Change to Remain? Welfare Colonialism in European Colonial Empires in Africa (1920-1975)
This research project aims to understand, from an historical comparative perspective, the formulation and development of the doctrines and programs of “welfare colonialism” in the European colonial empires since the 1920s. The identification and analysis of the repertoires of colonial rule used by European empire-states to develop a “welfare colonial state” will be at the core of our concerns, side by side with an analysis of the set of political, economic and sociocultural processes of incorporation, differentiation and exclusion that characterized colonial rule and its politics of difference. Examining the international, metropolitan and colonial historical conditions that affected the modus operandi of European imperialism in Africa, this project will also contribute to the understanding of its contemporary legacies. The compared assessment of (1) “native policies”, namely the question of native labour and the Indigenato regime; (2) colonial education, health and “social” policies; of the politics of imperial citizenship, their legal and administrative frameworks; (3) the role of racialism and other idioms of cultural difference within empires; (4) and the emergence of colonial developmentalism and colonial modernization, its global connections, and its relation to late colonialism and decolonization; are some of the problems that will be studied.