Abstract
The Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons provides a plural assessment of the ends of the European colonial empires, made by some of the leading experts of the growing field — in quantity, quality, and scope — of decolonization studies.1 The historiography of decolonization is still work in progress, vibrant in its plurality of analytical approaches, establishing productive conversations with other historiographies and disciplinary fields. It is a field of research marked by the emergence of novel intellectual concerns, political and ideological outlooks and also geopolitical vistas, as John Darwin illustrates in his contribution to this volume.2 For example, the intersections between the scrutiny of the imperial and colonial endgames and local and global researches on the histories of the Cold War, of development, of labour, of human rights or of international organizations are being prolifically explored.3 The establishment of a critical dialogue between historiographies of imperial endgames, geopolitical competition, and trajectories of globalization, for instance, entails many relevant advantages for each domain.4 Of course, these historiographical dialogues may generate some problems.5
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Notes
For some recent comparative reassessments see Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires, Oxford: Blackwell, 2008;
Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and Larry Butler, Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918–1975, London: Hodder Education, 2008;
Jost Dülffer and Marc Frey, eds, Elites and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011;
Pierre Brocheux, ed., Les Decolonisations au XXe Siècle: Le Fin Des Empires Européens et Japonais, Paris: Colin Armand, 2012.
For comprehensive assessments that place imperial endgames in a longue durée approach see John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405, New York, Bloomsbury Press, 2008,
and Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010.
For five examples only, one for each theme: Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005;
Joseph Hodge, Gerald Hodl, and Martina Kopf, eds, Developing Africa: Concepts and Practices in Twentieth Century Colonialism, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014;
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996;
Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011;
Daniel Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization: The International Labour Organization, 1940–1970, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. See below for further relevant references.
For a recent review of the most interesting research possibilities and advantages emerging from this dialogue between historiographies, see Martin Thomas and Andrew Thompson, ‘Empire and Globalisation: From “High Imperialism” to Decolonisation’, The International History Review, vol. 36, no. 1 (2014), pp. 1–29.
For a cautionary approach related to the intersection between decolonization and the Cold War see Matthew Connelly, ‘Taking off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence’, American Historical Review, vol. 105, no. 3 (2000), pp. 739–769.
For another geography see, for instance, Marc Frey, Ronald W. Pruessen and Tan Tai Yong, eds, The Transformation of Southeast Asia: International Perspectives on Decolonization, Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe, 2003;
and Christopher E. Goscha and Christian Ostermann, Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2009.
This is an extremely valid point raised by one of the anonymous peer reviewers of this volume. For an important contribution see Alfred W. McCoy, Josep Maria Fradera, and Stephen Jacobson, eds, Endless Empire: Spain’s Retreat, Europe’s Eclipse, America’s Decline, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.
The editors of this volume also acknowledge the near absence of the Dutch experience, which is only substantially addressed by Crawford Young’s contribution. For some important contributions see: Bob Moore, ‘Decolonization by Default: Suriname and the Dutch Retreat from Empire, 1945–1975’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 28, no. 3 (2000), pp. 228–250;
Christian Penders, The West New Guinea Debacle: Dutch Decolonisation and Indonesia, 1945–1962, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2002;
Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers, Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2003; Marc Frey, ‘The Indonesian Revolution and the Fall of the Dutch Empire: Actors, Factors, and Strategies’, in Marc Frey, Ronald W. Pruessen, and Tan Tai Yong, eds, The Transformation of Southeast Asia, pp. 83–104.
For inspiration see John Darwin, ‘What Was the Late Colonial State?’, Itinerario, vol. 23, nos 3–4 (1999), pp. 73–82.
For a history of the early period see Jonathan Derrick, Africa’s ‘Agitators’: Militant Anti-Colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918–1939, London, Hurst, 2008.
See also Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007;
Cemil Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007;
and Christopher Lee, ed., Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2010.
For the notion of ‘late colonial shift’ see Martin Shipway, Decolonization and Its Impact, 12–16. For some recent important contributions to the assessment of violence in late colonialism see: Sylvie Thénault, Violence ordinaire dans l’Algérie coloniale. Camps, internements, assignations à residence, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2012;
and Fabian Klose, Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenia and Algeria, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
The now classic works of Anderson and Elkins are fundamental references as well: David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005;
Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, London, Jonathan Cape, 2005.
For coverage of an early period see Martin Thomas, Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers, and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Frederick Cooper, ‘Reconstructing Empire in British and French Africa’ and Nicholas J. White, ‘Reconstructing Europe through Rejuvenating Empire: The British, French and Dutch Experiences Compared’, in Mark Mazower, Jessica Reinisch, and David Feldman (orgs), Post-War Reconstruction in Europe. International Perspectives. Past and Present Supplement, vol. 6 (2011), pp. 196–210 and pp. 211–236, respectively.
On international development see Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds, International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays in the History and Politics of Knowledge, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1997,
and the recent Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel, and Corinna R. Unger, International Organizations and Development, 1945–1990, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
For the notion of infrastructural power of the state see Michael Mann, ‘The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 25 (1984), pp. 185–213.
See Bertrand Badie, The Imported State: The Westernization of Political Order, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000; Julian Go, ‘Modeling States and Sovereignty: Postcolonial Constitutions in Asia and Africa’, in Christopher Lee, Making a World After Empire, pp. 107–140;
Dietmar Rothermund, ‘Constitutions et décolonisation’, Diogène, vol. 4, no. 212 (2005), pp. 9–21;
and Crawford Young, The Postcolonial State in Africa: Tifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.
For the history of Sociology’s engagement with imperial formations, see Georges Steinmetz, ed., Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline, Durham, Duke University Press, 2013.
See: Joseph Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, Athens, Ohio University Press, 2007;
Véronique Dimier, The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014;
Sandrine Kott, ‘Une ‘communauté épistémique’ du social?’, Genèses, vol. 71, no. 2 (2008), pp. 26–46.
On the League of Nations see, for instance, Susan Pedersen, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, The American Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 4 (2007), pp. 1091–1117;
and Patricia Clavin, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
On the International Labour Organization see Daniel Maul, ‘Human Rights, Development and Decolonization’, in Sandrine Kott, ed., Globalizing Social Rights: The International Labour Organization and Beyond, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
and Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, ‘Internationalism and the Labours of the Portuguese Colonial Empire (1945–1974)’, Portuguese Studies, vol. 29, no. 2 (2014), pp. 142–163.
For a collection of texts that explore several international and transnational organizations and dynamics see Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, eds, Os passados do presente: Internacionalismo, imperialismo e a construção das sociedades contemporâneas, Lisboa, Almedina, 2014.
For a rich overview see Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004.
See also Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
On the United Nations see, for instance: Paul Kennedy, Parliament of Man, The United Nations and the Quest for World Government, London, Allen Lane, 2007;
Glenda Sluga and Sunil Amrith, ‘New Histories of the U.N.’, Journal of World History, vol. 19, no. 3 (2008), pp. 251–274;
Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009;
and Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, New York, The Penguin Press, 2012.
Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007.
See, for a summary, Mark Philip Bradley, ‘Decolonization, the Global South and the Cold War, 1919–1962’, in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, The Cambridge History of the War, Vol. 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 464–485.
See also Robert J. McMahon, ed., The Cold War in the Third World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
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© 2015 Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and António Costa Pinto
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Jerónimo, M.B., Pinto, A.C. (2015). Introduction — The Ends of Empire: Chronologies, Historiographies, and Trajectories. In: Jerónimo, M.B., Pinto, A.C. (eds) The Ends of European Colonial Empires. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394064_1
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