Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction

by Robert J.C. Young

This key new introduction, by one of the leading exponents in the field, explains in clear and accessible language the historical and theoretical origins of post-colonial theory. Acknowledging that post-colonial theory draws on a wide, often contested, range of theory from different fields, Young analyzes the concepts and issues involved, explains the meaning of key terms, and interprets the work of some of the major writers concerned, to provide an ideal introductory guide for those undergraduates or academics coming to post-colonial theory and criticism for the first time.

Genres: History, Politics, Theory, Nonfiction, Post Colonial, Society, Philosophy

498 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Robert J. C. Young FBA (D.Phil, Exeter College, Oxford; born 1950) is a postcolonial theorist, cultural critic, and historian. He is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, and was Dean of Arts & Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi, 2015–2018. Previously he was Professor of English and Critical Theory and a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford University, where he was one of the founding editors of the Oxford Literary Review as a grad student. He is currently President of the AILC/ICLA Research Committee on Literary Theory.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Young’s Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction is, as suggested by the title, an overview of the development of postcolonial thought. Although intended as an accessible and introductory-level text, the author goes beyond a simple recapitulation or synthesis and makes a historiographical intervention by telling the story of postcolonialism through the lens of Marxism, in addition to national liberation movements as a whole. Defining postcolonialism in his introduction as “the pursuit of liberation after the achievement of political independence”, he leaves almost no stone unturned in quest to uncover the roots of the movement and capture the multifarious trains of thought that constitute its essence.

Young’s first section engages the basic terminology of the field and begins by differentiating colonialism from imperialism. The former, he postulates, concerned the intent of physical settlement, while the latter was an afterthought intended to reap the spoils of the former and that focused on economic exploitation without necessarily having a permanent presence. The ultimate goal of postcolonialism, therefore, is to struggle against the obstacles that prevent them from living in a postimperalist world, since physical independence did not lead to economic independence for colonial subjects. The classic colonial system ended due to the influence of liberation movements, the inability of nations to maintain a physical hold their colonies following World War II, and the United States seeing physical presence as an obstacle to their desired economic domination. This led to a situation of neocolonialism, which “denotes a continuing economic hegemony that means that the postcolonial state remains in a situation of dependence on its former masters, and that the former masters continue to act in a colonialist manner towards formerly colonized states”. Finally, the author deals with some issues surrounding the concept of “postcolonialism” and chooses to define it as a set of “conceptual resources” rather than a theory.

Young’s next section engages the emergence of anti-colonial thought through Marx, essentially the precursor to modern postcolonial thought. He argues that, at its core, postcolonialism operates in a framework that is humanitarian, liberal, and Marxist, and he devotes a chapter each to tracking their historical development. The humanitarian element begins with Bartolome de las Casas and the roots of the anti-slavery program, which in turn expanded to a broader anti-colonial movement as it tied into liberal values. Marx, meanwhile, did not analyze or criticize imperialism or colonialism as concepts, but laid the foundation for others to do so. He discussed these concepts in relation to capitalism, arguing that territorial expansion was a natural consequence of capitalism and that it was as destructive as other forms of exploitation. Yet he also rejects the liberal train of thought to a significant degree, arguing that such projects were profitable and, by improving underdeveloped countries and eventually encouraging nationalism, could help spur a revolution in the home country, thus giving colonialism an important “purpose” in the development of society.

Young then discusses the development of postcolonial thought within the context of socialism and, specifically, the communist internationals. The First International set the basis of anti-colonialism and socialist internationalism, while the Second International focused more on socialist nationalism. This tension between socialism and nationalism was a recurring theme in anti-colonial discourse and its reconciliation became the subject of the Third International. In a climate that seemed less propitious for socialism than the Second International, the Third International focused on turning the objects of history into subjects, with Lenin arguing that communists should work with the liberal bourgeois when combatting imperialism. His ideological counterpart for the opposing view was M. N. Roy, who was against collaboration and believed that the fate of the west depended on the success of complete revolution in the east. The question thus became whether anti-colonial struggle should be about bring down imperialist nations or instituting socialism and destroying capitalism itself. From this juncture the viewpoints of the communist congresses generally reflected the exigencies of contemporary circumstances, and thus their position on these and other matters vacillated with the changing political winds.

Young continues by engaging specific liberation movements and outlines their contributions to postcolonial discourse as a whole. First, he outlines five different types of struggles engaged by colonial subjects: resistance to conquest, rebellions against European rule, movements of religious revivalism, nationalist constitutional moves towards decolonization, and nationalist liberation struggles, all of which had the ultimate objective of reversing the structure of power relationships. He then examines the relationship between Marxism and national liberation movements, arguing that “[w]ith some exceptions, Marxism historically provided the theoretical inspiration and most effective political practice for twentieth-century anti-colonial resistance”, even if it was later replaced ideologically by nationalism. Colonial subjects found it less difficult to reconcile nationalism and Marxism than intellectuals, as they perceived these ideologies as having similar goals, but often saw nationalism as being more pragmatic.

Young refers to the 1949 Chinese revolution as the first successful socialist triumph outside of the west, which served as an inspiration to others and shifted movements away from bourgeois collaboration, as Mao believed that the lower classes were the true agents of change. Egypt’s revolution, on the other hand, did not produce an imitable version of socialism, but it did take part in the 1955 Bandung Conference, which was the first international postcolonial conference and established the foundations of the Non-Aligned Movement. The author then shifts his focus to Latin America, which had been “postcolonial” before many states became “colonial”, yet had still been subjected to American imperialism for nearly two centuries. The key figure here was José Carlos Mariátegui, who connected Latin America to a previously indifferent Marxist movement. Latin America would later become the locus of the widely-accepted Dependency Theory, which postulated that as poorer states integrated into the world economy, they did not “modernize”, but instead grew more impoverished and enriched the wealthier states in the process. Che Guevara, meanwhile, focused on socialism at a more intimate level, arguing that genuine revolution was only possible through the transformation of the individual. His international focus led him to reconceptualize the oppressed subject from the “worker” to the “exploited” everywhere, allowing socialism to more easily incorporate the postcolonial subject.

Young then devotes significant attention to Africa, which had an anti-colonial movement prior to the left’s adaptation of Marxism. The right was influenced by the African-American movement in the United States and is the faction most often highlighted by historians. The author argues, however, that the left was much more active in Africa prior to World War II than has been claimed and it set up the organizational infrastructure that would be used by revolutionary movements in the postwar period. The Italian invasion of Abyssinia, and the Soviet Union’s support of it, led to a break between the communist and African movements, which led to Pan-Africanism’s emergence after the war being perceived as both an alliance with communism and a reaction against it. This speaks to the broader problem of “Africa” having been a European homogenizing invention intended to iron over a region full of disparate cultures. Pan-African socialism “involved a common commitment to anti-colonialism and self-determination, a rejection of violence as the means of achieving independence, social co-operation envisaged on the assumption that the class struggle did not operate in European terms in Africa, commitment to a general policy of economic centralization and nationalization, and a strong emphasis on the retrieval and revalidation of the African cultural inheritance”. Nationalism, therefore, was a stepping stone and not a final goal, since such divisions were arbitrary. One adherent, Kwame Nkrumah, developed the theory of Consciencism, which “represents a cultural ideology appropriate for a postcolonial culture that has absorbed different, competing influences; instead of an attempt to put the clock back by rejecting carefully chosen elements that are perceived as non-indigenous, its role is to resolve these into a new emergent form”. He eventually falls victim, however, to pursuing his overarching goals without taking into account the need for political freedom, and repressed opposition under the guise of it being “neocolonialism”.

Young points out, however, that nonviolence only worked well in British and French West Africa, while in other areas the rise of massacres led to more violent resistance, whose use was defined by exigencies. Because French territories were considered part of a larger mainland France, rather than independent units, this led to two different movements, one for complete independence and another for a new status of equality within greater France. Tovalou Houenon of Dahomey, Lamine Senghor of Senegal, and Tiemoho Garan Kouyate of Mali laid the foundations of the postwar independence movements, while Lamine’s brother Leopold focused on socialism as a way of negotiating a postcolonial existence with an inability or unwillingness to return to “past” or “indigenous” forms. Frantz Fanon, meanwhile, focused on the psychology of colonialism and tried to make revolutionary principles pragmatic and “articulate[] militant anti-colonial activism with the tradition of psychological redemption and black empowerment”. Amilcar Cabal, meanwhile, attempted to accomplish the same from a socialist, rather than anti-colonialist, perspective. The author concludes his discussion on Africa by taking a more in-depth look at violence. He postulates that “[c]olonial violence was carried out in the name of ‘pacification’; postcolonial violence is carried out in the name of ‘degradation’, degrading the postcolonial subject back to subaltern status” and argues that violence itself has been defined historically first by the perpetrators, and then by their acts, but rarely by their victims. Calls for universal nonviolence, therefore, ignore the need for it in many circumstances.

This discussion leads into one about Indian anti-colonial activities, where Young highlights two differences in India’s liberation movement: a congress that limited the influence of the communist movement by being organized and the presence of a unique anti-colonial leader. He first engages in a brief survey of the nation’s relationship with Marxism, noting that the two socialist parties, the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) differed at first only in terms of the former’s pro-nationalist stance. Marxism in India therefore remained orthodox as a way for the CPI to differentiate itself from the CSP and because India was one of the few places for which Marx himself had specific commentary. Gandhi, meanwhile, considered himself a British subject at first, but also chastised Indians for becoming dependent on the west. Thus resistance had come in the form of opposing British ideology and its material nature, leading him to attack the notion of western civilization as a superior achievement rather than colonialism itself.

Yet Gandhi is not prominent in postcolonial studies, as divisions continue in India over Marxism, Nehru’s socialism, and Gandhi’s vision, which leads Young into his final section concerning the “formations of postcolonial theory”. His first focus is on hybridity, developed by Ashis Nandy, which is an attempt to resolve these disparate theories and discuss nationalism outside of the constraints of western discourse. Its essence is the creation of a counter-modernity that does not return to an imaginary “traditional” past, but creates new traditions and permits individuals to mix ideas that were previously incompatible. The author then examines women and their relationship to postcolonialism, postulating that there have not been many studies of colonial women because the sources are less available and colonized women had different concerns. Women’s marginality and struggles mean that they must be understood outside of the traditional paradigms of anti-colonialism, particularly as women were less visible. They did, however, play important and complex roles, and political space was rare, but a possibility, for them. Feminism worked well with anti-imperialism, since they had similar goals at first, but veered in numerous directions once independence was achieved.

Young next examines Edward Said, who was the first to introduce the idea that colonialism was not just a physical presence, but also a discourse. Concerned with “Orientalism”, which was a way of subordinating the “east” as an inferior “other” for the benefit of the “west”, he notes the way in which its discourse created a real impact by creating representations that were imposed violently on the subject cultures. This leads into a survey of Foucault’s work, the basis of Said’s text, which attempted to describe how discourse structures knowledge and objects. In Foucault’s view, every act of language becomes a historical moment that interacts with materiality. A Foucauldian study of colonial discourse would not involve structures of knowledge or representations, since those concepts have no permanency, but instead would examine what governed the rules of possibility. The author’s final main chapter engaged Derrida and the concept of structure without a center, pulling apart discourse and its constituent parts to examine how they function to create reality.

Young’s survey of postcolonialism, therefore, is extensive, yet almost never sacrifices accessibility for the sake of depth, both of which are found in copious quantities within this work. Overall, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction is a long, multifarious text, but one that does not wear on the reader and serves its intent of initiating the uninformed (or underinformed) about the core tenets of postcolonial discourse and theory. As mentioned earlier, despite its synthetic nature, the book does make a historical intervention by highlighting the close relationship between Marxism and postcolonialism that has been glossed over in the past, yet is still broad enough to provide a general survey worthwhile for anyone looking to gain a better understanding of this complex and multifaceted set of ideas.

[Namera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shelved for now
Read:
Introduction
Section 1
Section 4

Do want to return to this book to read section 2 and 3

[Hanna W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert J.C. Young's text, as well as his essay on the influence of Edward Said in Literature, is a must-read for anyone studying postcolonialism and anti-colonial literature. So impressed by the depth of his scholarship! Love, love, love his writing.

[brenda tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

i feel like i should read this book every other year

[Shayan Tadayon]

I read parts of the book carefully, while skimming through some chapters. My focus was mainly on the first and second parts: Concepts in History and European Anticolonialism; the brilliant and illuminating section The Subject of Violence; and sections of the final chapter on the critiques of Edward Said’s discourse analysis, as well as the recovery of the concept of discourse in Foucault and its usefulness for postcolonial studies.

The book was first published in 2001 and seeks to connect postcolonial studies with anticolonial movements and their political and intellectual roots, both in the metropole and in the colonized territories. This connection, and the way it is articulated, is explained with numerous historical examples—from India and Algeria to Ireland and European cities and Latin american struggles. In its search for this linkage, the book situates postcolonial studies within the continuous current of political struggle in favor of the colonized and, from their perspective, as a form of analyitical and activist writing.

While reading, fundamental questions about the very task and the theoretical and practical limits of such an undertaking kept running through my head. But for now, I tried to set those aside in order to extract what might be useful for my own work.

A deep reading of this book is a must for anyone who is not looking to oversimplify postcolonial studies and who fears falling into its limitations.

Even though the author’s hopes and aims are sometimes expressed quite clearly, the more theoretical parts of the book, along with the historical examples, reveal the difficulties of such aspirations and objectives. To settle merely for such hopes risks falling into naïve illusion.

In any case, I need to read more, and better, on this subject in the future.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the wake of the collapse of (formal) empire during the 1950s through to the 1970s we saw also a weakening of the cultural power of the old imperial centres - the Euro-American North Atlantic nexus. While this did not necessarily lead to a profound weakening of social and economic power it did result in a newly vibrant set of analyses of empire, of colonialism, and of anti-colonial struggles – and led also to a wider discussion of the problematic ‘post’: is this something that came after colonialism, or is it a critical commentary on colonialism. Given its condition as a set of cultural commentaries, it is not surprising that much of the discussion of postcolonialism has been dominated by literary studies, and in the context shaped by some of the dominant models in that field, notably psychoanalytic approaches.

One of the real strengths of this marvellous book by Robert Young – one of the sharpest of post colonial scholars – is that while he gives credence to these approaches, he also takes us well beyond the literary and the textual to a much wider historically informed analysis that firmly grounds postcolonialism in anti-colonialism, reminds us that the morality, ethics and politics of colonialism have been under discussion and contested since at least the publication of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1542 and that there is a long liberal as well as radical/socialist tradition of anti-colonial politics, and that many of the vital voices in anti- and postcolonial politics are now little known ‘third world’ scholars and activists, many of whom are brought to the fore.

Young’s breadth of understanding is impressive, his ability to respectfully develop and critique positions he rejects humbling (given the rancorousness of many debates in the area), and his power of argument invigorating. There are several great strengths to this book – his reinjection of Marxist and especially Gramscian approaches to the field; his ability to place many of the long running debates in a wider historical frame, his linking of the typically political with the cultural and theoretical (less typically political), and his ability to reach across settings to draw in European-based critics, as well as comprador and subaltern indigenous analyses drawing on English, French, Portuguese and Spanish imperial settings across the global south. All in all, a major text in the field and one I keep coming back to over 10 years after its first publication.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Academic paper pushers have long realized they are rehashing the same crap over and over again it is getting old. So they pulled out an easy trick: affix some prefix or suffix and bingo! It looks new and they can be smart about nitpicking the imaginary differences. In this case, colonialism done with steamships or better is "post" colonialism.

[Mediuschung · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a shrot introduction for post colonialism呢本稱職，指出了當中的角度、事例很有代入感，不過對法農嘅尊敬可以收斂少少咁😂的確嗰啲人嘅思想係好inspirational。
全新的視覺看待權力世界值得一睇。

[Jacob Aubut]

Read section one: great overview

[Jason Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little heavy on the hero-worship, but otherwise a terrific example of scholars re-situating Marx (and Gramsci) into the realm of anti-colonial thought (and, in turn, anti-colonialism as anti-capitalism, as the former is the last stage of the latter in the Leninist school). It's a heuristic thing, not a political program.

[Benemint]

It's a little too schematic to my taste. But the brevity of each chapter is great for teaching purposes.