Aufgeklärte Weltaneignungen? Imperiale Akteure und Kolonialismus im 18. Jahrhundert

The conference and related collective monograph will make a contribution, especially from the point of view of historical science, to the question: did Enlightenment provide the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism? This question has been discussed in the past decades among historians of ideas, philosophers and students of literature, whereas historians have not broadly contributed to the debate. On one side, postcolonial authors believe that enlightened rationalism helped delegitimize non-European cultures. On the other side, some historians of ideas and literature are willing to "defend” at least some 18th-century philosophers whom they consider to have been "anti-colonialists”.