Colonial and Postcolonial States

Authority, Decisions, and Power: Political Anthropology ANTH 2301 Colonial and Postcolonial States Much of the rest of the globe outside of Europe was fashioned after a similar assortment of kingdoms, chiefdoms, lineage systems, and village democracies. Remember that Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, and Central and South America all saw the emergence of ancient state systems at different points in antiquity. On most continents, kingdoms were also common types of centralised government. Smaller chiefdoms and acephalous groups might be found all around these highly centralised societies. For example, the African continent was home to numerous large, centralised states and kingdoms, including the great trade-based empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai; large, centralised states and kingdoms like Egypt in the north; east African kingdoms like Aksum, Zimbabwe, and Swahili; and central African kingdoms like Luba and Kongo (Monroe 2013). Communities outside of these large kingdoms and states were politically organised, with structures for leadership, decisionmaking, and conflict resolution that upheld social order, as was mentioned in the description of acephalous societies. African cultures like the Asante and Zulu were proto-states, or states in construction, throughout the period of European colonisation, according to British historian Basil Davidson (1992). As belligerent kingdoms secured vast swathes of territory, many African civilizations saw comparable transformations between 1400 and 1900, the period during which European nation-states were developing. Such highly centralised cultures featured multiethnic populations, governmental bureaucracy, legal systems, and colossal architecture. They were founded on intense agriculture and vast commerce networks throughout the continent (and beyond). Additionally, they were dominated by ideas that placed a strong emphasis on accumulating and fairly allocating money. State societies, then, were common in many African communities, and they were ideally positioned to develop into contemporary nation-states. Rather, colonisation took place. The main European nations sought to get access to markets and raw resources for their completed goods as industrial capitalism grew. A lot of people focused on Africa's potential for agriculture and mineral wealth. In order to discuss their territorial interests on the African continent, European delegates convened in Berlin in 1884–1885. They drew borders around the regions they intended to conquer on their map of the continent, despite the fact that they knew virtually little about the terrain or the inhabitants of many of those regions. They decided that the only way they could keep their exclusive claim over those regions was if they set up government agencies to manage the local populace. Europeans subjugated native African political systems under European authority by establishing colonial governance over almost all African cultures by the early 20th century. The autocratic, military, and extractive colonial powers founded by Europeans were the result of colonialism's primary goal of securing resources to support European colonies. They murdered Africans who refused to submit to European control when they conquered African territory. Africans were compelled to labour on roads and mines as part of colonial initiatives. Africans were forced to pay taxes in order to support the colonial endeavour. Additionally, they created and managed African economies to transfer earnings to European producers and traders. Strangely, European colonial powers exercised total control over colonial economies while European nation-states retreated from direct control over their own economy. Furthermore, European colonial powers were run in a repressive, authoritarian, and overtly violent manner as European nation-states grew more democratic and participative. A affluent capitalist elite and the printing press were two factors that helped Europe become a modern nation-state, but colonial control prevented them from having the same impact on African civilizations. Under colonial control, Africans were purposefully kept out of the import-export trade and prohibited from opening factories, which prevented the development of a class of affluent entrepreneurs. Instead, a two-tiered structure of government was constructed in the colonies under colonial control, with a muscular authoritarian state machinery ruling over native African political systems such as chiefdoms, proto-states, lineage orders, and a few dispersed band societies. When there were chiefs in a region, the colonial authorities utilised them to enforce their policies, frequently against the preferences and concerns of the leaders' own people. Africans were frequently forced to choose a chief to carry out such responsibilities by colonial authorities in areas without native leaders. African political institutions were outright forbidden in several territories. When addressing political challenges in historically colonised states (like the majority of African nations), anthropologists frequently integrate historical and modern studies to comprehend the junction of local and foreign forces that contribute to this intricate picture. The evolution of political systems in Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the Americas, and eastern Europe was influenced by colonial forces in one way or another. The topic of postcolonial studies is multidisciplinary and was founded in the 1970s. It brings together political science, anthropology, history, and area studies to better comprehend the global legacy, variety, and complexity of colonialism.