Session Abstract

This panel aims to provide a comparative assessment of the nature, modus operandi and eventual legacies of the late colonial state in the major European colonial empires since the 1940s. Analyzing the cases of Portuguese, French, British and Belgian African colonial empires, this session offers a comparative framework in which the main post-WWII political, economic and sociocultural dimensions of late colonialism are explored and interrelated. The role of late colonial state, of its institutional apparatus and ideological foundations and outlooks, will be at the core of this collective inquiry. Taken as a crucial observatory of the fundamental historical processes that characterized and conditioned the multiple trajectories of decolonization in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the focus on the institutional and ideological dynamics of the late colonial state enables a finer look into those historical processes. Among other important and related aspects, this session will (1) highlight the militarization of colonial societies and assess the unfolding of insurgency and counterinsurgency movements, and the evolving of the set of colonial wars that marked, in some cases, the pathways to decolonization; (2) underline the role of the colonial state in the engineering of social and cultural difference, evaluating the formation and function of the politics of imperial identity and citizenship, addressing as well the formulation and dissemination of ideologies of late colonial rule; (3) identify and consider the policies, mechanisms and social geographies of colonial taxation, among other crucial factors to understand the overall developmental and modernizing facets of late colonialism, including their international and transnational dimensions; (4) investigate the models and modalities of administrative territorialization by the colonial state, its agencies of information, intelligence and policing, including the understanding of the role played by local powers and elites in this process; (5) examine the interimperial connections and diplomatic exchanges between these European colonial powers; finally, (6) underline the major legacies of these interrelated historical phenomena in postcolonial societies, namely in the nature and functioning of the postcolonial states.