I said I'd do this, so I am.

The book I read for last week was Imperialism and Postcolonialism by Barbara Bush. It was a very good read and I enjoyed it much. Here is the paper I wrote for that book. It is a very "heady" book in that it is full of poli-sci jargon and is very abstract so I had a hard time forming the ideas I wanted to say but this is it. Sorry for the uneven paragraphs and page breaks, it didn't translate well to blogger mode.

Imperialism and Postcolonialism (2006) by Barbara Bush is a critical study of what is imperialism, empire, and colonialism both in what is considered the modern sense and the historical sense. She examines the links between these three human experiences and their interplay with capitalism, modernity, culture both globally and locally, and the power relations inherent in them. She starts the book by looking at empire and imperialism in a historical sense while juxtaposing it against the modern incarnation,

“Empires emerged with the great civilizations of antiquity such as Old Babylonia (1800 B.C.), which bequeathed mathematics, science and the written word to future Middle Eastern and European cultures. The Greek Empire (c. 750-550 B.C.) created colonies around the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea and established some of the essential characteristics of later European empires, including an early form of orientalist discourse." (p. 10)

It is in this fashion that Bush lays out for the reader the idea that new builds on old. Just as the Babylonians laid the foundations for later empires, each successive group built on and enhanced the tools and ideas of empire used before them. In the same fashion resistance builds on and learns from both its self and imperialism. In quoting Fowden Bush states, “Antiquity’s contribution to the technique of empire… was the discovery of a ‘non-military… partially political basis for self perpetuation’. This was facilitated by the emergence of monotheism… rooted in the unifying religions of Christianity and Islam that justified the exercise of imperial power and made it more effective” (p. 12). As discussed above the Greeks were some of the first imperialists to use the idea of “othering” in order to bring about the building of their empire. Later other empires would build on this idea as a justification for their own empire building.

Bushs’ focus is on European empire and it’s development. When discussing the difference between European and other non-European forms of empire she states,

… the Renaissance instilled new vigour into Western European society and economy. The reconquista, the expulsion of Islamic influence from the Iberian Peninsula, combined with improvements in navigation, facilitated the Spanish and Portuguese seaborne empires (Boxer, 1969; Scammel, 1989) and the European remapping of the world… The epochal moment was the conquest of the Americas. (p. 13-14)

This idea that technological advancement (European improvements in navigation and seamanship) along with ideological changes (the idea that Europe was the center of the known world ‘remapping’) enhanced European Empire though modernity and much like the Greeks, Romans and many others, an idea of othering, of dehumanization. With the European conquest of the Americas we see the differences between the old imperialism and New Imperialism, the main difference being that of navel power; again this technological advancement by Europe building upon the advancements of other empires.

There is no question that the reason for empire is the exploitation of others in order that the imperial power can obtain the resources controlled by them. It is this that has driven all empires, the need to control resources. A key idea in this is that in each Empire there is the metropolitan center, the base of power for the Empire, and the periphery, the outlying colonies and resource rich areas of the empire that have been invaded and conquered by the armies of the Empire. This is where the reader will see that as Bush tells them, “Informal imperialism can exist without colonialism but colonialism cannot exist without imperialism” (p. 46). This idea of an almost symbiotic relationship between imperialism and colonialism illustrates that the ideas of domination and repression are key to both, yet one requires the other.

When discussing the relationship between colonialism and imperialism Bush reminds the reader that, “Some theories rely too much on mono-causal explanations foe European imperial conquest – for instance, technological and scientific superiority (Headrick, 1981) or the economic determinism of conventional Marxist studies… Arguably, the most plausible explanations of imperialism need to account for the interaction of the economic, political, social and cultural factors operating at both the local (periphery) level and within the metropolitan centre of imperial power” (p.47). This need to have an inclusive framework with which to study imperialism is what led to the use of both Marxist theory and Postmodernism like in Edward Said’s work Orientalism. Like the work of Fanon it is this inclusive understanding of both political/economic and social/cultural impacts that allow for a deeper understanding of the impacts of both colonialism and imperialism.

Bush points out for the reader that, “when evaluating theories and conceptual frameworks, one needs to bear in mind a number of key questions. What definition of imperialism is used? How does this influence the way imperialism was/is conceptualized? What is the purpose of the theory? Is it a conceptual tool of the historian (Robinson and Gallagher, Cain and Hopkins) or linked to political critique and/or activism (Lenin, Chomsky, Hobson)?” (p.48). For Bush the answers to the above questions when asked about colonialism have only enlivened and “enriched controversies” (p.50) about imperialism and reawakened the study of imperial history.