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"In 1893, a group of colonial officials from thirteen colonies abandoned their imperial rivalry and established the International Colonial Institute (ICI), the world's most important colonial think tank of the twentieth century. Through the lens of the ICI, Florian Wagner argues that these colonial internationalists reshaped colonialism as a transimperial governmental policy, demonstrating that the ICI's goal of encouraging colonial development through the international cooperation of colonial experts in fact served to maintain colonial rule beyond the official end of empires. By inviting the colonized elites to participate, it laid the groundwork for the structural and discursive dependence of the Global South. The book presents a detailed study of the ICI's creation, the transnational activities of its prominent members, its interactions with state governments and colonial actors, and the reactions of Africans and Asians who were unsure as to whether the ICI was a tool of colonialism or an objective third party that might aid their calls for greater autonomy"--
List of contents
Introduction; 1. "More Beautiful than the Nationalist Thought"? Colonialist Fraternization and the Birth of Transnational Cooperation; 2. A Transcolonial Governmentality Sui Generis: The Invention of Emulative Development; 3. Politics of Comparison: The Dutch Model and the Reform of Colonial Training Schools; 4. Cultivating the Myth of Transcolonial Progress: The ICI and the Global Career of Buitenzorg's Agronomic Laboratory; 5. The Adatization of Islamic Law and Muslim Codes of Development; 6. Creating an "Anti-Geneva Bloc" and the Question of Representivity; 7. Inventing Fascist Eurafrica at the Volta Congress; 8. False Authenticity: The Fokon'olona and the Cooperative World Commonwealth; 9. "That Has Been Our Program for Fifty Years": Sustained Development and Loyal Emancipation after 1945; Conclusion.
About the author
Florian Wagner is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Erfurt.
Summary
In 1893, colonial officials from thirteen countries abandoned imperial rivalry and established the International Colonial Institute to take control of the world's colonial policy. Florian Wagner argues that colonial internationalists reshaped colonialism as a transimperial governmental policy to perpetuate empires well into the twentieth century.
Foreword
Explores how the International Colonial Institute, a pervasive colonial think tank established in 1893, reformed colonialism to make empires last.
Additional text
'Through the life of the International Colonial Institute, Wagner offers a stunning account of the ways internationalism served the goals of empire. Ranging from health and rural development to the codification of customary and Islamic law, he vividly shows how knowledgeable but manipulative transnational networks of experts agreed on one fundamental course of action: undermining self-determination to legitimize the persistence of (neo)colonial structures.' Sara Lorenzini, University of Trento
