Contextualising colonial violence: Causality, continuity and the Holocaust

This article considers the problems that arises in linking colonialism and colonial violence to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Links between colonialism and the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, have again become popular with the increased focus on colonial violence. In German colonial history, a dominant tendency has been the ‘colonial sonderweg’ where continuities are drawn from colonial Africa to the Holocaust. Recently, British colonial violence too has been contextualised with the Holocaust, thus expanding the continuity thesis. Furthermore, Germany's confrontation with the Holocaust after 1945, some argue, serves as a model for how Britain should confront its past as a colonial power. This article argues that the invocation of the Holocaust as a benchmark for violence and a way to gauge colonial violence is generally unproductive and problematic. While intended to promote the historical significance of colonial violence, it does the opposite: it reduces it to a precursor and flattens the historical complexities that explained colonialism and colonial violence. Colonial violence, it is argued, is in itself significant and should therefore be separated from the Holocaust if we are to maintain its colonial context and historical specificity.