Empire, development & colonialism: the past in the present

This collection explores the similarities, differences and overlaps between the contemporary debates on international development and humanitarian intervention and the historical artefacts and strategies of Empire. It includes views by historians and students of politics and development, drawing on a range of methodologies and approaches. The parallels between the language of nineteenth-century liberal imperialism and the humanitarian interventionism of the post-Cold War era are striking. The American military, both in Somalia in the early 1990s and in the aftermath the Iraq invasion, used ethnographic information compiled by British colonial administrators. Are these interconnections, which are capable of endless multiplication, accidental curiosities or more elemental? The contributors to this book articulate the belief that these comparisons are not just anecdotal but are analytically revealing. From the language of moral necessity and conviction, the design of specific aid packages; the devised forms of intervention and governmentality, through to the life-style, design and location of NGO encampments, the authors seek to account for the numerous and often striking parallels between contemporary international security, development and humanitarian intervention, and the logic of Empire. -- Publisher description.

"This collection of essays resulted ... from a workshop held at the University of Bristol, in September 2007, entitled 'Development and colonialism: the past in the present'"--Introduction.

The exceptional inclusion of 'savages' & 'barbarians' : the colonial liberal bio-politics of mobility & development / Matthew Merefield -- Empire, international development & the concept of good government / Vernon Hewitt -- Empire : a question of hearts? : the social turn in colonial government Bombay c. 1905-1925 / Henrik Aspengren -- 'Conflict-sensitive' aid & making liberal peace / Suthaharan Nadarajah -- Development, poverty & famines : the case of British Empire / Richard Sheldon -- Plain tales from the reconstruction site : spatial continuities in contemporary humanitarian practice / Lisa Smirl -- The international politics of social transformation : trusteeship & intervention in historical perspective / David Williams & Tom Young -- Liberal interventionism & the fragile state : linked by design? / Mark Duffield -- Freedom, fear & NGOs : balancing discourses of violence & humanity in securitising times / Patricia Noxolo -- Theorising continuities between empire & development : toward a new theory of history / April R. Biccum -- Spatial practices & imaginaries : experiences of colonial officers & development professionals / Uma Kothari -- Decolonising the borders in Sudan : …