Postcolonial international relations

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Postcolonial international relations (postcolonial IR) is a branch of scholarship that approaches the study of international relations (IR) using the critical lens of postcolonialism. This critique of IR theory suggests that mainstream IR scholarship does not adequately address the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on current day world politics.^[1] Despite using the language of post-, scholars of postcolonial IR argue that the legacies of colonialism are ongoing, and that critiquing international relations with this lens allows scholars to contextualize global events. By bridging postcolonialism and international relations, scholars point to the process of globalization as a crucial point in both fields, due to the increases in global interactions and integration.^[1] Postcolonial IR focuses on the re-narrativization of global politics to create a balanced transnational understanding of colonial histories, and attempts to tie non-Western sources of thought into political praxis.^[2]

Postcolonial IR developed through the study of postcolonialism as a rejection of colonialism, and parallels postmodernism or poststructuralism in the skepticism towards and departure from the dominant ideologies of modernism and structuralism, respectively.^[3] Postcolonial IR is critically introspective into the study of International Relations, often in attempts to disturb dominant models of theorization to relocate IR temporally and spatially.^[2] Some scholars of postcolonial IR critique postcolonialism as well for taking too much of a cultural and civilizational approach, rather than connecting colonialism to political and economic structures of the modern world.^[4] Many scholars have attempted to bridge the studies of postcolonialism and international relations, and have often taken interdisciplinary approaches that consider various social aspects such as race, gender, and class.^[2] Additionally, scholars of postcolonial IR have also critically analyzed systems such as capitalism, patriarchy, and militarism as modes in which colonization has impacted political issues such as governance and sovereignty. Some prominent scholars that have informed the approach of postcolonialism include Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,^[5] amongst many others.

Postcolonial IR's critique of mainstream IR studies of capitalism claims that the legacies of the exploitation of labour through colonization and imperialism are not acknowledged enough as current global economy.^[6] Aimé Césaire's essay Discourse on Colonialism rejects the claim that capitalism is simply the pursuit of wealth and power, and emphasizes the European colonial empire's desire to "civilize" pre-colonial societies.^[6] This concept is also highlighted by Rudyard Kipling in their conceptualization of "The White Man's Burden" to bring Western ideologies in order to enlighten morally "primitive" colonized peoples. Postcolonial IR traces the global economy to exploitation in the forms of transatlantic slavery, such as through the British East India Company, Royal African Company, and the Dutch East India Company, as well as conquest and genocide of indigenous peoples, in order to create conditions suitable for European colonial expansion.^[7][8] As such, the labeling of the "Third World" in the economic and political sense during the Cold War can be viewed from a postcolonial IR perspective to embody racialized and colonial meanings instead. For instance, some scholars of Postcolonial IR argue that the institution of development aid has reinforced these inferiority narratives by creating systems in which Western countries, through agencies such as the IMF, benevolently bring modernization to Third World countries.^[5]