Historical Geographies (L7021) Module II: Historical Geographies of British Colonialism Prof. Alan Lester

Cultures of Colonialism (F8030)

Prof. Alan Lester

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J. R. Seely, The Expansion of England, 1883, p. 13:The history of England was not in England but in America and AsiaFour Foundations of Empire (Darwin 2009)Britains industrial economy (coal)The City of Londons 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.Traditional Imperial History: The Causes of Expansion Robinson and Gallagher:

Informal imperialism preferredPeripheral crises and interventionThe official mindCollaborators

Marxists:

industrial capitalism and crises of accumulation

Cain and Hopkins:

gentlemanly capitalists

Postcolonial Approaches to Empire: Said Postcolonial studies in English and Imperial Historys rejection

Saids 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.

Colonial discourse and the geographical imagination: past and present

Postcolonial Approaches to Empire: Bhabha and Spivak Bhabha: critiquing Saids binaries:

AmbivalenceHybridityMimicry

Spivak: Can the subaltern speak?

The example of sati

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 inactionthe alternatives of oral history and reading against the grain

iv) Critiques of postcolonialism as a whole from atheoretical imperial historians

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

Example: Hall on Jamaica and Britain

The making of race, class and genderThe politics of inclusion and exclusionThe making of masculinities and femininities

Imperial Networks

The Cape and Britain: projects, discourses and networks:

GovernmentalityHumanitarianismSettler capitalism

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

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 oilGregory: colonial discourses in the present

The Uses of Britains History

i) Fergusons appeal to the USA

ii) Gregory: colonial Amnesia and nostalgia - in Britain

iii) Race and postcolonial Britain