Where does the colonial past intersect with the deployment of European military forces and relief missions in the global South? Is the use of 'soft power' to underwrite democratic governance in former colonial dependencies imperialistic? These questions raise unsettling possibilities because the presumption that humanitarian interventionism, whether involving security forces or non-governmental agencies, is driven by compassion and urgent need is belied by its specific geographies. Inter-governmental humanitarian policy priorities, even transnational lobbying for peacekeeping deployments, operate within webs of post-colonial connection; nowhere more so than between Western Europe and Africa. Even the conceptualization of humanitarianism, and associated ideas of relief and rehabilitation, are grounded in European experiences of occupation, population displacement, and peace planning. Numerous humanitarian agencies also began their operations inside empires, often in uncomfortable dialogue with imperial governments. These experiences point to the depth of connection between empire, ideas of good governance, and post-imperial interventionism. It is these connections that this project explores.
Imperialist Humanitarianism brings together historical research on European decolonization with social scientific scholarship on peace theory, post-colonial development and European military, economic and cultural connections in former colonial dependencies in Africa and Asia.
In three ways the issue of violence is central to the research:
By exploring how ideas of legitimate state repression were recast during decolonization;
Tracing the tensions between imperial sovereignty and forms of anti-colonial expression, the project considers changing conceptualizations of community rights;
By connecting the first two points to current European responses to civil breakdown and political violence in former dependencies.