The Phenomenon of Colonialism in World History: Themes and Trends in Recent Historiography

Abstract

In this article, the author examines a range of issues related to the study of the phenomenon of colonialism in contemporary historiography. On the one hand, he analyses existing intellectual trends, historiographical schools, and methodological approaches, and, on the other hand, outlines new research fields and identifies promising directions for further research. He also points out that the study of the phenomenon of colonialism in all its systemic integrity and structural heterogeneity remains an essential objective for modern scholarship. The author assesses the impact of Edward Said's ideas on the formation of new approaches to the study of colonialism. He argues that his works led to a shift in the focus of research from socio-economic and political history to the study of cultural and intellectual history, and to an increased appreciation of the relationship between knowledge production and imperial expansion. The author examines contemporary research trends such as New Imperial History, Subaltern Studies, Transnational History (Histoire croisée) and analyses their strengths and weaknesses. Thus, in his view, the representatives of the “New Imperial History” tend to present colonialism primarily as a cultural project oriented towards superiority and domination. The proponents of Subaltern Studies focus on the history of people who were oppressed and exploited. Colonialism, imperialism, and decolonisation are presented in their studies exclusively as a history of violence and domination. In the context of transnational history, the phenomenon of colonialism is presented as an interwoven, interconnected history of a multitude of diverse civilisations and communities, making the world-system from the sixteenth to the twentieth century appear as a living mixture of European and non-European elements. The Histoire croisée rediscovers a seemingly obvious fact, namely the inseparability of mother countries and colonies, imperial practices at the local level and situations within and between European states themselves. The history of civilisations, states, and societies of the Afro-Asian region — the former colonial world — revisited in research in recent decades shows a multitude of trajectories, often branching, of their own paths of long and fruitful adaptation to different environments, of their own ways of developing rational economy and politics, which are particular to them. The author observes that the task of modern historiography is to strive to study the phenomenon of colonialism in all its diversity and to free itself from the perspective of its predecessors, who viewed the world only in the focus of binary relations between the European colonial empires on the one hand and the former colonies on the other. The historical study of the colonial world needs to continue, not as a collection of heterogeneous experiences reflecting the diversity of non-European countries, but as a significant part of the history of a single world where all people, whatever their origin, played equal roles.