Reinventing International Colonialism during a Crisis of Empire: Belgian-British Colonial Exchanges between Inter-Imperialism and Inter-Colonial Technical Cooperation, 1920s–1930s

Abstract

Assessing attempts to revive Belgian-British colonial exchanges in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this paper suggests a refined understanding of the crisis of empire, not so much as a crisis of individual empires (as was the case in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe), but as a crisis of inter-imperial relations and of an underlying imperial order. This becomes apparent when contrasting developments in and between colonies with inter-imperial initiatives in the metropole, thus giving more prominence to the colonial perspective than has hitherto been done in the historiography on the link between imperialism and internationalisation. Although the colonial administration was actually strengthened in the 1920s, marking this period as the heyday of colonialism, and even though the new international order was still heavily influenced by imperial member-states, we observe a growing disconnect between empire and colonies, which becomes manifest in direct inter-colonial exchanges, bypassing imperial channels, and increasingly based on topical issues tackled by experts. In other words, we see a shift from an imperial order to inter-colonial technical cooperation, largely in line with the development of transnational expertise on the international level in the same period.

Biographical Note

Geert Castryck (SFB 1199, Leipzig University)

Geert Castryck is a historian specializing in African and global history. He did research on African urban history, remembrance education, and colonial legacies. He earned his PhD in history from Ghent University in 2006 for his dissertation about the colonial Muslim communities of Bujumbura (Burundi). He came to Leipzig University in 2010 to write a global history of the East Central African town of Kigoma-Ujiji. At the Collaborative Research Centre, he analyses the redefinition of political, economic, and religious spaces in East and Central Africa as well as in Europe during and after the Scramble for Africa.