colonialism 
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SOURCE: The Guardian
5/7/2021
Decolonising Museums isn’t Part of a ‘Culture War’. It’s about Keeping them Relevant
by Dan Hicks
"Britain’s museums sorely need such cultural revitalisation right now, and the question of human remains and artefacts offers a position from which to see debates around museums in a clearer light."
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5/9/2021
India's COVID Crisis Has Roots in its Colonial-Era Tax Structure
by Roderick Matthews
India's COVID crisis is being exacerbated by a health system that uses an anemic 3.5% of GDP. Continuities from the era of the British Raj, when powerful rural landowners went untaxed, are a big part of the problem.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
5/5/2021
Except for the Miracles
by Olúfémi Táíwò
"The deciding aspect of politics over these next crucial years will turn on battles against overwhelmingly powerful foes who will try to prevent radical redistribution of resources," writes Olúfémi Táíwò. The legacy of two radicals, in Ireland and Kenya, show the value of partial victory and learning from defeat.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/30/2021
Germany Sets Out Plans to Return Benin Bronzes
“We are facing the historical and moral responsibility to bring Germany’s colonial past to light and to come to terms with it,” Monika Grütters, Germany’s culture minister, said in a news release.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
5/3/2021
Ancient Egypt for the Egyptians
New books and a documentary consider the entanglement of colonialism with the rise of academic Egyptology.
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SOURCE: Contingent
4/25/2021
Colony of Cobblestone
by Carlos Santiago
San Juan's cobblestones are an illusion, aesthetic flourishes of "old world charm" intended to boost the tourism economy and conceal the island's status as a U.S. territory.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/21/2021
The Fruit of Power
Raoul Peck's documentary "Exterminate All The Brutes" considers not just the history of settler colonialism, but the epistemology of history in contexts where the powerful seek to shape knowledge.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/19/2021
France Enabled 1994 Rwanda Genocide, Report Says
A Rwandan government commission has concluded that the government of France supported the leaders of genocide in Rwanda to sustain its own influence. This goes a step beyond a recent French government report that identified French involvement in virulent ethnic politics but not in genocide.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/19/2021
U.N. Panel Calls British Report on Race a Repackaging of ‘Tropes’
United Nations experts have stated that a recent British government report on racial issues recycles racist tropes and unjustifiably ignores evidence of racial bias and disparities.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/15/2021
The Sun Never Set on the British Empire’s Oppression
While nationalist leaders in postcolonial states win political support by invoking heroic struggle to defeat British imperialism, they are very happy to use the repressive laws of colonialism against dissidents today.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/6/2021
Review: ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ Rewrites a Brutal History
The atrocities documented in Raoul Peck's HBO film series on colonization of the western hemisphere are not news. That's part of what fuels the anger driving the film.
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SOURCE: Public Books
3/29/2021
Who's Afraid of Antiracism?
by Chelsea Stieber
Recent books in different genres shed light on the limits of the French governing ideal of republican universalism for a society where racism is real and historically significant.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/18/2021
Napoleon Isn’t a Hero to Celebrate
by Marlene Daut
The veneration of Napoleon on the 200th anniversary of his death reflects a systemic problem in French education, which touts the color-blind universality of French republicanism (which Napoleon destroyed) without acknowedging his policy of attempted genocide in the effort to retake control of Haiti.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
3/16/2021
Fascism and Analogies — British and American, Past and Present
by Priya Satia
"Historical and local specificities mean all analogies are ultimately inaccurate in ways that historians must always make clear. The point of such comparisons, however, is to uncover darker historical truths obscured by prevailing, more flattering comparisons."
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/9/2021
France Eases Access, a Little, to Its Secrets
Historians of France's colonial war in Algeria have long been frustrated by the government's classification policies on documents related to the conflict. It is unclear how much this change will create transparency.
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SOURCE: Open Democracy
3/2/2021
The UK Government’s Obsession with ‘Culture Wars’ is a Threat to Democracy
In the British debate over the public history of colonialism and empire, are conservative government ministers the ones really engaged in "cancel culture"?
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SOURCE: The Guardian
3/7/2021
Trinity College Reckons with Slavery Links as Ireland Confronts Collusion with Empire
Dublin's Trinity College is undertaking a review of its institutional ties to slavery, a project that involves acknowledging the participation of Irish merchants in the Atlantic slave trade.
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SOURCE: Al Jazeera
2/26/2021
‘Moral Evil, Economic Good’: Whitewashing the Sins of Colonialism
by Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Recent efforts to reframe Europe's history of colonialism as a net contribution to human welfare are misguided, argues a scholar of African history.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/23/2021
Having Vaccines Alone isn’t Enough to Defeat COVID-19
by Joyce Chaplin
Early efforts at smallpox innoculation showed the importance of social and political factors in making new medical technologies effective.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/22/2021
Pankaj Mishra’s Reckoning With Liberalism’s Bloody Past
Indian critic Pankaj Mishra argues in a new book of essays that recent liberal concern about right-wing politicians declaring support for "western civilization" ignores the way that liberal colonialists have embraced ideas of cultural supremacy.