Democracy and Difference Seminar Series 2016-17

Adria Lawrence, Yale University - Colonial Approaches to Governance in the Periphery

When European imperial powers expanded into Africa, Asia, and the Americas, they began ruling diverse populations that differed from them along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines. To manage this diversity, they articulated two distinct ideologies: direct and indirect rule. Advocates of direct rule envisioned a colonial project that would modernize and transform colonial territories; proponents of indirect rule favored preserving tradition and working with local authorities. Recent scholarly work on the legacies of colonial rule has coded direct and indirect rule in former colonies, arguing that the type of colonial rule has important long-term consequences. This paper examines how the concepts of direct and indirect rule have been defined and measured in the social science literature. It argues that the distinction between the two has been overstated. Drawing on the case of colonial Algeria, it points to a gap between colonial rhetoric and actual colonial governance. Through considering the Algerian case, it suggests new ways of understanding why and how colonial strategies varied over time and place.

Biography

Adria Lawrence in the Aronson Associate Professor of International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is a scholar of Middle Eastern and North African politics. She studies colonialism, nationalism, conflict, and collective action. Her book, Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2013), provides an analysis of the violent and non-violent mobilization for national independence that confronted European colonial empires during the decades following World War II. The book won the 2015 J. David Greenstone Book Prize for best book in history and politics, given by the American Political Science Association’s Politics and History Section, the 2015 L. Carl Brown Book Prize, given by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, and the 2014 Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award, given by the American Political Science Association's Organized Section on International History and Politics.  Her current work examines foreign rule and resistance in the colonial period and the contemporary Arab world. 

The Democracy and Difference Seminar Series is jointly supported by Blavatnik School of Government, Department of Politics and International Relations, and Nuffield College. Convened by Nancy Bermeo, Maya Tudor, Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos and Jody LaPorte.

Advanced sign-up is required – please email events@bsg.ox.ac.uk stating which sessions you will attend. Lunch is provided.