An Interview 権力行使としての帝国

Empire as a Practice of Power: An Interview 権力行使としての帝国

Partha Chatterjee, Ayça Çubukçu

subjects. Partha Chatterjee's The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power (Princeton, 2012) follows the ever- changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India.

Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, examining the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history Empire is an Inseparable Part of Modern of the modern state. Political Theory

When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial

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World History. In any case, I have tried to do something that is not very easily done, namely, combine within the same text a narrative history alongside a serious engagement with the history of a concept. The usual way of approaching the latter problem would have been to place the modern concept of empire within a frame of intellectual history. But I have been concerned in this book to deal with empire as a practice rather than merely as a concept. Hence, I needed to take the discussion out of a strictly intellectual history framework and instead show how conceptual changes were connected to actual practices of power in imperial settings and also of resistance to empire. I chose to do this by picking the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta as the narrative spine of the book.

In each chapter, I move away from this evolving story to pick out instances of discursive shifts as well as shifts in the techniques of imperial power, only to return to a new episode in the Black Hole story and what was happening in and around the fort in Calcutta. That is the craft. I suppose I have Black Hole Memorial restored by Lord employed narrative techniques I have learnt Curzon from literature and the theatre, but that is the privilege one enjoys when one writes narrative history instead of theoretical social science. But Introduction: The Legitimation of Imperial Practices I have also done something that I learnt while doing Subaltern Studies—namely, to Ayça Çubukçu: How would you describe the interrogate in theoretical terms the elements of field and the genre which The Black Hole of popular culture. Hence, I was able to connect Empire fits, or else, wishes to inspire? What is the theoretical foundations of imperial policy the craft you practiced when writing The Black and anti-imperial politics with the everyday Hole? Is this a book in Anthropology and Asian forms of mass culture. No intellectual historian Studies as the Princeton University Press would consider the popular theatre or football catalogue claims? as subjects of serious study. But I have tried to show that they were as effective historical Partha Chatterjee: This is like asking a forces as—who knows, perhaps more effective magician to reveal his tricks. But actually that than—the writings and speeches of intellectuals is not a good analogy, because there are no and political leaders. secrets behind my craft. Is this a book in Asian Studies? Yes, it is. Is this a book inÇubukçu: “This book,” your preface declares, Anthropology? I am not sure. But I would “braids two histories: a little history and a certainly claim that it is a book on Modern grand one.” The little history is local, tracing

2 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF the career of the English East India Company’s conceptual changes in those disciplinary fortified settlement in Bengal from theknowledges of power. That is my method. To a eighteenth century, while the grand history is large extent, I had to invent it. Whether it global, following the phenomenon of modern works or not is for readers like you to judge. empire from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. How would you characterize the “method” which governed the way you braided these two histories? How does one write a History of a Global Practice of Power, as your book’s subtitle has it?

Chatterjee: Let me elaborate on my answer to your first question. The two histories actually require two different methods. For the first, I could have written a straightforward political history of the colonial city of Calcutta, beginning with the fortified British settlement in the early eighteenth century, Siraj’s attack on the fort, the British reconquest and founding of the empire in India, the emergence of Calcutta as the capital city of the British empire and the centre of colonial capitalism, all the way to nationalism and the end of British rule. This political history has been already written by others. And as for the second, I could have done a conceptual history of modern empire—an old subject of intellectual history. But I wanted to bring them together into the same discursive space through a focus on the practices of empire. Hence the braiding of the English officers in the Black Hole two histories. But I had to be selective on both sides, since every switch from one register to Çubukçu: In a memorable formulation, you the other required a discursive shift. To try to observe that “modern empire was not an do both histories in the conventional way in the aberrant supplement to the history of same book would have been utterlymodernity but rather its constituent part,” and unmanageable—in fact, impossible. So Ithat “it will continue to thrive as long as the narrowed down the local political history to the practices of the modern state-form remain history of the Black Hole story and Fort unchanged.” Why is this the case? What is it William. On the other side, I moved selectively about the modern state-form, which lends itself through the historiography of British India, the to empire? history of Western political theory and political economy, of international law and international Chatterjee: This is a claim I could only have institutions, insofar as they had a bearing on supported by explicitly making the connection the evolution of actual practices of empire. My between the two histories, not otherwise. The attempt was to show that while many of my field of imperial history (even, I would suggest, narratives of actual practices were local, they the revisionist “new imperial history”) has had a strong relationship with evolvingdefined itself as a special subject separate from

3 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF the history of the modern state which is a wants to disavow empire. narrative supplement to the history of modern political theory—a classic field of intellectual Çubukçu: Offering a typology of European history. I have discussed this in myoverseas empires, you distinguish between book Lineages of Political Society (2011). The three kinds—white settler colonies, plantation fundamental claim of imperial history is that colonies, and Oriental colonies—to argue that the problems encountered in overseas colonies colonies of the Oriental kind posed were of a special kind that required pragmatic, unprecedented conceptual problems for on-the-spot solutions that, even though they (imperial) political thought in the late were often rationalized and packaged in eighteenth century. What was so particular theoretical terms for consumption in the about Oriental colonies? How do the metropolis, lacked a proper grounding in “conceptual problems” that materialized theoretical knowledge. In other words, what through the Haitian Revolution in a plantation imperial historians claim is that there really colony of revolutionary France, for example, can be no theoretical history of empire. The compare with those addressed by British rule in exception to this is, of course, the Marxist India? tradition of the history of imperialism. But that has been bound to the twentieth-century Chatterjee: It is interesting that you raise the history of finance capital, which is a rather question of the Haitian Revolution in this specific history if you want to think of modern context. The Haitian Revolution actually empire as going back at least to the beginning produced, I think, the first postcolonial of the nineteenth century, if not earlier. condition in our contemporary sense, as my friend Michel-Rolph Trouillot (who, sadly, So my answer was to find a way of tying passed away recently) tried to suggest. modern empire as a history of actual practices Because the revolt of African slaves and to its history as a concept. I found a way of freemen at the turn of the nineteenth century doing this through my braiding of the two in a French Caribbean colony was a very histories—one a local history of imperial and different thing from the revolution of white anti-imperial practices and the other asettlers in British North America or the Creole conceptual history firmly located within the revolutions in South America. The latter were history of the modern state, namely, in the seeking to create political conditions inspired disciplines of political theory, politicalby the most modern European political thought economy, international law and sometimes of the time. They had no place in their scheme anthropology. I try to show that what imperial of things for the political institutions or powers do in their colonies have everything to practices of Native Americans and certainly not do with what they think they are as modern those of their African slaves. The failure of the European nation-states. Not only that, what Haitian Revolution made the subsequent anti-colonial movements do against empires history of that country utterly marginal to the also have everything to do with what they think history of the Americas. But things had to they want to create as new sovereign nation- unfold very differently in the European states. Empire, as I say, is immanent in the overseas empires in the East. For reasons of nation-state. This is not merely a happenstance, the sheer size, complexity and density of their a matter of historical chance. It is inherent in presence, the institutions and practices of the the modern conceptualization of state power. defeated peoples of the Asian colonies could Empire is a fundamental part of modern not be simply swept aside. They had to be political theory, even, as I try to show in my incorporated within the ruling structure of the last chapter, in our present era when everyone European empires in Asia and later in Africa –

4 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF whether Dutch or British or French (I am dates. Further, I have distinguished between leaving aside the Portuguese colonies because two different early modern tendencies: the they present somewhat peculiar problems for absolutist and the anti-absolutist. The the history of modern European empire). This absolutist tendency I trace through the is what I was referring to when I said that eighteenth century, culminating in Tipu Sultan. conventional imperial history wants to treat Tipu’s military defeat marks, I think, the this subject as distant and more or less historical end of this tendency. But it remains a unrelated to the history of the modernsuppressed discourse that is revived in late European state, because so much of its actual nineteenth-century nationalism when the material seems to be neither European nor connection is made by Indian writers through modern. But my claim is that it is actually an the economic theories of the German historical inseparable part of the history of the modern school between national sovereignty and state because the techniques that wereeconomic independence. I think Tipu’s developed to rule over these empires were memorialisation after independence has a lot to thought out within the modern fields of do with state-led industrialization as the disciplinary knowledge such as political theory, hallmark of national sovereignty. On the other political economy and international law, not to hand, the anti-absolutist early modern speak of anthropology which, of course,represented by Rammohan Roy is very similar became a classic colonial discipline. to the republicanism of the American revolutions. There was a large element there of Empire as ideology and as technique the championing of the rights of the British subject to representation in government Ayça Çubukçu: In contradistinction to (republicanism in the English sense did not nationalist projects that would be fashioned necessarily mean the elimination of the during the colonial modern, in a formation you monarchy as in the French Revolution: distinguish as the early modern, various Rammohan, for example, was very careful in “native” figures in British India—among them both displaying and hiding his sympathies on Rammohan—were campaigning for liberty and this matter). The question was, once more, a equality as subjects of the British Crown, with a peculiar one in the Eastern colony. The Native certain kind of faith in the emancipating American and African were not part of the mission of British rule. What is the significance republican nation in revolutionary America. of such early modern imaginaries of political Could the Indian be an equal part of the body of community, which you observe to have been British subjects seeking representation in “doomed”? Why do they resist attempts to India? Rammohan thought so. His British subsume them in nationalist historiographies of friends did not. That was the end of the anti- modernity? absolutist early modern: it lasted for perhaps thirty years or so in the early nineteenth Partha Chatterjee: I think I have advanced century. But once again, its memory was here a quite novel idea as far as the existing revived in late nineteenth- and twentieth- historiography goes. I have been careful to century nationalism. The question here was not define the term “early modern” as precisely as sovereignty but the quality of government—the possible. It is not quite a period with exact classic liberal question posed by utilitarians dates. I have preferred to talk about the early like Bentham and James Mill. No matter who modern in the domain of the political, leaving rules, what would the government be like? This aside the possibility of the early modern in the was the question raised by liberal nationalists domains of literature or art, for instance, which in the twentieth century when they were might have quite different characteristics and thinking of a new constitution for independent

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India. They wanted to trace a lineage to deviant countries as requiring policies based on Rammohan. But actually there is no continuous the suspension of the universally desirable history of liberalism from Rammohan to the norm—declaring the colonial exception. The Indian constitution of 1950. That is a problem norm-deviation empirical knowledge thus that nationalist historiography will never became the ground for the norm-exception manage to resolve. policy prescription. The history of colonial government is replete with examples. Thus, Çubukçu: You argue that a new paradigm in freedom of speech might be the universally justificatory logics of empire—based on the desirable norm but a fanatical people easily global, comparative, and normative theory of aroused to violence might require stringent government inaugurated by Bentham—became controls on public speech. Public health established by the mid-nineteenth century. You policies should normally elicit voluntary also suggest that this nineteenth century compliance, but for a people with rigid and paradigm continues to frame, “right down to backward cultural practices, forcible the present day,” the legitimation of imperial compliance may be necessary. Free mobility of practices. What accounts for this paradigmatic capital and labour may be the desirable norm shift and the leading role you accord in it to for good economic policy but a tribal society Bentham’s social and political thought? unfamiliar with commercial practices might require a government policy that prohibits Chatterjee: I think the crucial step that outsiders from doing business in that area. Bentham took was to conceptually open up the Most generally, the universally valid liberal entire field of government everywhere in the norm was representative government, but for world, no matter where and in what kind of countries that were empirically found to be society, to comparative evaluation. This was socially backward, there had to be an radically different from the kinds ofexception: the best exceptional form was comparisons made in the eighteenth century by enlightened despotism. I think this structure of Montesquieu, for instance. Bentham found the thinking remains in place even today, long after key to comparison in the common measure of the old colonial empires have disappeared. utility. This made possible the normalization of government everywhere—to measure them Çubukçu: According to the definition of against a common norm. It also allowed for modern empire you offer, the“ imperial evaluating governments by the consequences of prerogative lies, one could say, in the claim to policy rather than by asking “who rules.” In declare the colonial exception” (original other words, the utility-based consequentialist emphasis). How does this conceptualization of comparison separated sovereignty fromthe imperial prerogative differ from the government. Needless to say, this provided a sovereign prerogative as conceptualized by completely new justificatory basis to modern Carl Schmitt? To pose the question more empire. The question now became not “who abstractly, what is the difference between a rules” but “who rules better.” I also show how, modern empire and a modern state—say, with through the nineteenth and twentieth century, “minorities”? You emphasize that the concept what was only implicit in Bentham wasof modern empire is limited to “the domain of explicated and elaborated, namely, theinternational relations” (original emphasis) and implications of the two senses of the norm. The that “instances of declaring the exception norm as the empirical mean or average ranked within contexts that are taken to belong to the countries as deviations from the norm—as sphere of the domestic politics of states are higher or lower than the average. The norm as not, in this sense, colonial-imperial.” But whose the normatively desirable could then designate “take” is to count here? In effect, doesn’t the

6 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF latter emphasis reinstate the problem, which system is the formally equal sovereignty of all involves the very difficulty of establishing, as a nation-states, even if the actual boundaries of matter of fact and law, what is a “domestic” states may be contested or redefined. matter, and what is not? Now, there will still remain open questions Chatterjee: Schmitt’s idea of exception lies at about how the boundary between the the heart of modern Western constitutional international and the domestic is to be drawn. I states (Schmitt had no qualms in declaring that can see that you are thinking of current non-Western countries did not have proper debates about intervention. The crucial constitutional states at all). He argued that in question is: does the conceptual ground of order to protect the very existence of the state, equal sovereignty provide a criterion for normal constitutional procedures would have to judging what is legitimate intervention and be suspended in an emergency: the state of what is not? This is disputed. The most radical exception was implied in the very founding of challenge is posed by those who question the the constitution. The colonial exception is quite very idea of national sovereignty today. In different. It is the suspension of a global norm terms of the history I have presented, this in the exceptional circumstances of anchallenge goes against the historical trend laid empirically deviant country. It could mean, for down by the anti-colonial movements and harks instance, a normal condition of absolutism or back to the consequentialist criterion despotism (colonial rule by others, military suggested by utilitarian imperialism, namely, dictatorship, authoritarian rule), not the“who rules better” rather than “who rules.” exceptional suspension of an otherwise extant The Legitimation of Imperial Practices constitution. The colonial exception is declared from outside the constituted state, not from Ayça Çubukçu: Considering the impressive within, and is justified by the need to rule common ground shared by what you better. differentiate as liberal and antiliberal ideologies of empire, why would it be incorrect As for your second question, my argument to interpret what you name ananti -liberal applies only to recent history when the nation- ideology of empire as an articulation internal to state has become recognized as the universal liberal imperialism? What are your criteria for normal form of the modern state. The distinguishing between liberal and antiliberal assumption is that on the ground ofideologies of empire on the one hand, and sovereignty, all nation-states are formally “techniques” and “ideologies” of imperial equal. This is the current foundation ofpractice, on the other? international law and international organizations. The exact conceptual equivalent Partha Chatterjee: I think the distinction is the idea of formally equal citizenship within between ideology and technique is important in the modern state. Now, of course there are order not to dismiss or misunderstand the very contestations over how nation-states are real debates that took place within the field of currently defined, who falls within them and imperial policy. The fights, for instance, who doesn’t, whether their borders should be between Gladstonian liberals and conservatives defined differently, and so on. But then there like Stephen and Maine in late nineteenth- are contestations over equal citizenshipcentury Britain were very serious, affecting too—and still the idea of equal citizenship as domestic party politics, the pace of institutional the foundation of popular sovereignty of the changes in the colonies as well as debates and state remains intact. Similarly, my argument is alliances among anti-colonial nationalists. For a that the foundation of our present states historian, it would be a bad mistake to simply

7 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF ignore the distinction by saying that they are members of the family of nations but two sides of the same coin. What the distinction subsequently regarding them as subordinate between technique and ideology achieves is the powers, not fully sovereign, and therefore separation between actual practices and their subject to British policy rather than justification. By the nineteenth century,international law. The new Indian state took imperial policies had to be justified before over the idea that international law did not several publics. The grounds were often apply to the various Indian princes who were ideological, since they became entangled with under British protection. Hence, when the ruler party politics and international diplomatic of Kashmir asked for Indian military assistance alliances, even though every side tried to find when raiders from Pakistan attacked his state, “scientific” arguments based on empirical the Indian government insisted that he first knowledge in the various disciplines. But even sign the agreement of accession to India before when the justifications differed, the techniques Indian troops and planes would be sent. Thus, were from a repertoire available to all. It is the Indian state’s position would be that it was interesting to note (as I do in the book) that taking action to protect a part of India’s even though the Indian nationalist leaders at sovereign territory. And when the ruler of the time of independence in 1947 were fervent Hyderabad refused for more than a year to join anti-imperialists, that did not stop them from India, Indian forces simply moved in and took using some of the same techniques of power over the territory. used by the British, such as, for instance, in the integration of the princely states into the new But from these facts it would be a mistake to nation-state, even using armed force in the conclude that the post-colonial Indian state was case of Hyderabad and Kashmir. This is an imperialist in the same way that the British had important finding, but it only confuses things if been. (This is a trap into which even Perry one simply concludes that the IndianAnderson has fallen in his recent review essays nationalists were every bit as imperialist as the in the London Review of Books.) The British. justifications for its actions were completely different. First, it would say that the Indian Çubukçu: Are you suggesting that in forcing princes were remnants of an old monarchical Hyderabad and Kashmir into the domestic order propped up by the British for their own realm of their new nation-state, Indianpurposes; they had no place in the new nationalists were acting as imperialistsrepublican order of post-colonial India. Second, technically, but not ideologically? I ask this it would say that organized popular movements question of clarification in reference, once within the princely states were against the old again, to your distinction between imperial monarchies and in favour of joining the larger “techniques” and “ideologies” on the one hand, political space of the Indian nation. This was and your definitional assertion that thefactually true for some of the princely states, “domestic” politics of states cannot bethough not all. In Hyderabad, the most considered colonial-imperial, on the other. powerful mass movement was led by the Communists in Telangana. After the Indian Chatterjee: Yes, the distinction would allow army occupied Hyderabad, the Communists for an accurate but nevertheless critical suspended the movement, surrendered arms evaluation of the Indian government's actions. and joined parliamentary politics. In Kashmir, At the level of technique, the Indian nationalist the popular National Conference led by Sheikh leadership was simply following the tradition Abdullah was in favour of joining India in 1947. the British had established of making treaties So I have made the point in my book that while with Indian rulers as though they were equal many of the techniques of power adopted by

8 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF the post-colonial state were the sameunintended consequence in what came after. I techniques developed in the colonial period, the think the League of Nations did provide a ideological ground of justification was now anti- skeletal framework for a global order in which imperialist. I might add that the Indianequal sovereignty of nation-states would be the government used full-throated anti-imperialist basic form but in which British hegemony arguments in 1960 to take over the Portuguese would be superseded by a collective dominance colony of Goa by force, claiming thatof Western powers led by the economic international law and treaties had no validity in dominance of the United States. Karl this case. Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is an instructive lesson in the underlying changes Çubukçu: Upon reviewing various theories of that were taking place in the inter-war years in imperialism, you propose that “what most of the global system. these theories of imperialism seem to have underestimated was the ability of the emerging capitalist global order to adjust to political resistances and to modify accordingly its own governmental structures and policies.” If so, should we think of the official espousal and adoption of the right to national self- determination during the League of Nations era—by figures ranging from Wilson to Lenin—as part of such an adjustment at the global level? Given your critique of the historical role played by international law and its conceptual apparatus in advancing Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and European imperialism, how should national Woodrow Wilson arriving at Versailles at sovereignty as a legal artefact that maintains the end of World War I the appearance of sovereign equality be evaluated? Once again, continuing my analogy with equal Chatterjee: There is no doubt that thecitizenship within the nation-state, I will say acknowledgement of national self-that the recognition of the principle of formal determination in the League of Nations was equality of national sovereignty was a great made in the face of growinghistorical advance achieved by the anti-colonial nationalist movements in Central and Eastern struggles of the twentieth century. But just as Europe. Left to themselves, the European formally equal citizenship in the nation-state imperial powers might have made thedoes not eliminate real differences in civil necessary adjustments without conceding the society, so does formally equal sovereignty not ideologically grounded principle of national erase the continued possibility of declaring the self-determination. But Wilson pushed the colonial exception. We see this every day. principle down their throats. And even though Equal sovereignty remains a powerful criterion he was thinking only of the European parts of in evaluating international action, whether the Austrian and Ottoman empires, thediplomatic or military, even though it might not principle acquired a life of its own. Wilson be the only one and even though the specific admirers see in this his role as a visionary conditions of its application might be disputed. leader imagining continued Western dominance in a world after empires. Others see an Çubukçu: Finally, if I could turn the

9 10 | 41 | 1 APJ | JF conversation away from imperial pedagogies of suggest that the place to experiment might be violence and culture to anti-imperial ones: with minorities who straddle international what should provide, in your judgement, a borders, such as Kashmiris or Kurds. Could foundation for anti-imperialism today? Are we neighbour states be pressured to relax the to repeat what you identify as “the old logic of stringency of borders so as to allow greater protecting the sovereign sphere of national freedom of movement, and hence a greater power” and “the old rhetoric of anti-degree of autonomy, to such people, outside imperialism”? What could be the political the rigid framework of national grounds, if anything, of an anti-nationalist anti- sovereignty–creating zones of regional imperialism that does not fall into the imperial autonomy across international borders, that is traps of a righteous politics “for the happiness to say? That would be a great start. But I have of mankind”? to say that the signs are not hopeful. I know, for instance, that the border between India and Chatterjee: I must be careful in answering this Nepal has been largely open, with relatively question because I know you are trying to trap free mobility and settlement of people on both me. Let me first restate what I just said in sides. The reactionary monarchy of Nepal was answer to your previous question. The principle not too bothered about this. But the of formal equal sovereignty was a great revolutionary Maoists who have come to power historical victory won through the anti-there recently are acutely sensitive to loopholes imperialist struggles of colonial peoples all over in national sovereignty and will, I think, try to the world. I believe it would be a great loss to police their borders more rigorously. So a give up that principle and return to some form genuinely progressive domestic change still of colonial good governance (the Americans seems to call for a deepening of national call it nation-building, as in Iraq andsovereignty. My sense is that the history of Afghanistan). But I would be the first person to nationalism has not been played out yet. I know argue that formal equal sovereignty of nation- that many of my readers, including you, will states always leaves open the room forfind this view pessimistic. But I can’t help it. declaring the colonial exception. How does one get out of the bind? AFTERWORD

Theoretically, it would mean nothing less than Chatterjee. I wish to add a few words to my grounding the forms of self-government in interview with Ayça Çubukçu for readers of the something other than the sovereign nation- Asia-Pacific Journal. For reasons that should be state. But that is more easily said than done clear, the bulk of my discussion of modern (although in some countries it cannot even be empire and nation-states has been built around said very easily). Not only that, merelythe history of Britain’s rule over India. When I challenging the principle of nationaltalk about the changes in the global order in sovereignty without simultaneously working the twentieth century, I do mention the rise of out a credible alternative form of collective Japan as an imperial power in East Asia and the government is, under present circumstances, Pacific, but my focus remains on the process of only to invite the declaration of the colonial the dismantling of the European empires after exception. So my opinion is that small steps World War II. Do Japanese imperialism and the must be taken and the results tested before recent rise of China as a global power change proposing any grand alternative visions. The the story of The Black Hole of Empire? grandest experiment made so far to surmount national sovereignty–the EuropeanMy sense is that although the rhetoric of anti- Union–seems to be falling apart. I would Westernism, and as a corollary that of Pan-

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Asianism, played a role in Japanese imperialism rhetoric of “war on behalf of humanity”. The in the first half of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union had used the ideology of anti- techniques of power it adopted were exactly colonialism in the service of its frequently the same as those followed by Western powers. imperial practices of power. Already, we hear Japan’s rulers obsessively compared thethat their rapidly expanding business dealings strength of their nation-state with those of with African countries are being described by others, using the same measures that Western the Chinese as significantly different from the states were using. Needless to say, they way the Americans or Europeans do business justified their authoritarian structure ofthere. Do we see a new imperial ideology government, their forced industrialization and emerging here that the world has not seen the rapid building-up of their militarybefore? After all, Chinese capitalism and its capabilities by the claim that they had to be associated forms of governance have marked strong and self-reliant. More significantly, they sociological differences with the normative made exactly the same comparisons of their forms of capitalist society in the West. own status as a nation-state with other countries of Asia as the Europeans did – the But I am speculating too much. others were indolent, submissive, weak and This dialogue on empire by Ayça Çubukçu and therefore defenceless against Western imperial Partha Chatterjee originated in Humanity. It is powers whereas Japan had risen far above the presented here with an afterword by Chatterjee prevailing Asian standards. In producing this reflecting on the Japanese empire and the comparative knowledge of Asian countries and significance of the rise of China. peoples, Japan indeed created its own Orientalism in which the cultures of China and Partha Chatterjee is Professor of Anthropology South-East Asia became marked byand South Asian Studies at Columbia backwardness and inferiority. I am sure there University. A founding member of the were significant differences too between Subaltern Studies Group, his recent books Japanese and Western imperialism (and the include The Black Hole of Empire: History of a former existed for a much shorter time than the Global Practice of Power, and Lineages of latter), but the broad parameters, I would say, Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial fall within my account of modern empire as a Democracy. global practice of power. Ayça Çubukçu is a Lecturer in Human Rights at As for China’s position today, I have spoken in the Department of Sociology and the Centre for the closing sections of my book of thethe Study of Human Rights at the London possibility of the global imperial role being School of Economics and Political Science. She shared regionally between different great is the author of “On Cosmopolitan Occupations: powers. Needless to say, China is a prime the Case of the World Tribunal on Iraq,” candidate. What would be interesting to see is Interventions: International Journal of whether or not there emerges a new ideological Postcolonial Studies. justification of the Chinese use of imperial techniques of global power. Thus far, China’s Recommended citation: Partha Chatterjee and international role has been marked by a fierce Ayça Çubukçu, "Empire as a Practice of Power: defence of national sovereignty. It seems An Interview," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, unlikely that it can easily adopt a US-style Issue 41, No. 1, October 9, 2012.