Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference by Dipesh Chakrabarty

Review by: David Hardiman

Social History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 64-66
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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 0 Routledge
Social HistoryVol. 27 No. I January 2002 Group
Taylor&Fracis

Reviews

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference

(2000), xii + 305 (Princeton University Press, Princeton $55.00, paperback $I6.95).
In this book, Dipesh Chakrabarty develops and refines his long-standing critique of the ways
in which non-'European' history is marginalized in the academies of the West. 'Europe' is used
by him as a shorthand term for a particular mind-set associated with values which originated
in the Enlightenment, but which may be adhered to today in any part of the modern global-
ized world. Enlightenment reason, he maintains, has relegated non-'European' societies to a
time that precedes that of 'Europe' - a past in the present. Such societies are considered
'backward' and 'undeveloped' - an inferior 'Other'. The future to which they must aspire is,
however, that of'Europe'. Histories produced in these other parts of the globe take 'European'
models of history-writing and themes as their guides, and they tend to analyse the ways in
which their own societies 'lack' certain core features of 'European' societies, the assumption
being that at some time in the future they will make good this'lack'.
The history of this 'Europe', Chakrabarty argues, has been central to world history over the
past two centuries, as Europeans and North Americans have extended their way of life to the
rest of the globe through imperial conquest, wars of aggression and coercive forms of trade.
This, the history of modern capital, he labels 'History I'. However, there is, Chakrabarty argues,
a multiplicity of other, alternative histories that cannot be incorporated seamlessly within such
a history. These he labels 'History 2'. These latter histories are not a mere remnant of a soon-
to-be superseded past, but histories which have their own integrity and independence and
which continue to develop according to their specific logics in contemporary times. The history
of the subaltern classes of the poorer countries - a class which Chakrabarty describes as 'the
peasantry', but which is in fact much wider than that of small-scale cultivators alone - provides
one such case. As Ranajit Guha has demonstrated with great force in his writings, there has
been a dynamic history of peasant resistance and politics that has operated according to its own
rationale into contemporary times. This is no less 'modern' than capital. The two inhabit the
same time-dimension, often braiding with, but never fully incorporating, each other.
Following Heidegger, Chakrabarty argues that we need to stop understanding history as a
developmental process and should accept the plurality of the present. If we accept this plural-
ity, then we should not want to totalize one aspect of it in the future - for example, capital,
citizenship, religion, etc. We need, he maintains, to accept that life is contradictory and that we
should learn to be at ease with holding contradictory truths within ourselves and relax over the
anticipation of a plural future.
Chakrabarty provides in this book a series of studies of Bengal during the British colonial
period which seek to demonstrate the ways in which one of the most Anglicized groups in
India at that time - the upper-caste middle classes of Calcutta - resisted being incorporated
fully within the 'European' paradigm. This resistance could be seen in the sphere of emotion,

Social History ISSN 0307-1022 print/ISSN 1470-1200 online 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: io. Io80/0307I020II0094200

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January 2002 Reviews 65
the family,nationalism,and even the discussiongroup,known in Bengalas the adda.All of these
case-studiesof Bengal are full of rich historicalinsight.For me, that on the addais best of all,
providinga study of the changesin a much-loved institutionthat is informedby both a deep
empathyand an awarenessof its limitations.In contrastto some of his earlierwritingson these
topics, Chakrabartyrefusesto romanticizeor validatea middle-classculture that was deeply
patriarchal; he insistshere thatit was not necessarily'better'thanits EuropeanOther,only differ-
ent and with its own history.
One of the most valuablepoints made by Chakrabarty's critiqueis to show up the insidious
logic which informs an analysisthat resortsto the idea of the contemporarycoexistence of
many different of
'stages' history within so-called 'backward' societies. Indiais thus frequently
depictedas some kind of 'time machine',in which people representingmanyvarious'stagesof
evolution'jostle together in a conflicting mix. The prevalenceof many 'backward'sectors is
seen somehow to compromisethe 'advanced'sector.In reality,Chakrabartyargues,all societies
are full of 'time-knots',with people everywheredemonstratinga remarkableability to hold
togetherthe many contradictionsof pastand presentwithin their own mentalworlds.
One problemwith Chakarbarty's argumentis thathe tendsto simplifyanddehistoricizewhat
standsfor'Europe'.Thus, in depicting'European'thought as a relativelyunchangingunity that
is rooted in the paradigmsof Enlightenmentreason,he fails to bring out the dialogic and
continuallyevolvingnatureof such thought.This dialogichasbeen rootednot only in 'Europe',
but also in relationshipto culturesbeyond Europe.For example,many key eighteenth-century
European philosophers- notably Voltaire- were deeply interestedin Indian thinkers and
systemsof thought. This traditioncontinued into the nineteenth century,with, for example,
Schopenhauerand Nietzsche.We can point to many importanttheoreticaldevelopmentsthat
defy pigeonholing into 'Europe'or 'non-Europe'.The Enlightenment'sdiscovery of Indian
philosophyfed into the writing of Henry David Thoreau in the USA, for instance,and his
writingsin turn were takenup by the young Gandhi,whose theorieswere in turn takenup by
Europeanpacifists,such as Bart de Ligt, and American civil rights activists,notably Martin
LutherKing.
Chakrabartyarguesthatin writing historyit is best to confine moraljudgementto the sphere
of'History I' and leave'History 2' well alone in this respect.He takesthe matterof religious
belief as a case in point, claimingthathistorianshavefailedto takereligionand belief in super-
naturalagency seriouslyin their work, as these are seen to be 'backward'forces which have
fallen,or are about to fall,throughthe trapdoorof history.Instead,we should accept that the
human condition involvesthe possibilityof calling upon gods, and when writing'History 2'
we should learn to take such beliefs at face value without having to feel obliged to establish
their reality.
Can 'History I' and 'History 2' be separatedwith such facility,however?The 'democratic
project',which Chakrabartysaysis the startingpoint for the writing of subalternhistory (I06),
is afterall a post-Frenchrevolutionaryconcept,so that that in itself colours the way we regard
the past. Can we write a 'democratic'history that is rooted in pre-democraticmentalities?
Although it is admirableto respectdiversity,the historianstill has to make moralchoices. Can
we affordto suspendjudgement when we are faced with, say,an authoritarianand monologic
religiosity,which rides roughshodover a secularreligiositythat defends pluralism?On what
basiscan we takethe instrumentalityof deitiesseriously?Howevermuch we mayseek empathy
and understandingwith past (andpresent)valueswhich arealien to ourselvesand our lives,do

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66 Social History VOL. 27: NO. I

we not in the last analysis have to make value-judgements based on what we consider right for
us today? And how do we separate two spheres that in practice are intertwined in a whole
range of ways?
Despite these reservations,this is an important book that is rooted in an encyclopaedic know-
ledge of historical theory and philosophy. It makes crucial points about a routine Eurocentricity
found in the writing of much history, and it does not flinch from raising many difficult questions
for which Chakrabarty refuses to provide easy answers. It also has within it a series of essays on
the Bengali middle classes that are likely to be regarded in time as classics of that genre.
David Hardiman
Universityof Warwick

Mark Salber Phillips, Society and Sentiment:Genres of Historical Writing in Britain,

1740-1820 (20ooo), xvii + 369 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, $57.50, paper-
back $25.95).
Rosemary Mitchell, Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image 1830-1870 (2000),
xii + 314 (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 48.oo/$85.oo).
Is it possible to trace a pedigree of any intellectual significance for British social history beyond
its relatively recent origins in the 960os?The stock answer is far from encouraging. Folklorists
and antiquarians had, of course, long been interested in popular customs and 'pots and pans'
history. But the historiographical mainstream, with its focus on the institutions of government,
law and the church, seemed to exclude the wider history of society. Indeed, even where
historians did express an interest in this subject, such as G. M. Trevelyan in his English Social
History (1944), there was little attempt to integrate social themes with the rest of the historical
agenda. Somewhat notoriously, of course, Trevelyan dismissed social history as 'history with the
politics left out'.
Although each asks various other questions of the historical literatures they survey, the two
books under review engage directly with the deeper provenance of British social history. Both
authors conclude that there is a fascinating prehistory to be told, especially if one broadens the
historical canon to embrace what Phillips terms 'parahistoriographical genres'. In his case these
include novels, memoirs and other editions of documents, and, in Mitchell's, they range from
illustrated textbooks to the satirical anti-heroic attacks made by Thackeray and others upon the
historiographical pieties of the age. As a result, we now possess a more richly textured picture
of British historical culture between the Enlightenment and the Victorian era, with a more
nuanced mapping of those remote and sometimes surprising genres and styles of interpretation
which anticipated, in certain aspects at least, the familiar brand of social history we recognize
as such today.
Phillips is concerned to rehabilitate eighteenth-century historical writing from the charge
that it was anti-historical, that it was so committed to philosophical distance and to the
presumed uniformity of human nature as to be insensitive to the felt particularities of past ages,
and that only the romantic identification with the textured pastness of the past could provide
a stable foundation for properly historical enquiry. Instead, he shows that this charge emerged
in the nineteenth century from a set of heightened expectations about the capacity of the
historian to present a more proximate and evocative account of past actors and periods, a trend
which itself originated in the modest efforts of eighteenth-century historical writings. This was

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