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Colonization and the Making of Mankind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Herbert Lüthy
Herbert Lüthy
Affiliation:
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
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Extract

A meeting of historians on “Colonialism and Colonization” certainly raises a terminological problem. Colonization is a great and old subject of historical study. The word “colonialism,” on the contrary, seems to me to have come to us from the international rostrums where diplomats and propagandists wage the psychological wars of today; and to my taste it has that Basic English quality of an international vocabulary ready-made for simultaneous translation, where the suggestive power of words is in inverse relation to their accuracy. In its current use it seems to be a synonym of imperialism or, more generally, of domination of one country by another, or by the rulers of another country. But imperialism, at least, says what it means: the policy of building and holding together an empire, a unit of domination which transcends the national state. Foreign domination is a self-defining expression apt to describe all degrees of dependency, from straight political and military to economic or even cultural ones. What, then, is the use of forging yet another term?

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1961 , pp. 483 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1961

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References

10 Strausz-Hupé, R. and Hazard, H. (eds.), The Idea of Colonialism (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1958)Google Scholar. The critic referred to is Peregrine Worsthorne in Encounter, London, 63 (February 1958), 79Google Scholar.

2 Cheverny, Julien, Eloge du Colonialisme. Essai sur Us Révolutions d'Asie (Paris: éd. Julliard, J., 1961)Google Scholar.

3 Panikkar, K. M., Asia and Western Dominance (London: Allen & Unwin, 1953)Google Scholar. I am quoting the French edition (Paris: Seuil, 1956).

4 See Toussaint, Auguste, Histoire de l'Océan Indien (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), p. 251 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 Conference given in the Sorbonne, Paris, and published in Preuves, 124 (June 1961).

6 On the social conditions which permitted the establishment of such trade kingdoms, see Klaveren, J. J. van, The Dutch Colonial System in the East Indies (Rotterdam: Benedictus Press, 1953), p. 27 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 The difference was known to colonial administrators, and was stressed as late as 1910 by the great French colonial officer Jules Harmand in his book Domination et Colonisation. In strict terminology, there were very few colonies in the British Empire as distinguished from dominions, from the Viceroyalty of India, and from mere protectorates, but for the public all parts of the map colored in the national color were now “colonies.” Hobson's, John A. famous imperialism (London, 1902)Google Scholar must be read in this context. Though this classic work of a British liberal has become a mine for quotations by Marxist authors, his main argument is to unmask the economic motivations of colonial imperialism, as advocated by Cecil Rhodes, Joseph Chamberlain and others, as humbug.

8 Thistlethwaite, Frank, Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Eleventh International Congress of Historical Sciences, Stockholm, 1960.Google ScholarReports, VI, 32–60, with a full bibliography on this still vastly unexplored subject.