Introduction: Some Thoughts on Colonialism

This edition of The European Legacy is devoted to discussions of European colonial influence in various parts of South East Asia, in particular, Indonesia, Timor Leste, and the Philippines. The essays appearing here are the result of an expert invited symposium held at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory of Australia in late 2017. The setting is important since Darwin is closer to South East Asia than to any capital city in Australia—a mere 300 miles from Dili in Timor Leste and indeed is closer to Denpasar in Bali than to any other major city in Australia. Australia too has a colonial history with devastating effects on the oldest continuous living culture in the world, though this is not the focus of this particular edition.

Conceptually, colonialism is a rather tricky notion to define. Is it, for example, to be distinguished from imperialism? Imperialism certainly has much in common with colonialism. Perhaps etymology provides us with some initial clues. Colonialism is derived from the Latin colonus (farmer) while imperialism is derived from the Latin imperium (command). So one might suggest that colonialism involves the transfer of populations from one area to another with an emphasis being placed upon land acquisition and the expropriation of that land for broadly speaking farming practices. A typical example here would be the colonisation of the North of Ireland (1609–) by Scots planters. Whereas imperialism involves the often-hostile take-over of territory and the administration of that territory through the exercise of power. A typical example would be the conquest of parts of the Americas by the Spanish (1492–).

Nonetheless, these distinctions are in practice not so easily made. Both imperialism and colonialism seem to be symbiotic and, in many instances, the very same beast. Both involve processes of domination and subjugation even when such domination and subjugation does not involve overt force as in some forms of cultural imperialism. What is clear is that both colonialism and imperialism are historically ancient with forms in ancient China, India, the ancient Near East and through much of Western history and Islamic expansion. The Greeks set up colonies including in Asia Minor, and under Alexander much further afield, as did the Romans in extending the pax romanum to the furthest reaches of the empire.

In terms of the history of ideas European thinkers had to come to terms with colonialism at least as far back as the Crusades. The key question for the mediaeval schoolmen in regard to colonialism and imperialism was how or whether to reconcile the programmatic expansion of European interests with the precepts of justice as derived from natural law theory. By the thirteenth century Aquinas’s elevation of the primacy of conscience had led to the conclusion that the forcible conversion of Jewish children was utterly against natural law and thus could not be condoned. This was, from the intellectual side of things, vitally important though as is so often the case when realpolitik intervenes not enough to stem either missionary zeal or rapacious greed. Nonetheless, the thinking that undergirded Aquinas’s position was given voice by Pope Innocent IV who, commenting on Innocent III’s Quod Super his, argued that pagans possessed the same natural rights as Christians but that nonetheless the Petrine Mandate qualified such rights. This, in its turn, fed the legal theories of Franciscus de Victoria (1480–1546) and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) in their elaborations of a Law of Nations.

The reason I raise Aquinas’s argument is because both at the time of the Crusades and subsequently in the European colonialist expansions, particularly in the Americas, but also in the East, one of the key justifying conditions for the subjugation of non-westerners was the so-called “civilizing mission” of European powers. Aquinas’s forthright promulgation of the primacy of conscience in practical terms was superseded by the notion that (dominium) lordship and property rights of pagans could be set aside where and when pagans offended the precepts of natural law. By the time Innocent IV penned his Commentaria in quinque libros (c. 1570) which affirms the rights of pagans to rule themselves, albeit in a qualified manner, the Church had committed itself to effectively separating the religious and secular offices. It is this separation that marks the ambivalent role of, for example, The Dutch East India Company (despite the Reformation) in its relations with the East, as indicated in several of the contributions to this edition. As colonialism was practised during the heyday of the European expansions in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these ambivalences at the heart of “civilizing mission” justifications, between religious and more clearly secular (economic) interests, were played out again and again, with often surprising particularities as is argued in several of the contributions.

At the height of European colonial expansion any notion of a so-called civilizing mission appeared to be but lip-service for the dominant motives of control—economic benefit for the European powers, and this remained the case even while religious orders and clergy both Catholic and Protestant still managed to contribute net goods to native populations. It is little wonder that nineteenth- and twentieth-century critiques of colonialism (and imperialism) became key features of Marxist and, in particular, Leninist fulminations against what was perceived as a historically inevitable denouement of capitalism. And in its own turn these critiques paved the way for postcolonial theory and its manifestations in identity politics.

These themes and others provide the background to the collection of essays in this edition. The first essay, by Dennis Shoesmith, “The Dichotomous Legacy of the Catholic Church’s Opposition to the Philippine Revolution of 1896,” examines the repositioning of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Philippine Revolution of 1896–98 during the transfer of Spanish to American colonial rule. The second contribution, by Laura Meitzner Yoder, “Genealogy of Colonial Land Registration and State Land in Portuguese Timor,” discusses the implications of establishing territorial control by the Portuguese in Timor from the late nineteenth century. The third, fourth and fifth essays are devoted to studies relating to colonialism in Indonesia. Steven Farram’s contribution, “Australia and the 1947 United Nations Consular Commission to Indonesia,” focuses on a lesser-known part of the story of Indonesia’s struggle for independence from the Dutch: Australia’s role in the UN Consular Commission, established at the same time as the UN Committee of Good Offices (CGO). Hans Hägerdal’s contribution, “On the Margins of Colonialism: Contact Zones in the Aru Islands,” discusses Western-Arunese relations in the seventeenth century in terms of economic exchange and political networks. The final essay, by Nathan John Franklin, “Islam and the Dutch in the East Indies: Oppression or Opportunity?” provides a systematic account of Dutch colonial engagement with Islam in Indonesia.