Prof. Stefano Pelaggi
stefano.pelaggi@uniroma1.it
Credits:9
Caterina Bassetti
caterina.bassetti@uniroma1.it
http://www.coris.uniroma1.it/corso/9384
DEVELOPMENT AND
PROCESSES OF COLONIZATION
AND DECOLONIZATION
EDUCATIONAL GOALS
THE COURSE IN QUESTION WILL BE AN
IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE
STUDENT TO LEARN THE HISTORY OF
THE PROCESSES OF COLONIZATION,
LEARNING
THEORIES
RELATED
TO
POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
EDUCATIONAL GOALS
DECISIVE FACTORS FOR THE DEGREE
COURSE IN SCIENCE COOPERATION BUT
ALSO FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE
COUNTRIES
WHERE
DEVELOPMENT
COOPERATION IS CURRENTLY WORKING
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
THE COURSE WILL BE DIVIDED IN TWO
DIFFERENT PARTS, THE FIRST ONE WILL
FOCUS ON THE HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF
COLONIALISM, IN WHICH WE WILL
EXPLORE A BROADER HISTORICAL VIEW
OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIAL
EMPIRES IN THE WORLD
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
WE WILL ALSO INTRODUCES A
THEORETICAL DEBATES CONCERNING
COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL
CULTURES AND IDENTITIES
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
THE FIRST PART WILL FOCUS ON THE
DISSEMINATION OF THE VARIOUS
COLONIAL POSSESSIONS, TRYING TO
OUTLINE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF
COLONIALISM AND THE DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN THE BRITISH, FRENCH,
PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH COLONIAL
ADMINISTRATION.
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
WE WILL STUDY SOME CASES, IN LATIN
AMERICA, IN ASIA, WHICH WILL BE ALSO
AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS THE
EVOLUTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL STATES
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
• FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE
DIFFERENT
PROCESSES
OF
INDEPENDECE FROM COLONIAL RULE
AND THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF THE
CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
The course will also explore the geography of
power that linked Europe to the rest of the
world and the various ways used by the
different nations in freeing from the colonial
rule, addressing the anti-colonial and
postcolonial nationalisms. In this regard
particular attention will be paid to the
discursive, rather than the material dimensions
of the colonialism.
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
In the second part the course will focus on the
analysis and study of the so-called
"postcolonial studies". Postcolonial studies are
a theoretical procedure that has emerged in the
early 70s which covers an inter-disciplinary
field of perspectives, theories and methods that
deal mainly with the cultural practices of
colonial rule
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
The methodological and theoretical apparatus
developed by "postcolonial studies" in the past
decades will be analyzed and used to describe
the hierarchical modes of representation of
subaltern cultures. The European colonial
empire will be analyzed as a cluster of
reciprocal relationships that has shaped not
only the colonized regions, but also the
European culture itself.
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
In this regard the study of so-called minor
colonialism, (Italian, Belgian, German and
Russian) will be crucial to understanding the
use and function of colonial expansion in the
definition and renegotiation of the national
identity of the individual European states.
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE
COURSE
• Students who will have to take the exam for 4
credits, having yet to take an examination
into the previous “study plan”, can prepare
just the second part of the course, the one
dedicated to “postcolonial studies”.
• For more information please contact Prof.
Pelaggi
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO BE
ACQUIRED DURING THE COURSE
THE COURSE WILL EXAMINE THE
DEFINITION OF COLONIALISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM, AND WILL TRY TO ANSWER
SEVERAL QUESTIONS, INCLUDING
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO BE
ACQUIRED DURING THE COURSE
• How the various postcolonial discourses are
related to the economic conditions of
globalization?
• How the colonial past of nations has
influenced in the process of construction of
the national identity?
• How different types of colonial rule have
outlined the present condition of the states?
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO BE
ACQUIRED DURING THE COURSE
• The course will also provide an opportunity
for all students to study the history of Asia
and Latin America, key regions for the near
future that often during the course of history
are left out at the expense of European
history.
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO BE
ACQUIRED DURING THE COURSE
Although we can not deal with a vast program
to cover the story of two continents over five
centuries, the case studies presented in this
course might provide an interpretive key to
understanding the historical processes of
countries in Asia and Latin America.
REQUESTED PREREQUISITES
No prerequisite are needed and no
propaedeutic are available for this course.
ASSESSMENT METHODS OF LEARNING
AND EXAMINATION PROCEDURES
Attending students must take a multiple choice
test during the last month of the course and will
have to make a presentation in class
ASSESSMENT METHODS OF LEARNING
AND EXAMINATION PROCEDURES
The theme of the presentation will be agreed
between the student and the professor and will
be an opportunity to assess the learning of the
subject of the course
ASSESSMENT METHODS OF LEARNING
AND EXAMINATION PROCEDURES
The students who pass in a positive manner
the multiple choice test and the presentation
may take the exam by presenting the textbook
indicated in the box plus than an academic
paper assigned by the professor and agreed
with the student.
ASSESSMENT METHODS OF LEARNING
AND EXAMINATION PROCEDURES
Attending students will be considered only
those who have attended at least 75 percent of
the total course, although for the attending
students who will not reach the set limit can
recover the missed lessons attending some
conference specifically agreed with the
professor.
ASSESSMENT METHODS OF LEARNING
AND EXAMINATION PROCEDURES
The examination of the non attending students
will focus on 2 textbooks indicated and an
article from a list that will be shown in the
coming weeks.
CALENDAR OF THE COURSE
The first lesson of the course will be held
Wednesday, February 23, 2016 at 16 pm at
Aula BLU 2. It will be a presentation of the
course, in the days to follow the course will be
interrupted and the classes will restart on
Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 16 pm in the
AULA BLU 2.
CALENDAR OF THE COURSE
Starting form March 9 classes will follow the
schedule indicated in the Bacheca: Three
weekly classes, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
from 16 to 18 in the AULA BLU 2 and Thursday
from 15 to 17 in AULA BLU 2.
CALENDAR OF THE COURSE
The lessons for the first month will be held by
Caterina Bassetti, Stefano Pelaggi will resume
the teaching activities from March 30, 2016.
PROCEDURES FOR THE THESIS
• A topic must be agreed with the Professor
after success on the exam.
TEACHING METHODS
• The attending students will be provided a
power point presentations of each lessons
and every presentation will be uploaded in a
designated website (mailing list)
TEACHING METHODS
• There will be presentations from experts and
testimonies of experts in the field, the names
of the individual actions will be announced in
the weeks immediately preceding the date
• A series of papers, films and books will be
recommended to students during the course.
METHOD OF EVALUATION OF THE
ATTENDANCE
• Attendance is highly recommended but not
required.
• Attendance at lectures will be counted.
METHOD OF EVALUATION OF THE
ATTENDANCE
• Attending students will take an exam carrying
a reduced program compared to nonattending, using the tests in class and
presentations to be given at the end of the
course as part of the exam test itself.
METHOD OF EVALUATION OF THE
ATTENDANCE
• For attending students who have not passed
one or neither of the two tests an additional
articles will be agreed with the professor for
the exam.
METHOD OF EVALUATION OF THE
ATTENDANCE
•
•
•
•
Suggested Books:
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Burmese Days by George Orwell
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
TEXTBOOK FOR FINAL EXAM
• The common textbook for attending and nonattending students is:
• Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism
(The New Critical Idiom), Routledge, London,
2015 (third edition).
TEXTBOOK FOR FINAL EXAM
• The book is available through the usual
channels of e-commerce, in case of difficulty
in obtaining the same the students are
requested to contact the professor in
advance to solve the problem.
TEXTBOOK FOR FINAL EXAM
• In addition to the aforementioned text of
Loomba non-attending students will have to
study the following textbook for the final
exam:
• Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History,
Routledge, London, 1994.
• An article chosen by Prof. Pelaggi
“COLONIALISM”
(Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, Key
concepts in Post colonial studies,
Routledge,1998)
• Edward Said (Said, E. (1993) Culture and
Imperialism, London: Chatto & Windus) offers the
following distinction: ‘imperialism” means the
practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a
dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant
territory; “colonialism”, which is almost always a
consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of
settlements on distant territory’ (Said 1993: 8).
“COLONIALISM”
The scale and variety of colonial settlements
generated by the expansion of European society after
the Renaissance shows why the term colonialism has
been seen to be a distinctive form of the more general
ideology of imperialism.
“DECOLONIZATION”
Decolonization is the process of revealing and
dismantling colonialist power in all its forms.
This includes dismantling the hidden aspects of those
institutional and cultural forces that had maintained
the colonialist power and that remain even after
political independence is achieve
“APPROPRIATION”
(Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, Key
concepts in Post colonial studies,
Routledge,1998)
A term used to describe the ways in which
post-colonial societies take over those aspects
of the imperial culture – language, forms of
writing, film, theatre, even modes of thought
and argument such as rationalism, logic and
analysis – that may be of use to them in
articulating their own social and cultural
identities.
“APPROPRIATION”
This process is sometimes used to describe
the strategy by which the dominant imperial
power incorporates as its own the territory or
culture that it surveys and invades (Spurr 1993:
28).
“APPROPRIATION”
However, post-colonial theory focuses instead
on an exploration of the ways in which the
dominated or colonized culture can use the
tools of the dominant discourse to resist its
political or cultural control.
Post-colonialism
Deals with the effects of colonization on
cultures and societies. As originally used by
historians after the Second World War in terms
such as the post-colonial state, ‘post-colonial’
had a clearly chronological meaning,
designating the post-independence period.
However, from the late 1970s the term has
been used by literary critics to discuss the
various cultural effects of colonization.
“ANTI-COLONIALISM AND ANTICOLONIAL NATIONALISM”
anti-colonialism: The political struggle of
colonized peoples against the specific ideology
and practice of colonialism. Anti-colonialism
signifies the point at which the various forms of
opposition become articulated as a resistance
to the operations of colonialism in political,
economic and cultural institutions.
“ANTI-COLONIALISM AND ANTICOLONIAL NATIONALISM”
It emphasizes the need to reject colonial power
and restore local control. Paradoxically, anticolonialist
movements
often
expressed
themselves in the appropriation and subversion
of forms borrowed from the institutions of the
colonizer and turned back on them.
“ANTI-COLONIALISM AND ANTICOLONIAL NATIONALISM”
Thus the struggle was often articulated
in terms of a discourse of anti-colonial
“nationalism’ in which the form of the modern
European nation-state was taken over and
employed as a sign of resistance.
• Nations and nationalism are profoundly
important in the formation of colonial
practice.
• As Hobson puts it: Colonialism, where it
consists in the migration of part of a nation to
vacant or sparsely peopled foreign lands, the
emigrants carrying with them full rights of
citizenship in the mother country . . . may be
considered a genuine expansion of
nationality.
• Hobson, J.A. (1902) Imperialism, Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
“NATION ”
voluntarist vs organicist conceptions
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) « Qu'est-ce qu'une
nation?» 1882 lecture: nation is "a daily
referendum”
Johann Gottfried Herder Ideen zur Philosophie
der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791),
ethno-cultural nationalism (language, blood,
ethno biological elements)
“NATION ”
Renan: nations are not ‘natural’ entities, and
the instability of the nation is the inevitable
consequence of its nature as a social
construction. This myth of nationhood, masked
by ideology, perpetuates nationalism, in which
specific identifiers are employed to create
exclusive and homogeneous conceptions of
national traditions.
“NATION ”
Such signifiers of homogeneity always fail to
represent the diversity of the actual ‘national’
community for which they purport to speak,
and, in practice, usually represent and
consolidate the interests of the dominant power
groups within any national formation
NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS
AND STATES
• States, nations and regionalisms
• Hans Kohn in The Idea of Nationalism
(1944) had distinguished between two
kinds of nationalism
NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS
Nationalism/
exclusionary
AND STATES
nation
in
ethnic
terms
Dominant in Eastern Europe, but also at the
time when he wrote in Germany, as a linguistic
community having a common origin, defined
even in racial terms
NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS
AND STATES
• Nationalism/
inclusionary
nation
in
civic
terms
Typical of Western Europe and the English speaking
world. The French revolutionary vision of France as
the fatherland of all liberty loving men was an
example.
A VARIATION OF THIS MODEL SUGGESTS A
DISTINTION BETWEEN
• The “Old” nation (Western world)
•The “New” nation (created on purpose, from Eastern
Europe to Asia)
Anthony D. Smith recognizes in this dichotomy as a
distinguished element
• The territory for the first model
•The ethnicity for the second model
Critics to Kohn’s classification: simplistic/strict (Smith
1991; Kymlicka 1996; Yack 1996; Brown 1999; Kuzio 2002;
Björklund 2006)
Taras Kuzio (The myth of the civic state: a critical
survey of Hans Kohn’s framework for understanding
nationalism, Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 25 No. 1
January 2002 pp. 20–39)
“The myth of the civic state”
Pure civic or ethnic states only exist in theory.
All civic states, whether in the West or East, are
based on ethno-cultural cores. Each nationalism
and nation has elements and dimensions that
include both types of nationalism elaborated by
Kohn (‘organic, ethnic’ and ‘voluntary, civic’).
Michael Keating: The idea of the homogeneous
nation-state it has been more aspiration than
reality and never applied in reality applied across
the entire continent
State: as a human community that successfully
claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force within a given territory (Max
Weber, 1922)
• Human Community
• legitimate use of physical fprce
• Territory
O’Leary (2001) comments that a modern
state is:
1) a differentiated and impersonal institution
that is
(2) politically centralized though not
necessarily unitary;
(3) that generally exercises an effective
monopoly of publicly organized physical force
and of
O’Leary (2001) comments that a modern
state is:
(4) authoritatively binding rule-making (or
sovereignty) over persons, groups and
property; and that
5) is sufficiently recognized by a sufficient
number of its subjects,
(6) and of other stats, that it can
O’Leary (2001) comments that a modern
state is:
(7) maintain its organizational and policymaking powers
(8) within a potentially variable territory.
O’Leary (2001) ‘Introduction’, in Brendan O’Leary, Ian S.
Lustick and Thomas Callaghy, eds., Right-sizing the State:
the politics of moving borders (Oxford: Oxford University
Press),
NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS
AND STATES
Different theories and approach:
When is nation?
Is an old phenomenon or a modern
concept?
NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS
AND STATES
• Primordialism (nations are ancient, natural
phenomena) Walter Bagehot nation "are as old as
history” (Van den Berghe, Schils).
• Ethno-symbolism (importance of symbols, myths,
values and traditions in the formation and
persistence of the modern nation state) A. D. Smith
NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS
AND STATES
Modernism (nationalism as a recent phenomenon
that requires the structural conditions of modern
society in order to exist) Gellener, Kedourie
Constructivist (identity as a created sentiment, based
on social, political and cultural resource – B.
Anderson 1983 nation as “imagined community”)
Constructions of the nation are thus potent sites of
control and domination within modern society
Smith, Anthony D. "Gastronomy or geology? The role of
nationalism in the reconstruction of nations." Nations and
Nationalism 1, no. 1 (1994): 3-23.
"Perhaps the central question in our
understanding of nationalism is the role of the
past in the creation of the present. This is
certainly the area in which there have been the
sharpest divisions between theorists of
nationalism.
Nationalists, perennialists, modernists and
post-modernists have presented us with very
different interpretations of that role. The
manner in which they have viewed the place of
ethnic history has largely determined their
understanding of nations and nationalism
today”.