review written by one of your
predecessors, Jennifer Drouin).
WATCH THE BBC PROGRAMME WHO DO
YOU THINK YOU ARE?
 Episodes 9 (Billy Connolly) and 8 (
Reggie Yates) are particularly relevant on
colonial empires.