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Book Review
| Colonialism and the Modern World: Selected Studies. Edited by GREGORY BLUE, MARTIN BUNTON, and RALPH CROIZIER. Armonk, N.Y., and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. 372 pp. $ 65.95 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).
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This interesting volume contains fifteen articles that were originally presented as papers at the World History Association meetings in Victoria, British Columbia, in June 1999. The collection features a varied cross section of recent works on colonialism, from studies of gender politics to analyses of imperial science. Case studies focused on German, Dutch, French, and British colonies and set variously in Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Australia are included, as are reflections on the impact of colonizing discourses and practices on Europe itself. Only one article, an analysis of Japanese urban policies in Changchun, China, treats non-European colonialism. Partly reflecting the emphasis on the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, the collection contains no works on the Portuguese empire or Spanish America. |
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True to its subtitle, "Selected Studies," the book offers a diverse sampling of studies whose common perspectives at first appear difficult to locate. The editors have grouped the articles in topical sections, but some sections hold together better than others. Overall there is an eclectic feel, to some extent the necessary condition of conference volumes. Here the editors' decision to provide an introduction but to forego comments setting up each section adds to the sense of conceptual looseness. |
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Gregory Blue's introduction provides some of the needed contextualizing but is cautious in outlining the book's objectives and strengths. Blue timidly claims that the volume will "give an impression of some of the concerns and approaches evident in one of the most vibrant fields of world history scholarship" (p.4). He does suggest that the volume's articles collectively promise to move colonial history beyond an understanding of colonial rule as uniformly hegemonic and opposed by indigenous forms of resistance. |
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