Colonialism and violence: Alleged transfers and political instrumentalisation

After the Enlightenment colonialism and imperialism were criticised above all by those who distinguished them from »legitimate« forms of violence such as war and conquest and in these cases there was always a political objective behind it. One of the arguments behind this criticism was that the transfer involved an especially disruptive form of violence, either from the centre to the colonies in the form of modern warfare, diseases and disruption of the social order or from the colonies to the core in the form of soldiers, »Oriental despotism« and money, which changed social and economic conditions at home. What links both examples discussed here is the inward direction of their argumentation. In both debates the ostensible transfer of techniques of rule was seen as something threatening, and the concept of violence applied to the examples implies that somebody was »perpetrating violence« against their own mother country.