Throughout his work, Herder developed a subtle and multi-facetted understanding of colonialism and imperialism. In many respects, Herder’s writings point to a strong anti-colonialism, particularly when he is addressing European activities overseas in his own time. This has long been acknowledged by the research, citing above all his so-called “Negro Idylls” of 1797 (Solbrig 1990, Layne and Norberg 2023), but also his repeated condemnation of the economic system upon which colonialism was founded: its brutality, it’s dependence on slavery and its unnatural tendencies. Knoll (1989) understood Herder’s anticolonialism not as a sentiment, but as a scientific position “based upon lessons drawn from a lifelong study of history.” This led Herder to an intensifying opposition to colonialism during the course of his lifetime, strengthened by what Knoll calls “a growing awareness, not common in his day, of the economic roots of the colonizing urge. His anticolonialism became, in fact, an attack upon the commercial capitalism of the age and its tragic impact upon the peoples whose welfare it pretended to promote.” At the same time, however, Herder witnessed other endeavours that were understood as colonization: projects such as the draining of the Oder swamps to create fertile land for settlement; or the re-settlement of impoverished families to under-populated parts of southeastern Europe. Here, the colonized and about-to-be colonized world is filtered through the Enlightenment urge to improve living standards, driven by its faith in human progress. Herder also theorizes this aspect of colonization, arguing that it can have the beneficial effect of pushing a culture out of the strict determinism of climate. This is also how he understood the colonial activities of ancient Greece, but also (as he puts it in Ideen) of the Malays, Arabs, Turks, the Tartars, and “the swarm of nations that covered Europe in the course of the great migration.” And in the Humanitätsbriefe (1797), he wrote that “climates can change; for many reasons, many inhabited countries can become uninhabitable, many a colony can become a motherland.” What does this mean? And what exactly does he mean with his terminology? How does the positive valence of various Enlightenment colonization projects relate to the reality of contemporary European colonialism, built upon slavery and exploitation, violence and greed? And how do the contradictions in his views on colonization impact on his concept of Humanität? Can the contradictions in Herder’s views on colonization be adequately theorized within his philosophy? And how does colonialism relate to imperialism? Did Herder’s anti-colonialism find any resonance among his contemporaries or in the views of later intellectuals? In this panel we are looking for papers that will examine the complexity of his views on colonialism and imperialism.

Papers in both English and German are welcome.

Please send a title and 350-500 word abstract to john.noyes@utoronto.ca before March 1, 2024

John K. Noyes

Professor of German, University of Toronto, Canada

Extraordinary Professor of Modern Foreign Languages, Stellenbosch University, South Africa