Departments

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colonialism

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    1/10/2022

    The Reparations Fight Must Include Costs of Climate Change

    by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

    The movement for reparations should be informed by the broader politics of anticolonial liberation struggles which sought not just to transfer resources but to raise new questions about the basic organiation of societies on a global scale.

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    12/6/2021

    What are Frantz Fanon's Lessons for Today?

    by Pankaj Mishra

    Taken at the moment of the Algerian fight for independence and other colonial liberation movements, "The Wretched of the Earth" was first seen as a beacon of liberatory thought. A new edition frames the ambivalences in Fanon's work on freedom.

  • SOURCE: Times Higher Education
    11/25/2021

    David Olusoga: Support Historians in Culture War Crosshairs

    “These new history wars have the warped logic of a witch trial; their aim is to convince people that they are being oppressed by the irrefutable facts of their own national histories, such as slavery in America, or the British Empire,” University of Manchester historian David Olusoga said.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    11/28/2021

    Are Native Land Acknowledgments Empty Gestures?

    by Graeme Wood

    Too often, says Atlantic writer Graeme Wood, the rote ackowledgment by a speaker that an event is taking place on land historically occupied by an indigenous people is an empty gesture that short-circuits discussion of Native demands.

  • SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
    11/28/2021

    Utopia’s Settler Colonialism Problem

    by Jessica Namakkal

    The commune movements of the 1960s counterculture were organized around a number of pernicious assumptions about indigenous people and the prerogatives of whites to settle and reorganize land. 

  • SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
    11/12/2021

    The Last Emperor of Mexico (Review)

    As the younger brother of the Austrian emperor, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian was a perfect figurehead for Napoleon III of France's efforts to create a puppet regime in Mexico. Things didn't go the way he hoped. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    11/11/2021

    Black Veterans of the First World War are Often Overlooked

    by Michelle Moyd

    Nearly 638,000 African men fought in Africa and Europe. Some were conscripted by colonial powers and forced to fight or labor, and others hoped through service to stake claims to political rights. More global attention to their service and its relationship to colonialism is needed.

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    10/26/2021

    France to Return Looted Artifacts to Benin

    At least 90,000 artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa are held by institutions in France, according to a 2018 report commissioned by the French government.

  • SOURCE: Black Perspectives
    10/12/2021

    Jack Johnson and Africa: Boxing and Race in Colonial Africa

    by Abraham Tapiwa Seda

    Jack Johnson's achievement as the world heavyweight champion had cultural significance far beyond the United States, as European colonial regimes that had used sports like boxing as instruments of social control found that they could also be instruments of rebellion and rejection of white supremacy.

  • 10/17/2021

    The Fantasy of Hispanic Heritage Month

    by Frank P. Barajas

    Conceived by a Congressman to honor the contributions of ethnic Mexicans to American society, Hispanic Heritage Month is based in a mythical Spanish past that obscures the indigenous history of the west and legitimates the succession of power from Iberian to Anglo elites. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    8/20/2021

    The Disasters in Afghanistan and Haiti Share the Same Twisted Root

    by Jonathan M. Katz

    "Both Haiti and Afghanistan owe their sorry conditions to decades of direct U.S. control. Looking closely at the links between the two is essential for understanding how to respond to each in ways that help, rather than do more harm."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    8/21/2021

    Afghanistan: A Failure Foretold?

    Historians of numerous colonial and imperial misadventures – from Indochina to Algieria to Afghanistan – suggest that American goals should have been recognized as incompatible with the reality of Afghan society. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    8/18/2021

    The US Repeated Mistakes of the Past in Afghanistan

    by Ali A. Olomi

    "By flooding Afghanistan with payoffs, bribes and aid, the British created a system of endemic corruption in which local chieftains and favorable bureaucrats would enrich themselves while the rest of the country remained relatively poor."