Legacies of Colonial Institutions in Contemporary Civil Wars

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

European colonialism had a profound impact on many aspects of the development of Asia, but its effects on contemporary civil wars are understudied. This panel seeks to understand the long-term effects of colonial institutions on insurgency. The papers challenge the simplistic narrative that blames every negative socioeconomic and political outcome, including contemporary civil conflicts, on colonial institutions and practices. Instead, they explore the various mechanisms through which colonial institutions shaped conflict dynamics both in direct and indirect ways. Sarbahi examines how the spread of organized religion among the Meiteis, Mizos, and Nagas during colonial India left distinct imprints on the contemporary insurgents’ capacity to mobilize co-ethnics. Pelletier argues that the uneven spread of Christian networks in colonial Burma’s ethnic states shape today’s insurgent groups capacity to generate compliance and participation among their co-ethnic. Mendoza compares how colonial education policies contributed to the development of a national identity and shaped perceptions of discrimination around this identity for both the Moros and Karen in the Philippines and Burma, respectively. Mukherjee creates a typology of princely states in South Asia and shows that different states had different effects on state capacities, inequalities, and the Maoist insurgency. In sum, this panel contributes theoretically and empirically by demonstrating the different ways in which colonial institutions created long term effects on through religious networks, types of indirect rule and colonial education policies on post-colonial insurgency.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• Ethnicity, Religion and Insurgent Mobilization in South Asia - Anoop K. Sarbahi, University of Minnesota

• Colonial Education and Separatist Rebellion in the Philippines and Burma - Mary Anne Mendoza, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

• Christian Networks, Insurgent Capacity, and Intra-Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar - Alexandre Pelletier, Laval University

• Varieties of Indirect Rule and Insurgency in India - Shivaji Mukherjee, University of Toronto

Chair

• Steven I. Wilkinson Yale University

Discussants

• Jacques Bertrand University of Toronto

• Alexander Lee University of Rochester