The essay intends to propose a reflection on the intersections between
colonial studies and colonialism and historiographical perspectives of ‘global
history’. It starts from the reconstruction of the recent emergence and use
of the term ‘colonialism’ in the English, French and Italian languages, linking
it to international political developments after World War II and to the
subsequent opening up of new forms of historical research on colonial and
imperial phenomena on a global scale and in comparative terms. It points
out that, in the field of colonial studies, a specialism has developed that has
investigated the specificity of the forms of colonial domination on the economic,
political, social, cultural and religious levels, drawing a particular impulse
from post-colonial studies and the emergence of non-Western historiographies.
A consideration of the research paths of some of the most important
contemporary historians of colonialism and empires serves to show
how precisely this kind of experience, with the ability to confront different
sources and to take different points of view from the traditional ones of
Western historiography, has opened some of the most fruitful paths towards
global history, with its drive towards denationalization and criticism of Eurocentrism,
and its adoption of pluralist perspectives on progress, modernization
and civilization. Finally, it illustrates a series of historiographic fields
which, starting from the study of colonial phenomena, have favoured and
enriched the emergence of a global view of the past. It concludes with a reflection
on the persistent and still visible relationship in the present between
colonial legacies and macro-phenomena of a global nature.
