ABSTRACT
Colonial rule developed in a far messier and more contingent way than our sense of the globe at the height of colonial dominance (in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) allows. This means that our models of early modern European colonial conquest (and discourse) will be different from those derived from the study of later imperial rule, which tended to be more hegemonic, and to repress its connections with the cultures of the colonized. To take a single instance: while military violence, and advanced technologies of warfare (including shipbuilding and navigational methods), were essential to colonial dominance, early merchant adventurers and companies often extended their spheres of influence by offering their services to native rulers and by complementing (rather than immediately demolishing) pre-existing local structures of power and exploitation. Thus when we think of the penetration of the globe by European manpower and capital, we need to be attentive to local histories as much as to imperial mentalities—to understand, for instance, how soldiers in colonial armies were recruited and how they functioned, as well as what their officers thought and did in their efforts to consolidate colonial power.
