The mounting internationalisation of African affairs, since the late nineteenth-century, entailed a significant escalation of the critical assessments of the modi operandi of European colonialism, in Africa and elsewhere. Its “civilised savagery” was increasingly under scrutiny. Exploring some significant cases related to specific imperial and colonial contexts by the turn of the century – from the well-known case of the État Indépendant du Congo to the one of Angola and São Tomé, less studied and understood – this lecture aims to offer an analysis of the central role played by photography in this process. As a document and as a proof, photography was fundamental to the authentication of indignation regarding imperial inequalities and colonial abuses and atrocities, for instance those associated with new slaveries. It was a powerful political, social, economic and, naturally, moral instrument – with many uses, by diverse actors, and with countless ends –, shaping the debates about the legitimacy of colonialism and constraining the formulation of its politics and policies, from labour to welfare, among other aspects.
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (PhD King’s College London, 2008) is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Coimbra (Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of History, European Studies, Archaeology, and Arts) and a Researcher at the Centre for the History of Society and Culture (CHSC), University of Coimbra, Portugal. His research interests focus on comparative and connected histories of imperialism, colonialism, and internationalism (XIX-XX centuries). Recently, he has been working on forms of repressive developmentalism in late colonial Africa and on international and interimperial organisations since 1945. Among other publications, in several publishers and journals of reference, he authored The ‘Civilizing Mission’ of Portuguese Colonialism (c.1870–1930) (2015) and co-edited Internationalism, Imperialism and the Formation of the Contemporary World (2017), Resistance and Colonialism. Insurgent Peoples in World History (2019), Education and Development in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (2020), Visões do Império (2021) and Colonial Echoes (2023). He recently edited Os Mundos do (Sub)Desenvolvimento (2023). He coordinates The worlds of (under)development: processes and legacies of the Portuguese colonial empire in a comparative perspective (1945-1975) and co-coordinates Humanity Internationalized: Cases, dynamics, comparisons (1945-1980), two international research projects funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.
Chair: Kirsten Rüther
Tuesday, 14th November 2023, 5:15 pm
Department of African Studies - Seminar room 1
University Campus, court 5.1., Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna
afrika@univie.ac.at, afrika.univie.ac.at
