COLONIALISM

Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Cultural Colonialism, Cultural Imperialism

“Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: ’In reality, who am I’?” Frantz Fanon

Political domination of one nation over another that is institutionalized in direct political administration by the colonial power, control of all economic relationships and a systematic attempt to transform the culture of the subject nation.

Colonialism usually involves extensive immigration from the colonial power into the colony and the immigrants taking on roles as landowners, business people and professionals. Colonialism is a form of imperialism.

Though colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism, the latter is sometimes used more broadly as it covers control exercised informally (via influence) as well as formally.

Despite the decolonization in the 1960s-70s, former colonies still are today for the most part under strong Western influence. Critics of this continued Western influence talk of neocolonialism.

The main difference between neocolonialism and internal colonialism is the source of exploitation. In the former, the control comes from outside the nation-state, while in the latter it comes from within.

The MA in Culture and Colonialism is a multi-disciplinary taught Masters of Arts programme, offered by the Faculty of Arts, NUI, Galway. It is designed for graduates from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. It was established to further an understanding of the meanings of ‘colonialism,’ 'imperialism,' ‘post-colonialism,’ and ‘neo-colonialism’ across a range of disciplines. We encourage students to view colonialism in the widest possible contexts, in both historical and contemporary forms. - nuigalway.ie/english/macc.htm

SOCIOLOGY OF COLONIALISM Sociology Dept, Binghamton University, Nigel Westmaas
Course Description: This course analyzes the colonial experience on several continents, focusing on the dimensions and cases of colonialism through its historical, sociological, and ideological contexts. 
Colonialism has transformed customs, traditions, and social organizations, introduced new boundaries between peoples and erased others through the institutionalization of racism and the creation of new ethnicities.
The history, theory, and practice of colonialism and neocolonialism are presented through social-science material, historical documents, literature, and film. We will explore the long-term economic, psychological, and cultural effects of colonialism on the colonized. 
We will examine the episodes and events invoked by anti-colonialism and nationalism as colonized peoples resisted colonial domination. We will also examine how patterns of colonial rule, activities of indigenous collaborators, changes in the organization of production, introduction of new plants, animals, and diseases, and labor migrations have transformed colonized societies.
Fundamental to all these debates are concerns with the gendered and racist ideology of colonization—themes that also echo in the anti-colonial rebellions and liberation movements.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS & ASSESSMENT
You are expected to attend classes regularly (attendance will be graded), read assigned materials carefully and participate in class discussion; Participation will include 5 minute student presentations, in class discussions, postings, comments on Blackboard and other contributions.
You are also required to write a three-page report on each of the films we watch in class. 
You will of course be required to check Blackboard regularly as material for the course will regularly be posted regularly in the system. These will include guidelines for assignments, additional readings, useful links, and other material. Blackboard’s messaging capabilities will be used to circulate outlines of class presentations. 
The Turnitin checking facility on Blackboard will be used in this course for essays and other assignments.
Readings: All the required readings are available on ERES, on Blackboard as articles or on Reserve at the Library desk. There will also be some important websites that you might consult for important background information on colonial history. 

Reference Sites:
New Internationalist website - newint.org/
New York Times in Pro-Quest newspapers in BU Library website - proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
Colonial Map (1945) on Blackboard Documents

ERES Reserve List 
BLACK - Decolonization of concepts 
BUSH - 'Whose dream was it anyway?' 
Carney, African Rice in the Columbian Exchange
COMAROFF - Images of Empire 
GEWALD - Herero Genocide in the 20th century 
REECE - Inventing Aborigines 
SUAALII - Deconstructing the exotic female beauty 

Texts available at Reserve Room only 
BURTON - After the imperial turn 
HAVINDEN - Colonialism and development 
SAAKANA - colonial legacy in Caribbean literature 

COURSE SYLLABUS
Course Overview: (1) Methods/Grading
(2) Colonial History: the very beginning colonialism and ways of knowing
Readings: (1) Ronald J. Horvath “A Definition of Colonialism: (JSTOR) 
Current Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 1. (Feb, 1972)
(II)Doctrines of Colonialism: Assesses various definitions of colonialism and imperialism (Blackboard Documents)
Colonialism and the Rise of Capitalism – European colonization of the Americas 
Reading: Jeffrey Stone, “Imperialism, colonialism & Cartography (Reading on Blackboard)
Colonialism and the Rise of capitalism – European colonization of the Americas
DVD: Empire of the Sun: Story of the conquest of the Inca empire (47 mins) (graded writing response required) 
Colonialism and the Rise of Racism: Misappropriation of knowledge
Reading: Judith Carney – “African Rice in the Columbian Exchange” (ERES)
Colonialism and the Rise of Racism 
Reading: “Inventing Aborogines” (ERES)
Dynamics of Capitalism and Colonialism: A Social History of Soap
Reading: A. McClintock, “Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising,” in McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York: Routledge, 1995, 207-31
Dynamics of Capitalism and Colonialism: 
Reading: (I)Brenda Yeoh. “Colonial Names in Colonial Singapore” Geographical Review (Blackboard)
(II) Decolonization of concepts (ERES)
Colonialism and Movies 
Reading: Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race “The Stereotyping of American Indians in film pp. 167-206 (ERES)
Colonialism and Gender
Reading: Tamasailau M. Sua’ali’i, “Deconstructing the ‘exotic’ female beauty of the 
Pacific Islands and ‘white’ male desire,” Women’s Studies Journal, XIII, 2, Spring 
1997(ERES)
Colonialism in Asia : Japanese Representations of Colonialism
Reading: Peter Duus, Chap 11 “Defining the Koreans: Images of Domination,” in Duus (ed.), The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (ERES)
Colonialism in Asia : Indonesia
Reading: “Indonesia - Colonial Crime” (Blackboard)
Colonial India
Reading: “Colonialism in India” (Chap II ) in Shibani Chaube, Colonialism Freedom Struggle & Nationalism in India (ERES)
Colonialism in Africa (I)
Reading: John L. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa” American Ethnologist, Vol. 16, No. 4. (Nov., 1989) (ERES)
Colonialism in Africa(II)The Scramble and Rearrangement of Africa
Reading: Reserve text (Havinden ) chapter to be announced
Colonialism & Dress Cultures
Readings: (I) Phyllis Martin, “Contesting clothes in Colonial Brazzaville” (JSTOR)
(II) Kristin Kristin Hoganson, “The Fashionable World: Imagined Communities of Dress” in After the Imperial Turn (Desk Reserve)
Anti Colonial Resistance : Isandhlwana 1879
Reading: J. J. Guy, A Note on Firearms in the Zulu Kingdom with Special Reference to the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879 The Journal of African History > Vol. 12, No. 4 (JSTOR)
Colonialism and African Resistance (1)
DVD film: Lion of the Desert (pt1) – the Omar Mukthar rebellion against the Italians (1920s)
Reading: Gary Fowler, “Italian Colonization of Tripolitania” (JSTOR) 
Colonialism and African Resistance(II)
DVD Film Lion of the Desert (pt2) the Omar Mukthar rebellion against the Italians (1920s) Writing response (graded) 
Colonialism and African Resistance: Mau-Mau Rebellion
Reading: Imperial Reckoning Chap 5 “The Birth of Britain’s Gulag”
Colonialism Today
Reading: Julius Nyrere interview (Blackboard)
Colonialism & the Passport
Reading: Radhika Mongia, “Race, Nationality, mobility: A History of the Passport” pp. 196-214 in After the Imperial Turn (Desk Reserve)
Research Day
Colonial Genocide : The Case of Namibia
Reading: Gewald, “Herero Genocide in the 20th Century (ERES)
Colonial Genocide : Nanking Massacre
Reading: Daqing Yang, “Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rap of Nanking” American Historical Review vol 104, no. 3 June 1999 (JSTOR)
Research Day
Non-European Perspectives on Colonialism: —Indigenous conceptions of 
Social Reality
Reading: Tony Ballantyne, “Rereading the Archive and Opening up the Nation state: 
Colonial Knowledge in south Asia (and Beyond)” in After the Imperial Turn (Desk Res)
The Statistics of Colonialism
Reading: Class presentations & displays (assignments to be prepared in advance)
Research Day 
Colonialism & Feminism in the Present
Reading: “Young, “Postcolonial Feminism” (ERES)
Easter recess April 12 – 17
Colonialism & Writing the Caribbean
Reading: Saakana, Colonial Legacy in Caribbean Literature (Desk Res) (Chapter to be announced)
Research Day 
Colonialism & Writing the Caribbean
Reading: John Plotz, “One-Way Traffic: George Lamming and the Portable Empire” in After the Imperial Turn (Desk Reserve)
Colonialism Today—: Iraq (1)
Reading: Gregory, Colonial Present, pp. 144-245
Research day
Colonialism Today—: Iraq (II)
Reading: Video, cahrts & discussion (reading to be announced)
Colonialism Today: Palestine
Reading: Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present, pp. 76-143
Research Day 
Is Colonialism alive?
Reading: discussion & guest presentation

MA in Culture and Colonialism

The course is a full-time degree taken over a twelve-month period (September to September). The year is divided into two teaching semesters (September to December and January to May), while the summer period is devoted to completing a minor dissertation.

The taught programme comprises six compulsory courses (two of which are not examined), plus two option courses, and occasional lectures by distinguished visiting speakers. Most courses consist of 10 two-hour seminars. The list of available courses varies from year to year: the following list is provisional.

Compulsory Courses:

EN541 Colonialism in 20th-Century Cultural Theory
This course offers an introduction twentieth-century theories of colonialism and neo-colonialism in relation to cultural production. The course focuses on issues related to identity, political agency and discourse. Ireland’s relation to postcolonial theory is also discussed. Some of the theorists discussed include Fanon, Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Ahmad, and Lloyd.

HI546 Studies in the History of Colonialism and Imperialism 1
This course provides students with an understanding of the forces which contributed to nineteenth-century European imperialism. Students are encouraged to evaluate critically the various theories that have been advanced to explain imperialism, and to consider how far imperialism acted to stimulate or retard 'modernisation' in colonised areas, including areas of European settlement (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) and possessions in which imperial authority was exerted over alien populations (India, Africa, etc.).

HI547 Studies in the History of Colonialism and Imperialism 2
This course examines the challenges that emerged in the course of the twentieth century to imperial structures, including the impact of two world wars and the rise of protest movements among the colonised. It considers the responses of various imperial powers, first in successfully countering threats to continued dominance, and later in managing the retreat from empire. Students also consider the degree to which imperial structures survived formal processes of decolonisation, and continue to shape the modern world.

SP565 Decolonization and Neo-Colonialism: The Politics of 'Development'
The phenomena of development and underdevelopment in those lands that have experienced colonial rule have been theorised in two broadly contrasting ways in social science: the modernisation perspective, which derives from the northern hemisphere by and large, and a series of counter-perspectives (such as structuralism, dependency, neo-Marxism and world systems theory), whose exponents hail from the southern hemisphere in the main. This course examines these theories, and also considers how much light they shed on the Irish experience of development and underdevelopment.

Research Seminar 1 and 2 (compulsory but not examined)
This course provides basic training in research techniques appropriate to the programme, and provides assistance in developing each student’s dissertation. The dissertation is a 15,000-word thesis on a topic decided by the student in consultation with the programme staff. This seminar runs over both semesters.

Option Courses (two to be chosen):

EN547 Literature and Colonialism
This course examines literary representations of colonial and post-colonial experience, from a variety of points-of-view and from various historical and geographical contexts. The focus in previous years has been on literature in the English language from the 17th to the 20th centuries. 

EC535 Political Economy, Colonialism and Globalisation
This course considers the engagement of the ‘science’ of political economy with colonialism in a variety of nineteenth-century British writings and debates. It focuses particularly on the ways in which political economy attempted to explain and justify colonization by reference to the redundancy of population and capital in European countries. 

EN549 Cinema and Colonialism
This course considers the relationships between colonialism and the theory and practice of cinema. Seminars address the following themes: the Hollywood genres of the ‘Western’ and the ‘Vietnam movie’; Western cinematic representations of imperialism; postcolonial theories of cinema; Cuban cinema; African cinema; Irish cinema. 

HI540 Gender and Colonialism
This course explores the interaction between gender and colonial/postcolonial issues, drawing on a variety of theoretical models and a variety of social, political and literary contexts. Some of the areas studied include the relations among feminism, politics, and nationalism; the constructions of race and gender in colonised societies, and gender and literature in colonial and post-colonial societies. 

NG541 Cultúr agus Coilíneachas: An Coilíneachas agus Domhan na Gaeilge
Déanfaidh an cúrsa seo iniúchadh ar dhearcadh phobal na Gaeilge in Éirinn ar an gconcas mar fheictear é sa litríocht ón 17ú haois i leith. Léifear agus pléifear trí mhodh seimineáir saothair i dtréimhsí mar seo thíos: Seathrún Céitinn agus filíocht an 17ú haois; filí éagsúla ón 18ú agus 19ú haois; scríbhinní mhuintir an Náisiúin; Athbheochan dheireadh an 19ú agus thús an 20ú haois. Ina theannta sin, déanfar iniúchadh ar imeachtaí cultúrtha agus teanga san aois seo in Éirinn faoi sholas na díospóireachta faoin meon iarchoilíneach. 

Gender and Nation in 19th Ireland (proposed for 2006-07)
This course deals with the connections between the representations of gender and national difference in fiction written in or about Ireland in the nineteenth century. This period, which is marked both by widespread public discussion of marriage and alternatives to it, and by the Irish Revival, sees the mapping of these forms of difference on to one another in a range of fictional works. In the case of Irish fiction, the particular political resonance of such themes as women’s autonomy, dependence, and marriage as unequal contract is enabled in part by the long tradition of both literary and popular images of Ireland as woman. The course considers the ways in which both feminism and nationalism were faced with essentialist accounts of gender- and nationally-determined character (the ‘Celtic temperament’ and the ‘female nature’) that served to disqualify and distance them from the exercise of political power. It will also examine the relation between writing that emerges self-consciously from a political or cultural ‘periphery’ (as nationalist and feminist fiction does) and the breakdown of realism as the dominant literary mode in this period. 

Ecology and Colonialism (Proposed for 2006-07) 
This course proposes to enlarge the scope of conventional political economy analyses of colonialism and neo-colonialism by including the dimension of ecology and the environment. The environment is usually treated as an ‘externality’ in studies of colonialism, yet the discovery and appropriation of the ‘environment’ in the forms of land and natural resources was a key driving force behind colonial expansion and the relationships between colonisers and colonised peoples. A ‘greening’ of the political economy perspective invites us to take a deeper and broader worldview to encompass territories, animals, plants and ecological regimes. It compels us to look at the long historical timeframe within which human cultures and civilisations have ‘developed’, changed and destroyed ecological regimes. How differently might we approach colonisation, ‘decolonisation’ and ‘development’ if insights from ecology can be applied? And how does thinking about colonized ‘others’ (natives and nature) help us to understand the dilemmas of the colonising ‘self’ (settler and coloniser) so that both coloniser and colonised can be emancipated?

E-Books