What’s the Significance?
Big Picture Questions
In what ways did colonial rule rest on violence and coercion, and in what ways did it elicit voluntary cooperation or generate benefits for some people?
In what respects were colonized people more than victims of colonial conquest and rule? To what extent could they act in their own interests within the colonial situation?
Was colonial rule a transforming, even a revolutionary, experience, or did it serve to freeze or preserve existing social and economic patterns? What evidence can you find to support both sides of this argument?
Looking Back: How would you compare the colonial experience of Asian and African peoples during the long nineteenth century to the earlier colonial experience in the Americas?
Next Steps: For Further Study
A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (1987). An examination of the colonial experience by a prominent African scholar.
Alice Conklin and Ian Fletcher, European Imperialism, 1830–1930 (1999). A collection of both classical reflections on empire and examples of modern scholarship.
Scott B. Cook, Colonial Encounters in the Age of High Imperialism (1996). Seven case studies of the late nineteenth-century colonial experience.
Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (1999). A journalist’s evocative account of the horrors of early colonial rule in the Congo.
Douglas Peers, India under Colonial Rule (2006). A concise and up-to-date exploration of colonial India.
Bonnie Smith, ed., Imperialism (2000). A fine collection of documents, pictures, and commentary on nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires.
Margaret Strobel, Gender, Sex, and Empire (1994). A brief account of late twentieth- century historical thinking about colonial life and gender.