Europe's colonial past backfiring into the regions: Spain and Catalonia
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2016-08-29
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en
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This thesis is about examining how Europe’s colonial past is backfiring into its own nation states by using Catalonia, Spain as a case study in light of Michel Hechter’s internal colonialism thesis. A detailed reconstruction of Spain’s historical process of national development and colonial background is used to trace how Catalonia emerged in Spain’s nation-building process as an economically powerful ‘peripheral’ region. Although, Catalonia can be looked upon as Spain’s economic powerhouse it is yet politically dependent on Madrid. This thesis is therefore building up to the argument that Catalonia can be regarded as an internal colony of Spain because Catalonia can be looked upon as a region who wants to have greater autonomy, sayings about their own affairs and even want fully independence. This overlaps with the way how the colonies in Asia, Africa, the America’s and the Middle East wanted to gain independence. Although, the way to independence Catalonia is in not comparable to the way how the former colonies gained their independence, but the rooted reasons why they want to achieve independence are fundamentally the same. The same thing is happening only in a different context, in a modern, Western, civilized postcolonial world. A possibly modern form of decolonization inside Europe.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen