Colonial Complicities and Imperial Entanglements: An Afterword

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    Abstract (may include machine translation)

    Europe is literally a product of the Third World, wrote Frantz Fanon provocatively in The Wretched of the Earth.1 This brilliant insight into the mutually constitutive relationship between colonizing and colonized societies formulates a key theme of postcolonial scholarship avant la lettre. Of what possible relevance, however, could postcolonial theories be for an understanding of the past or present of Switzerland, a landlocked country in the heart of Europe, which neither possessed colonies nor pursued geopolitical interests in other regions of the world? Colonizing ambitions played little part in Swiss national identity formation, nor were imperial desires attributed to Switzerland either by other European colonizing powers or in the colonies. What makes this collection of essays unique is the very implausibility of its provocative claim to demonstrate the long shadows cast by (post)imperial formations on parts of Europe that were not colonizing societies but participated in the colonial project in a variety of ways and shared in its spoils. We see the Swiss as sojourners, not settlers, but nevertheless deeply imbricated in the imperial projects of their European neighbours overseas as they trade, proselytize, practise medicine, explore and travel or conduct anthropometric and botanical research in the colonies. Even in the absence of a colonial administrative service of their own, European empires could well offer a career for Swiss men, and occasionally women as well.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationCambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
    PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
    Pages296-306
    Number of pages11
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2015

    Publication series

    NameCambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
    VolumePart F91
    ISSN (Print)2635-1633
    ISSN (Electronic)2635-1641

    Keywords

    • Colonial Context
    • Colonial Project
    • European Colonial
    • European Neighbour
    • Postcolonial Theory

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