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138-417: Postcolonial, as in the postcolonial condition, is to be understood, as Mahmood Mamdani puts it, as a reversal of colonialism but not as superseding it. As an epistemology (i.e., a study of knowledge , its nature, and verifiability), ethics ( moral philosophy ), and as a political science (i.e., in its concern with affairs of the citizenry), the field of postcolonialism addresses the matters that constitute

276-592: A Master of Arts in political science and Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 1969. He attained his Doctor of Philosophy in government from Harvard University in 1974. His thesis was titled Politics and Class Formation in Uganda . Mamdani returned to Uganda in early 1972 and joined Makerere University as a teaching assistant at the same time conducting his doctoral research ; only to be expelled later that year by Idi Amin due to his ethnicity. He left Uganda for

414-468: A civilizing mission to cultivate land and life, based on beliefs of entitlement and superiority, historically often rooted in the belief of a Christian mission . Because of this broad impact different instances of colonialism have been identified from around the world and in history, starting with when colonization was developed by developing colonies and metropoles , the base colonial separation and characteristic. Decolonization , which started in

552-634: A 'style of thought' based on the antinomy of East and West in their world-views, and also as a 'corporate institution' for dealing with the Orient." In concordance with philosopher Michel Foucault , Said established that power and knowledge are the inseparable components of the intellectual binary relationship with which Occidentals claim "knowledge of the Orient." That the applied power of such cultural knowledge allowed Europeans to rename, re-define, and thereby control Oriental peoples, places, and things, into imperial colonies. The power-knowledge binary relation

690-668: A Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1967. He was among the many students in the northern US who made the bus journey south to Montgomery, Alabama , organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in March 1965, to participate in the civil rights movement . This was in Montgomery, during the time of but distinct from the Selma to Montgomery marches . He was jailed during

828-408: A clear or complete description of the area it supposedly refers to, it instead erases distinctions and identities of the groups it claims to represent. A postcolonial critique of this term would analyze the self-justifying usage of such a term, the discourse it occurs within, as well as the philosophical and political functions the language may have. Postcolonial critiques of homogeneous concepts such as

966-552: A cultural Other is salving your conscience...allowing you not to do any homework." Moreover, postcolonial studies also reject the colonial cultural depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mimics of the European colonists and their Western ways; and rejects the depiction of subaltern peoples as the passive recipient-vessels of the imperial and colonial power of the Mother Country. Consequent to Foucault's philosophic model of

1104-486: A deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism , including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may overlap with studies of contemporary history , and may also draw examples from anthropology, historiography , political science , philosophy , sociology , and human geography . Sub-disciplines of postcolonial studies examine

1242-446: A foreign ruling state... The ruling state monopolizes political power and keeps the subordinated society and its people in a legally inferior position." He also writes, "colonialism depends first and foremost upon the declaration of sovereignty and/or territorial seizure by a core state over another territory and its inhabitants who are classified as inferior subjects rather than equal citizens." According to David Strang, decolonization

1380-482: A higher purpose in life, whereby the more powerful, more developed, and more civilized races have the right to colonize other peoples, in service to the noble idea of "civilization" and its economic benefits. Postcolonial theory holds that decolonized people develop a postcolonial identity that is based on cultural interactions between different identities (cultural, national, and ethnic as well as gender and class based) which are assigned varying degrees of social power by

1518-574: A lot in military costs while private investors pocketed the benefits. In other cases the colonial powers managed to move the burden of administrative costs to the colonies themselves by imposing taxes. After World War I (1914–1918), the victorious Allies divided up the German colonial empire and much of the Ottoman Empire between themselves as League of Nations mandates , grouping these territories into three classes according to how quickly it

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1656-537: A mentally cathartic practise, which purges colonial servility from the native psyche , and restores self-respect to the subjugated. Thus, Fanon actively supported and participated in the Algerian Revolution (1954–62) for independence from France as a member and representative of the Front de Libération Nationale . As postcolonial praxis , Fanon's mental health analyses of colonialism and imperialism, and

1794-403: A nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories". The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers four definitions, including "something characteristic of a colony" and "control by one power over a dependent area or people". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses the term "to describe the process of European settlement and political control over the rest of

1932-519: A race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity, and almost no sense of honour; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers,

2070-681: A refugee camp in the United Kingdom in early November just as the three-month deadline was approaching for people of Asian heritage to leave the country. He left England in mid-1973 after being recruited to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. In Dar es Salaam, he completed writing his thesis and was active with anti-Amin groups. In 1979, he attended the Moshi Conference as an observer and returned to Uganda after Amin

2208-557: A scholarship along with 26 other Ugandan students to study in the United States. He was part of the 1963 group of the Kennedy Airlift , a scholarship program that brought hundreds of East Africans to universities in the United States and Canada between 1959 and 1963. The scholarships were part of the independence gift that the new nation had received. Mamdani joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1963 and graduated with

2346-866: A son, Zohran Mamdani , a current member of the New York State Assembly , representing the 36th District in Queens . In July 2017, Mamdani was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Colonialism Colonialism is the exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group. Colonizers monopolize political power and hold conquered societies and their people to be inferior to their conquerors in legal, administrative, social, cultural, or biological terms. While frequently advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can also take

2484-545: A specific area, demonstrate the interdependence of movements and the shared pursuit of justice and emancipation. Colonialism was presented as "the extension of civilization," which ideologically justified the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world over the non-Western world. This concept was espoused by Ernest Renan in La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial stewardship

2622-491: A subaltern woman, she applied to her voice the Spanish cultural filters of sexism , Christian monotheism, and servile language, in addressing her colonial master: I, Francisca de Figueroa, mulatta in colour, declare that I have, in the city of Cartagena, a daughter named Juana de Figueroa; and she has written, to call for me, in order to help me. I will take with me, in my company, a daughter of mine, her sister, named María, of

2760-402: A system of indentured servitude. Indentured servants consented to a contract with the European colonisers. Under their contract, the servant would work for an employer for a term of at least a year, while the employer agreed to pay for the servant's voyage to the colony, possibly pay for the return to the country of origin, and pay the employee a wage as well. The employees became "indentured" to

2898-411: A system that comes after colonialism , as the prefix post- may suggest. As such, postcolonialism may be thought of as a reaction to or departure from colonialism in the same way postmodernism is a reaction to modernism ; the term postcolonialism itself is modeled on postmodernism, with which it shares certain concepts and methods. A clear reflection of the continuous fights for independence around

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3036-484: A triumphant British colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms." In Provincializing Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty charts the subaltern history of the Indian struggle for independence, and counters Eurocentric , Western scholarship about non-Western peoples and cultures, by proposing that Western Europe simply be considered as culturally equal to

3174-425: Is Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks . In this book, Fanon discusses the logic of colonial rule from the perspective of the existential experience of racialized subjectivity. Fanon treats colonialism as a total project which rules every aspect of colonized peoples and their reality. Fanon reflects on colonialism, language, and racism and asserts that to speak a language is to adopt a civilization and to participate in

3312-782: Is a Ugandan of Indian ancestry . He was born in Mumbai and grew up in Kampala . Both his parents were born in the neighbouring Tanganyika Territory (present day Tanzania ). He was educated at the Government Primary School in Dar es Salaam , Government Primary School in Masaka , K.S.I. Primary School in Kampala, Shimoni and Nakivubo Government Primary Schools in Kampala, and Old Kampala Senior Secondary School . He received

3450-439: Is a more suited term because "the colonial in colonial modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority. Santiniketan's artist teachers' refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and modernism. Those European modernities, projected through

3588-879: Is achieved through the attainment of sovereign statehood with de jure recognition by the international community or through full incorporation into an existing sovereign state. The Times once quipped that there were three types of colonial empire: "The English, which consists in making colonies with colonists; the German, which collects colonists without colonies; the French, which sets up colonies without colonists." Modern studies of colonialism have often distinguished between various overlapping categories of colonialism, broadly classified into four types: settler colonialism , exploitation colonialism , surrogate colonialism , and internal colonialism . Some historians have identified other forms of colonialism, including national and trade forms. When colonists settled in pre-populated areas,

3726-481: Is allocated. To explain the different colonial cases, we thus need to look first into the political institutions that shaped the economic institutions. For example, one interesting observation is "the Reversal of Fortune" – the less developed civilisations in 1500, like North America, Australia, and New Zealand, are now much richer than those countries who used to be in the prosperous civilisations in 1500 before

3864-620: Is an Indian-born Ugandan academic, author, and political commentator. He currently serves as the Chancellor of Kampala International University , Uganda. He was the director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) from 2010 until February 2022, the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a Professor of Anthropology, Political Science and African Studies at Columbia University . Mamdani

4002-407: Is believed to be a problematic application of the term, as the immediate, historical, political time is not included in the categories of critical identity-discourse, which deals with over-inclusive terms of cultural representation, which are abrogated and replaced by postcolonial criticism. As such, the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism denote aspects of the subject matter that indicate that

4140-422: Is conceptually essential to identify and understand colonialism in general, and European colonialism in particular. Hence, To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated by the orientalist, brought into reality by them or as a kind of cultural and international proletariat useful for

4278-426: Is considered by E. San Juan, Jr. as "the originator and inspiring patron-saint of postcolonial theory and discourse" due to his interpretation of the theory of orientalism explained in his 1978 book, Orientalism . To describe the us-and-them "binary social relation" with which Western Europe intellectually divided the world—into the " Occident " and the " Orient "—Said developed the denotations and connotations of

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4416-469: Is necessary to thoroughly reconsider historical narratives, acknowledge a variety of viewpoints, and work to create inclusive and equitable societies that enable people to affirm and reclaim their distinct cultural identities in the post-colonial era. As a term in contemporary history , postcolonialism occasionally is applied, temporally, to denote the immediate time after the period during which imperial powers retreated from their colonial territories. Such

4554-418: Is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie... In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern .... Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and

4692-454: Is the existence of colonies, which are by definition governed differently from other territories such as protectorates or informal spheres of influence." In the book, Osterhammel asks, "How can 'colonialism' be defined independently from 'colony? ' " He settles on a three-sentence definition: Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting

4830-528: The Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia ) the vast majority of "Dutch" settlers were in fact Eurasians known as Indo-Europeans , formally belonging to the European legal class in the colony. Activity that could be called colonialism has a long history, starting at least as early as the ancient Egyptians . Phoenicians , Greeks , and Romans founded colonies in antiquity . Phoenicia had an enterprising maritime trading-culture that spread across

4968-987: The Scramble for Africa . The world's colonial population at the outbreak of the First World War (1914) – a high point for colonialism – totalled about 560 million people, of whom 70% lived in British possessions, 10% in French possessions, 9% in Dutch possessions, 4% in Japanese possessions, 2% in German possessions, 2% in American possessions, 3% in Portuguese possessions, 1% in Belgian possessions and 0.5% in Italian possessions. The domestic domains of

5106-924: The Third World concept, it ignores the why those regions or countries are considered Third World and who is responsible. One of the ongoing struggles is balancing the cultural heritage of the indigenous people with the norms and values imposed by colonizers. This can cause identity fracture and a sense of displacement in people as well as communities.  In addition, the hierarchical social structures that were created during colonial control have continued to support inequalities in power and injustice, which contributed to identity conflicts based on gender, class, and ethnicity. These problems are not just historical artifacts; rather, they are fundamental components of society and are expressed in current discussions about government, language, education, and cultural representation. In order to address these persistent identity problems, it

5244-502: The decolonized world is an intellectual space "of contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of hybridity , and of liminalities." As in most critical theory-based research, the lack of clarity in the definition of the subject matter coupled with an open claim to normativity makes criticism of postcolonial discourse problematic, reasserting its dogmatic or ideological status. In Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996), Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins clarify

5382-722: The mestizos of the Americas, as well as racially divided populations such as those found in French Algeria or in Southern Rhodesia . In fact, everywhere where colonial powers established a consistent and continued presence, hybrid communities existed. Notable examples in Asia include the Anglo-Burmese , Anglo-Indian , Burgher , Eurasian Singaporean , Filipino mestizo , Kristang , and Macanese peoples . In

5520-420: The " Arabs ," the " First World ," " Christendom ," and the " Ummah ", often aim to show how such language actually does not represent the groups supposedly identified. Such terminology often fails to adequately describe the heterogeneous peoples, cultures, and geography that make them up. Accurate descriptions of the world's peoples, places, and things require nuanced and accurate terms. By including everyone under

5658-593: The 'us-and-them' binary social relation to view the non-Western world as inhabited by ' the other '. As an example, consider how neocolonial discourse of geopolitical homogeneity often includes the relegating of decolonized peoples, their cultures, and their countries, to an imaginary place, such as "the Third World ." Oftentimes the term "the third World" is over-inclusive: it refers vaguely to large geographic areas comprising several continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. Rather than providing

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5796-523: The 16th century. The British, French and Dutch joined in the slave trade in subsequent centuries. The European colonial system took approximately 11 million Africans to the Caribbean and to North and South America as slaves. Abolitionists in Europe and Americas protested the inhumane treatment of African slaves, which led to the elimination of the slave trade (and later, of most forms of slavery) by

5934-453: The 18th century, gradually led to the independence of colonies in waves, with a particular large wave of decolonizations happening in the aftermath of World War II between 1945 and 1975. Colonialism has a persistent impact on a wide range of modern outcomes, as scholars have shown that variations in colonial institutions can account for variations in economic development , regime types , and state capacity . Some academics have used

6072-656: The 9th century Vikings ( Norsemen ) such as Leif Erikson established colonies in Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, North America, present-day Russia and Ukraine, France (Normandy) and Sicily. In the 9th century a new wave of Mediterranean colonisation began, with competitors such as the Venetians , Genovese and Amalfians infiltrating the wealthy previously Byzantine or Eastern Roman islands and lands. European Crusaders set up colonial regimes in Outremer (in

6210-617: The Americas with the Spanish American wars of independence (1808–1833). Empire-builders established several new colonies after this time, including in the German colonial empire and Belgian colonial empire . Starting with the end of the French Revolution European authors such as Johann Gottfried Herder , August von Kotzebue , and Heinrich von Kleist prolifically published so as to conjure up sympathy for

6348-738: The Bering Strait. From the 1860s onwards the Empire of Japan modelled itself on European colonial empires and expanded its territories in the Pacific and on the Asian mainland. The Empire of Brazil fought for hegemony in South America. The United States gained overseas territories after the 1898 Spanish–American War , hence, the coining of the term " American imperialism ". In the late 19th century, many European powers became involved in

6486-488: The European race.... Let each do what he is made for, and all will be well. From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century, such racialist group-identity language was the cultural common-currency justifying geopolitical competition amongst the European and American empires and meant to protect their over-extended economies. Especially in the colonization of the Far East and in the late-nineteenth century Scramble for Africa ,

6624-882: The Legacy of Classical Writers, Acheraiou discusses the history of colonialist discourse and traces its spirit to ancient Greece, including Europe's claim to racial supremacy and right to rule over non-Europeans harboured by Renan and other 19th-century colonial ideologues. He argues that modern colonial representations of the colonized as "inferior," "stagnant," and "degenerate" were borrowed from Greek and Latin authors like Lysias (440–380 BC), Isocrates (436–338 BC), Plato (427–327 BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC), Cicero (106–43 BC), and Sallust (86–34 BC), who all considered their racial others—the Persians, Scythians, Egyptians as "backward," "inferior," and "effeminate." Mahmood Mamdani Mahmood Mamdani , FBA (born 23 April 1946)

6762-803: The Levant , 1097–1291) and in the Baltic littoral (12th century onwards). Venice began to dominate Dalmatia and reached its greatest nominal colonial extent at the conclusion of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, with the declaration of the acquisition of three octaves of the Byzantine Empire. The European early modern period began with the Turkish colonization of Anatolia . After the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453,

6900-728: The Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC; later the Persian Empire and various Greek city-states continued on this line of setting up colonies. The Romans would soon follow, setting up coloniae throughout the Mediterranean, in North Africa, and in Western Asia. Beginning in the 7th century, Arabs colonized a substantial portion of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia and Europe. From

7038-447: The Orient for its own subjective purposes, one that lacks a native and intimate understanding. Such industries become institutionalized and eventually become a resource for manifest Orientalism, or for compiling misinformation about the Orient. The ideology of Empire was hardly ever a brute jingoism; rather, it made subtle use of reason and recruited science and history to serve its ends. These subjective fields of academia now synthesize

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7176-405: The United Kingdom, and the United States abstained). The word " neocolonialism " originated from Jean-Paul Sartre in 1956, to refer to a variety of contexts since the decolonisation that took place after World War II . Generally it does not refer to a type of direct colonisation – rather to colonialism or colonial-style exploitation by other means. Specifically, neocolonialism may refer to

7314-591: The West could progress—beyond the colonial perspective—by means of introspective self-criticism of the basic ideas and investigative methods that establish a culturally superior West studying the culturally inferior non–Western peoples. Hence, the integration of the subaltern voice to the intellectual spaces of social studies is problematic, because of the unrealistic opposition to the idea of studying "Others"; Spivak rejected such an anti-intellectual stance by social scientists, and about them said that "to refuse to represent

7452-400: The West's alter ego. It should be understood that this process draws creativity, amounting to an entire domain and discourse. In Orientalism (p. 6), Said mentions the production of "philology [the study of the history of languages], lexicography [dictionary making], history, biology, political and economic theory, novel-writing and lyric poetry." There is an entire industry that exploits

7590-812: The administration on his draft syllabus of a foundation course on Africa called "Problematizing Africa". This was dubbed the "Mamdani Affair". From 1998 to 2002, he served as president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa . In December 2001, he gave a speech on "Making Sense of Violence in Postcolonial Africa" at the Nobel Centennial Symposia in Oslo, Norway. In 2008, in an open online poll, Mamdani

7728-654: The armies of all three empires, Mocha coffee to Delhi and Belgrade , Persian silk to India and Istanbul . Aztec civilisation developed into an extensive empire that, much like the Roman Empire, had the goal of exacting tribute from the conquered colonial areas. For the Aztecs, a significant tribute was the acquisition of sacrificial victims for their religious rituals. On the other hand, European colonial empires sometimes attempted to channel, restrict and impede trade involving their colonies, funneling activity through

7866-426: The beginning of World War I . European colonialism employed mercantilism and chartered companies , and established coloniality , which keeps the colonized socio-economically othered and subaltern through modern biopolitics of sexuality , gender , race , disability and class , among others, resulting in intersectional violence and discrimination . Colonialism has been justified with beliefs of having

8004-487: The binary relationship of power and knowledge, scholars from the Subaltern Studies Collective , proposed that anti-colonial resistance always counters every exercise of colonial power. In The Location of Culture (1994), theoretician Homi K. Bhabha argues that viewing the human world as composed of separate and unequal cultures, rather than as an integral human world, perpetuates the belief in

8142-748: The birth of the Dutch Empire and French colonial empire , as well as the English overseas possessions , which later became the British Empire . It also saw the establishment of Danish overseas colonies and Swedish overseas colonies . A first wave of separatism started with the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), initiating the Rise of the "Second" British Empire (1783–1815). The Spanish Empire largely collapsed in

8280-707: The colonial behavior happening due to the War on Terror. Acheraiou argues that colonialism was a capitalist venture moved by appropriation and plundering of foreign lands and was supported by military force and a discourse that legitimized violence in the name of progress and a universal civilizing mission. This discourse is complex and multi-faceted. It was elaborated in the 19th century by colonial ideologues such as Ernest Renan and Arthur de Gobineau , but its roots reach far back in history. In Rethinking Postcolonialism: Colonialist Discourse in Modern Literature and

8418-416: The colonial era. Indentured servants from India travelled to British colonies in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and also to French and Portuguese colonies, while Chinese servants travelled to British and Dutch colonies. Between 1830 and 1930, around 30 million indentured servants migrated from India, and 24 million returned to India. China sent more indentured servants to European colonies, and around

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8556-522: The colonial powers had a total population of about 370 million people. Outside Europe, few areas had remained without coming under formal colonial tutorship – and even Siam , China , Japan , Nepal , Afghanistan , Persia , and Abyssinia had felt varying degrees of Western colonial-style influence – concessions , unequal treaties , extraterritoriality and the like. Asking whether colonies paid, economic historian Grover Clark (1891–1938) argues an emphatic "No!" He reports that in every case

8694-438: The colonial society. In postcolonial literature , the anti-conquest narrative analyzes the identity politics that are the social and cultural perspectives of the subaltern colonial subjects—their creative resistance to the culture of the colonizer ; how such cultural resistance complicated the establishment of a colonial society; how the colonizers developed their postcolonial identity; and how neocolonialism actively employs

8832-447: The colonised peoples can also have a powerful influence on the imperial country. With respect to international borders, Britain and France traced close to 40% of the entire length of the world's international boundaries. Economic expansion, sometimes described as the colonial surplus , has accompanied imperial expansion since ancient times. Greek trade networks spread throughout the Mediterranean region while Roman trade expanded with

8970-439: The colonists came, like the Mughals in India and the Incas in the Americas. One explanation offered by the paper focuses on the political institutions of the various colonies: it was less likely for European colonists to introduce economic institutions where they could benefit quickly from the extraction of resources in the area. Therefore, given a more developed civilisation and denser population, European colonists would rather keep

9108-406: The colonized. This language results from centuries of colonial domination which is aimed at eliminating other expressive forms in order to reflect the world of the colonizer. As a consequence, when colonial beings speak as the colonized, they participate in their own oppression and the very structures of alienation are reflected in all aspects of their adopted language. Cultural critic Edward Said

9246-437: The course of inter-group discourse. The important distinction, between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore the diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group, but that, in its practical function, strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes inter-group diversity to pragmatically support the essential group-identity. Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe

9384-430: The cultural concept of "the East," which according to Said allowed the Europeans to suppress the peoples of the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and of Asia in general, from expressing and representing themselves as discrete peoples and cultures. Orientalism thus conflated and reduced the non-Western world into the homogeneous cultural entity known as "the East." Therefore, in service to the colonial type of imperialism,

9522-609: The denotational functions, among which: The term post-colonialism —according to a too-rigid etymology—is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state. Not a naïve teleological sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post-colonialism is, rather, an engagement with, and contestation of, colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies... A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more than

9660-462: The destruction of non-Western ways of perceiving the world and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world. Conceptually, epistemic violence specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must always be caught in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself," because the colonial power's destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her non–Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing

9798-424: The difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use colonialism broadly to refer to the project of European political domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that ended with the national liberation movements of the 1960s". In his preface to Jürgen Osterhammel 's Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview , Roger Tignor says "For Osterhammel, the essence of colonialism

9936-731: The early 19th century played a part in ending slave-taking and slave-keeping among the indigenous Māori . On the other hand, British colonial administration in Southern Africa , when it officially abolished slavery in the 1830s, caused rifts in society which arguably perpetuated slavery in the Boer Republics and fed into the philosophy of apartheid . The labour shortages that resulted from abolition inspired European colonisers in Queensland, British Guaiana and Fiji (for example) to develop new sources of labour, re-adopting

10074-493: The effects of colonial rule on the practice of feminism , anarchism , literature , and Christian thought . At times, the term postcolonial studies may be preferred to postcolonialism , as the ambiguous term colonialism could refer either to a system of government, or to an ideology or world view underlying that system. However, postcolonialism (i.e., postcolonial studies) generally represents an ideological response to colonialist thought, rather than simply describing

10212-423: The elimination of indigenous knowledge and customs. Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life—based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators —from the point of view of the colonized people. On

10350-447: The employer because they owed a debt back to the employer for their travel expense to the colony, which they were expected to pay through their wages. In practice, indentured servants were exploited through terrible working conditions and burdensome debts imposed by the employers, with whom the servants had no means of negotiating the debt once they arrived in the colony. India and China were the largest source of indentured servants during

10488-434: The existence of imaginary peoples and places—" Christendom " and the " Islamic World ", " First World ," " Second World ," and the " Third World ." To counter such linguistic and sociological reductionism , postcolonial praxis establishes the philosophic value of hybrid intellectual spaces, wherein ambiguity abrogates truth and authenticity; thereby, hybridity is the philosophic condition that most substantively challenges

10626-438: The existing economic systems than introduce an entirely new system; while in places with little to extract, European colonists would rather establish new economic institutions to protect their interests. Political institutions thus gave rise to different types of economic systems, which determined the colonial economic performance. European colonisation and development also changed gendered systems of power already in place around

10764-448: The form of settler colonialism , whereby colonial settlers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace an existing society with that of the colonizers, possibly towards a genocide of native populations . Colonialism developed as a concept describing European colonial empires of the modern era , which spread globally from the 15th century to the mid-20th century, spanning 35% of Earth 's land by 1800 and peaking at 84% by

10902-500: The formation of the cohesive, collective European cultural identity denoted by the term "The West." With this described binary logic, the West generally constructs the Orient subconsciously as its alter ego. Therefore, descriptions of the Orient by the Occident lack material attributes, grounded within the land. This imaginative interpretation ascribes female characteristics to the Orient and plays into fantasies that are inherent within

11040-430: The foundational aspects of art necessitated by changes in one's unique historical position. In the post-colonial history of art, this marked the departure from Eurocentric unilateral idea of modernism to alternative context sensitive modernisms . The brief survey of the individual works of the core Santiniketan artists and the thought perspectives they open up makes clear that though there were various contact points in

11178-420: The generation, production, and distribution of knowledge) about the colonized peoples of the non-Western world. The cultural and religious assumptions of colonialist logic remain active practices in contemporary society and are the basis of the Mother Country's neocolonial attitude towards her former colonial subjects—an economical source of labour and raw materials. It acts as a non interchangeable term that links

11316-481: The huge discrepancies in previous European colonies, for example, between West African colonies like Sierra Leone and Hong Kong and Singapore . According to the paper, economic institutions are the determinant of the colonial success because they determine their financial performance and order for the distribution of resources. At the same time, these institutions are also consequences of political institutions – especially how de facto and de jure political power

11454-508: The ideological validity of colonialism. In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's Independence, " Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism " was an important exhibition curated by R. Siva Kumar at the National Gallery of Modern Art . In his catalogue essay, Kumar introduced the term Contextual Modernism, which later emerged as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of Indian art , specifically

11592-556: The imbalanced us-and-them binary power-relationship between the colonist and the colonial subjects. Understanding the complex chain of political and social, economic, and cultural impacts left in the aftermath of colonial control is essential to understanding post-colonialism. A wide range of experiences are included in post-colonial discourse, from ongoing battles against colonialism and globalization to struggles for independence. The long-lasting effects of colonialism will be faced by them, such as identity issues, structural injustices, and

11730-471: The independent country to its colonizer, depriving countries of their Independence , decades after building their own identities. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon analyzes and medically describes the nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its societal effects—the imposition of a subjugating colonial identity —is harmful to the mental health of

11868-527: The intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror , and the history and theory of human rights. His current research "takes as its point of departure his 1996 book, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism ". In Citizen and Subject , Mamdani argues that

12006-588: The landowner and trapped in servitude. The earliest uses of colonialism referred to plantations that men emigrated to and settled. The term expanded its meaning in the early 20th century to primarily refer to European imperial expansion and the imperial subjection of Asian and African peoples. Collins English Dictionary defines colonialism as "the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth". Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary defines colonialism as "the system or policy of

12144-646: The late 19th century. One (disputed) school of thought points to the role of abolitionism in the American Revolution : while the British colonial metropole started to move towards outlawing slavery, slave-owning elites in the Thirteen Colonies saw this as one of the reasons to fight for their post-colonial independence and for the right to develop and continue a largely slave-based economy. British colonising activity in New Zealand from

12282-415: The lives of the colonised people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonised population, the colonisers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule. According to Julian Go, "Colonialism refers to the direct political control of a society and its people by

12420-653: The march and was allowed to make a phone call. Mamdani called the Ugandan Ambassador in Washington, D.C. , for assistance. The ambassador asked him why he was "interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country", to which he responded by saying that this was not an internal affair but a freedom struggle and that they too had gotten their freedom only last year. Soon after he learnt about Karl Marx 's work from an FBI visit. He then joined The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and graduated in 1968 with

12558-476: The merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism. The term post-colonialism is also applied to denote the Mother Country 's neocolonial control of the decolonized country, affected by the legalistic continuation of the economic, cultural, and linguistic power relationships that controlled the colonial politics of knowledge (i.e.,

12696-402: The metropole and taxing accordingly. Despite the general trend of economic expansion, the economic performance of former European colonies varies significantly. In "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-run Growth", economists Daron Acemoglu , Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson compare the economic influences of the European colonists on different colonies and study what could explain

12834-408: The most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern'... They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern. Spivak also introduced

12972-471: The native peoples who were subjugated into colonies. Fanon writes that the ideological essence of colonialism is the systematic denial of "all attributes of humanity" of the colonized people. Such dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, by which the colonist means to inculcate a servile mentality upon the natives. For Fanon, the natives must violently resist colonial subjugation. Hence, Fanon describes violent resistance to colonialism as

13110-462: The oppressed native peoples and the slaves of the new world, thereby starting the idealization of native humans. The Habsburg monarchy , the Russian Empire , and the Ottoman Empire existed at the same time but did not expand over oceans. Rather, these empires expanded through the conquest of neighbouring territories. There was, though, some Russian colonization of North America across

13248-501: The orientalist's grander interpretive activity. Nonetheless, critics of the homogeneous "Occident–Orient" binary social relation, say that Orientalism is of limited descriptive capability and practical application, and propose instead that there are variants of Orientalism that apply to Africa and to Latin America. Said responds that the European West applied Orientalism as a homogeneous form of The Other , in order to facilitate

13386-401: The other cultures of the world; that is, as "one region among many" in human geography. Derek Gregory argues the long trajectory through history of British and American colonization is an ongoing process still happening today. In The Colonial Present , Gregory traces connections between the geopolitics of events happening in modern-day Afghanistan, Palestine , and Iraq and links it back to

13524-416: The other hand, denotes a temporary, essential group-identity used in the praxis of discourse among peoples. Furthermore, essentialism can occasionally be applied—by the so-described people—to facilitate the subaltern's communication in being heeded, heard, and understood, because strategic essentialism (a fixed and established subaltern identity) is more readily grasped, and accepted, by the popular majority, in

13662-402: The other it was characterised by indirect rule which was rural in nature and involved the incorporation of 'natives' into a 'state enforced customary order' enforced by a 'rural tribal authority' which he termed as 'decentralised despotism'. This state was 'Janus faced' and 'contained a duality: two forms of power under a single hegemonic authority'. In the post-colonial realm, the urban sphere

13800-539: The political resources and think-tanks that are so common in the West today. Orientalism is self-perpetuating to the extent that it becomes normalized within common discourse, making people say things that are latent, impulsive, or not fully conscious of it. In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term subaltern , the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against assigning an over-broad connotation. She argues: ... subaltern

13938-474: The post-colonial state cannot be understood without a clear analysis of the institutional colonial state. The nature of the colonial state in Africa was a response to the dilemma of the 'native question' and argued that it took on the form of a 'Bifurcated State'. This was characterised by 'direct rule' on the one hand which was a form of 'urban civil power' and focused on the exclusion of natives from civil freedoms guaranteed to citizens in civil society. Whilst on

14076-481: The postcolonial identity of a decolonized people, which derives from: Postcolonialism is aimed at disempowering such theories (intellectual and linguistic, social and economic) by means of which colonialists "perceive," "understand," and "know" the world. Postcolonial theory thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, and thus produce cultural discourses of philosophy, language, society, and economy, balancing

14214-527: The post–World War II period. The term "neocolonialism" became popular in ex-colonies in the late 20th century. While colonies of contiguous empires have been historically excluded, they can be seen as colonies. Contemporary expansion of colonies is seen by some in case of Russian imperialism and Chinese imperialism . There is also ongoing debate in academia about Zionism as settler colonialism . The impacts of colonisation are immense and pervasive. Various effects, both immediate and protracted, include

14352-578: The primary goal of directing tribute from the colonised areas towards the Roman metropole. According to Strabo , by the time of emperor Augustus , up to 120 Roman ships would set sail every year from Myos Hormos in Roman Egypt to India. With the development of trade routes under the Ottoman Empire , Gujari Hindus, Syrian Muslims, Jews, Armenians, Christians from south and central Europe operated trading routes that supplied Persian and Arab horses to

14490-470: The representation of a homogeneous European identity justified colonization. Hence, Belgium and Britain, and France and Germany proffered theories of national superiority that justified colonialism as delivering the light of civilization to unenlightened peoples. Notably, la mission civilisatrice , the self-ascribed 'civilizing mission' of the French Empire, proposed that some races and cultures have

14628-411: The rise of European colonialism came a large push for development and industrialisation of most economic systems. When working to improve productivity, Europeans focused mostly on male workers. Foreign aid arrived in the form of loans, land, credit, and tools to speed up development, but were only allocated to men. In a more European fashion, women were expected to serve on a more domestic level. The result

14766-494: The said colour, and of medium size. Once given, I attest to this. I beg your Lordship to approve and order it done. I ask for justice in this. [On the twenty-first day of the month of June 1600, Your Majesty's Lords Presidents and Official Judges of this House of Contract Employment order that the account she offers be received, and that testimony for the purpose she requests given.] Moreover, Spivak further cautioned against ignoring subaltern peoples as "cultural Others", and said that

14904-451: The said colour; and for this, I must write to Our Lord the King to petition that he favour me with a licence, so that I, and my said daughter, can go and reside in the said city of Cartagena. For this, I will give an account of what is put down in this report; and of how I, Francisca de Figueroa, am a woman of sound body, and mulatta in colour.... And my daughter María is twenty-years-old, and of

15042-736: The sea routes discovered by Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) became central to trade , and helped fuel the Age of Discovery . The Crown of Castile encountered the Americas in 1492 through sea travel and built trading posts or conquered large extents of land. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the areas of these "new" lands between the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire in 1494. The 17th century saw

15180-444: The societies and cultures of the people in those areas permanently changed. Colonial practices directly and indirectly forced the colonized peoples to abandon their traditional cultures. For example, European colonizers in the United States implemented the residential schools program to force native children to assimilate into the hegemonic culture. Cultural colonialism gave rise to culturally and ethnically mixed populations such as

15318-423: The spread of virulent diseases , unequal social relations , detribalization , exploitation , enslavement , medical advances , the creation of new institutions, abolitionism , improved infrastructure, and technological progress. Colonial practices also spur the spread of conquerors' languages, literature and cultural institutions, while endangering or obliterating those of Indigenous peoples. The cultures of

15456-590: The superior races is part of the providential order of things for humanity.... Regere imperio populos is our vocation. Pour forth this all-consuming activity onto countries, which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum , a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role. Nature has made

15594-472: The support cost, especially the military system necessary to support and defend colonies, outran the total trade they produced. Apart from the British Empire, they did not provide favoured destinations for the immigration of surplus metropole populations. The question of whether colonies paid is a complicated one when recognizing the multiplicity of interests involved. In some cases colonial powers paid

15732-539: The supporting economic theories, were partly derived from the essay " Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism " (1916), wherein Vladimir Lenin described colonial imperialism as an advanced form of capitalism , desperate for growth at all costs, and so requires more and more human exploitation to ensure continually consistent profit-for-investment. Another key book that predates postcolonial theories

15870-522: The term neocolonialism to describe the continuation or imposition of elements of colonial rule through indirect means in the contemporary period. Colonialism is etymologically rooted in the Latin word " Colonus ", which was used to describe tenant farmers in the Roman Empire . The coloni sharecroppers started as tenants of landlords, but as the system evolved they became permanently indebted to

16008-469: The term orientalism (an art-history term for Western depictions and the study of the Orient). Said's concept (which he also termed "orientalism") is that the cultural representations generated with the us-and-them binary relation are social constructs , which are mutually constitutive and cannot exist independent of each other, because each exists on account of and for the other. Notably, "the West" created

16146-438: The terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism. Essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to reviving subaltern voices in ways that might (over) simplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous social groups and, thereby, create stereotyped representations of the different identities of the people who compose a given social group. Strategic essentialism , on

16284-615: The theory that former or existing economic relationships, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the Central American Free Trade Agreement , or the operations of companies (such as Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria and Brunei ) fostered by former colonial powers were or are used to maintain control of former colonies and dependencies after the colonial independence movements of

16422-500: The us-and-them binary relation between the Western and Eastern world. Building upon the ideas of the other and Said's work on orientalism, Gregory critiques the economic policy, military apparatus, and transnational corporations as vehicles driving present-day colonialism. Emphasizing discussion of ideas around colonialism in the present tense, Gregory utilizes modern events such as the September 11 attacks to tell spatial stories around

16560-562: The us-and-them orientalist paradigm allowed European scholars to represent the Oriental World as inferior and backward, irrational and wild, as opposed to a Western Europe that was superior and progressive, rational and civil—the opposite of the Oriental Other. Reviewing Said's Orientalism (1978), A. Madhavan (1993) says that "Said's passionate thesis in that book, now an 'almost canonical study', represented Orientalism as

16698-644: The war significantly weakened the major colonial powers, and they quickly lost control of colonies such as Singapore, India, and Libya. In addition, the United Nations shows support for decolonisation in its 1945 charter . In 1960, the UN issued the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples , which affirmed its stance (though notably, colonial empires such as France, Spain,

16836-468: The work they were not bound by a continuity of style but by a community of ideas. Which they not only shared but also interpreted and carried forward. Thus they do not represent a school but a movement. Several terms including Paul Gilroy 's counterculture of modernity and Tani E. Barlow 's Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non-European contexts. Professor Gall argues that 'Contextual Modernism'

16974-424: The works of Nandalal Bose , Rabindranath Tagore , Ramkinkar Baij , and Benode Behari Mukherjee . Santiniketan artists did not believe that to be indigenous one has to be historicist either in theme or in style, and similarly to be modern one has to adopt a particular trans-national formal language or technique. Modernism was to them neither a style nor a form of internationalism. It was critical re-engagement with

17112-564: The world is provided by the ongoing struggles against colonialism and globalization. The harsh effects of colonial rule and the homogenizing effects of globalization have development to movements in recent years. The opposition to colonialism and globalization represents a complex battle for liberty and independence, ranging from community organizations calling for economic sovereignty and self-determination to indigenous people defending their land and culture against corporate exploitation. These initiatives, which cross continents rather than stay inside

17250-415: The world of that language. His ideas show the influence of French and German philosophy, since existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics claim that language, subjectivity, and reality are interrelated. However, the colonial situation presents a paradox: when colonial beings are forced to adopt and speak an imposed language which is not their own, they adopt and participate in the world and civilization of

17388-438: The world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia". It discusses the distinction between colonialism, imperialism and conquest and states that "[t]he difficulty of defining colonialism stems from the fact that the term is often used as a synonym for imperialism. Both colonialism and imperialism were forms of conquest that were expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically," and continues "given

17526-575: The world. In June of the year 1600, the Afro–Iberian woman Francisca de Figueroa requested from the King of Spain his permission for her to emigrate from Europe to New Granada, and reunite with her daughter, Juana de Figueroa. As a subaltern woman, Francisca repressed her native African language, and spoke her request in Peninsular Spanish, the official language of Colonial Latin America . As

17664-509: The world. In many pre-colonialist areas, women maintained power, prestige, or authority through reproductive or agricultural control. For example, in certain parts of sub-Saharan Africa women maintained farmland in which they had usage rights. While men would make political and communal decisions for a community, the women would control the village's food supply or their individual family's land. This allowed women to achieve power and autonomy, even in patrilineal and patriarchal societies. Through

17802-464: Was a technologic, economic, and class-based gender gap that widened over time. Within a colony, the presence of extractive colonial institutions in a given area has been found have effects on the modern day economic development, institutions and infrastructure of these areas. European nations entered their imperial projects with the goal of enriching the European metropoles. Exploitation of non-Europeans and of other Europeans to support imperial goals

17940-598: Was acceptable to the colonisers. Two outgrowths of this imperial agenda were the extension of slavery and indentured servitude. In the 17th century, nearly two-thirds of English settlers came to North America as indentured servants. European slave traders brought large numbers of African slaves to the Americas by sail. Spain and Portugal had brought African slaves to work in African colonies such as Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe , and then in Latin America, by

18078-656: Was also a visiting professor at the University of Durban - Westville in South Africa (January to June in 1993), at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library in New Delhi (January to June in 1995) and at Princeton University (1995–96). In 1996, he was appointed as the inaugural holder of the AC Jordan chair of African studies at the University of Cape Town . He left after having disagreements with

18216-515: Was deemed that they could prepare for independence. The empires of Russia and Austria collapsed in 1917–1918, and the Soviet empire started. Nazi Germany set up short-lived colonial systems ( Reichskommissariate , Generalgouvernement ) in Eastern Europe in the early 1940s. In the aftermath of World War II (1939–1945), decolonisation progressed rapidly. The tumultuous upheaval of

18354-695: Was overthrown following the Uganda–Tanzania War as a Frontier Interne of the World Council of Churches . He was posted with the Church of Uganda offices in Mengo and was assigned to research the former regime's foreign relations. His report was published as a book: Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda . In 1984, while attending a conference in Dakar , Senegal , he became stateless after his citizenship

18492-477: Was the generic form of a European colony in Africa, encompassing aspects of indirect rule and association . Mamdani is married to Mira Nair , an Indian film director and producer. They met in Kampala, Uganda, in 1989 when Nair was conducting research for her film, Mississippi Masala . She had read his book The Myth of Population Control while an undergraduate at university and From Citizen to Refugee just before their meeting. They married in 1991 and have

18630-408: Was thought to affect the intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser cultures of the world. That such a divinely established, natural harmony among the human races of the world would be possible, because everyone has an assigned cultural identity , a social place, and an economic role within an imperial colony. Thus: The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races, by

18768-711: Was to an extent deracialised but the rural one remained subject to quasi colonial control whether at the hands of conservative rulers for whom it provided their own power base or those of radical ones with centralised authoritarian projects of their own. In this way both experiences reproduced 'one part of the dual legacy of the bifurcated state and created their own distinctive version of despotism'. Mamdani analyses extensive historical case studies in South Africa and Uganda to argue that colonial rule tapped into authoritarian possibilities whose legacies often persist after independence. Challenging conventional perceptions of apartheid in South Africa as exceptional, he argues that apartheid

18906-491: Was voted as the ninth "top public intellectual " in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (US). His essays have appeared in the London Review of Books , among other journals. Mamdani specialises in the study of African and international politics, colonialism and post‐colonialism, and the politics of knowledge production. His works explore

19044-575: Was withdrawn by the government under Milton Obote due to his criticism of its policies. He returned to Dar es Salaam and was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan , Ann Arbor for the spring semester in 1986. After Obote was deposed for the second time, Mamdani once again returned to Uganda in June 1986. He was the founding director of the Centre for Basic Research (CBR), Uganda's first research non-governmental organisation from 1987 to 2006. He

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