Overview of European Colonialism
The term colonialism describes a dominant form of cultural exploitation that developed with the expansion of Europe over the last 400 years. The term “colony” stems from the Latin word colonus meaning “a small farm” and thus originates in the practice of occupying and cultivating land. Although many earlier civilizations had colonies and although they perceived their relations with them to be one of a central imperium in relation to a periphery of provincial, marginal, and barbarian cultures, a number of crucial factors entered into the construction of the post-Renaissance practices of imperialism.
Image: Map of the world showing the extent of the British Empire in 1886. British territories colored in red. - from Wikimedia Commons
Gale World History in Context
Selected Books
The Scramble for Africa : White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 by Call Number: DT28.P34 2003ISBN: 0380719991
The Making of Europe by
From our twentieth-century perspective, we tend to think of the Europe of the past as a colonizer, a series of empires that conquered lands beyond their borders and forced European cultural values on other peoples. This provocative book shows that Europe in the Middle Ages was as much a product of a process of conquest and colonization as it was later a colonizer.
Call Number: D200 .B27 1993ISBN: 069103298X
After Colonialism : Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements by
After Colonialism offers a fresh look at the history of colonialism and the changes in knowledge, disciplines, and identities produced by the imperial experience. Ranging across disciplines--from history to anthropology to literary studies--and across regions--from India to Palestine to Latin America to Europe--the essays in this volume reexamine colonialism and its aftermath. Leading literary scholars, historians, and anthropologists engage with recent theories and perspectives in their specific studies, showing the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world and offering postcolonial reflections on the effects and experience of empire. The contributions cross historical analysis of texts with textual examination of historical records and situate metropolitan cultural practices in engagements with non-metropolitan locations. Interdisciplinarity here means exploring and realigning disciplinary boundaries. Contributors to After Colonialism include Edward Said, Steven Feierman, Joan Dayan, Ruth Phillips, Anthony Pagden, Leonard Blussé, Gauri Viswanathan, Zachary Lockman, Jorge Klor de Alva, Irene Silverblatt, Emily Apter, and Homi Bhabha.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780691037424Publication Date: 1994-12-19
