Enlightened Colonialism: Civilization Narratives and Imperial Politics in the Age of Reason [Hardcover]

This book further qualifies the postcolonial thesis and shows its limits. To reach these goals, it links text analysis and political history on a global comparative scale. Focusing on imperial agents, their narratives of progress, and their political aims and strategies, it asks whether Enlightenment gave birth to a new colonialism between 1760 and 1820.

Has Enlightenment provided the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism? For decades, historians of political thought, philosophy, and literature have debated this question. On one side, many postcolonial authors believe that enlightened rationalism helped delegitimize non-European cultures. On the other side, some historians of ideas and literature are willing to defend at least some eighteenth-century philosophers whom they consider to have been anti-colonialists. Surprisingly enough, both sides have focused on literary and philosophical texts, but have rarely taken political and social practice into account.

Chapter 1: Introduction; Damien Tricoire.- Part I  The Invention of Enlightenment and the Return of Assimilationist Policy.- Chapter 2: The Enlightenment and the Politics of Civilization: Self-colonization, Catholicism, and Assimilationism in Eighteenth-century France; Damien Tricoire.- Chapter 3: Enlightened Colonialism? French Assimilationism, Silencing, and Colonial Fantasy on Madagascar; Damien Tricoire.- Part II  From Civilizing to Assimilationist Policy.- Chapter 4: Portuguese Indigenous Policy and Indigenous Policies in the Age of Enlightenment: Assimilationist Ideals and the Preservation of Indigenous Identities; Maria Regina Celestino de Almeida.- Chapter 5: New Forms of Colonialism on the Frontiers ofl–