Colonialism and Monumental Archaeology in South and Southeast Asia

In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, political and economic power was concentrated in just a few countries. Having eclipsed the most mighty early modern empires—those of Spain and Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, The Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries— Britain, France, the Russian, and the Austro-Hungarian Empires became the major European powers. Later, these were joined by the newly formed countries of Germany and Italy, together with the United States of America and Japan. In these countries elites drew their might not only from the industrial revolution but also from the economic exploitation of their ever-increasing colonies. Colonialism, a policy by which a state claims sovereignty over territory and people outside its own boundaries, often to facilitate economic domination over their resources, labour, and markets, was not new. In fact, colonialism was an old phenomenon, in existence for several millennia (Gosden 2004). However, in the nineteenth century capitalism changed the character of colonialism in its search for new markets and cheap labour, and the imperial expansion of the European powers prompted the control and subjugation of increasingly large areas of the world. From 1815 to 1914 the overseas territories held by the European powers expanded from 35 per cent to about 85 per cent of the earth’s surface (Said 1978: 41; 1993: 6). To this enlarged region areas of informal imperialism (see Part II of this book) could be added. However, colonialism and informal colonialism were not only about economic exploitation. The appropriation of the ‘Other’ in the colonies went much further, and included the imposition of an ideological and cultural hegemony throughout each of the empires. The zenith of this process of colonization was reached between the 1860s and the First World War, in the context of an increasingly exultant nationalism. In a process referred to as ‘New Imperialism’, European colonies were established in all the other four continents, mainly in areas not inhabited by populations with political forms cognate to the Western powers. In the case of Africa, its partition would be formally decided at an international meeting—the Berlin Conference of 1884–5.

Ancient history · Appropriation · Capitalism · Colonialism · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Geography · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sovereignty · Archaeological Research and Protection · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Law