Institutional Background

Colonialism is on everyone's lips. All over Germany, exhibition and research projects as well as civil society initiatives are being carried out to address our country's colonial history. In Münster, for example, projects by the LWL and initiatives to rename streets are worth mentioning, as well as the name change of Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster to University of Münster, which was at least partly due to the colonial activities of its former namesake Wilhelm II. In a global comparison, Germany tends to be a “late bloomer” when it comes to dealing with its colonial past, although it has recently taken a rather prominent role in debates on the restitution of museum objects.

For decades now, the reappraisal of the colonial heritage has constituted a major global research focus. In some cases, this process of dealing with the past began already in the final phase of a great empire or directly followed political decolonization, like in the case of the partition of British India in 1947, the independence of Angola and Mozambique from the colonial power of Portugal in 1975, the independence of Zimbabwe from Great Britain in 1980, of Namibia from South Africa in 1990, and the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Other prominent examples are the highly controversial 500th anniversary celebrations of the conquest of America in 1992, the “Rhodes Must Fall” initiative in South Africa in 2015, and the toppling of the Colston statue in the UK in 2020. In the Caribbean island country of Barbados, the replacement of the British crown with its own president as head of state in 2021 is one of the most recent acts of political reappraisal in the history of the British Empire.

Numerous interventions by the USA in Latin America in the 20th century and, more recently, Russia's war against Ukraine show that the concept of empires, either as an “informal empire” or as a political and military concept, has by no means become obsolete.

The ongoing and still highly virulent process of coming to terms with the heritage of former empires as well as the struggles over their meaning follow a long tradition of research on empires - which has been given new impetus by the establishment of postcolonial studies, through debates on decolonization in the metropolises and on racism both inside and outside the research system.

Reason enough to establish a “Centre for Empire Studies: (Post)Colonial Histories and Global Entanglements”, which aims to contribute to international research, bring more objectivity to day-to-day political debates on empires and the colonial past, and enhance social self-awareness. The CES’ activities are not limited to examining the prehistory of imperial “ghosts” that currently haunt us. Rather, the members of the CES are committed to a systematic and varied historicization of the imperial concept, focusing on the modern empires from the 15th to the 21st centuries, but also taking into account the history of premodern empires as well as current questions in cultural history on how to deal with the colonial past. To achieve this, the categories and mindsets we apply to approach (historical) empires need to be analysed and constantly reviewed. Hence, a persistent self-reflection on whether the current categories of research on empires are shaped by imperial thinking themselves is key.