The course aims to provide an understanding of the history of European colonialism in the modern era. While adopting a long-term perspective, the course focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries, examining the various phases of European colonialism from the origins of imperialism through to decolonization and neocolonialism. Alongside the political, economic, and military dimensions that characterized the conquest and exploitation of the colonies, the ideological and cultural aspects of the colonial project will also be examined. The course will address the phenomenon of anti-colonialism—opposition to colonialism in its various forms—manifesting both within the colonies and in the metropole. Recognizing colonial history as a shared history involving both the colonies and the metropole, the course will discuss the continuities and entanglements occurring within the imperial space between the two. Particular attention will be paid to the economic, political, and cultural impact of colonialism on colonized societies, while also considering how colonialism transformed European society through encounters with a "racialized Other" and the movement of people between the colonies and the metropole.
Students will have the opportunity to explore colonialism in depth through the informed use of historiographical analytical tools and the discussion of key concepts such as race, civilization, empire, subjecthood, and so on. A central focus of the course will be the critical analysis of sources and documents of colonial origin. To this end, a visit to the IsIAO (Italian Institute for Africa and the East) Library—housed at the National Central Library of Rome—is planned.
The course is structured thematically and requires active student participation; introductory lectures on the general history of colonialism and anticolonialism will be followed by seminars, text discussions, and workshops regarding specific topics and involving various types of sources. Students will be required to complete a written midterm examination in class.
One session will be dedicated to watching a film.
Students who have attended classes regularly and taken the written assessment are required to study one book of their choice from this list in preparation for the oral examination, whereas all other students are required to study two books:
- Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism. A Theoretical Overview, transl. by Shelley L. Frisch, Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997
- Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette M. Burton, Empires and the Reach of the Global, 1870-1945, Cambridge, Mass., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012
- Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds)., Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997
- Martin Thomas, The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2024
- Ruth Ben Ghiat and Mia Fuller (eds.), Italian Colonialism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
Recommended Readings for All Students:
- Aimé Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1955), trans. by Joan Pinkham, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2000
- Franzt Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), transl. by Richard Philcox, New York, Grove Press, 2004
Students will have the opportunity to explore colonialism in depth through the informed use of historiographical analytical tools and the discussion of key concepts such as race, civilization, empire, subjecthood, and so on. A central focus of the course will be the critical analysis of sources and documents of colonial origin. To this end, a visit to the IsIAO (Italian Institute for Africa and the East) Library—housed at the National Central Library of Rome—is planned.
The course is structured thematically and requires active student participation; introductory lectures on the general history of colonialism and anticolonialism will be followed by seminars, text discussions, and workshops regarding specific topics and involving various types of sources. Students will be required to complete a written midterm examination in class.
One session will be dedicated to watching a film.
Students who have attended classes regularly and taken the written assessment are required to study one book of their choice from this list in preparation for the oral examination, whereas all other students are required to study two books:
- Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism. A Theoretical Overview, transl. by Shelley L. Frisch, Princeton, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997
- Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette M. Burton, Empires and the Reach of the Global, 1870-1945, Cambridge, Mass., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012
- Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds)., Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997
- Martin Thomas, The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2024
- Ruth Ben Ghiat and Mia Fuller (eds.), Italian Colonialism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
Recommended Readings for All Students:
- Aimé Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1955), trans. by Joan Pinkham, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2000
- Franzt Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), transl. by Richard Philcox, New York, Grove Press, 2004
- Docente: Nicola Camilleri