Colonialist Stories, Told Differently

As we are more and more talking about colonisation and colonizers in different contexts, it is useful to keep in mind that the process as such encompasses more than one part of the world and surprinsingly, reveals the simple reality that various countries and empires at specific historical moments were involved in colonization processes. 

Histoire des Colonisations by Marc Ferro covers seven centuries of European expansionism, completed and/or complimented by other expansionist adventures: China, Russia - both as a capitalist and a communist empire -, Japan and even Egypt. The approach follows the French historical take of placing events and encounters in the long duration in order to obtain patterns and read mentalities. Although such an approach is not always appropriate as it obliterates important concrete events for the sake of the vague perspective setting, in the case of colonizations, Marc Ferro take is very relevant for outlining various processes and individual features of different stages of colonization or national patterns. From the 13rd century onwards, colonizations were used as a tool for religious outreach, search for new territories and economic resources, lately cheap resources and workforce, as in the case of France, among others, in North Africa. 
The author explores not only historical facts and events, but also connects with intellectual movements, cultural works and the construction of national elites and the birth of the concept of race.

Although it was written in 1994, it maintains valid perspectives for the recent discussions regarding colonialism, as it frames the right trends and matrix. It is dense and one can easily read it as a passionate journey across ages and continents. 

The only weakness of the book is that given the impressive amount of information, it rather limits the space for critical discourse and theoretical comparisons. The critical part is significantly missing which is a pity due to the tremendous volume of information featured that clearly needs more than a ´neutral´ storification.