Europe as a Province: Perspectives on Post-Colonial Historiography

Europe as a Province: Perspectives on Postcolonial Historiography (original title: Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference ) is a collection of essays by the Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty that was published in 2000 and is regarded as the central theoretical basis of postcolonial historiography. It contains Chakrabarty's critique of Eurocentric historiography.

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Using the example of Indian historiography, Chakrabarty shows that prototypically developed concepts from the history of Europe cannot simply be transferred to non-European contexts, but are tied to the aforementioned European context. The uncritical transfer and generalization of central historical concepts such as modernity , the Enlightenment , civil society and the nation state lead, according to Chakrabarty, to a non-European historiography, which can only be understood as a "historiography of lack" in relation to said concepts. In this context, the author advocates an incessant deconstruction of the historical vocabulary in order to enable a radically heterogeneous historiography.

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• Europe as a province. Perspectives on Postcolonial Historiography. Translated from the English by Robin Cackett, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-593-39262-2 .