ABSTRACT
Introduction The point of departure for defining “colonial modernity” in this chapter rests on two premises. The first is that modernity is a global phenomenon that came into being with the emergence of Europe’s overseas colonies and empires. The second is that the experience of modernity as colonial domination requires a close examination of local resistance to universalizing discourses, as “enlightened” as these may have been, in the extra-European world. This scrutiny is essential if we are to evaluate modernity as a more extensive phenomenon than the provincialism or chauvinism, for instance, with which Hegel remarks in his introduction to The Philosophy of History that “what takes place in America, is but an emanation from Europe” (hegel 2004, pp. 80-2).
