This chapter begins with the concepts of colonialism and imperialism, their ideological content and their association with power and control, domination and subordination as well as with a ‘civilizing process’. It goes on to examine early (European) colonizing activities in Oceania, all of which have shaped the region in one way or another, and then the quest to establish a ‘British Oceania’, pursued largely by colonists in Australia and New Zealand. This is followed by discussion of the Western Pacific High Commission, established initially as a means of controlling the behaviour of British subjects in the region. The last section highlights the fact that although the idea of a ‘Pacific World’ arose in the later colonial period, the persistence of imperial rivalries in the region until well into the twentieth century ensured that it remained a rather incoherent one.

The “civilizing mission” gave the French their most coherent explanation of empire since mercantilism. The Third Republic would return France to the front rank of Great Powers through an expanding empire rooted in republican values and capitalist economic development. Evolving race theory provided new means of legitimizing hierarchical difference. Settler republicanism deepened its roots in Algeria, even as European immigration began to decline. The republican imperial agenda dovetailed conveniently with geopolitics in the “scramble for Africa,” leading to the formation of two colonial federations, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, each much larger than the Hexagon itself. The agents of republican empire were largely the same as previous incarnations—colonial officials, military officers, missionaries, and capitalists. The “civilizing mission” produced varied results, not least because of the parsimony of the bourgeois regime. Republican schools trained both collaborators and future anti-colonial and postcolonial elites. Railroads built at a horrendous cost in blood and indigenous treasure unified parts of the empire. In the Indochinese Union, the French sought to construct a gateway to influence in Asia that would rival that of British India. Through a state-driven regime of extraction, the Indochinese Union became financially self-sustaining.

Chapter 1 explains why colonial lobbyists founded the ICI in 1893 and why over 200 colonial experts from thirteen countries joined the ICI during a period of tense imperial rivalry. Their internationalist efforts were in the context of severe criticism of colonialism in the 1890s due to losing money for colonizing countries. After non-governmental colonial interest groups initiatied the ICI, governments and colonial administrations soon started funding it. They thus showed their esteem for its transnational agenda, which promised a quick and cheap economic development of overseas possessions. While in the early period of the ICI’s existence, emulation of other colonial powers still aimed at nationalist competition, colonial experts learned quickly how to capitalize on superior colonial methods developed through transnational exchange. Unveiling this transnational cooperation, this chapter shows how the ICI marginalized the nationalist branches of the colonial movements in Europe and even took diplomatic action to prevent colonial powers from going to war, which would pose a threat to their colonial project. Ultimately, most colonial experts turned to colonial internationalism to save the colonial project that earned them a living. By 1914, most colonizing countries brought their policies in line with the best practice propagated by the ICI.

This book argues that the problems of genocide are as much conceptual as empirical: that the crowning of genocide as “crime of crimes” depoliticizes the language of transgression; and that depoliticization means screening out how genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the wanton infliction of collateral damage are driven by the permanent security imperatives of states and political movements seeking to found states. As a consequence, the connections between the postwar order of nation-states, the violence with which they were founded, and the international legal order are largely hidden from view. However, the appeal of making the world “safe for democracy” and “saving strangers” in the name of humanity has waned with the election of populist nationalists who express disdain for “globalism” and emphasize national security. Even so, whether in the name of an “international rules-based order” or making one’s country “great again,” US geopolitical domination is the enduring imperative that drives the permanent securitization of subaltern actors that challenge liberal empire.

This chapter looks at the history of prostration in Thailand. The practice appears to have been adopted from the Angkorean Empire of the Khmers and was used at the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. It examines the modes of etiquette that were required in royal audiences for both Thais and foreign visitors. The chapter argues that by the nineteenth century Europeans regarded such practices as slavish and 'uncivilized'. This led, in 1873, to the young new king, Chulalongkorn, issuing a famous edict abolishing the custom of prostration and replacing it with European modes of paying respect such as bowing. But while in public functions involving Europeans the new modes of paying respect were observed, privately the custom of prostration before one’s superiors continued with little change.

The nineteenth century infatuation with opera by residents of Izmir, Istanbul, and Thessaloniki is grounded mainly in their attempt to take part in a global "civilizing mission." The middle classes and the administration intended but often failed to educate the lower classes to properly behavior during theater performances, refraining from smoking, eating, unpleasant bodily movements or ill-timed displays of veneration. Nonetheless, all these and also violence were not uncommon at the opera house. Moreover, opera aficionados wishes for a "one world" of global stage entertainment, for a cultural exchange with Western and Central Europe. Unfortunately, Western interest in Eastern music and narratives came to an end in the 1820s, whereas Eastern interest in Western performances gained momentum later.

Enlightenment philosophy introduced the notion that social evolution and progress resulted from scientific inquiry and technological advancements. This view evolved out of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment idea that all societies progressed in a linear fashion toward modernity, the pinnacle of which was European civilization. In this construction “modern” or “progressive” societies were those that mimicked European cultural, social, economic, and political structures. Western missionaries’ efforts in the nineteenth century to bring “Christianity, commerce and civilization” set in motion a progressive ideology that led to modern development practice in Africa. These three words captured the Enlightenment ideology of social progress, the capitalism of the Industrial Revolution, and the mating of Christian doctrine with secular social Darwinian ideas. By defining poverty as a lack of access to capitalist systems “modern” societies defined any cultures not fully participating in capitalism as poor. These concepts are the bedrock of modern development theory. They presume that Western civilization is the highest form of social development, that all societies must progress in a linear fashion to attain this status, and that development will come through an economic transformation that will reshape social and cultural aspects of societies.