For a plural historical sociology of imperialism and colonialism

 

Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo*

*ICS, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. e-mail: mbjeronimo@ics.ul.pt

 

In the Preface to the much anticipated third volume of his magnum opus The Sources of Social Power: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890-1945, Michael Mann states that he felt the need to rectify the ‘neglect of the global empires created by the most advanced countries’ that the second volume revealed (Mann, 2012, p. vii). The importance of empires in the historical constitution of modern societies (and their forms of specialized knowledge¹) is undeniable, and its contemporary resonances are obvious, even if still downplayed by many disciplines. Defining empire ‘as a centralized, hierarchical system of rule acquired and maintained by coercion through which a core territory dominates peripheral territories, serves as the intermediary for their main interactions, and channels resources from and between the peripheries’, and recognizing imperialism as a ‘core feature of modernity’, Mann finally stresses their relevance to the understanding of modern and contemporary history, exploring their relation to and co-constitution with other major macro-historical actors and processes. As one of the major power organizations of human societies and as a specific type of ‘networks of interaction’, empires were crucial to multiple forms of globalization, defined as the polymorphous, competitive, and ‘plural extension of relations of ideological, economic, military, and political power across the world’.² The ‘globalization of multiple empires’ was one of the main historical institutional processes of ‘modern globalization’, alongside the ‘globalization of capitalism’ and the ‘globalization of nation-states’, generating its own contending ideologies (‘imperialism, anti-imperialism, and racism’).³

Like globalization, empires are also plural and require a multidimensional scrutiny, which can provide a combined, integrated use of metrocentric, pericentric, and international systemic scales of analysis and explanations. The exclusive focus on metropolitan processes, on local developments, or on international dynamics is insufficient. Only a combined approach enables a proper understanding of the multifaceted nature and manifestations of empire.⁴ This plurality entailed different forms of ideological, economic, military, and political power (Mann’s IEMP model) and involved various repertoires of imperial rule, with disparate natures and degrees of coercion, accurately understandable only through examinations with a solid empirical commitment. Accordingly, Mann (2013, p. 213) offers a typology of empires – from direct and indirect empires, which involve colonies, to informal ones, and to mere hegemony – and identifies, especially regarding the informal type, distinct modalities of exerting authority and enacting coercion that characterize similar forms of power organization and relation. A ‘descending hierarchy of domination’ is therefore outlined. The ideal-type of informal empire entails several subtypes in which we can appreciate the plurality of forms of coercion that mark imperial connections and interactions: informal ‘gunboat’ empire, informal empire through proxies, and economic imperialism. The latter is a distinctive feature of modern empires (given the efficiency of capitalism in integrating core and peripheral economies). While stressing the variety of forms and repertoires of imperial rule and coercion, Mann also emphasizes the fact that empires typically embrace several of those forms and repertoires, being a result of multiple combinations or ‘impure mixtures’ of social power as well.⁵

More than offering a rigid model to promote simplistic, ready-made formulae and assessments of imperial formations, Mann’s purpose is, as it tended to be throughout his career, to offer a rich and balanced historical and empirical account of ‘globalization imperially fractured’.⁶ As the ‘incurable empiricist’ he constantly proclaims and demonstrates to be, his take on global historical empires abstains from proposing grand and overambitious typological, nomological, and evolutionary accounts. The practitioners of the rise and fall models and the advocates of general models and analysis of social change will have to look elsewhere.⁷ As an ‘analytical historian’, as John Hall provocatively labels him, his approach to the plural manifestations of the imperial phenomena refuses to be captured by particularistic and ideographic narratives of great individuals, insulated societies, or single historical events.⁸ As an important representative of a weberian historical sociology, Mann emphasizes the analytical principles of multi-causality (the existence and impact of plural, partially autonomous, interdependent power sources: e.g. Mann’s IEMP model) and multi-spatiality (the connection and co-constitution of plural, interdependent spatial dimensions: e.g. Mann’s statement that national and international societies are ‘constituted of multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power’), and stresses, without failing to recognize the importance of Weber’s switchman metaphor, the role of circumstantial, fortuitous transformations and of unintended influences promoted by the interplay between power forces in disparate scales and geographies. Mann’s endorsement of ­Gellner’s gatekeeper model of human progress (used especially to account for the nature of European historical trajectory), his notion of ‘patterned mess’ and his refusal of evolutionary, functional, and teleological historical assessments are particularly important in order to understand his overall historical-sociological approach, adding up to his rejection of an ultimate primacy of any of the four sources of social power and his defense of a combined, interconnected approach to their specific and relative nature and functioning.⁹

All these analytical and methodological principles must also be dominant in a comparative historical sociology of imperialism and colonialism. Although focused on the cases of the British, the United States, and the Japanese empires¹⁰, the third volume of The Sources of Social Power offers an important contribution to this paramount collective intellectual enterprise, advocating a global exploration of the influences, causes, motivations, and plural sources and dynamics of power relations that conditioned these imperial polities. A plural historical sociology of Portuguese imperialism and colonialism is yet to be done.¹¹

 

REFERENCES

 

BAYLY, C. (2002), “‘Archaic’ and ‘Modern’ globalization in the Eurasian and African arena, c. 1750-1850”. In A.G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History, London, Pimlico, pp. 47-68.         [ Links ]

BRYANT, J. (2006), “Grand, yet grounded: ontology, theory, and method in Michael Mann’s historical sociology”. In J.A. Hall and R. Schroeder (eds.), An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 71-97.         [ Links ]

COOPER, F., BURBANK, J. (2010), Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, Princeton University Press.         [ Links ]

DOYLE, M. (1986), Empires, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.         [ Links ]

GELLNER, E. (ed.) (1980), Soviet and Western Anthropology, London, Duckworth.         [ Links ]

HALL, J.A. (2006), “Political questions”. In J.A. Hall and R. Schroeder (eds.), An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 33-55.         [ Links ]

HOBDEN, S. (1998), International Relations and Historical Sociology: Breaking Down Boundaries, London, Routledge, pp. 117-141.         [ Links ]

HOBSON, J.M. (1998), The Historical Sociology of the State and the State of Historical Sociology in International Relations”. Review of International Political Economy, 5 (2), pp. 284-320.         [ Links ]

JERÓNIMO, M.B. (2011), “A escrita plural dos impérios: economia, geopolítica e religião na obra de Andrew Porter”. In A. Porter, O Imperialismo Europeu, 1860-1914, Lisbon, Edições 70, Coleção História & Sociedade, pp. 7-67.         [ Links ]

JERÓNIMO, M.B. (ed.) (2012), O Império Colonial em Questão, Lisbon, Edições 70.         [ Links ]

JERÓNIMO, M.B. (forthcoming 2014), “Visões Globais. A imaginacão política dos Estados-império”. In D.R. Curto (ed.), Globalização, Lisbon, Edições Almedina.         [ Links ]

LONG, D., SCHMIDT, B.C. (eds.) (2005), Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations, New York, State University of New York.         [ Links ]

MAGEE, G.B., THOMPSON, A.S. (2010), Empire and Globalization: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c. 1850–1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (1986), The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power From the Beginning to AD 1760, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (1991), “The uses of History in Sociology: reflections on some recent tendencies”. British Journal of Sociology, 42 (2), pp. 211-230.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (1993), The Sources of Social Power: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (1994), “In praise of Macro-Sociology: A reply to Goldthorpe”. The British Journal of Sociology, 45 (1), pp. 37-54.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (2003), Incoherent Empire, London, Verso.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (2004), “The failed empire of the 21^st century”. Review of International Studies, 30, pp. 631-653.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (2008), “American empires: Past and present”. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 45 (1), pp. 7-50.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (2012), The Sources of Social Power: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890-1945, ­Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.         [ Links ]

MANN, M. (2013), “The recent intensification of American economic and military imperialism: are they connected?”. In G. Steinmetz (ed.), Sociology and Empire. The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline, Duke University Press, pp. 213-244.         [ Links ]

REUS-SMIT, C. (2002), “The idea of History and History with ideas”. In J.M. Hobson and S. Hobden (ed.), Historical Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 120-140.         [ Links ]

STEINMETZ, G. (ed.) (2013), Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline, Durham, London, Duke University Press.         [ Links ]

 

NOTAS

¹ The study of imperial formations is, or should be, inextricably linked to the study of the forms of specialized knowledge (especially the human and social sciences) that presided over their formation and historical evolution. This argument is developed in Miguel Bandeira ­Jerónimo (2014). For some examples regarding specific disciplines, not including the traditional examples of geography and anthropology, see David Long and Brian C. Schmidt (eds.) (2005) and Georges Steinmetz (ed.) (2013).

²  Ibid, p. 17. The fourth volume of Mann’s The Sources of Social Power is entitled Globalizations.

³ Ibid, pp. 1-2, 17. For an excellent analysis of the connection between globalization and empires see, for instance, Christopher Bayly (2002, pp. 47-68) and Gary B. Magee and Andrew S. Thompson (2010).

⁴ See Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (2011, pp. 7-67). For an example of a collective effort to stress the polymorphous nature and modus operandi of the “third” Portuguese colonial empire, see Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (ed.) (2012). See also Michael Doyle, Empires (1986), which Mann cites as a reference for the need to integrate approaches, levels of analysis, and explanations.

⁵ Mann’s (2008, pp. 9-13) early typological attempt in “American Empires: Past and Present”, is replicated in The Sources of Social Power: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890-1945, pp. 18-22. For the notion of repertoires of imperial rule see Frederick Cooper and Jane Burbank (2010, pp. 3-8; 16-17).

⁶ The title of the first chapter of The Sources of Social Power: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890-1945, pp. 17-57.

⁷ See, for instance, his remarks apropos the criticism of John Goldthorpe regarding historical sociology (Mann, 1991, 1994). For a rich analysis of Mann’s methodological and analytical frameworks see Joseph Bryant (2006).

⁸ John A. Hall (2006, p. 52, footnote 3).

⁹ See John M. Hobson (1998). For a criticism of the materialist and rationalist nature of the multicausality principle of neo-weberian wave in historical sociology, that precludes ideas and cultural dimensions from the analysis of interest formation, see Chris Reus-Smit (2002). For a critical analysis of Mann’s contribution to the strengthening of the relationship between ­Historical Sociology and International Relations, see Stephen Hobden (1998). See also Mann’s The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (1986, p. 1); ibid, The Sources of Social Power: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (Mann, 1993, chapter 1); and Ernest Gellner (1980, pp. 73-80).

¹⁰ As Adam Tooze indicates, Tsarist Russia’s near absence is noticeable. Adam Tooze (2013, esp. pp. 133-134).

¹¹ For the US empire, alongside the already mentioned “American Empires: Past and Present”, see also Michael Mann (2003; 2004).