Africa and colonial plantations shaped European modernity and governmentality

Evidence

I wish to dispense, once and for all, with a possible critique that might be leveled at the dichotomization of modern Europe and the rest of the world. It is argued, often by political economists, that to attribute the emerging forces of modernity to Europe (or the West) reenacts and perpetuates, while attempting to subvert, the very European discourse that installs Europe as the birthplace of the modern project, thereby provincializing the rest of the world as subsidiaries to, and followers of, the European model. The evidence for this argument is usually drawn from the colonial experience and experimentation on the ground, such as on sugar plantations and in other modes of structured exploitation. The main point of this argument is that it was these colonialist experiences that allowed Europeans to construct modes of production and methods of governmentality that they would in turn bring back home, cultivate further, refine, and then export again to the colonies. The modern project thus becomes a story of interaction between Europe and its colonies, both of which are seen to contribute to the production of modernity, however much in unequal fashion. My position is that this is a fundamentally erroneous argument, one that privileges economic-materialist interpretation to the exclusion of crucial others. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 41

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the ‘sugar plantation as prototype of industrial modernity’ thesis in Sidney Mintz and James Lockhart-era colonial historiography. — connects to: Colonialism and capitalism have been entangled since the sixteenth century — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 41; The Plantation system’s margins prefigure present-day modes of Relation — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 378
• QUESTION: Worth chasing whether Hallaq’s dismissal of the materialist contribution thesis holds weight against the substantial plantation-modernity historiography.