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Europeanisation of the World Engin Isin, Professor of International Politics, ULIP & QMUL http://enginfisin.net TransEuropa: Where is Europe? University of London Institute in Paris 28 September 2017 https://ulip.london.ac.uk/events/transeuropa-where-europe Engin Isin — 28 September 2017

Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

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Page 1: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Europeanisation of the World

Engin Isin, Professor of International Politics, ULIP & QMUL

http://enginfisin.net

TransEuropa: Where is Europe? University of London Institute in Paris 28 September 2017https://ulip.london.ac.uk/events/transeuropa-where-europe

Engin Isin — 28 September 2017

Page 2: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Europe shaped the world in its own image since at least the fifteenth century. The birth of European empires and their colonial occupations, slavery, and settlement left indelible marks on the world. As generations of scholars studying histories of imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, European empires managed the ‘Europeanisation of the world’ through various technologies.

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Page 3: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

[The] worse was the tale of the eighteenth century and the seventeenth century and the sixteenth century, and this whole dark crime against a human race began in 1442 when the historic thirty Negroes landed in Lisbon. … Thus, from 1442 to 1860, nearly half a millennium, the Christian world fattened on the stealing of human souls. … And during all this time Martin Luther had lived and died, Calvin had preached, Raphael had painted and Shakespeare and Milton sung; and yet for four hundred years the coasts of Africa and America were strewn with the dying and the dead, four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships, four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God. All this you know, all this you have read many a time. I tell it again, lest you forget.

DuBois, W. E. B. 1904. ‘The Development of a People’, pp. 300-311.

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Engin Isin — 28 September 2017

Page 4: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Amongst these technologies perhaps most insidious yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the world. I want to raise and discuss some questions about understanding how Europe represented itself as both the centre of the world and at the same time as a contained continent.

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Page 5: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

The centrality and containment became dominant aspects of Europe’s image of itself and in the eyes of the other. Can the performative force of cartography perhaps explain how Europeans came to think of and present ‘themselves’ as wanderers and ‘others’ as migrants?

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Engin Isin — 28 September 2017

Page 6: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Walter Mignolo retells a story of Mateo Ricci, a Jesuit priest ‘travelling’ in China for establishing a mission.

Walter Mignolo. 2003. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Original edition, 1995.

Where is Europe?

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Page 7: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Around 1584, the Chinese Mandarins visited the first Jesuit mission established in Shaoxing.

The Chinese saw on the wall what was for them an astonishing depiction of the earth.

It was likely that this was Abraham Ortelius map of Tipus orbis terrarum (1570).

What was astonishing was that not only the Chinese had thought the Chinese empire covered almost all of the earth but it was also at the centre.

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Page 8: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

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Page 9: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

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Page 10: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

The official history of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), written while Ricci was still in China, does not follow Ricci’s map and provides a critique of it. (Mignolo, p. 224).

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Engin Isin — 28 September 2017

Page 11: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

‘Lately, Mateo Ricci utilized some false teachings to fool people, and scholars unanimously believed him. … The map of the world which he made contains elements of the fabulous and mysterious, and it is a downright attempt to deceive people on things which they personally can not go to verify for themselves. It is really like the trick of a painter who draws ghosts in his pictures.’

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Page 12: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

‘We need not discuss other points, but just take for example the position of China on the map. He puts it not in the centre but slightly to the west and inclined to the north. This is altogether far from truth, for China should be in the centre of the world, which we can prove by the single fact that we can see the North Star resting at the zenith of the heaven at midnight. How can China be treated like a small unimportant country, and placed slightly to the north as in this map?'

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Page 13: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

‘This really shows how dogmatic his ideas are. Those who trust him say that the people in his country are fond of travelling afar, but such an error would certainly not be by a widely-travelled man.'

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Page 14: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) produced an alternative map mappamondo (1602)

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Page 16: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Mignolo says ‘Ricci was able to concede and change the geographical centre, although he may never have doubted that the ethnic centre remained in Rome.’ [p. 222]

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Page 17: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)

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Page 18: Engin Isin Ñ 28 September 2017 · 2017-10-03 · imperialism, colonialism, and slavery illustrated, ... yet most visualising one has been cartography – a way of representing the

Empire Population Metropole Colonial Percent

British 441 46 395 10.4

Dutch 56 6 50 11

French 89 41 48 46

Russian 165 111 54 67

German 79 66 13 84

Japanese 61 52 9 85

American 108 98 10 91

Chinese 450 428 23 95

Italian 39 37 2 95

Jürgen Osterhammel. 2009. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 119.

Empires, metropolitan and colonial populations, 1913

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0

125

250

375

500

British Dutch French Russian German Japanese American Chinese Italian

Metropole Colonial

Jürgen Osterhammel. 2009. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 119

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Branch, Jordan. 2014. The Cartographic State: Maps, Territory and the Origins of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

DuBois, W. E. B. 1904. “The Development of a People.” International Journal of Ethics 14 (3): 292-311.

Gunn, Geoffrey C. 2011. History without Borders: The Making of an Asian World Region (1000-1800). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Hiatt, Alfred. 2008. Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600.British Library Publishing Division.

Husain, Aiyaz. 2014. Mapping the End of Empire: American and British Strategic Visions in the Postwar World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Lewis, Martin W., and Kären Wigen. 1997. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mignolo, Walter. 2003. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Original edition, 1995.

Olsson, Gunnar. 2007. Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2009. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Sources and readings:

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Engin Isin — 28 September 2017