The Postcolonial View of Eastern Europe
The History and Present-Day Impact of a
Successful Approach
Successful Approach
The dialogue between postcolonial studies and research into Eastern Europe began in the 1990s,
when the world order that had become prevalent during the Cold War period was fundamentally
shattered. Postcolonial perspectives on Eastern Europe became widespread, were developed in
detail, and have led to new findings, regarding both this region specifically and the colonial
balances of power across the globe more generally, particularly since the turn of the millennium.
when the world order that had become prevalent during the Cold War period was fundamentally
shattered. Postcolonial perspectives on Eastern Europe became widespread, were developed in
detail, and have led to new findings, regarding both this region specifically and the colonial
balances of power across the globe more generally, particularly since the turn of the millennium.
Where does Eastern Europe fit within a modern world shaped by colonialism?
Postcolonial studies analyze the colonial power relations between different regions, societies, and cultures around the world over the last three centuries. The discipline views these power relations as a foundation of the modern world – the system of political, economic, and cultural relations, which began with the European age of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries and which was significantly advanced by the Industrial Revolution. This perspective goes hand in hand with a critical view of the concept of European or Western modernity, which postcolonial authors describe as colonial modernity. This is because the main thrust of postcolonial criticism is not only, or, rather, not primarily colonialism as the material exploitation and violent subjugation of individual European colonial empires in non-European colonies. Rather, it is about questioning the general validity and colonial character of the modern concepts of history, culture, and knowledge. From the perspective of postcolonial research, these terms played a key role in allowing Europe to position itself at the forefront of progress in the modern world. By contrast, the colonial, non-European space was seen to be lagging behind – confronted with the never-ending challenge of needing to catch up with the history and modernity of Europe. According to postcolonial studies, this notion that the colonies are backward and striving to reach the European level of progress doesn’t just stand at the heart of historical colonialism; it has also outlived it and continues to shape our present.1 As Stuart Hall has accurately argued, the English imperial phrase “The West and the Rest” expresses this structural imbalance of the modern world.2
What is the position of Eastern Europe in this hierarchical world order of colonial modernity between the West and the Rest? This question wasn’t a focus of postcolonial research until the 1990s, while, during the Cold War, the “Second World” was considered to be a competing model of modernity to capitalism. When the Berlin Wall fell, this model lost its validity as an alternative to western dominance in the modern world. At the same time, the experience of transformation undergone by post-socialist societies displayed striking parallels to the historical process of decolonization beyond Europe’s borders. This similarity brought Eastern Europe closer to the postcolonial world. Furthermore, in the 1990s, rhetoric spread about the supposed “return to Europe” or the need for a “Europeanization” of the former Warsaw Pact states. This in turn placed question marks around their belonging to Europe based on geography. All of these phenomena represented tectonic shifts on the imaginary map of the modern world. They paved the way for a new, postcolonial perspective of Eastern Europe and its position within colonial modernity.
Berlin Wall on November 12, 1989 (seen from West Berlin). Yuriy Somov / Wikimedia Common, CC BY-SA 3.0
Berlin Wall on November 12, 1989 (seen from West Berlin). Yuriy Somov / Wikimedia Common, CC BY-SA 3.0
The colonial legacies of the terms “Eastern Europe” and “the Balkans”
Newfound interest in the role of Eastern Europe within colonial modernity in the 1990s was reflected in two pioneering works of postcolonial Eastern European studies: Larry Wolff’s “Inventing Eastern Europe” and Maria Todorova’s “Imagining the Balkans”.3 As the titles suggest, the studies looked at the genesis and development of the spatial concepts of “Eastern Europe” and “the Balkans” with regard to their relationship to Europe and to the colonial “Orient.” Although Wolff and Todorova didn’t expressly describe their approaches as postcolonial, they both referred to Edward Said’s “Orientalism” – one of the first foundational works of postcolonial literature.4 In this work, Said analyzed orientalism as a discourse of European modernity about the Orient. According to Said, since the 19th century, European orientalists have viewed the Orient as the inferior “other” to Europe and have used this contrast to define Europe as the region of modernity and civilization.
Wolff and Todorova showed that, like the Orient, Eastern Europe and the Balkans are products of modern Western European thinking about Eastern and Southeastern Europe. They argued that the two spatial concepts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans had an equivalent role as the term “the Orient;” namely as a juxtaposition to reinforce the modern self-image of Western Europe. According to their research, however, the Western European view of the Asian Orient also differed from its view of Eastern Europe precisely because the latter had an undeniable geographical affiliation with Europe – a space which also represented the Western European identity.
Both Wolff and Todorova made key contributions to a specific postcolonial view of Eastern Europe. Namely that Eastern Europe and the Balkans are not to be primarily understood as historical regions; rather as historically categories with colonial features. They reflect a form of location and self-location of the eastern part of the continent within the modern world, which places it in an inferior position vis-à-vis Western Europe.
Orientalism heads East
Another important postcolonial perspective from the 1990s that tries to capture the position of Eastern Europe within colonial modernity comes from a renowned essay by Milica Bakić-Hayden.5 In it, the author demonstrates that Orientalist paradigms don’t just shape the relationship between the “West” and the “Orient,” but are also widespread within Eastern Europe and non-European regions, i.e., in regions that are themselves perceived as “Eastern” or “other.” Many societies in these regions adopted Orientalist stereotypes to describe their eastern neighbors in order to portray themselves as modern, European, and superior.
Using the example of the newly emerging power relations between ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Bakić-Hayden described how Orientalism was reproduced in the East and created new spatial hierarchies at a regional level. She coined the term “nesting Orientalism” to describe this phenomenon. This concept of a world order shaped by several intertwined “Orientalisms” opened up another overarching postcolonial perspective on Eastern Europe: the (South-)Eastern European societies came into focus, and not just as recipients, but also as producers of colonial concepts about their own Eastern neighbors, whom they describe as inferior and backward.
First area of research: the imperial-colonial experience of Eastern Europe
With the growing number of studies conducted during the last two decades, the areas of interest and approaches of postcolonial research into Eastern and Southeastern Europe have also grown considerably. It is possible to identify four different areas of research without attempting to represent the full range of postcolonial approaches.
An initial focus was on the colonial character of the European land empires, starting with Russia. At the start of the 21st century, authors such as David Chioni Moore and Claire Cavanagh brought into focus the experiences of dependency and oppression that linked Eastern Europe to the Tsarist and then to the Soviet imperial project.6 They complained that these experiences had been invisible in postcolonial literature to date, and called for the 
and the to be viewed as colonial empires.
Малоформатный атлас Российской империи (1796). Карта Российской империи (карта 1).
Russian Empire
rus. Российская империя, rus. Rossijskaja imperija, deu. Russisches Kaiserreich, deu. Russländisches Reich, deu. Russländisches Kaiserreich
The Russian Empire (or Empire of Russia) was a state that existed from 1721 to 1917 in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and North America. The country was the largest contiguous empire in modern history in the mid-19th century. It was dissolved after the February Revolution in 1917. The state was regarded as autocratically ruled and was inhabited by about 181 million people.
Soviet Union
deu. Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken, deu. Sowjetunion, rus. Sovetskiy Soyuz, rus. Советский Союз, . Совет Ушем, . Советонь Соткс, rus. Sovetskij Soûz, . Советий Союз, yid. ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, yid. סאוועטן פארבאנד, yid. sovətn farband, yid. sovʿtn-farband, yid. sovətn-farband, . Советтер Союзу, . Совет Союзы, deu. Советий Союз, . Советон Цæдис, . Совет Эвилели
The Soviet Union (SU or USSR) was a state in Eastern Europe, Central and Northern Asia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It emerged from the so-called Soviet Russia, the successor state of the Russian Empire. The Russian Soviet Republic formed the core of the union and at the same time its largest part, with further constituent republics added. Their number varied over time and was related to the occupation of other countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Soviet republics that existed only for a short time (Karelo-Finlandia) or the division or merger of Soviet republics. In addition, there were numerous autonomous republics or other territorial units with an autonomy status that was essentially limited to linguistic autonomy for minorities.
Before its formal dissolution, the USSR consisted of 15 Soviet republics with a population of approximately 290 million people. At around 22.4 million km², it was the largest territorial state in the world at the time. The Soviet Union was a socialist soviet republic with a one-party system and an absence of separation of powers.
Besides Russia, – or, rather, the – the , and the also became the subject of postcolonial interpretation. An extensive body of research looked at how Orientalist stereotypes and colonial spatial concepts shaped regions such as the Prussian-German province of Posen, Bosnia, and Galicia under Habsburg rule, or Ottoman Lebanon.7 Looking at the German Empire in particular, similarities were brought tolight between the imperial-colonial ideas about the Polish regions in the east of the empire and similar ideas about African colonies.8
Prussia
deu. Preußen, lit. Prūsija, rus. Prussija, rus. Prussiâ, rus. Пруссия, . Prūsa, pol. Prusy, lat. Borussia
The historical region is named after the Baltic tribe of the Prussians. In the course of the establishment of the Teutonic Order, this tribe was subjugated and eventually perished, but the name of the region was retained. The Prussian Confederation, founded in 1440 and consisting of both nobles and towns, broke away from the Teutonic Order and submitted to the Polish king. The territory of the Confederation has since been known as Royal Prussia. The remaining part of the former territory of the Teutonic Order was finally transferred to the Duchy of Prussia in 1525, from which the later Kingdom of Prussia emerged.
German Reich
deu. Deutsches Reich
The German Empire was a state in Central Europe that existed from 1871 to 1945. The period from its founding until 1918 is called the German Empire, then followed the period of the Weimar Republic (1918/1919-1933) and the National Socialism (so-called Third Reich) from 1933 to 1945. 01.01.1871 is considered the day of the foundation of the German Reich.
Habsburg Empire
deu. Habsburgerreich, deu. Habsburgermonarchie, deu. Donaumonarchie, eng. Habsburg Realm, eng. Habsburg monarchy, deu. Danubian monarchy, lat. Habsburg Monarchia
The Habsburg Empire refers to the territories and countries that were ruled by the rulers of the House of Habsburg or Habsburg-Lorraine in personal union from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century - but for a long time did not form a unified state in the strict sense. It was not until 1804 that the Austrian Empire was founded as such, from which Austria-Hungary and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy evolved in 1867.
The Habsburg Empire included a large number of smaller and larger lands and territories, most of which were grouped together. In addition to the Archduchy of Austria and its neighboring lands (including the duchies of Carinthia, Carniola, Salzburg and others), these included above all the so-called “Lands of the Bohemian Crown” and the “Lands of the Hungarian Crown”. As part of the expansionist policy of the 19th century, further territories and parts of the country were added, also in the Balkans (including Bosnia and Herzegovina). Due to the numerous border shifts, territorial reorganizations and temporary territorial gains and losses, the Habsburg Empire was practically constantly subject to border and territorial changes.
From the late 18th century, most of the constituent states of the Habsburg Empire formed the so-called crown lands, which later received their own provincial orders. With the transformation of the empire into a dual Austro-Hungarian state (dual monarchy), the Kingdom of Hungary and the other lands of the Hungarian crown also ceased to be crown lands. Subsequently, they were also referred to as Transleithania in official parlance, all others (excluding Bosnia and Herzegovina) as Cisleithania.
Ottoman Empire
tur. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, deu. Osmanisches Reich, deu. Ottomanisches Reich
The Ottoman Empire was the state of the Ottoman dynasty from about 1299 to 1922. The name derives from the founder of the dynasty, Osman I. The successor state of the Ottoman Empire is the Republic of Turkey.
In addition, analyses of German expansion projects from the German Empire to the Third Reich9 point to continuities with the German image of the East from the Wilhelmine period to the Nazi era. They also explore interrelationships and parallels between European colonialism and the National Socialist project of conquest, domination, and racial resettlement in the East.
Second area of research: the colonial entanglements of Eastern Europe using the example of Poland
A second area of research looks into postcolonial perspectives which view Eastern Europe not only as a target region for Western imperial-colonial discourses and claims, but also as a place producing these discourses. Postcolonial research into Poland is a good example of this. In its beginnings at the start of the new millennium, Polish research focused on the experiences of Polish regions as objects of Russian-Soviet and Prussian-German imperial and colonial aspirations.10 Yet, just a few years later, postcolonial theories increasingly served to explain the imperial, colonial character of the Polish view of the eastern part of the former (the so-called Kresy or Eastern Borderlands – the Ukrainian and Lithuanian border regions) in the 19th and 20th centuries.11 This was followed by studies on the Polish involvement in the European colonial expeditions to Africa, or the Russian colonial project in Siberia during the second half of the 19th century, when the Polish state did not exist, as well as on Poland’s colonial ambitions during the interwar period.12
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
lit. Abiejų Tautų Respublika, pol. Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, deu. Polen-Litauen, deu. Erste Polnische Republik, lat. Respublica Poloniae, pol. Korona Polska i Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie, lat. Res Publica Utriusque Nationis, deu. Republik beider Völker
As early as 1386, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were united by a personal union. Poland-Lithuania existed as a multi-ethnic state and a great power in Eastern Europe from 1569 to 1795. In the state, also called Rzeczpospolita, the king was elected by the nobles.
When one considers all of these studies, it is not possible to look at the recent history of Poland and clearly classify Poland as either a colonial force or as an object of colonial projects. Rather, it appears to be at the center of various – in part contradictory – asymmetrical relationships, in which colonial self-attributions and imperial claims are interwoven.13
Third area of research: the postcolonial status of Eastern Europe
At the beginning of the 21st century, a third strand of postcolonial research started to look into the similarities between the post-socialist phase of the 1990s and decolonization outside of Europe; in the hybrid formation of identity, i.e., one that was shaped by diverse influences, the processing of trauma resulting from imperialism, the challenges of decolonizing language, culture, and self-image, as well as the renegotiation of one’s position within the global system.14
Since the debates concerning the accession of the post-Socialist states to the European Union and NATO, postcolonial research has also been addressing the new asymmetries in power between the former members of the Warsaw Pact and the Western states. The postcolonial critique centers around the imperial and colonial hallmarks of the narrative underlying these accession processes. According to this view, Eastern Europe was considered to be the less European part of the continent, which could only be “Europeanized” through expanding the European Union and NATO to include these states.15 Even since its integration into the two international institutions, the region has continued to play a subordinate role.
Another important postcolonial interpretation when it comes to understanding the fundamental dynamics of the post-socialist era is the phenomenon of self-orientalization. This term is used by academics including anthropologist Michał Bukowski to describe the internalization of orientalist stereotypes in the self-perception of post-socialist societies.16 Self-orientalization primarily affects social groups such as farmers or workers who fall into the category of “transformation losers.” In the 1990s, these groups were seen as being remnants of the communist era. They were presumed to be fundamentally passive and incapable of adapting to capitalist modernity. Just like the “Orient,” they therefore served as a foil for comparison with the modernity of the new post-Soviet economic and political elites.
Fourth area of research: limits, criticism, and alternatives
In the late 2000s, a fourth train of thought emerged regarding the methodological challenges of applying postcolonial perspectives to Eastern Europe. Applying a theoretical toolkit that had been developed to address colonialism and decolonization to another context entails risks: namely an overly narrow colonial interpretation of the relationship between Eastern and Western Europe, which blinds us to the specific asymmetries of power within this relationship.
Furthermore, a one-sided perception of Eastern Europe as a colonized space can obscure the resources of Eastern European societies to identify and assert themselves as modern. And that’s not all: It also obscures the active participation of these societies in the modern phenomena of colonialism, imperialism, and racism, as well as antisemitism. Thus, for example, the postcolonial narratives in Poland reinforced the traditional view that sees Germany and Russia as the enemy. At the same time, they served as an argument to ignore Poland’s historical guilt towards ethnic minorities and its eastern neighbors. In doing so, they provided a new, academically recognized basis for the victim narrative of Polish nationalist and conservative forces17 .
As a discipline, postcolonial research into Eastern Europe is well aware of the limitations of the postcolonial lens. It mostly describes both the historical and current position of Eastern Europe within the modern world with a series of terms that make these limitations visible. In her work, Maria Todorova didn’t define the Balkans as the colonial “other” like the Orient, but rather as Europe’s “incomplete self.”18 In addition, academics have developed a long list of other terms, including “semicolonial,” “semiperipheral,” “inbetween peripheral,” as well as “post-dependent,” or even “post-socialist” or “post-Soviet.” Each of these terms has a slightly different meaning but they all describe how economic, political, and, above all, cultural relationships between Eastern Europe and the West were not and are not negotiated within the framework of traditional colonial relations, yet are interwoven with colonialism. They express the fact that the Eastern European regions are not colonies or peripheries of empires in the narrow sense; rather that power asymmetries both within and beyond Europe are subject to different strengths and manifestations.
Ultimately, decolonial critique is also concerned with the limits of the postcolonial perspective. This approach has developed over the last decade with a view to Eastern Europe and has gained in visibility and importance as a result of the Russian war against Ukraine. Madina Tlostanova, one of its central proponents, argues that the post-socialist societies are shaped by a very specific experience of subordination under a “second-rate” empire like Russia, which itself experienced being in an inferior relationship to the West, and under the alternative Soviet concept of modernity, which completely lost its validity after 1989.19 According to Tlostanova, postcolonial theories largely conceal the specifics of this experience of subjugation. Instead, she advocates an emancipatory approach – “the decolonial option” – which not only captures the specifics of colonial and Russian/Soviet imperial thought and knowledge structures, but also actively overcomes them.20
The value of the postcolonial approach: a summary
Finally, one should consider the value that the dialogue between postcolonial studies and Eastern European studies brings. To put it bluntly: Why is there a postcolonial view of Eastern Europe? Dorota Kołodziejczyk and Siegfried Huigen have put forward a suitable answer to this question.21 According to them, the postcolonial perspective should not be used to assign Eastern Europe the clear status of a colony or a postcolonial space in different historical contexts, nor be used to reinforce certain national victim myths or common enemies. Instead, the postcolonial perspective makes it possible to embed the region in a network of cultural, political, and social power relations at the global level. It makes it possible to relate the experiences and processes that have historically shaped and continue to shape Eastern Europe to the experiences of Global South and to examine the interactions between these experiences. This postcolonial understanding of Eastern Europe also challenges the dominant nationalist historical narratives of the region.
Conversely, the Eastern European perspective also brings value to the postcolonial critique. It breaks down the dichotomy between the colonized and the colonizers by highlighting the ambivalence and diversity of these roles. Eastern Europe serves as a paradigmatic example of how, in certain societies, these two roles interact with each other in a complex way. As a result, the dichotomy of “the West and the Rest” is insufficient to capture the hierarchical world order of colonial modernity. Eastern Europe not only represents a third position between the two poles; rather, it can be seen as a perspective or postcolonial critique to raise awareness of the diversity of power relations, as well as the possibilities of the individual colonial or semi-colonial actors to create their own narratives about their own power and modernity. As such, the Eastern European perspective also challenges the idea that there is a single “classical”22 form of colonialism and that global hierarchies are a consequence of this.
Finally, the Eastern European perspective makes Europe seem less monolithic than in postcolonial studies that ignore the post-socialist world. Postcolonial criticism tends to ascribe a uniform character to Europe as a place that claims a monopoly on the definition of modernity and civilization. Yet, by directing the postcolonial magnifying glass at Eastern Europe and its relations with Western Europe, it becomes clear that the continent is not homogeneous. Manuela Boatcă writes about this European heterogeneity as multiple “Europes”, each with a different role in colonial modernity. Considering the position of Eastern Europe versus Western Europe thus complicates the understanding that Europe has of itself as the self-proclaimed center of modernity.23 Anca Parvulescu goes so far as to define Eastern Europe as a “method”24 that breaks down the unity of Europe and facilitates connections between the different regions of Eastern Europe and the world beyond Western Europe. In this way, Eastern Europe stands as a key pursuit in the field of postcolonial studies and has a very specific role to play, namely, to decentralize and “provincialize” (Western) Europe.25
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Authors
Footnotes
1.
For the postcolonial critique of the modern world order, see: Dipesh Chakrabarty: Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton 2000; Frederick Cooper: Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, Berkeley 2005; Manuela Boatcă, Willfried Spohn (ed.): Globale, multiple und postkoloniale Modernen, Munich 2010; Sebastian Conrad (ed.), Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2013.
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7.
Cf. Ussama Makdisi: Ottoman Orientalism, in: The American Historical Review 107 (2002), pp. 768–796; Johannes Feichtinger (ed.): Habsburg postcolonial. Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, Innsbruck 2003; Philipp Ther: Deutsche Geschichte als imperiale Geschichte. Polen, slawophone Minderheiten und das Kaiserreich als kontinentales Empire, in: Sebastian Conrad, Jürgen Osterhammel (ed.): Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914, Göttingen 2004, pp. 129–148; Kristin Leigh Kopp: Germany’s Wild East. Constructing Poland as Colonial Space, Ann Arbor 2012; Christoph Kienemann: Der koloniale Blick gen Osten, Paderborn 2018. On this topic: https://www.copernico.eu/de/themenbeitraege/max-sering-und-max-weber-eine-erkundung-kolonialen-denkens-im-wirtschafts-und-landwirtschaftsdiskurs-ueber-die-preussischen-ostprovinzen (https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/max-sering-and-max-weber-exploring-colonial-thought-economic-and-agricultural-discourse-prussian-eastern-provinces); https://www.copernico.eu/de/themenbeitraege/bosnien-herzegowina-die-habsburgische-kolonie-1878-1918-eine-ungarische-sichtweise (https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/bosnia-herzegovina-habsburg-colony-1878-1918-hungarian-perspective); https://www.copernico.eu/de/themenbeitraege/die-habsburgische-bukowina-ein-kolonisiertes-gebilde-untersuchung-literarischer-bezuege-zum-kolonialismus-gregor-von-rezzoris-blumen-im-schnee (https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/habsburg-bukovina-colonized-entity-exploring-literary-references-colonialism-gregor-von-rezzoris-snows-yesteryear).
8.
Cf. Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities. Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920, Athens 2019. On this topic: https://www.copernico.eu/de/themenbeitraege/verschraenkte-narrative-des-kolonialismus-die-foerderung-der-ueberseeischen-und-kontinentalen-expansion-im-nationalsozialistischen-deutschland (https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/entangled-narratives-colonialism-promoting-overseas-and-continental-expansion-nazi-germany)
9.
Cf. Robert L. Nelson (ed.): Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East. 1850 through the Present, Basingstoke 2009; Shelley Baranowski: Nazi Empire. German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler, Cambridge 2011. On this topic: https://www.copernico.eu/de/themenbeitraege/kolonialismus-rassismus-und-das-oestliche-europa-ein-problemaufriss (https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/colonialism-racism-and-eastern-europe-problem-definition)
10.
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Bogusław Bakuła: Kolonialne i postkolonialne aspekty polskiego dyskursu kresoznawczego, in: Teksty Drugie, 2006, pp. 11–33; Franciszek Wasyl: Kresy wschodnie jako kolonialna metafora historiografii polskiej. Postkolonialna perspektywa badań historiografii narodowej, in: Pawel Cieliczko, Pawel Kucinski (ed.): Obcy – obecny. Literatura, sztuka i kultura wobec inności, Warszawa 2008, pp. 73–78; Tomasz Zarycki: Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe, London 2014; Clara M. Frysztacka: Zeitliche Tiefe und Begegnungsgeschichten. Die imperial-kolonialen Werkzeuge des polnischen historischen Wissens über den Osten, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 47 (2021), No. 4, pp. 648–670.
12.
Cf. Maria Rhode: Zivilisierungsmissionen und Wissenschaft. Polen kolonial?, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 39 (2013), No. 1, pp. 5–34; Dirk Ufelmann: Buren und Polen. Metonymischer Manichäismus und metaphorische Autoafrikanisierung bei Henryk Sienkiewicz, in: Robert Born, Sarah Lemmen (ed.): Orientalismen in Ostmitteleuropa. Diskurse, Akteure und Disziplinen vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, Bielefeld 2014, pp. 285–312. On this topic: https://www.copernico.eu/de/themenbeitraege/warschau-monrovia-und-london-polnische-kolonialambitionen-liberia-den-1930ern-und-die-britischen-reaktionen (https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/warschau-monrovia-und-london-polish-colonial-ambitions-liberia-1930s-and-british-reactions)
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14.
Cf. David Chioni Moore: Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique, in: PMLA 116 (2001), No. 1, pp. 111–128; Manuela Boatcă, Madina Tlostanova: Uneasy “posts” and Unmarked Categories. Politics of Positionality between and beyond the Global South and the European East, in: Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert (ed.): Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues. Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice, London 2021, pp. 185–192.
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