lecture 2 Flashcards
introduction
Big influence Dutch Empire
New York City flag represents Dutch history (Willem de Zwijger + NL republiek)
- New Amsterdam + crest with Dutch symbols (colonist, mill, native American)
- Dutch gave it up to the Britains in exchange for land in the Indies
South-African apartheid
- racial segregation after WW2, roots in 19th century slave trade
Jakarta, Indonesia
- former capital Dutch East India Company : Batavia
- European architecture, references to Batavia
- goal: bring culture, to civilize (+make money?)
imperial expansion =
- process of destruction (what was there before)
- process of creation (new peoples, cultures, synchronization cultures (e.g. synchratic religion))
- has major consequences to this day : eco. advantage West, hybrid cultures, lost languages, official languages till this day, borders
the geographic scope of European empires
- Dutch Empire (mercantile empire: relying on client regimes + centered on coastal areas) = relatively small
- British Empire (sealanes (they ‘‘ruled the waves’’) + large areas) = biggest Empire (the empire in which the sun never set: always day somewhere, was larger than Africa, they once ruled over >25% population)
most countries were controlled or influenced by Europe at some point (really: only a few exceptions (Japan, Korea (colonized by Japan), Liberia (was a colony of a private American organization), Thailand (they WERE under pressure of unequal contracts etc.)
- no one was free, everyone was screwed in one way or another
1800: Europeans controlled 35% of world landmass
1914: control jumped to 84%
caveat: the term ‘‘Europe’’
- convenient shorthand for Western European empires + Russia
overlooks significant heterogeneity within Europe:
- Eastern vs. Western Europe
- Issues of internal colonialism (e.g. Ireland, Poland)
US
- don’t think of themselves as an empire (cultural reasons)
- had colonies at some point
chronological scope of European empires
- European colonization begins 1492 (not discovery: it already existed)
- Era of Spanish and Portuguese hegemony, C15-C16
- Era of British and French hegemony C17-C19
- High imperialism ca. 1870-1914
- Decolonization (end of empire), ca. 1950-1980
imperialism was competitive, not peaceful between Europeans, no collective benefit, they were fighting each other as well
decolonization
- specific period after second world war: radical transformation empirical system
- .also……
*change in Empire could be radical/sudden/radical, but also gradual
broadening the focus of IR
Empire is a big deal,
still IR uses the state as basic unit, while modern IR (1400-now) was mostly empirical
studying with empires leads to:
- relationships between empires instead of between states
- relationships between societies within empires
- conceptual issues: e.g. international anarchy or international hierarchy?
definition empire
empire =
- a large, composite, multi-ethnic or multinational political unit,
- usually created by conquest,
- and divided between a dominant center and subordinate, sometimes far distant peripheries (in terms of rights and status)
empire - 6 main characteristics
- direct (centralized) and indirect (decentralized rule)
- established and maintained by violence
- dominant core economically exploits the periphery
- core population believes in its own cultural superiority and ‘‘civilizing mission’’
- European empires in particular associated with pseudo-scientific racial hierarchies
- mass movement of people: both voluntary migration (e.g. settler colonialism) and forced migration (e.g. slave trade)
- direct (centralized) and indirect (decentralized) rule
- empires
direct = central government in empirical metropoles directly running things in the colony
indirect = central government in metropole rules in colonies trough client-control over local government (formation client-state (ruling willing elite, e.g. Dutch Cape Colony)
- established and maintained by violence
- empire
= more arbitrary and random use of violence/force than in states -> was extreme (genocide, mass murders) + not always military (e.g. famine)
- dominant core exploiting periphery
- empires
core benefits from empire: extract wealth + strategic advantage
'’we must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available for the natives of the colonies’’ (Cecil Rhodes, allegedly)
- belief in ‘‘civilizing mission’’
- empire
debates about whether they should force their own culture or let people keep their own culture
e.g. Catholicism: if the colonized people have souls, than the church is obliged to try to convert them
- European empires in particular associated with pseudo-scientific racial hierarchies
19th century mostly
modern biological conceptualizations of race (often pseudo-scientific)
racial systems put in place by imperial powers
emperial powers sometimes created racial groups as to their conceptions/beliefs
= imp. in contemporary politics
white supremacy idea
(journal of race development was predecessor of foreign affairs)
e.g. Kipling: the white man’s burden (to ‘‘breed’’ with colonized people) = patronizing
