Interpreting colonialism

This volume has its origins in an international seminar where eighteen scholars representing a number of academic fields were invited to consider the eighteenth-century colonial enterprise from a more global and interdisciplinary perspective. Among the issues that arose then, and that are more fully elaborated here, are: the nature and goals of the many colonial expeditions that were undertaken at the time; the manners and means in which these were carried out; the differences between them; and the similarities that they shared. Relying on a variety of sources that include historical archives, literary texts, travel journals, visual and material artefacts and critical studies, the authors explore eighteenth-century colonialism as it was practised and manifested around the world: Europe, Africa, the Americas, the South Pacific, and Asia. What emerges from their essays is the image of a Eurocentric practice with global implications whose themes, despite the diversity existing among the preponderant colonial powers, were oft repeated. As a result, the essays presented here are grouped into four sub-headings â Representations, Mercantilism, Religion and ideology, and Slavery â each of which is integral to an understanding of colonial and post-colonial theories and of their respective consequences and interpretations. The motives of colonisers, as well as their critics, were both multiple and shared during the eighteenth century. These engendered complex sets of arguments â philosophical, political, economic, and social â which the contributors to this volume examine in detail in such disparate geo-political areas as Mexico and Thailand, Senegal and China. Introduction I. Representations Driss Aissaoui, Lâimage de lâAutre dans le Journal de voyage de Robert Challe Fabienne-Sophie Chauderlot, Prolégomènes à un anti-colonialisme futur: Histoire des deux Indes et Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville de Diderot Mark Hinchman, The travelling portrait: women and representation in eighteenth-century Senegal Oliver Berghof, Tahiti, 1767-1777: the view from the shore Sven Trakulhun, Lost history: 18th-century European travel literature and the writing of the Thai past of the Ayudhyan period (1350-1767) II. Mercantilism Noelia González Adánez, From kingdoms to colonies: the enlightened idea of America in Charles IIIâs Spain Gustavo L. Paz, Mules for the Indians: coerced consumption and domestic market in late colonial Spanish South America Ty M. Reese, Debating Englandâs African trade: mercantilism, free trade, and the worldâs commodities at Cape Coast Castle, 1730-1780 Eun Kyung Min, Narrating the Far East: commerce, civility, and ceremony in the Amherst Embassy to China, 1816-1817 Siraj Ahmed, The power to lend money without extracting interest: renegade capitalism in late eighteenth-century British India III. Religion and ideology David Eduardo Tavárez, Colonial evangelisation and native resistance: the interplay of native political autonomy and ritual practices in Villa Alta (New Spain), 1700-1704 Ruth Hill, Casta as culture and the Sociedad de Castas as literature Doris Garraway, Material bodies, spiritual worlds: ideologies of the occult and regimes of discipline in the colonial French Caribbean Eva M. Pérez, Encounters in sixteenth-century Europe: Jews, black slaves and despots in William Godwinâs Travels of St Leon IV. Slavery Daniel Carey, Sugar, colonialism and the critique of slavery: Thomas Tryon in Barbados Lynn Festa, Tropes and chains: figures of exchange in eighteenth-century depictions of the slave trade Sarah Watson Parsons, The arts of abolition: race, representation, and British colonialism, 1768-1807 Vera Lind, Privileged dependency on the edge of the Atlantic world: Africans and Germans in the eighteenth century List of works cited Index