BOOK REVIEWS

REVIEW OF PAUL GILLEN AND DEVLEENA

GHOSHS COLONIALISM AND MODERNITY
Harry Aveling

Harry Aveling of La Trobe University reviews Colonialism and Modernity by Paul Gillen and Devleena Ghosh,
(Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007, pp. 271 AU$44.95 pb).

Publishers website: http://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/0868407356.htm

This is a postcolonial history of the world postcolonial as in postcolonial theory. It opens
with the assertion: Two great phenomena have transformed the world in a spectacular fashion
in the last five centuries. One is European colonialism; the other is the development of modernity.
Modernity and colonialism are loose baggy concepts, related to one another in multifaceted and
complex ways, the nature of which is controversial among scholars. This book outlines their intertwined histories and scholarly debates about them, and investigates some aspects in more detail
(1).
In accordance with this programme, the book is divided into two parts. Part I presents overlapping histories: The Rise of Europe 14501789, Reason and Revolution 16481815, Industry
and Imperialism 17801914, and Crisis and Aftermath 1914 . Part II deals with themes: Debating
the Ethics of Colonialism, Nationalism, Culture, Race, Gender and Modern Time. It concludes
with A Conclusion in which Nothing is Concluded. The approach is interdisciplinary, drawing
on the intellectual frameworks called history, philosophy, political science, economics, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, and the more recent cultural and postcolonial studies (6).
A postcolonial history, however much it may protest otherwise, inevitably privileges Europe,
with the rest of the world being the recipients of a process which has its origins elsewhere. Gillen
and Ghosh admit this: The focus is on Europe because Europeans and their descendants colonised
so extensively in recent centuries, because nothing like the modernity of today would have
happened without Europe (5). The history of the world outside Europe is dealt with mainly as
a preparation for the coming of colonialism and modernity and, usually, a difficult response to
these two forces. The four empires [which] dominated Eurasia at the beginning of the 1600s
the Ming dynasty and the three Muslim states of the Iranian and Ottoman empires, together
with the Mogul rule of India are all dealt with in one paragraph, for example, and that paragraph
ends with European merchants, a century later, dominating the rapidly growing Atlantic Ocean
trade, and a great deal of trade in the Indian Ocean (27).

54.1

HISTORY AUSTRALIA, VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2, 2008 MONASH UNIVERSITY EPRESS

The book would be eminently teachable in a course which focused on the impact of a modernising Europe on the rest of the world. The historical chapters are wide ranging and present
brief introductions to the processes, philosophers and some of the artistic achievements, which
characterised these four centuries. Their narratives are supplemented by a series of boxes which
open up conceptual discussions on Hot Topics such as Colonisation, Colonial Representation,
Subjection and Abjection , Progress, Criticism of the Enlightenment, Hegels Dialectic,
Modernity and The West, Orientalism, Neo-colonialism and Dependency Theory, and The
Crisis of Modernity: Postmodernism and Postcolonialism.
The second part of the book provides a significant and sufficiently detailed treatment of a
wide range of themes to challenge and stimulate undergraduates. The material presented includes
a range of opinions from diverse postcolonial thinkers, who tend to see non-western cultures as
locked in obeisance to, and reaction against, Western forms of modernity. The chapter on Culture, for example, is shaped through reference to the writings of Leela Gandhi, Antonio Gramsci,
Albert Memmi, Gauri Viswanathan, Michael Taussig, Amitav Ghosh, Pankraj Mishra, Bernard
Cohn, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Benedict Anderson, Ashis Nandy, Foucault, Ien Ang and Homi Bhabha. There are boxes here giving Case Studies of Malaysia, Jamaica, Fiji and India. The Australian students who meet and grapple with these cosmologies of difference (154) will be enriched
through entering into completely new perspectives on their own daily experience and their place
in the wider world around them.
Towards the very end of the book, Gillen and Ghosh quote Dipesh Chakrabartys question:
What allowed the modern European sages to develop such clairvoyance with regard to the societies of which they were empirically ignorant? And cannot we, once again return the gaze? (219).
The clairvoyance was, as they abundantly demonstrate, deeply flawed, self-aggrandising, and
thoroughly prejudiced. Colonialism and Modernity will help students begin the process of returning the gaze. To take further steps, however, they will need to let go of what is still a basically
Euro-centric view and enter into the fuller experience of those nations defined in terms other
than being an ex-colony. The Ming dynasty and the three great Muslim states deserve to be
known in their own terms.

BOOK REVIEWS

54.2