Enlightened Colonialism

Project manager: Dr. Damien Tricoire

Project Description

For several decades, historians of ideas, philosophers, historians and philologists have discussed the question as to whether the origins of modern colonialism are to be found in the Enlightenment. On the one hand postcolonial authors believe that Enlightenment rationalism delegitimized non-European cultures. On the other hand, other researchers defend at least some philosophes, whom they sometimes qualify as anti-colonialists.

The project “enlightened colonialism” examines more closely than has hitherto been done the question of the relationship between intellectual, social and political history. It explores the positioning of actors in the imperial field, their self-representations and claims. “Enlightenment” is here understood as the claim to contribute to progress. The project examines not only the opinions of the intellectual urban European elites, but also pays attention to the transfers between different regions of the world. The interactions between elites in the mother country and the colonies, and between Europeans and non-Europeans lie at the heart of this study.

Conference

An international conference on "Enlightened World Appropriations. Imperial Actors and Scenarios of Change (1750 to 1820)", funded by the excellence program Enlightenment-Religion-Knowledge was held on June 12th - 13th 2015 at the IZEA.

Conference Report

Publications

• Tricoire, Damien: Der koloniale Traum. Imperiales Wissen und die französisch-madagassischen Begegnungen im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Köln a.o.: Böhlau 2018.
• Tricoire, Damien: Raynal’s and Diderot’s Patriotic History of the two Indies, or The Problem of Anticolonialism in the Eighteenth Century, in: The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 59/4 (2018), pp. 429–448.
• Tricoire, Damien: Beňovský on Madagascar: the Self-Fashioning, Career and Knowledge Production of a Central European Actor in the French Colonial Empire, in: European Review 26/3 (2018), pp. 471–480.