On the Remaking of History: How to Reinvent the Past- Janet Abu-Lughod

If the rise of the West can not be attributed to a unique genius, then the fall of the West can also not be attributed to the lack of a virtue. There are other factors that can account for the rise and fall of nations. When researching history, there are three problems with the methods:
1- Truims: The truisms that historical accounts are constructions instead of descriptions are still not accepted. Social events are not recorded constructions, they are observed descriptions and are not as objective as sociologists and historians would think. The solution to this problem is triangulation: "We assume that somewhere between the accounts given, duly discounted for 'distortions' due to partial perspectives and vested interests, one can 'find' an approximation of social reality that might have been constructed by an unbiased and virtually omniscient narrator, had such an observer been possible" (Abu-Lughod). Thus, any account of the other is from one perspective only. All accounts need to be taken into consideration and then a common detail must be found- which can be an approximation for the actual event.
2- Backwards constructions: All sociological accounts are constructed backwards. Only after an event takes place do the narratives and explanations form. We build narratives to explain historical events by looking at what factors made the events inevitable. Instead, we should look at the whole picture of factors surrounding the events. The solution to this problem is to assert relative conditions at successive points in time of the historical eent and then to analyze how these various states could have hapened. If the endpoint determines the history, then we need to take a series of different endpoints and find a common ground in their histories.
3- Starting point: Each narrator begins his account at a point that interests him/her. Starting points of history are relative to the historian, making for different and inaccurate accounts of the same history.

Abu-Lughod for the remainder of the article refutes accounts that claim that "Europe's leap into modernity was achieved solely by its own strengths and virtues" (Abu-Lughod) and explains how this history was written.
There are two biases in the making of European historical accounts. The historians start with the present hegemony of the West as a predetermined outcome. And then they explain why this outcome happened. The two biases:
-The starting point they use makes the outcome inevitable. The year 1400 is the earliest starting point used. It is the earliest point when the rise of the West could have been predicted. Historians should start earlier, in the thirteenth century, when they can examine the outcome whereby the East fell. This account would explain that the East declined in power at the same time that Portugese men-of-war entered Eastern waters and eventually helped the West rise. Western scholars tend to begin too late and even then, they only consider partial accounts. They should work together with archivists and synthesizers to make increase the chances of a complete history instead of making partial histories. The archivists would research material and compile their findings which the synthesizers would use this research and produce accounts/narratives.
Synthesis happens at two levels: Socio-economic or intellectual histories of smaller regions and global histories of wider regions.
Histories written by the hegemony creators will natually hold biases towards the hegemonized. We tend to gravitate towards facts and accounts in our language, and pull out relevant facts that are relevant to us. We need to apply triangulation and include non-Western accounts in order to prevent biases.
An example Abu-Lughod brings up is that historical accounts of the fall of Rome are in binary opposition to accounts of the Rise of the West. They place the East as backward and undeveloped. If that had been true, the East would have been of no interest nor use to the West. We know, now, that historical evidence points to the contrary. She goes on to present numerous examples of the East's technological innovations that the West was simply not capable of producing at the time. She traces history back to the point where it was inevitable that the East was declining in the mid-fifteenth century. There was a vacuum of power in the Indian Ocean that the Portugese men-of-war filled- and that led to the rise of the West. At the end of her article, she predicts a new world hegemony about to arrive. Could it be the Pacific?

Robert Young on Colonialism and Imperialism

Robert Young reading
"POST COLONIALISM"
Reading Summary

• Even though the terms "colonialism" and "imperialism" are sometimes used synonymously, they are not the same. This is evident in the fact that we have "post colonial studies" but not "post imperial studies".
• Common factors between colonialism and imperialism:
• Both involve "forms of subjugation" by another.
• Domination
• Historically:
• Empires expand over one land mass...they grow out to conquer lands joined to them. Example: Chinese empire, empire of the Moors, Roman empire (which grew so large that it broke into two divisions- byzantine and holy roman)
• Sixteenth century water travel evolved and allowed Europe to build empires past the limits of the sea. Sea travel allowed geographical expansion as well as the ability of populations to stay in touch with their homeland.
• Empires became geographically incoherent. Eg: SPanish and Portugese empires in South/Central America. They extracted riches from the land and converted the indigenous people to Christianity.
• Spanish imperialism was based on Ottoman and Roman model- tribute structure.
• British Empire in North America was concerned about settlement and was colonial.

Imperial versus Colonial

Imperialism: "an empire that was bureaucratically controlled by a government from the center, and which was developed for ideological as well as financial reasons". Driven by ideology from a metropolitan center. Concerned with expansion of state power.

Colonialism: "an empire that was developed for settlement by individual communities or for commercial purposes by a trading company". Developed in an unorderly fashion on the periphery. Economically driven.

Imperialism was of two types- Roman, Ottoman and Spanish....and late nineteenth century Europe.

Colonialism was also of two types- Colonization aand Domination...or Dominions and Deprendencies...or Settlement (British North America, Australia, New Zealand, French Algeria) and Exploitation (American Philippines, Peurto Rico, British India, Dutch East Indies, French India, German Togo, Japanese Taiwan).

Colonies have two groups: the settled and the exploited. Today's former setttler colonies have two existances: they have freed themselves from colonialization of the mother country (Eg: US, Canada, Australia), and the settlers who went to those regions and ended up oppressing the indigenous peoples. Young calls them "persecuted minorities emigrating and then themselves persecuting minorities". Colonialism did not come without its share of geographical violence. The colonizers exterminated natives to take over the formerly occupied land. Also, the plantations on the land needed labor which came in the form of slaves taken from the native population.

As far as imperialism is concerned, the Spanish created the first European empire in the Americas. The British empire though, predated British Imperialism by several centuries. The word "imperialism" is a hybrid term; a political system of actual conquest and occupatoion, and a general system of economic domination. Imperialism consists of direct conquest through politcal and economic domination, and is ruled from the political center. Young's example of this power structure is the Pentagon and CIA in Washington. It is a dominating ideology.