Enlightened colonialism : civilization narratives and imperial politics in the Age of Reason

Description

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. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction (Damien Tricoire)....Pages 1-22 Front Matter ....Pages 23-23 The Enlightenment and the Politics of Civilization: Self-Colonization, Catholicism, and Assimilationism in Eighteenth-Century France (Damien Tricoire)....Pages 25-45 Enlightened Colonialism? French Assimilationism, Silencing, and Colonial Fantasy on Madagascar (Damien Tricoire)....Pages 47-70 Front Matter ....Pages 71-71 Portuguese Indigenous Policy and Indigenous Politics in the Age of Enlightenment: Assimilationist Ideals and the Preservation of Native Identities (Maria Regina Celestino de Almeida)....Pages 73-92 New Forms of Colonialism on the Frontiers of Hispanic America: Assimilationist Projects and Economic Disputes (Río de la Plata, Late Eighteenth Century) (Lía Quarleri)....Pages 93-110 Front Matter ....Pages 111-111 Civilizing Strategies and the Beginning of Colonial Policy in the Eighteenth-Century Russian Empire (Ricarda Vulpius)....Pages 113-132 Creating Differences for Integration: Enlightened Reforms and Civilizing Missions in the Eastern European Possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy (1750–1815) (Klemens Kaps)....Pages 133-155 Front Matter ....Pages 157-157 “Gradually Reclaiming Them from a State of Barbarism”: Emergence of and Ambivalence in the Aboriginal Civilization Project in Canada (1815–1857) (Alain Beaulieu)....Pages 159-177 Europe in an Indian Mirror: Comparing Conceptions of Civil Government in Abu Taleb’s Travels (1810) (Sven Trakulhun)....Pages 179-201 Front Matter ....Pages 203-203 Jean-François de Saint-Lambert and His Moral conte “Ziméo” (1769) in the Context of Abolitionist and Imperial Activities (Anja Bandau)....Pages 205-226 Slavery and the Enlightenment in Jamaica and the British Empire, 1760–1772: The Afterlife of Tacky’s Rebellion and the Origins of British Abolitionism (Trevor Burnard)....Pages 227-246 France, the Abolition of Slavery, and Abolitionisms in the Eighteenth Century (Matthias Middell)....Pages 247-267 Colonial Enlightenment and the French Revolution: Julien Raymond and Milscent Créole (Jeremy D. Popkin)....Pages 269-286 Black Athena in Haiti: Universal History, Colonization, and the African Origins of Civilization in Postrevolutionary Haitian Writing (Doris L. Garraway)....Pages 287-308 Back Matter ....Pages 309-318