A new world order seemed to have emerged during the 20th century, a world after empire. Both in imperial and colonial spaces, both in (Eastern and Western) Europe and in Asia, Africa and Latin America the crises, and dissolutions of empires have resulted in the emergence of a multitude of new spatial formations, in which societies have re-organized their political, cultural, social and economic activities as well as the ways in which they interacted with other people. This has been neither an easy nor a teleological transformation into a world of nation states, but a process rich in complexities, ruptures and contingencies.
In addition, it seems that empires and their legacies in global history have never completely vanished: they are until today evoked to address predatory polities, global inequalities or promises to reconcile diversity. Neomarxists e.g. use the concept of „empire“ to describe a neoliberal global order; Russian elites have long imagined and now exercise neoimperial geopolitics of the 21st century; Turkish elites re-mobilize the idea of the Ottoman empire to position their state in the region; by some the US is characterized as an „insular empire“ and the EU as a „benevolent“ one. Not all of these arguments refer to „empire“ as a negative mode of politico-spatial organization, but as a flexible form of organizing multi-ethnicity and -culturality in contrast to the rigid framework of the nation state.
The seminar will address the transformations of imperial spaces in a comparative and entangled perspective, investigating selected cases of imperial transformations in different world regions. How did empires come into crisis? Which actors pushed proposals to re-organize imperial spaces and in which ways? What was at stake in these new visions, how were they connected to questions of emancipation, and development?
Giving an insight into larger historical and global contexts of imperial transformations, the regional and historical focus of the seminar will be on Eastern and Western Europe as well as Eastern and Western Africa since the late 19th century (among them the Russian and the British empires). Also contemporary discourses on “empire” will be analyzed in the seminar.
Students will work in research teams studying selected empires from different angles. The result of the group work will be presented and discussed in class (poster presentation) and provide the basis for the essay.
Recommended introductory reading:
Jane Burbank/ Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton 2010.
Requirements: Portfolio
- Active participation, which includes the preparation of reading material and the presentation of one text in one session, as well as giving guidance for the respective discussion (15%)
- Active participation in research teams, and presentation of its findings in class (25%),
- Essay (60%)
- Trainer/in: Steffi Marung