REVIEW OF PAUL GILLEN AND DEVLEENAGHOSH’S COLONIALISM AND MODERNITYHarry Aveling

Harry Aveling of La Trobe University reviews Colonialism and Modernity by Paul Gillen and Devleena Ghosh,(Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007, pp. 271 AU$44.95 pb).

Publisher’s website: http://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/0868407356.htm

This is a postcolonial history of the world – postcolonial as in ‘postcolonial theory’. It openswith the assertion: ‘Two great phenomena have transformed the world in a spectacular fashionin the last five centuries. One is European colonialism; the other is the development of modernity.Modernity and colonialism are loose baggy concepts, related to one another in multifaceted andcomplex ways, the nature of which is controversial among scholars. This book outlines their in-tertwined histories and scholarly debates about them, and investigates some aspects in more detail’(1).

In accordance with this programme, the book is divided into two parts. Part I presents over-lapping histories: The Rise of Europe 1450–1789, Reason and Revolution 1648–1815, Industryand Imperialism 1780–1914, and Crisis and Aftermath 1914– . Part II deals with themes: Debatingthe Ethics of Colonialism, Nationalism, Culture, Race, Gender and Modern Time. It concludeswith ‘A Conclusion in which Nothing is Concluded’. The approach is interdisciplinary, drawingon ‘the intellectual frameworks called history, philosophy, political science, economics, anthro-pology, sociology, literary studies, and the more recent cultural and postcolonial studies’ (6).

A postcolonial history, however much it may protest otherwise, inevitably privileges Europe,with the rest of the world being the recipients of a process which has its origins elsewhere. Gillenand Ghosh admit this: ‘The focus is on Europe because Europeans and their descendants colonisedso extensively in recent centuries, because nothing like the modernity of today would havehappened without Europe’ (5). The history of the world outside Europe is dealt with mainly asa preparation for the coming of colonialism and modernity and, usually, a difficult response tothese two forces. The ‘four empires [which] dominated Eurasia’ at the beginning of the 1600s –the Ming dynasty and the three Muslim states of the Iranian and Ottoman empires, togetherwith the Mogul rule of India – are all dealt with in one paragraph, for example, and that paragraphends with European merchants, a century later, dominating ‘the rapidly growing Atlantic Oceantrade, and a great deal of trade in the Indian Ocean’ (27).

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The book would be eminently teachable in a course which focused on the impact of a mod-ernising Europe on the rest of the world. The historical chapters are wide ranging and presentbrief introductions to the processes, philosophers and some of the artistic achievements, whichcharacterised these four centuries. Their narratives are supplemented by a series of boxes whichopen up conceptual discussions on ‘Hot Topics’ such as ‘Colonisation’, ‘Colonial Representation,Subjection and Abjection’ , ‘Progress’, ‘Criticism of the Enlightenment’, ‘Hegel’s Dialectic’,‘Modernity and ‘The West’’, ‘Orientalism’, ‘Neo-colonialism and Dependency Theory’, and ‘TheCrisis of Modernity: Postmodernism and Postcolonialism’.

The second part of the book provides a significant and sufficiently detailed treatment of awide range of themes to challenge and stimulate undergraduates. The material presented includesa range of opinions from diverse postcolonial thinkers, who tend to see non-western cultures aslocked in obeisance to, and reaction against, Western forms of modernity. The chapter on ‘Cul-ture’, for example, is shaped through reference to the writings of Leela Gandhi, Antonio Gramsci,Albert Memmi, Gauri Viswanathan, Michael Taussig, Amitav Ghosh, Pankraj Mishra, BernardCohn, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Benedict Anderson, Ashis Nandy, Foucault, Ien Ang and Homi Bh-abha. There are boxes here giving ‘Case Studies’ of Malaysia, Jamaica, Fiji and India. The Aus-tralian students who meet and grapple with these ‘cosmologies of difference’ (154) will be enrichedthrough entering into completely new perspectives on their own daily experience and their placein the wider world around them.

Towards the very end of the book, Gillen and Ghosh quote Dipesh Chakrabarty’s question:‘What allowed the modern European sages to develop such clairvoyance with regard to the soci-eties of which they were empirically ignorant? And cannot we, once again return the gaze?’ (219).The clairvoyance was, as they abundantly demonstrate, deeply flawed, self-aggrandising, andthoroughly prejudiced. Colonialism and Modernity will help students begin the process of ‘re-turning the gaze’. To take further steps, however, they will need to let go of what is still a basicallyEuro-centric view and enter into the fuller experience of those nations defined in terms otherthan being an ex-colony. The Ming dynasty and the three great Muslim states deserve to beknown in their own terms.

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