The project, consisting of two parts, examines the role of emotions in twentieth-century colonial conflicts.
The first part focuses on Western Europe between 1905 and 1945. During this period, a large number of anti-colonialists from various territories of the British and French Empires were active in Britain, France, and Germany. To an increasing extent, they were put under surveillance by pro-colonial governments and police institutions. This contributed in a decisive way to the creation of transnational networks across inner-European borders. In order to escape surveillance, many anti-colonialists fled from the center of “their” colonial empire into other European countries. This, in turn, led numerous European governments to exchange information about the anti-colonialists, and to try to cooperate in keeping these activists under control. The project investigates how this two-fold development towards a greater extent of transnational connections was influenced by emotions. In this context, it examines the importance of “affective communities” among European and non-European anti-colonialists, and studies the role of trust in the creation, maintenance, and surveillance of anti-colonial contacts across national borders. In addition, the project asks how the profound fears of subversion among the colonial authorities, which often developed into forms of paranoia, shaped the interpretation of, and the fight against, anti-colonial activities in Europe. Finally, the project analyses how anti-colonialists used the European press for their own purposes by publicly appealing to collective emotions such as pride in national sovereignty in order to protect themselves from a potential extradition.
The second part of the project investigates the role of honor and dignity in twentieth-century colonial conflicts in Europe as well as in the colonies. In particular, it examines how strategies of shaming and ridicule were used in order to buttress or undermine colonial hierarchies. The project explores how Europeans tried to caricature the indigenous people of the colonies through racist texts and graphical materials, in order to represent them as harmless and devoid of dignity. At the same time, the project shows that anti-colonialists used similar communicative strategies to call into question the honor and dignity of colonial authorities. In this context, the project discusses anti-colonial humorous texts and caricatures as well as the role of insults and irony in everyday interactions and communications between colonial masters and colonial subjects.
