Metropolitan, Colonial, and Colonized States: Processes of State-Making in the European Empires, 1880s–1940s

I will ask how we can best theorize and write the history of modern states, and how the study of states can be integrated with the analysis of empires, without collapsing the two. I argue that modern colonial empires consisted of a multiplicity of states (or state fields, following Bourdieu, On the State). First, there was the state in the metropole—those states that have been the main concern of so-called state theorists. Second, there was at least one state (a European one) in each of the colonies – a colonial state, partially autonomous from the metropole and characterized by most of the key criteria that define “states” in definitions such as Max Weber’s. Finally, in colonies organized around indirect rule, one or more indigenous states coexisted with the conquering power’s colonial state within the same territory. Metropolitan and colonial states were subdivided into separate administrative departments. All three kinds of states expanded and enhanced certain kinds of power over the period 1880s-1950s. These points are illustrated with examples from British, French, and German colonial governance.