Decolonising Europe?: Popular Responses to the End of Empire

299 Pages·2020·20.663 MB·English

by  Berny Sèbe, Matthew G. Stanard

Decolonising Europe?
Decolonising Europe? Popular Responses to the End of Empire offers a new
paradigm to understand decolonisation in Europe by showing how it was fun-
damentally a fluid process of fluxes and refluxes involving not only transfers of
populations, ideas, and sociocultural practices across continents but also com-
plex intra-European dynamics at a time of political convergence following the
Treaty of Rome. Decolonisation was neither a process of sudden, rapid changes to
European cultures nor one of cultural inertia, but a development marked by fluid-
ity, movement, and dynamism. Rather than being a static process where Europe’s
(former) metropoles and their peoples ‘at home’ reacted to the end of empire ‘out
there’, decolonisation translated into new realities for Europe’s cultures, socie-
ties, and politics as flows, ebbs, fluxes, and cultural refluxes reshaped both former
colonies and former metropoles.
The volume’s contributors set out a carefully crafted panorama of decolonisa-
tion’s sequels in European popular culture by means of in-depth studies of spe-
cific cases and media, analysing the interwoven meaning, momentum, memory,
material culture, and migration patterns of the end of empire across eight major
European countries.
The revised meaning of ‘decolonisation’ that emerges will challenge scholars
in several fields, and the panorama of new research in the book charts paths for
new investigations. The question mark in the title asks not only how European
cultures experienced the ‘end of empire’ but also the extent to which this is still
a work in progress.
Berny Sèbe is Senior Lecturer in Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies at the
University of Birmingham, UK.
Matthew G. Stanard is Professor of History at Berry College, USA.
Empire and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–2000
Series Editors: Philippa Levine, University of Texas at Austin,
and John Marriott, University of Hull
This monograph series seeks to explore the complexities of the relationships
among empires, modernity and global history. In so doing, it wishes to challenge
the orthodoxy that the experience of modernity was located exclusively in the
west, and that the non-western world was brought into the modern age through
conquest, mimicry and association. To the contrary, modernity had its origins in
the interaction between the two worlds.
Decolonising Europe?
Popular Responses to the End of Empire
Edited by Berny Sèbe and Matthew G. Stanard
Archiving Settler Colonialism
Culture, Space and Race
Edited by Yu-ting Huang and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower
Across the World with the Johnsons
Visual Culture and American Empire in the Twentieth Century
By Prue Ahrens, Lamont Lindstrom, Fiona Paisley
Empire De/Centered
New Spatial Histories of Russia and the Soviet Union
Edited by Maxim Waldstein, Sanna Turoma
Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies,
c. 1750–1830
Edited by Gabriel Paquette
Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World
Edited by Liam Matthew Brockey
Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt
By Hibba Abugideiri
Rethinking African Politics
A History of Opposition in Zambia
By Miles Larmer
Art in the Time of Colony
By Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll
Decolonising Europe?
Popular Responses to the End of Empire
Edited by Berny Sèbe and
Matthew G. Stanard
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Berny Sèbe and Matthew G. Stanard;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Berny Sèbe and Matthew G. Stanard to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-13960-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02936-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To Robin & Elliott
and
Marlon & Ivan
So that they can better understand where they come from,
and where they are heading.

Contents
List of figures ix
List of contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiv
Acronyms xvi
Making sense of the end of empire: Fluxes and flows in
Decolonising Europe? 1
BERNY SÈBE AND MATTHEW G. STANARD
Meaning: Making sense of decolonisation 23
1 Magna Carta and the end of empire 25
AMANDA BEHM
2 The end of empire and the four nations 42
JOHN M. MACKENZIE
3 Reverberations of decolonisation: British approaches to governance
in post-colonial Africa and the rise of the ‘strong men’ 57
CHRISTOPHER PRIOR
Media: Words and images of the end of empire 73
4 The semantics of decolonisation: The public debate on the New
Guinea Question in the Netherlands, 1950–62 75
VINCENT KUITENBROUWER
5 Decolonisation and the press: A path to pluralism in Franco’s
Spain, ca. 1950–75 96
SASHA D. PACK
viii Contents
Memory: Recalling empire in post-imperial worlds 111
6 Afterlives of colonialism in the everyday: Street names and the
(un)making of imperial debris 113
BRITTA SCHILLING
7 Passing the point of no return: Italy’s regretted end of empire
and the Mogadishu massacre of 1948 140
GIUSEPPE FINALDI
8 Oases of imperial nostalgia: British and French desert
memories after empire 159
BERNY SÈBE
9 Questioning Portugal’s social cohesion and preparing
post-imperial memory: Returned settlers (retornados) and
Portuguese society, 1975–80 181
ISABEL DOS SANTOS LOURENÇO AND ALEXANDER KEESE
Material culture: Tactile rémanences 197
10 Ephemera and the dynamics of colonial memory 199
CHARLES FORSDICK
11 Domestic museums of decolonisation?: Objects, colonial
officials, and the afterlives of empire in Britain 220
SARAH LONGAIR AND CHRIS JEPPESEN
12 Decongolising Europe? African art and post-colony Belgium 238
MATTHEW G. STANARD
Momentum: Decolonisation and its aftermath 257
Afterword: Diverging experiences of decolonisation 259
WM ROGER LOUIS
Index 273
Figures
4.1 Delpher ngram-graph, use of term ‘dekolonisatie’, 1900–1990 76
4.2 Delpher ngram-graph, use of term ‘Papoea’ (Papua), 1900–1990 76
4.3 Delpher ngram-graph, use of term ‘zelfbeschikkingsrecht’
(self-determination), 1900–1990 76
6.1 German postage stamp series commemorating the ‘colonial
memorial year’ of 1934 118
6.2 Poster depicting Jan Pieterszoon Coen’s ‘bloody’ legacy 125
8.1 The entrance to the Musée saharien in the outskirts of
Montpellier 167
8.2 Musée saharien, Montpellier: colonial and ethnographic
displays (including a traditional Tuareg tent at the back)
on the first floor 167
8.3 Musée saharien, Montpellier: ethnographic and prehistoric
displays on the ground floor 168
8.4 Appearance of keywords ‘Sahara’ and ‘Sudan’ in catalogues
of the BnF and BL 169
8.5 Appearance of keywords ‘désert’ and ‘desert’ in the catalogues
of the BnF and BL, 2 January 2017 170
8.6 Appearance of keywords ‘Sahara’ in France, and ‘Sahara’
and ‘Sudan’ in the UK, in catalogues of the BnF and LoC
(respectively), 2 January 2017 171
9.1 Articles in Diário de Notícias and Primeiro de Janeiro, by theme,
1974–79 188
10.1 Nescao promotional material, c. 1930. Cut-out figure sitting under
coconut tree 208
10.2 Publicity material, Phosphatine Falières, c. 1930. Cut-out figure
of Bambara musician 209
10.3 Publicity material, Phosphatine Falières, c. 1930. Cut-out figure
of Kabylian shepherd 210
10.4 Luc Marie Bayle, La Vache qui rit promotional blotting paper
series ‘Les Découvertes’, c. 1960, no. 5, Francis Garnier 212