Europe has always presented a problem for postcolonial studies. In the elisions of temporal and spatial coordinates that occur so frequently in theoretical discourse that ostensibly addresses the task of understanding the nature of colonialism and its aftermaths, of how colonialism shaped the modern world, and of how it may be resisted in the name of an equitable, peaceful, and just ‘postcolonial’ future, the ‘when’ and ‘where’ and ‘why’ of Europe has often been obscured
