SUMMARY:

This article observes that so far the emphasis has been on the influence of colonialism rather than on the large social and economic domains that remained beyond imperial control. It has been widely acknowledged that this has paradoxically resulted in a privileging of colonial discourse and an overstatement of Europe’s historical role rather than a decentering of Europe in global history. The article explores how current attempts to challenge narratives of European exceptionalism and to contextualize colonialism as an aspect rather than a phase of globalization could be applied more effectively. It suggests that by coupling the approaches of New Imperial History and New Institutional Economic History a more realistic insight into the relative weight of these domains beyond imperial control might be obtained and, hence, a more precise assessment of the historical roles of colonial empires. In this venture, different epistemological positions and different systems of knowledge production are involved. The article briefly presents a few examples to underline the argument that extensive domains remained beyond imperial control. These include local money lending and business circuits, colonial bourgeoisies, transnational relations, and the world market.