While the study of "indigenous intermediaries" is today the focus of some of the most interesting research in the historiography of colonialism, its roots extend back to at least the 1970s. The contributions to this volume revisit Ronald E. Robinson's theory of collaboration in a range of historical contexts by melding it with theoretical perspectives derived from postcolonial studies and transnational history. In case studies ranging globally over the course of four centuries, these essays offer nuanced explorations of the varied, complex interactions between imperial and local actors, with particular attention to those shifting and ambivalent roles that transcend simple binaries of colonizer and colonized.

This innovative work offers the first comprehensive transcultural history of historiography. The contributors transcend a Eurocentric approach not only in terms of the individual historiographies they assess, but also in the methodologies they use for comparative analysis. Moving beyond the traditional national focus of historiography, the book offers a genuinely comparative consideration of the commonalities and differences in writing history. Distinguishing among distinct cultural identities, the contributors consider the ways and means of intellectual transfers and assess the strength of local historiographical traditions as they are challenged from outside. The essays explore the question of the utility and the limits of conceptions of modernism that apply Western theories of development to non-Western cultures. Warning against the dominant tendency in recent historiographies of non-Western societies to define these predominantly in relation to Western thought, the authors show the extent to which indigenous traditions have been overlooked. The key question is how the triad of industrialization, modernization, and the historicization process, which was decisive in the development of modern academic historiography, also is valid beyond Europe. Illustrating just how deeply suffused history writing is with European models, the book offers a broad theoretical platform for exploring the value and necessity of a world historiography beyond Eurocentrism.

Die koloniale Expansion Europas wurde seit ihren Anfangen von kritischen Stimmen begleitet, die als prazise Kolonialismustheorien zutage traten. Durch den Streit der Imperialismusgegner und -befurworter gewannen beide Seiten ein scharfes Profil. Benedikt Stuchtey untersucht die kommunikativen Kontexte der gelehrten Offentlichkeiten der Kolonialmachte unter Einbeziehung des amerikanischen Imperialismus vom 18. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Kolonialismuskritik kann im Zusammenhang transnationaler Verflechtungen von der europaischen Aufklarungsphilosophie bis zur pluralisierten Massenkommunikationsgesellschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts nachvollzogen werden."