Colonialism

Osterhammel's book represents a new approach to the subject. The concise but sweeping study encompasses the process of colonization and decolonization from the early modern period to the twentieth century. Virtually all other studies to date have looked at strategies of colonial conquest, exploitation, and rule from the imperial point of view. Osterhammel shows that the colonial situation developed in ways that duplicated neither the metropolis nor the pre-colonial society, but instead blended these and added a new direction characteristic only of colonial realms. He emphasizes that the Europeans were normally not considered dangerous invaders by local populations until they threatened the traditional cultures with missionaries, European schools, and bureaucracy.

A conviction of imperial cultural superiority gave modern colonialism an aggressive turn. The result was ethnic and social stratification in the colonial society, even when colonists took over the pre-colonial administration and society as the British did in India. - Midwest Book Review

Jürgen Osterhammel, University of Constance, is the author of several books, in-clu-d-ing the award-winning China and World Society. He has provided a new bibliography for this edition. Robert L. Tignor, professor of history at Princeton University, is the author of The Colonial Transformation of Kenya: The Kamba, Kikuyu, and Maasai from 1900 to 1939, and other books.