Possessing the World: Taking the Measurements of Colonisation from the 18th to the 20th Century (review)

First published in French (2000), Bouda Etemad’s Posessing the World is an ambitious study spanning expansive temporal and geographical boundaries. Etemad’s main argument is that empires between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries were made feasible through the shifting of human costs of colonialism onto the colonies. This not only limited loss of European/ imperial citizens’ lives in colonial campaigns but also helped limit expenses of maintaining military units. In proposing so, he also wants to take on what is by now a canonical text in the study of technology and colonialism - Daniel Headrick’s “tools of empire” (1981). Etemad has no quarrel with Headrick’s claim that technology did help consolidate European expansionism – but he would rather ask: starting when? Working his way through a method seldom preferred by historians, Etemad uses statistical tools to proffer “until the 1880’s, that is until the colonisation of sub-Saharan Africa, new technologies played practically no role in European territorial acquisition. British India, the Dutch East Indies, Algeria, French Indo-China, that is the four largest, most populous, and richest colonies … were conquered before the conquest technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution were usable” (5).

Etemad’s method can appear provocative. His closeness to Camille-Ernest Labrousse, especially Labrousse’s collaborative work with the Annales School is evident, nonetheless his area of research spans across a hierarchical order of civilisations thus bringing into question the comparability and commensurability of his data. Using incomplete and diverse statistical data, he paints huge strokes in the comparative history of empires of Europe, North America and Japan. This makes a robust evaluation of his main argument not so easy a task. By new technologies, Etemad is alluding to weapons like rapid fire and machine guns; colonial medicine, especially quinine; modern transportation like steamboats and railways and finally communications, especially the introduction of the telegraph. However, his only empirical example is the overstated use of quinine based on Philip D. Cutrin’s much acclaimed recent work on disease and empire. Overwhelming attention to data on explaining the geographical extent and human costs of empires often to the relative neglect of (similarly incomplete) statistical data on colonial trade and relative costs of warfare on both sides can be misleading. Even as he ascertains the difficulties in conducting “cost benefit analysis” of empires, Etemad remains engaged with the problem of how empires were made feasible. Moreover, the monograph is divided into chapters in the narrative style alongside chapters that present statistical findings that do not necessarily make smooth reading.

At least one of Etemad’s conclusions from his study is most certainly provocative. Etemad is convinced that scholars such as Headrick, in arguing for technological determinism and in failing to write comparative histories have been guilty of anachronism. Furthermore they are guilty “of forgetting that before 1880s the motives for European expansion lay more in the changing social and economic structures of Asia and Africa than in those of the home countries” (206).

That having been said, Etemad’s work is refreshing. Sceptical as one may be of statistical data employed by Etemad and his proposal for a “demographic determinism”, his work will certainly help renew questions in the field. He reorients the debate on the nature of colonialism by calling for acute attention to chronology and decentring technology as a decisive tool of empire. Even as he takes away the bite from technologies of the industrial revolution, together with Philip D. Curtin, he reopens the examination of the variegated nature of tools of empire, a question of much relevance even today. Etemad’s study is also a call for the need of comparative history and can provide a good reference point for further studies. Especially useful for teaching as well as research are the extensive tables and a well organised bibliography on various empires. Controversial and difficult as Etemad’s work may be...