WHY STUDY EUROPE’S OVERSEAS EMPIRES?

The overseas empires deserve careful study, first, because their spatial and temporal dimensions are quite extraordinary. Two-thirds of the United Nations’ member states as of January 2000—125 of 188—consisted of territories outside of Europe which at one time were governed by Europeans.

Second, the study of European empires raises pivotal intellectual issues. The sheer improbability of one tiny part of the world dominating so many areas for so long cries out for explanation. How and why were Europe’s empires formed? How much causal weight should be placed on characteristics of the empire builders, how much on characteristics of peoples who became imperial subjects? What characteris­tics, whether of colonizers or colonized, are most significant? How can we account for the durability of systems of rule in which ultimate authority over a territory was lodged in a metropolitan capital thousands of miles away?

The overseas empires eventually fell, as colonial dependencies became inde­pendent, legally sovereign states. It is easier to understand why improbable political arrangements ended than why they were formed or why they lasted. But imperial collapse poses its own intriguing puzzles. Why did colonies attain independence when they did? Why was decolonization violent in some territories and relatively peaceful in others? Considering that so many colonial boundaries were artificial and externally imposed, why were new states so frequently territorial replicas of their predecessors rather than reincarnations of precolonial polities? To what extent was colonial nationalism a rejection, to what extent an affirmation, of what the imperial­ists accomplished?

Studying the dynamics of European global dominance enables one to pose even broader questions.

The study of European empires raises questions about the usefulness of catego­ries used to analyze worldwide trends in the twentieth century. Social scientists have often drawn a distinction between tradition and modernity. The distinction is then harnessed to the claim that so-called Third World countries were once traditional but are now moving toward modernity, as expressed in the institutions, ideas, and living standards of advanced capitalist First World countries. Even if one sets aside problems in defining and measuring tradition and modernity, the prevalence of co­lonial situations in which “modern” Europeans ruled “traditional” non-Europeans through imported institutions makes the dichotomy especially problematic. Were the institutions transplanted from metropoles to colonies modern? What about the Roman Catholic Church, whose origins are deeply rooted in a world conventionally termed ancient? Was plantation slavery, introduced centuries ago to satisfy European consumer demands, traditional or modern? How should one classify current social and economic patterns inherited from plantation slavery? Are people whose racial heritage is mixed or whose culture reflects complex combinations of non-European and European practices agents of tradition or of modernity? The very existence of empires whose boundaries transgressed the line separating societies envisaged as modern and traditional and whose activities deeply implicated each type of society in the life of the other renders the distinction confusing and misleading rather than helpful.

During the Cold War scholars of international relations focused on properties of the bipolar system then in place. The usual starting point for analyses of U.S.- Soviet rivalry was events in the twentieth century, notably the start of the First World War and the end of the Second. But the study of international relations in the mod­ern world more appropriately begins in 1415 than in 1914 or 1945. European imperial­ism was an outward projection of the power of states. Its ultimate result was the global diffusion of the ideals and institutions of the state. Because the territorially bounded, bureaucratic state is the key unit in the study of international relations, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to the process by which such a unit became globalized.²³ The end of the Cold War offers an opportunity to make up for this oversight. By focusing more on European imperialism, colonialism, and anti­colonial nationalism, scholars can give the study of international relations the broad temporal scope it needs and deserves.

A recent attempt to shift attention from states to civilizations as essential units of identity and conflict in the post-Cold War world understates the significance of European global dominance. Had the cultural categories in Samuel Huntington’s widely cited work The Clash of Civilizations been confined to specific regions over the past several centuries, one could plausibly imagine them functioning today as co­herent expressions of radically divergent worldviews. But that is not the story of modern world history. The sustained triple assault of one of these civilizations upon others, and incorporation of the colonizers’ institutions and norms into the na­tionalist movements that brought over a hundred colonies to independence—these realities long ago blurred civilizational boundaries.

Globalization is another theme in discussions of the post-Cold War world. Analysts emphasize massive, rapid flows of finance capital, technology, and labor across political boundaries, pointing out that these movements may weaken the power of governments to set and implement policy. An implication is that globaliza­tion is a historically unique phenomenon. But this is misleading. Many areas of the world were globalized long ago in the course of being incorporated into European empires. A legacy of colonial rule in many currently independent states is a high level of vulnerability to externally generated economic and technological changes. What may be different today is that the strongest, most historically insulated economies are experiencing levels of vulnerability once reserved for the world’s most marginalized economies. In this situation strong, wealthy countries can learn from the more experienced weak, poor ones about the destabilizing consequences of globalization.

Implicit in these observations is a third reason for studying the rise and fall of European empires. Although the era of formal colonial rule has passed, its legacies live on, profoundly influencing the postcolonial world in ways both obvious and subtle. Chapter 16 discusses these legacies at some length. Here I want to mention a few in passing. As just noted, institutions and ideals associated with the state were passed from European metropoles to their colonies, then to successors appropriately designated new states. In the economic arena, production patterns introduced in the colonial era and early transport routes linking local commodities to imperially de­fined trade networks have in many instances shaped development options long after independence.

In the cultural arena, Christianity is in fact as well as aspiration a world religion. Its spread to many parts of the world can be traced to the initiatives of European missionaries, who aided and abetted the imperial project even when they had nonpolitical goals primarily in mind. Striking illustrations of the cultural legacy can be found in linguistics. Of 112 formerly colonized countries for which informa­tion is available, 88 (with a combined population of 2.3 billion) list a west European tongue as an official language.²⁵ An estimated 700 million people living outside Europe speak English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish in the home.²⁶

A revealing indicator of colonialism’s global impact is the names Europeans bestowed on territories they claimed. The list is especially long in what is conven­tionally called the New World or the Americas. (The very terms, of course, make the point. The hemisphere Columbus reached was new from the perspective of Euro­pean explorers and settlers. The Americas were named in all likelihood after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci.) The New World is littered with countries, provinces, and cities named after

1. European political entities from countries to cities, for example, Hispaniola, New Spain (Mexico), New Granada (Colombia), Cartagena, New England, New Amster­dam (later New York), New Rochelle, Harlem, New Orleans, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, New Hampshire, Valencia, Venezuela (“little Venice”), Guadalajara;

2.

3. Signs, symbols, and saints of the Christian faith Europeans brought with them: Santo Domingo, Vera Cruz, Santiago, Trinidad, El Salvador, Asuncion, Corpus Christi, Madre de Dios, Santa Fe, Magdalena, San Juan, San Jose, Sao Paulo, San Francisco, St. Louis, St. Augustine, St. Johns, and numerous Caribbean islands named for saints;

4. Prominent figures in exploration, conquest, settlement, and colonial administration: Colombia, British Columbia, De Soto, Pennsylvania, Cadillac, Hudson River and Bay, Baffin Island, Raleigh, Straits of Magellan, Delaware, Drake’s Bay, James Bay, Mar­quette, Champlain, Humboldt Current, Grijalva River, Albuquerque, Vancouver.

Similar illustrations, though far less numerous, could be taken from Africa, Asia, and Oceania.²⁷ In the same categories as above, examples include the following:

1. Nova Lisboa (now Huambo), Batavia, New Holland, New South Wales, Perth, New Zealand, New Caledonia, He de France, East London;

2. Mauritius, Leopoldville, Philippine Islands; a lake, falls, and towns and provinces throughout the British Empire named for Queen Victoria;

3. Natal, St. Louis, Sao Tome, San Salvador;

4. Southern and Northern Rhodesia, Luderitz Bay, Louren^o Marques (now Maputo), Stanleyville, Brazzaville, Tasmania (earlier called Van Diemen’s Land), Livingstone, Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Cook Bay, Pretoria, Wallis Islands, Fernando Po, Fort Lamy.

Many territories were named for a commodity highly valued by European commercial interests: Cape Cod, Minas Gerais, Argentina, Rio de Oro, Walvis Bay, Gold Coast, and Còte d’Ivoire. In other cases a name bestowed by Europeans de­scribes certain features of a territory. Nigeria, Niger, and the River Niger are derived from the Latin word for black; Cameroon is derived from the Portuguese reference to a river rich in prawns (rio dos camaròes). As for the human beings Europeans encountered, it is ironic that because of Christopher Columbus’s monumental mis­calculation of the earth’s circumference the New World’s indigenous peoples were named after the inhabitants of the distant Indian subcontinent. The collective ap­pellation lives on, centuries after the error was acknowledged.

Not all the names listed above were retained after colonies became indepen­dent. The two Rhodesias, for instance, became Zambia and Zimbabwe; Leopoldville and Stanleyville became Kinshasa and Kisangani. But the fact that most of the names were retained is an enduring colonial legacy, generally unnoticed because place- names are so often taken for granted.

The historian Raymond Betts sums up the legacies of colonial rule in a striking image: “The landscape of the post-colonial world resembles a beach after the tide has receded; it is still strewn with much of what the Europeans had earlier floated in.”²⁸