History Seminar - "Imperial Relations: Ordinary People and Western Imperialism, 1850-1950"

HIEU 4502 (3)

History Seminar - "Imperial Relations: Ordinary People and Western Imperialism, 1850-1950"

Scott Spencer

This course examines the interpersonal relations between colonizers and colonized during the period of New Imperialism, c. 1850-1950.  With the rise of nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth century and elsewhere in the twentieth century, imperial policymakers had to justify their rule in ways that complemented nationalist claims for political legitimacy.  For the most part, imperial and colonial leaders assumed credit for the actions of the ordinary people who travelled, worked, and negotiated in the field.  How did the empires of the last half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century actually function on the ground?  How did the colonizing agents regard the populations they intended to colonize?  How did the communities nominally colonized regard their self-proclaimed imperial overlords?  How did the social constructions of race, gender, and nation cloud colonial perceptions?  Students can answer those questions through detailed explorations into the lives of the ordinary men and women who participated, voluntarily or involuntarily, in Western empires.  The class readings over the first six weeks will introduce students to the literature on relations between empire and colonies and between proclaimed colonizers and nominally colonized in order to help them select a topic on which to write a research paper based on primary sources.  As their goal, students should seek to go beyond the theoretically rigid lines separating colonizer and colonized and to seek the grey areas of real life contact in-between.