Overview
- Expands the debate on whether Enlightenment provided the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism by exploring political and social practices
- Brings together studies about the overseas empires of Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal as well as the continental empires of Russia and Austria
- Explores the interaction and assimilationism between European, indigenous, creole, and mix-raced elites
Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies (CIPCSS)
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About this book
This book further qualifies the postcolonial thesis and shows its limits. To reach these goals, it links text analysis and political history on a global comparative scale. Focusing on imperial agents, their narratives of progress, and their political aims and strategies, it asks whether Enlightenment gave birth to a new colonialism between 1760 and 1820.
Has Enlightenment provided the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism? For decades, historians of political thought, philosophy, and literature have debated this question. On one side, many postcolonial authors believe that enlightened rationalism helped delegitimize non-European cultures. On the other side, some historians of ideas and literature are willing to defend at least some eighteenth-century philosophers whom they consider to have been “anti-colonialists”. Surprisingly enough, both sides have focused on literary and philosophical texts, but have rarely taken political and social practice into account.
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Keywords
Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Invention of the Enlightenment and the Return of Assimilationist Policy
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Front Matter
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From Civilizing to Assimilationist Policy
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Front Matter
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The Invention of Intra-European Colonialism
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Front Matter
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Towards Civilizing Policy in the British Empire
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Front Matter
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Civilization, Racial Order, and Slavery
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Front Matter
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Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Damien Tricoire is Assistant Professor at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has published the following monographs: Mit Gott rechnen (2013; translated into French as La Vierge et le Roi, 2017), Falsche Freunde (2015, criticizing narratives of Enlightenment history). He has just completed a monograph on the topic “The Colonial Dream: Knowledge, Enlightenment, and the French-Malagasy Early Modern Encounters”.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Enlightened Colonialism
Book Subtitle: Civilization Narratives and Imperial Politics in the Age of Reason
Editors: Damien Tricoire
Series Title: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54280-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-54279-9Published: 23 August 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85361-1Published: 03 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-54280-5Published: 11 August 2017
Series ISSN: 2635-1633
Series E-ISSN: 2635-1641
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 318
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Imperialism and Colonialism, Political History, World History, Global and Transnational History, Cultural History, Intellectual Studies