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J. P. Daughton - An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism
In An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914, J. P. Daughton contests the traditional argument that missionary activity paved the way for later French colonialism. Instead, he questions the motivations of both of these groups, asking if “all Frenchmen in the colonies were working for a ‘common mother’ called France” (3). His answer is a resounding “no” for the period between 1880 and 1914. Instead, he finds that there were high tensions between republican colonizers and Catholic missionaries, who were subjected to profound anticlericalism.
While republicans colonized the world with a primary goal of bringing indigenous peoples into the fold of an amorphous idea that they called “civilization,” missionaries were less concerned with “civilizing.” Instead, they were far more occupied with converting people to Christianity in order to save their souls. Civilization was an unimportant concept to them in the grand scheme of things. However, this sentiment changed in the years following the First World War. Missionary goals and republican goals eventually collided, equating “civilization” with “salvation.” All heathens and heretics were therefore uncivilized in the eyes of missionaries, rather than having the perspective that Daughton paints as being more sympathetic.
In addition, Daughton argues that republican colonizers did not come to the colonies were prefigured ideas of civilization. This had to be produced by those doing the colonizing, much of which was informed by anticlerical sentiment. Tensions between colonizers and missionaries are one of the reasons why the mission civilisatrice was formed in the first place. With this comes the idea that the mission civilisatrice was not a monolithic idea, but an idea that was constantly negotiated (and renegotiated).
In making this argument, Daughton looks closely at three regions, which he uses as case studies for this book: Indochina, Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, and Madagascar. In the case study on Indochina, France becomes synonymous with progress, civilization, and—surprisingly—the Catholic faith in the eyes of Indochinese. The faith aspect was not something intended by the republican government, but something that emerged nonetheless. In the case study on French Polynesia, Daughton focuses on issues of depopulation. Missionaries put the blame on colonizers for causing depopulation through change and “civilizing,” and deep fissures formed between republican colonizers and Catholic missionaries.
In the last case study, Daughton finds that Catholicism remained a defining feature of French national identity despite the “anticlerical crusade in metropolitan France” (204). He also notes that the London Missionary Society asked for protection from the French government, and the government found that they could not protect a Protestant organization without also supporting a Catholic one, so the republic wound up protecting Catholic missionaries in spite of recent political trends in the Hexagon.
Because the wide geographic spread of this text, Daughton had to hunt for sources on four different continents. Of all sources, he spent the most time examining materials from religious organizations like the Archives Jésuites, the Archives des Pères Maristes, and the Archives des Soeurs de Saint Joseph de Cluny.
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John Darwin - After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires
In After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, John Darwin assembles numerous secondary sources to write a cohesive narrative about the history of “empire” after 1400. Rather functioning as a standard historical monograph, Darwin’s text reinterprets imperial history into a new meta-narrative about the rise of European empires in the years after the demise of Tamerlane’s Mongol empire. In some ways, Darwin succeeds, but in others he misses the mark.
In his text, Darwin puts forth three themes that he wishes to pursue: “the growth of a global ‘connectedness’ into the intensified form that we call ‘globalization,’” “the part that was played in this process by the power of Europe […] through the means of empire,” and “the resilience of many of Eurasia’s other states and cultures in the face of Europe’s expansion.”[1] Following the trajectory of Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence, Darwin points out that Europe and Asia existed in a world of “surprising resemblances,” where neither full dominated the other.
However, Darwin argues that this changed at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century as the British gained increasing power in Bengal. With Bengal, Europeans gained access to opium, as well as a new source for tea. With these two commodities, the British no longer had to rely on China and could instead reverse the balance of trade (which would culminate in the Opium Wars of the mid nineteenth century). This reversal in the balance of trade was, in Darwin’s words, the “Eurasian Revolution.” At last, Europe had the ability to dominate the rest of Asia, permitting European empires to become become the most powerful states in the world.
The “globalized world,” Darwin continues to argue, was therefore engineered primarily by European states in the late nineteenth century. To do this, Darwin argues that Europe led two great “transformations” in the late nineteenth century: the first was the making of a world economy that traded raw materials, manufactures and foodstuffs in addition to luxury commodities, and the second was the growth of European dominion over colonized lands. While the second transformation is undoubtedly true, the first can hardly be called a “transformation.” Goods like cotton and textiles were traded long before this “transformation.” A great deal of British cotton was imported from India as early as the eighteenth century, for example. Further, the Columbian Exchange was a result of the exchange of foodstuffs well before this “transformation.”
In addition, Darwin argues that the “three great divisions of the Old World” (Europe, the Islamic world, and China) were equal before the fifteenth century, but that this changed in the late fifteenth century.[2] Yet, this does not square with Darwin’s other argument that the “Eurasian Revolution” of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the event that caused Europe to diverge from the rest of Eurasia. In fact, he explicitly writes that
“historians have often been tempted to see the later part of early modern times as the grand prelude to the supremacy of Europe, and to imagine the imminent triumph of a global economy dominated by commercially advanced ‘core’ states in North West Europe. In fact there are few grounds for taking so deterministic a view of a period whose most striking feature was the limited influence that the European states could muster across most of Eurasia.”[3]
I am more inclined to agree with his latter argument, as European states had a great deal of difficulty extending any power at all over Islamic or Chinese society. Even the Habsburg empire, arguably the strongest state in Europe, lost a great deal of territory to the dynamic Ottoman empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Throughout the course of the book, Darwin continuously reminds us not to forget the dynamism of empires outside of Europe, but he spends little time on recounting their histories except to contextualize European growth, despite claiming that his book is about the rise and fall of “global” empires since 1400. Instead, the book would be better described as a history of the rise and abrupt fall of western European imperial states since 1400. Darwin’s argument on the subject of the Eurasian Revolution is insightful and worth thinking about, but it is necessary that he look at other Eurasian empires in their own right, rather than simply for comparison with Europe over time.
Darwin concludes his book arguing that “the history of the world […] is an imperial history, a history of empires,” going on to see that the “default position” of historical politics was rooted in empire.[4] It is true that empires have been a mainstay of the human experience since the third millennium BCE (and certainly since the third century BCE), but arguing that the history of the world is an imperial history misses the mark. A better way to augment this claim would be to examine the ways that people living under empire experienced the empires that they lived under. Surely the case of twentieth century European imperialism is unique in how present empire was—with its racial and hierarchies, drive for classification, and technological prowess. However, it is unlikely that individuals living in Arab parts of the Ottoman empire would have felt the same way. Instead, I would argue that what truly matters in world history is the local, which empire did not interfere with as heavily as Darwin suggests.
A large part of his failure is likely shared with Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper in their book, Empires in World History, as he does not engage with the primary source literature at all. In crafting a metanarrative, it is difficult to engage with individuals who lived under empire, and Darwin falls right into the mistake of claiming what world history is without consulting the people who lived through that history.
[1] Darwin, 6.
[2] Darwin, 50.
[3] Darwin, 154.
[4] Darwin, 491.
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Jane Dibblin - Day of Two Suns: US Nuclear Testing and the Pacific Islanders
In Day of Two Suns: US Nuclear Testing and the Pacific Islanders, Jane Dibblin offers an anthropological account of Marshall Islanders who were forced to leave their homes on the island on Rongelap as a result of nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll. Although Rongelap itself was not destroyed by nuclear testing, those living there were forced to move to the island of Kwajalein due to radiation clouds over Rongelap.
Today, these islanders are refugees who are forced to rely on the American government for food and supplies, as there is not enough food on Kwajalein itself. These islanders are generally, and rightfully, disgruntled with the American government, as ships do not come often enough, and the island nearly runs out of food before an American ship comes with more. Moreover, there is little to no healthcare on the island, meaning they must go to larger islands for healthcare. This is a particularly important issue, as the older generations have been affected by the radiation clouds of the 1950s and regularly face diseases that are little-known elsewhere. Many women even gave birth to “jelly babies,” infants who are little more than a squishy blob of liquid.
Throughout the Cold War, the United States took advantage of these islanders—as well as the Marshallese more broadly—in hopes of staving off communism in the Pacific. However, Cold War rhetoric has permitted some questionable statements by Americans on the conditions of Rongelap islanders. For example, some American officers stationed in the Marshall islands dismissed concerns about refugees from the Rongelap islands, their inability to find enough food, diseases, and more, claiming that it is better for them to face these conditions under the capitalist Americans than be under the influence of the communist Soviet Union.
Interestingly, in the early 1980s, the American government declared that Rongelap was fit for resettlement, with some stipulations: islanders must not go to the north part of the island, and those resettling the island must be at least eighteen years or older. These stipulations hardly encouraged resettlement, as it became clear that the atoll was—by no means—a safe place.
Dibblin finds that conditions in the Pacific have exacerbated with Ronald Reagan’s “star wars” policy, permitting more nuclear testing there and displacing increasing amounts of people. Those who are not displaced often must still face the consequences of living in a society where radiation has caused numerous deformities. Yet, Reagan is not the only American president who is complicit. Dibblin instead places the blame on every American government since Eisenhower, as they all had the opportunity to move the refugees to at least the United States, but did not even do that and instead bombed more islands.
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Christopher Guyver - The Second French Republic, 1848-1852: A Political Reinterpretation
In his new book, The Second French Republic, 1848-1852: A Political Reinterpretation, Christopher Guyver argues that the notables developed a sense of identity during the construction of the Second Republic was rooted in a sense of opposition to the Second Empire. Indeed, the notables are the core subject of this text, as illustrated when the author states that “the book’s focus is the fears and plans of the political elite displaced in February 1848” (2). He goes so far as to argue that the two things that held this group together were suspicion of the new republic and hatred for new ideas of socialism.
While the notables were shocked at the speed of the February Revolution, they were also perplexed by the lack of mass violence that followed. Most notables believed revolution to be a fundamentally violent affair culminating in events like the First Republic’s Reign of Terror. Coming to understand that the violence of the French Revolution occurred in the years following 1789, notables scrambled for power. In gathering power, there was a sense that it was absolutely essential for them to become legislators in order to prevent French society from descending into socialist anarchy. With this fear, Guyver argues that the notables were forced to mass-produce anti-socialist tracts, although these were unsuccessful at working against the spectre rouge.
After the coup of Napoleon III, many notables were convinced that the Empire would end badly, so they retreated from politics. In the aftermath of Napoleon III’s rise, many notables lived comfortably without interference, unlike a large number of Republicans, who were exiled, thrown in prison, or killed.
In addition to his main narrative, Guyver argues that the Second Republic is remarkable because all post-Revolutionary factions had a role in government: legitimists, Orléanists, republicans, etc. Although the republicans were the ones who formed the Second Republic, their republic quickly became a conservative structure.
Further, Guyver argues that the period cannot be understood without seeing Changarnier as central to the narrative. The notables pinned their hopes on his potential anti-republican presidency to bring “order” back to the country, but he failed miserably. In any case, he was in a position where he could have initiated a coup. Guyver even argues that the next time a single general would be as powerful as Changarnier would not be until the Boulanger Affair of the 1880s.
In crafting this history, Guyver spends far less time looking at broad social patterns and changes than individual men—especially bureaucrats and legislators—who had a role in the Republican government. However, Guyver did spend much time looking at newspapers and journals in order to gather the general mood of the notables, which would be much harder to do had he only looked at what individuals said in their memoirs or diaries.
Ultimately, this is a political history of French conservatism during the Second Republic. This is an interesting direction to take this work, as most of the other work on the Second Republic emphasizes the role of the Left and/or the usurpation of the government by Napoleon III.
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Richard Fogarty - Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918
In Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918, Richard S. Fogarty argues that traditional views of race in the French army during World War I are misguided. In the past, historians have argued that both the French people and the French state were racially color-blind. Although Fogarty admits that the idea of race as a biological construction was not nearly as relevant to France as it was to the United Kingdom or the United States, he argues that French ideas of race were far more deeply rooted in ideas about culture. This has implications on how we view the nature of the Third French Republic.
Before World War I, Fogarty asserts that colonial ideology was essentially assimilationist. The goal was for colonized people to become French by accepting French culture, French customs, the French language, and all other things French. However, the years leading up to the First World War saw the emergence of a new, associationist colonial ideology. In this ideology, colonial subjects were fundamentally different from citizens in metropolitan France. While this difference was not absolute, it created an invisible barrier or, better termed, a color line.
Throughout the course of the book, Fogarty examines seven major themes about the role of colonial soldiers in World War I. In the first chapter, Fogarty argues that the French demanded an impôt du sang in exchange for the “privilege” of living under French rule. As a result, soldiers were conscripted from colonies across the world. In the second chapter, Fogarty looks at racial stereotypes given to colonial soldiers and pays special attention to the differences between the races guerrières and races non-guerrières. In the third chapter, Fogarty examines the glass ceilings imposed on the elevation of colonial soldiers to higher ranks. He concludes that racial prejudices created a dynamic where colonial soldiers could not rise as high as their white counterparts.
In chapter 4, Fogarty argues that linguistic incompatibility caused difficulty within the French military, where the French did not teach colonial soldiers how to speak French because they assumed the colonized to be incompetent. In the fifth chapter, Fogarty looks at religion and the anxiety that the association between Islam and the Ottoman Empire caused. Indeed, the French feared that their Muslim soldiers would abandon them on behalf of the Ottomans. In a similar vein, the sixth chapter focuses on the anxiety that was produced by sexual liaisons between colonial soldiers and French women—both real and imagined. In the final chapter, Fogarty analyzes the debates about whether or not to offer French citizenship to colonial soldiers.
Fogarty relies heavily on archival sources, and he singles out the records of the army’s postal censors as being particularly important to understanding the way that the troupes indigènes were perceived by other soldiers. He also looked through the French military archives, documents from the Ministry of War, records on the colonial empire from the Centres des archives d’Outre-mer and the archives of the French Foreign Ministry. By looking at both colonial records and military records, Fogarty managed to write a thoughtful and successfully argued history of the relationship between the French military and the colonial empire.
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David Christian - Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
In Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, David Christian states that he is not trying to write a traditional piece of historical research, but rather that he is assembling a “modern creation myth” (2). Although most undergraduate world history surveys begin with the foundations of agrarian civilization in the ancient Near East, Indus Valley, on the Yellow River, and in Mesoamerica, Christian finds it crucial to give context to human history by taking a look at not only the non-human world, but the rest of the universe as well. As a result, Christian finds that his book is much like a Russian matryoshka doll, with humans as the smallest, central aspect of his work, but also including the outer layers which include the origins of the universe, the birth of the sun, the evolution of life, and far more.
While there are many critics of this sort of work (many of which ask if “big history” is even useful), Christian finds that it is. He acknowledges that detail is lost in his history, but larger frames enable a much larger picture. He also argues that it is necessary to cross disciplinary boundaries if we wish to truly know about our world. This interdisciplinary research is well-suited for this book, which incorporates economics, biology, geology, astrophysics, anthropology, and a wide range of other disciplines. Third, he argues that it is necessary to construct a grand narrative so that experts can remain in control of the narrative. He finds that grand narratives will form regardless of whether they are accepted by the academy or not, so it is important to construct the most accurate metanarrative possible. Lastly, he accepts that there is a possibility that his claims are exaggerated, but he thinks that further works of big history will mediate this problem.
Although many historians find “big history” that will never be successful, Christian finds that this sort of work is still impossible—if for no other reason than to contextualize the human experience in a larger framework. Understanding human history since the agricultural revolution is important, but it misses the thirteen billion years that came before it. With works of big history, it is possible to gain a better understanding of who we are and what our places in the universe is. Even though we are mere specks of dust compared to the processes that came before us, big history allows us to see the universe outside of our little speck with more clarity than has ever been possible before.
The primary disadvantage of this approach to history is that it does not appear to be a field of inquiry in itself. Rather, it now inhabits the place that world history inhabited before the 1990s. Given that it is impossible for a historian to be an expert in all disciplines, they are left to reading countless secondary sources and synthesizing them, adding little that is new to the discussion. Instead of producing new knowledge, big history assembles fragments from all different types of scholars and puts them in an order that is coherent. It is questionable whether this can be considered scholarship on its own.
Unlike other texts we have read in this course, Maps of Time is not a work of world history. While Christian does look at world-historic moments like the agricultural revolution, the formation of cities, and the modern acceleration, he does not place these moments (or the pre-human concepts) in conversation with the broader world. They tend to instead act as separate case studies.
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Wendy Lower - Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine
In Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, Wendy Lower frames the German occupation of Ukraine as more than a simple occupation. Rather, it was a uniquely form of German colonialism, looking to colonize adjacent territories on the European continent rather than abroad. Like colonized subjects, the native peoples of Ukraine were to be subordinated to the Germans, with the execution of Jews, who were executed en masse. Rather than examining Ukraine in its entirety, Lower is interested in the region around the city of Zhytomyr, in eastern Ukraine. Unlike other occupied territories, Zhytomyr was planned to be a ��German California.” Instead of it being a simple settlement, it was to be a place of refuge and beauty for the Germans who would live there and it was on the road to Crimea, which was to be turned into a “German Riviera.”
Lower argues that German colonialism in eastern Europe did not emerge in a vacuum. Instead, Adolf Hitler was personally responsible for this plan, which gained deep inspiration from British colonialism in India. Like British India, beautiful buildings were to be used to house the German administration and the territory would be segregated in an Apartheid-like state. However, Hitler disagreed with British usage of India as a territory solely used for economic exploitation. Instead, he wanted it to be a settler colony much closer to Australia or South Africa, but more total in its segregation.
When the Germans first invaded Ukraine in 1941, they were greeted by Ukrainian nationalists as liberators. These nationalists wanted to create a state separate from the Soviet Union. Like the Germans, they wanted their hypothetical state to be a Ukrainian homeland, not a multiethnic state that includes Jews, Roma, Russians, Poles, or any other ethnic groups. Unsurprisingly, these hopes were eliminated by the Germans when they began to establish their colonial government. Although there was some central instruction in this colonial project, Hitler found it best to leave day-to-day administration up to German administrators, much like other forms of European colonialism in Asia and Africa.
Notably, the Jewish population of Ukraine (which was part of the Pale of Settlement), was not to have any place in this new German colony. Instead, the Holocaust veritably began in late 1941. Like colonial administration, Hitler did not give instructions about how to wipe out the Jewish population, but did find it to be a necessary task. In Europe east of Poland and the Balkans, two million Jews were eliminated between 1941 and 1945. This extermination differed from central Europe in that these Jews were not sent to concentration camps. These Jews found their deaths much closer to home—they were instead shot, alongside any Ukrainian who attempted to aid them (these Ukrainians were far and few between). The Germans managed to be so efficient because of the high density of Jewish settlement in this part of Ukraine, as well as Jewish inability to flee the Germans.
After the Soviet Union retook Ukraine, things did not get better for Ukrainians. A large number of Ukrainian nationalists were executed by the Soviet military, and returning Jews from deeper in the Soviet Union bred resentment when they attempted to go home to houses that were stolen from them by ethnic Ukrainians. Shortly after the war ended, pogroms began once more, followed by Stalin’s persecution of the Soviet Jewish population in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A great deal of fighting took place between Ukrainian nationalists, communists, and Zionists, leading to what Lower characterizes as a sort of civil war.
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Heather Streets-Salter - World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict
In World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict, Heather Streets-Salter fills a gap in the literature of World War I history by looking at colonial Southeast Asia, which she considers an integral part of the Great War. Although no major battles were fought in Southeast Asia, Streets-Salter argues that tensions were created primarily by Germans, who pushed anticolonial literature onto colonized peoples in hopes that they could weaken the British and French empires. However, the Ottoman Empire also played a role in calling a jihad for Muslims in Southeast Asia to rebel against their colonial leaders in vein of more global pan-Islamic traditions.
Moreover, and on a more methodological note, Streets-Salter emphasizes inter-colony relationships, as well as relationships between colonies and other sovereign states outside of their metropoles. This is highlighted well in the example of the Singapore Mutiny of 1915, where Ottoman and German individuals persuaded Indian military divisions to rebel against British rule. As a response, the British needed the assistance of Japan, Russia, and other colonial powers to fully put it down. As she states in her Journal of World History article on this topic, “the local was global.”
Although the first two chapters are on the Singapore Mutiny—the first about German and Ottoman influence on Indian divisions and the second on the Allied response—she also looks at states that were neutral during the earlier periods of the war, namely the Dutch East Indies, China, and Siam. These were areas were the Germans had the most influence, as they acted as liminal zones where both Germans and colonized peoples could meet and plot against colonial governments in Southeast Asia. The German presence was perhaps strongest in the Dutch East Indies, where it was possible that the Netherlands would ally with the Germans against the British and French. Yet, the Dutch did wind up siding with the British in the war.
Like Germans, the British were also active in these neutral zones, where anticolonial figures were able to be arrested and extradited to colonial governments. Streets-Salter offers the example of a Vietnamese man who went to Siam in order to meet up with a German agent. However, the Vietnamese man was caught by British police and admitted that he planned on rebelling against the French. The reason that the British were the ones who caught this Vietnamese individual was because Britain had exerted a significant amount of power in Siam going back to the late nineteenth century. The British then extradited the man to French Indochina, where he eventually was killed after aiding in an anticolonial riot.
Streets-Salters’s arguments about both the role of Southeast Asia in World War I and larger methodological concerns about world history stand up to scrutiny, as anticolonial success in Southeast Asia would have significantly weakened Allied abilities in the war, even though the only colony to send laborers or soldiers (in this case laborers) was French Indochina. Southeast Asia was a space that generated revenue, especially with the spice trade and rubber plantations, and decolonization so early may have led to the demise of the Allies during the Great War.
This book should be read by historians of empire, Southeast Asia, and World War I. It is of utmost importance to come at World War I with a more global perspective, and Streets-Salter does this well.
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Sugata Bose - A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire
Since the emergence of world history (sometimes called “global history”) in the 1990s, scholars have heavily debated the scale with which historical analysis should take place. Some thinkers, like Janet Abu-Lughod and Immanuel Wallerstein, have been preoccupied with analyses of the so-called “world systems theory.” Other thinkers have taken a stance where they view global integration through the lens of imperial structures within a nation. Others still have looked at global history through the eyes of commodities. Sugata Bose rejects all of these and instead emphasizes the importance of “interregional areas,” which has less rigid connotations than the “systems” of Abu-Lughod or Wallerstein. (6)
In A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire, Bose examines the Indian Ocean world with the understanding that this is not a single region, but a space where many societies overlap. K. N. Chaudhuri argues that four different civilizations emerged on the Indian Ocean rim—Islamic, Sanskritic Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian. However, Bose finds that these four “civilizations” are inadequate at offering a good perspective into the Indian Ocean, as it completely ignores the ocean’s western littoral. In this work, the author amends Chaudhuri’s conception of the Indian Ocean by including the importance of Africa.
Earlier scholars had argued that the Indian Ocean was an interregional area that facilitated trade of Indian capital and labor between a number of regions until it was disrupted in approximately 1750. Bose rejects these earlier scholars and argues that the Indian Ocean remained a space full of interregional networks. Rather than staying the same, Bose argues that these were reordered under European rule between 1800 and 1930. It was only with the weakening of the imperial system in the 1930s that the Indian Ocean declined as a significant interregional area.
In his book, Bose identifies three major themes that emerge in the study of the Indian Ocean world before 1800 and 1930. First, colonialism—particularly British—restructured states across the rim of the Indian Ocean and changed conceptions of sovereignty. In this regard, the Indian Ocean became a sort of British lake. The British managed to successfully subordinate minor princes, chiefdoms, and other political arrangements in favor of the British sovereignty. Bose goes so far as to argue that the character of colonial violence differed significantly from earlier empires and state structure and points out that the “centralized state which was created in the colonial period was an entirely new political innovation in the Indian Ocean region” (24). With the centralized state came massive, European-style armies that emerged in India during the Napoleonic Wars.
In addition to these political shifts, Bose argues that a second major theme was made up of changes in the economy of the Indian Ocean, particularly in South Asia. While smaller traders had historically sailed with the monsoons and sold a wide variety of goods in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and more, these smaller traders were weakened—if not dominated—by the injection of the British East India Company into the Indian Ocean. Although the Company had existed for more than a century by 1800s, its development of state-like qualities at the end of the eighteenth century gave it greater ability to monopolize the region of the Indian Ocean. Although Indian and Southeast Asian merchants did have success throughout the Indian Ocean rim in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were newcomers to the trade and were—at some level—dependent on the British.
Finally, Bose argues that the Indian Ocean created a world where people from the Indian Ocean rim could traverse it and have an extraterritorial identity. He points out that anticolonialism was an ideology rooted in the idea of a national “homeland,” but was strengthened by relationships with peoples outside of that homeland. Indeed, it was often important for anticolonial nationalists to see their homes from the outside in order to fully articulate their nationalism.[1] Bose singles out Islam as another extraterritorial identity that was fostered by the Indian Ocean’s status as a British lake. Islam offered a sort of universalism for Muslims in East Africa, around the Persian Gulf, in South Asia, and in Southeast Asia. This cohesive identity—while articulated earlier in the idea of the ummah—took on new meaning in the Indian Ocean world.
Bose examines these three themes through his seven primary chapters and his conclusion. Although his first chapter acts as an introduction to the book, Bose also discusses the spatial and temporal parameters of this book (1800-1930 throughout the entire Indian Ocean rim). In the second chapter, Bose illustrates the centralizing tendencies of the British Empire throughout the Indian Ocean. Although many principalities and other small polities were nominally sovereign at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they gradually came into the orbit of the British Empire. In the next chapter, Bose finds that the Indian Ocean was an interregional area that was quickly globalizing economically. Goods and labor traveled from one end of the Indian Ocean to the other, and beyond. Even today, there are Indian communities in places as far away as Fiji (although not on the Indian Ocean rim) and Zimbabwe, as well as the Caribbean islands and Malaysia. This economic centralization was significant to the construction of a cohesive Indian Ocean.
Bose then moves from these foundations in several other examples. For example, Bose looks at the British army (made up of an enormous number of Indians) as it traversed the Indian Ocean, fighting in places all over the Indian Ocean rim like Egypt and Afghanistan. He then moves to South Africa and recounts the story of Mohandas Gandhi’s experiences in South Africa and how they moved him towards anticolonial nationalism. Finally, Bose looks at two forms of pilgrims in the Indian Ocean: Muslims who all wish to go on hajj and poets and philosophers who wished to learn more about the collective history of the Indian Ocean world. These collective identities are one of the enduring features of the Indian Ocean world.
One weakness is that Bose appears to tell more of a story of imperialists and Indians in the Indian Ocean, as he hardly looks at the movement of peoples like the Malay people, East Asians, or any number of non-Indians. This work is nevertheless a crucial piece of literature for any scholars of the history of seas/oceans, imperialism, world history, or South Asia.
[1] See Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis (2015).
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David Motadel, ed. - Islam and the European Empires
Islam and the European Empires is an edited collection by David Motadel, who finds the literature on the relationship between Islam and European imperialism to be woefully insufficient. Reviewing the literature, he finds that there is some work on the way that Islam fueled anticolonial nationalism and how it may have been seen by observers—both practicing Muslims and non-Muslim administrators—but there is little on the subject of how Islam was actually used by colonial governments to build up imperial regimes. After all, the British Empire would often market itself as the world’s largest Muslim polity, given the number of Muslims that lived in its territories. Nevertheless, the relationship between Islam and European empire-building was fraught with contradictions.
In the first section of the book, Motadel assembles five essays on the subject of “Islam and Imperial Rule.” In other words, this section focuses on the way that Islam was actually used to exert control over colonized peoples. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is John Slight’s piece on “British Imperial Rule and the Hajj.”[1] In this chapter, Slight looks at the way that the British government actually aided colonized peoples (particularly Muslims) who chose to take their pilgrimage to Mecca. Often, pilgrims would have enough money to reach Mecca but not enough to return back to India. In order to aid its subjects, the British colonial government would often use imperial ships to bring pilgrims back to India, leading to debate about whether or not these actions empowered Indian Muslims to go on hajj, knowing they would not need a way to get back. Other interesting chapters are “The Russian Worlds of Islam” and “Islam and Imperialism in East Africa,” two subjects that I knew little about at the time I began to read this book.[2]
The second section of this book is “Islam and Anti-Colonial Resistance,” a much more common topic in the dimension of Islam and European empires. The first chapter charts the rise of anti-imperialism and its relationship with pan-Islam through the lens of famous names like Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Rashid Rida.[3] For me, the most interesting chapter was on religious orders in colonial North Africa like the Sanusi, who were not formed as anti-colonial movements but were able to be mobilized whenever necessary.[4] Although this did not guarantee success in fighting back against the European empires, it led to deeper meaning for those who wished to fight against imperialism on religious grounds.
The final section of the book draws on the work of famous postcolonial thinkers like Edward Said (especially in Orientalism) in their analysis of colonial knowledge. This section itself is on the subject of how colonial knowledge was developed by studying Islam and its milieu in the European empires. Chapters in this section include one on arguments about Islam, its virtues, and its vices in Imperial Germany, a study of French ideas on Maraboutism, and the importance of Islam in Japanese imperial thought.[5] Perhaps the most interesting of this section is Cemil Aydin’s study of Japanese attitudes towards Islam, which they viewed as a powerful vector for pan-Asianism. Between 1931, with Japan’s conquest of Manchuria, and the end of World War II in 1945, studies of Islam in Japanese universities had exploded. The Japanese viewed Islam as a fundamentally Asian phenomenon that could be harnessed by them in fighting against Western variants of imperialism. Surprisingly to the Japanese, Muslims were no happier to find themselves being colonized by another Asian power. This became abundantly clear during the Japanese occupation of what is now Indonesia.
Because the goal of this text is to study the religion of Islam and its context within European empires more broadly, the authors do write effective essays that would keep any scholar engrossed. Unfortunately, other categories of analysis are neglected due to how much emphasis is placed on “Islam” as an idea. For example, there is little discussion of gender relations in Islam and the way that different classes of Muslims may have responded to European imperialism in different ways (were the wealthy more willing to accommodate while the poor were more likely to revolt?). Interestingly, there is some discussion of race’s impact on Islamic identities. Felicitas Becker offers us a glimpse of this by suggesting that Europeans tended to view black Africans as less fundamentally Muslim and more animist, while there is little evidence to support this. Indeed, although black Africans also kept some pre-Islamic traditions, the same was (and is) true of North African Muslims who have kept traditions like the “Evil Eye.” In this racial segmentation, Europeans often viewed Arabs as the most fundamentalist group of Muslims (and therefore the more fanatic, in their minds). While other groups of Muslims were not as great of a challenge in the minds of Europeans.
Overall, this book was an excellent study of Islam in the European Empires and offers a great deal for future studies.
[1] John Slight, “British Imperial Rule and the Hajj,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 53–72.
[2] Robert D. Crews, “The Russian Worlds of Islam,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 35–52; Felicitas Becker, “Islam and Imperialism in East Africa,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 112–28.
[3] Umar Ryad, “Anti-Imperialism and the Pan-Islamic Movement,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 131–49.
[4] Knut S. Vikør, “Religious Revolts in Colonial North Africa,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 170–86.
[5] Rebekka Habermas, “Debates on Islam in Imperial Germany,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 231–53; George R. Trumbull, “French Colonial Knowledge of Maraboutism,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 269–86; Cemil Aydin, “Islam and the European Empires in Japanese Imperial Thought,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 287–302.
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Gregory Cushman - Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: An Ecological History
Gregory T. Cushman’s Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History is a densely-packed work about the importance of guano (and its derivatives, nitrates and phosphates) in nineteenth and twentieth century world history. Above all, he concludes that guano was crucial to rapid industrial and agricultural change because this commodity is so packed with chemical compounds needed for crop growth—especially in more arid regions.
Cushman’s argument is sprawling in that he identifies seven things he examines extensively throughout the book. First, he includes Latin America (a region usually ignored in Pacific histories) into the Pacific World. Moreover, he notes that each island has its own identity and they are too often grouped together. Second, he argues that the Pacific World was integrated in the 19th century by the movement of guano and workers to mine and transport it. Because of this, networks were formed that intersected across the Pacific. Third, “nature” as an abstract concept had its own agency in the formation of a Pacific World. ENSO, birds, and fish all influenced imperial expansion, the production of guano, and more.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the Pacific is a region that was inextricably linked to the Industrial Revolution by use of guano. In fact, Cushman goes so far to argue that the opening of the Pacific World was so significant that it is on par with the Carboniferous—a geologic era characterized by the production of carbon-based fuel. He also argues that guano had a deep cultural influence on men like Aldo Leopold and William Vogt, as well as on the re-emergence on Malthusian ideas, that a technocratic class was formed that engineered exploitation and use of guano, and that this class often (sometimes accidentally) made decisions that contributed to environmental degradation.
This is certainly a work of global history, as Cushman looks closely at the transit of guano and the way it influences the world far from where it originated. This includes Europe, the rest of the Americas, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and more. By examining the role of guano in nineteenth and twentieth century history, Cushman is forced to ignore national boundaries at times, as the history of guano cannot be seen within national—or even regional—borders. As such, this is a quintessential work of global history.
While Cushman’s analysis of guano is comprehensive (and remarkable) it seems that he overstates the importance of guano in the modern era. If Cushman’s research is as solid as it appears to be, then it is indisputable that guano helped accelerate agricultural and industrial change, but he does not give enough thought to other resources that also fueled the industrial revolution—including the most widely studied resource of this period, coal. Moreover, he downplays other connections that were occurring in the Pacific, including whaling voyages, missionary work, immigration from Asia to the Americas, and indentured servitude from places like India. Cushman portrays guano as the definitive reason that the Pacific became an interconnected (and global) space, but he does not give enough thought to a multitude of other processes that were occurring during the same period.
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Tracey Banivanua-Mar - Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire
In her recent book, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Tracey Banivanua-Mar argues against the current interpretation—that there was no attempt at decolonizing in the Pacific. This argument is predicated on the erroneous idea that peoples of the Pacific islands did not have the “energy” to fight back against imperialism. Perhaps this means that there was not enough cohesive identity for anticolonial movements, but what is meant by “energy” is unclear.
Essential to her argument is that the colonial period allowed islanders across the Pacific to migrate, communicate, and develop a shared Pacific islander identity. European languages like English and French facilitated this community-building when islander languages were too different from one another. Regional organizations were formed in the Pacific islands, the indentured labor trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries built connections between islands, and many islanders had a shared sense of history due to their subjugation at the hands of Europeans.
Banivanua-Mar admits that decolonization was not entirely successful, but this was not often a result of Pacific islanders themselves. Instead, the United Nations was one organization that normally aided in decolonization processes but severely weakened them in the Pacific islands. This is because many of the island territories were not officially “colonies” but were military bases and outposts that were better integrated into the political systems of metropolitan nations. UN resolutions have historically not recognized indigenous peoples of metropolitan nations. As such, Hawaiians, Tahitians, Maori, aboriginal Australians, and many others never had the opportunity to decolonize from imperial powers. In fact, she specifically mentions that decolonization is/was notoriously difficult with former settler colonies, which were more widespread throughout a great deal of the Pacific.
Interestingly, the vast majority of her sources come from former metropoles. Although there are some government records from Australia and New Zealand, Banivanua-Mar did little archival work in the rest of the Pacific islands. Had she done this research, it is likely that her work would be more rooted in individual protests rather than sweeping ideas about inter-island links and international institutions.
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Meredith McKittrick - To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland
In To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland, Meredith McKittrick tells the story of the Ovambo people of Namibia’s relationship with colonialism. Although this book began as a work of history exclusively about colonialism in Ovamboland, McKittrick comes to realize that colonialism as an aggregate phenomenon had far less of an impact on the Ovambo people than did Christianity. Yet, Christianity did not impact all people equally.
The primary arguments of McKittrick’s book are three-fold. First, Christianity was the defining phenomenon of the twentieth century for the Ovambo people. Few Ovambo men or women met colonial administrators, nor did they feel the direct impacts of colonialism (to them, this was seen as consistent with the past, where leaders caused change, but Ovambo leaders often functioned as puppets of colonial administrators rather than independent individuals). Instead, the main product of colonialism that impacted all people was Christianity. Second, the youth were far more likely to accept Christianity than their elders. Like many other African societies, Ovamboland was a gerontocracy being led by the oldest members of the community. Many new Christians converted in order to find a new way to navigate these societal structures. Third, many youths accepted Christianity, because it entered Ovambo society during a time of great insecurity. Not only did the Ovambo people recently depose their king and vow not to have a new one, but a great famine hit the countryside in the early twentieth century and converts clung to Christianity for hope.
However, the story of Ovambo conversion to Christianity is not so simple. Although many youths accepted Christian doctrine, few were formally converted (let alone baptized) due to constraints placed on them by society. Conversion to Christianity could result in punishment as bad as death. Nevertheless, many did stay true to Christian beliefs and changed their morals according. On the other hand, some leaders could convert to Christianity because they did not fear the same repercussions that the youth did. Yet, as Christians they continued to have many wives and violate Christian moral codes. For them, Christianity functioned more as a title than a way of life.
The question of generational conflict pervades throughout the course of the book, with young Ovambo people having exceptionally different experiences than their elders. In traditional Ovambo life, an individual would continue working on farms and find a wife in their same village. But, with the advent of Christianity, more young men began to work as migrant workers in cities like Windhoek. Working in these cities allowed them to break out of traditional societal structures more than ever before, entirely shifting the future of the Ovambo people.
In writing this book, McKittrick relies on far more than just written documents (many of which come from the Finnish Lutherans, allowing her to do interesting work in Finland, or German colonial administrators). Her meticulous study also relies heavily on oral histories from elderly citizens of Ovamboland, many of whom were the first to convert to Christianity in the early twentieth century. She compares these oral histories with the written record to ensure that they are accurate, but many of the most insightful points do not come from their histories, but their views of the world today. One individual stated, for example, that Christian missionaries eliminated the power of rain dances, so those who believe in traditional religion (upagani) no longer practice, but simply believe. While those who believe in Christianity (ukristi) both practice and believe.
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Janet Abu-Lughod - Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
Abu-Lughod, Janet L.Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
In the four decades since Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World System was published, his ideas have received both critical reception and powerful criticism. While many historians reject Wallerstein’s ideas outright, Janet Abu-Lughod finds that they simply need qualification. In Before European Hegemony, Abu-Lughod argues that the world system has a much older genesis than Wallerstein accepts. Further, she argues that the European world system, which was the particular focus of The Modern World System, was just one component of a much larger world system that emerged in the thirteenth century. Moreover, she states that there “was no inherent historical necessity” (emphasis from original text, 12) that caused the West to be the center of Wallerstein’s world system. Ultimately, Abu-Lughod identifies eight subsystems within three circuits (western Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East) that together constitute the thirteenth-century world system.
In making this argument, Abu-Lughod emphasizes the importance of looking at the “archipelago” of urban areas, which were the units that were stitched together by the emergence of the many world-systems in the thirteenth century. She also concludes that Europe began to rise to prominence because of the demise of Pax Mongolica and because the Black Plague disrupted the usual interactions of cities across all of Eurasia. Significantly, Abu-Lughod argues that the economic systems of the three circuits had many more commonalities than differences. For example, long distance trade in all three circuits had to be facilitated by large amounts of capital, with a high risk of loss.
Following her introduction, Abu-Lughod structures the body of her book in three parts—one for each of the grand circuits—which then consist of three chapters each, in addition to an introduction to brief introduction to the circuit. All of these tell the story of a subsystem, with the exception of chapters one and two, which are about two centers of the northwest European subsystem. Finally, she has a conclusion where she admirably synthesizes all eight subsystems to create a comprehensive thirteenth-century world system. The structure of the book acts as a broad sweep from West to East, making it easy to see connections between adjacent regions.
The three chapters of Abu-Lughod’s first circuit are centered around the cities of eastern France, including Troyes, Provins, Lagny, and Bar-sur-Aube (chapter one); Flanders, particularly Bruges and Ghent (chapter two); and the mercantile cities of northern Italy, namely Genoa and Venice (chapter three). In the first chapter, Abu-Lughod argues that the towns of eastern France were important in the years immediately preceding the formation of the thirteenth-century world system because they handled intra-European economic interactions, as well as interactions outside of Europe. In the second chapter, Abu-Lughod asserts that this economic center shifted to Flanders by the late thirteenth century and solidified it in the early fourteenth century. As this was occurring, Abu-Lughod makes it clear that Genoa and Venice were essential nodes in the construction of the second-subsystem: the eastern Mediterranean. This eastern Mediterranean subsystem linked the northwestern European subsystem to the second circuit: the Middle East.
The subsystems of the second circuit are the northern route(s) that sprawled across the Mongol Empire, based around oasis cities like Samarkand and Bukhara (chapter four); the central route, which connected the bodies of water surrounding the Middle East with Baghdad being the most important city (chapter five); and the poor, southern route of Egypt and the western half of the Arabian Peninsula, which linked Alexandria and Cairo to the Indian Ocean (chapter six). In the chapter on the Mongols, Abu-Lughod chronicles the formation and dissolution of the Mongol Empire, arguing that the Mongols facilitated trade. With the end of a unified Mongol Empire, trade became increasingly difficult across the northern route. In the following chapter, Abu-Lughod maintains traditional belief that the subsystem routed in Baghdad was a hub of Eurasia, but notes that it declined following the siege of Baghdad by the Mongols. Because the two prior systems began to decline, the southern route to the Indian Ocean became increasingly central to the world system.
The final circuit, that routed in Asia, was centered around the Indian Ocean, connecting the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula to the riches of Malacca and China. Significantly, Abu-Lughod splits the Indian Ocean into two subsystems: the western Indian Ocean (chapter seven) and the eastern Indian Ocean (chapter eight). In order from goods to move from the Middle East to East Asia, they would have to traverse through both of these subsystems. Finally, Abu-Lughod reaches Chinese system—including Indochina and Malacca, which she regards as the wealthiest subsystem in the thirteenth-century world system. For goods to make the entire trip, they had to travel through the western Indian Ocean, which Abu-Lughod points out was largely inhabited by Muslims, in contrast to the eastern Indian Ocean which was thoroughly “Hinduized” (235). After crossing the Indian Ocean, goods and people will have arrived in the Chinese subsystem, which consisted primarily of Buddhists and (in China) Confucians. While China was the wealthiest power within this circuit, it was not a hegemon. In fact, Abu-Lughod goes so far as to argue that “no single power ever exercised dominance over the entire system” (253). This is because the major subsystems were formed by nature (particularly the powerful monsoons of the Indian Ocean).
In her concluding remarks, Abu-Lughod synthesizes the conclusions made throughout her book, then continues to argue that the West did not rise. Rather, the East “fell” (260). As a result, she asserts that the conquest of Asia was easy for Europeans, which then modified the world system to its needs. Unlike Wallerstein, Abu-Lughod finds that Europeans did not create a world system so much as adopt it for its own ends.
Overall, the Abu-Lughod’s argument that the European world system emerged spontaneously of its own accord is convincing. She adds a much-needed global perspective with historical context to Wallerstein’s work. However, this work is not without its faults. It may even be possible to push the formation of the modern world system earlier than Abu-Lughod is willing to. After all, Norsemen were trading with Constantinople as early as the tenth century. It was not, therefore, the Italian city-states alone that connected northwestern Europe to the Levant. In addition, this inclusion would also incorporate the princely states of Rus’ to the rest of the world system. Nonetheless, this work is a well-written and convincing analysis of the formation of the thirteenth-century world system. Janet Abu-Lughod’s formulation of interlinking subsystems is an important tool to understand the world system as it changes over time.
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