Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

It has become commonplace in a range of disciplines – in (at least parts of) history and literary studies, for instance, as well as anthropology and sociology – to approach empire as a type of knowledge project. ‘Colonial knowledge both enabled conquest and was produced by it’, states historical anthropologist Nicholas Dirks, ‘in certain ways knowledge was what colonialism was all about’ (1996: ix). The point is, in a sense, an obvious one. Successful conquerors need not just military strength and organization, together with some political skills, but also intelligence. Conquest itself is a learning process, both for the victors and the vanquished, and this feeds into the system of domination which is then established and consolidated. The management of knowledge – its continued but controlled generation, its rightful ordering, differential possession, and ongoing productivity – counts amongst the most vital technologies of colonial rule. It may also become a site of resistance.The principle is generally illustrated with examples from the ‘Grand Era’ of European imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, as Canadian historian Ruth Roach Pierson points out:Hand-in-hand with European conquerors, explorers, slave traders, merchants, missionaries, and imperial and colonial administrators, European cartographers, botanists, biologists, and budding anthropologists fanned ... log in or subscribe to read full text