tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/imperialism-28459/articlesImperialism – The Conversation2024-01-23T13:27:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2162552024-01-23T13:27:15Z2024-01-23T13:27:15ZBack in the USSR: New high school textbooks in Russia whitewash Stalin’s terror as Putin wages war on historical memory<p>Hey, kids, meet Josef Stalin.</p>
<p>New Russian high school textbooks – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/13/russia-history-textbook-revision-ukraine/">introduced in August 2023</a> on the instruction of President Vladimir Putin – attempt to whitewash Stalinist crimes and rehabilitate the Soviet Union’s legacy. While schools and teachers previously could pick educational materials from a variety of choices, these newly created textbooks are mandatory reading for 10th and 11th graders in Russia and occupied territories. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://search.asu.edu/profile/4666086">scholar of Russian and Soviet history</a>, I see the new books as just another example of state-sponsored efforts to use history and scholarship to serve Putin’s agenda and goals. </p>
<p>Other recent attempts along these lines include the establishment in November 2023 of the <a href="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6319763">National Center of Historical Memory</a>, tasked with preserving “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory”; the creation of a sprawling network of historical parks called “<a href="https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/the-romanovs-revisited-the-reimagining-of-the-romanovs-within-russia-my-history-history-parks/">Russia: My History</a>,” with new branches in <a href="https://myhistorypark.ru/for-visitors/events/v-luganske-otkryilsya-istoricheskij-park-%C2%ABrossiya-%E2%80%93-moya-istoriya/">occupied Ukrainian cities Luhansk and Melitopol</a>; and the <a href="https://statearchive.ru/1668">2023 publication</a> of a collection of archival documents called “On Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” </p>
<p>These projects not only demonstrate Putin’s desire to control the historical narrative but to serve the goal of promoting <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/12/06/blood-and-iron-how-nationalist-imperialism-became-russia-s-state-ideology-pub-91181">Russian cultural and educational imperialism</a>.</p>
<p>Putin’s efforts to redeem the Soviet past may help explain why Stalin is up in the polls, with 63% of Russians asked in June 2023 <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67408650">expressing a positive attitude</a> toward the Soviet dictator <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html">behind widespread</a> purges, mass executions, <a href="https://gulag.online/articles/mapa-taborovych-sprav-gulagu-a-pribehu-ze-stredni-evropy?locale=en">forced labor camps</a> and policies leading to the deaths of millions of his own compatriots. </p>
<p>But Stalin’s place in history remains divisive within the nations he once ruled over, especially where Russia retains significant political and cultural influence.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Russian President Vladimir Putin walks statue of Soviet leader Josef Stalin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin walks by the grave of Soviet leader Josef Stalin on June 25, 2015, in Moscow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-walks-by-the-grave-of-news-photo/478523040?adppopup=true">Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In January 2024, a newly installed icon honoring Stalin in his homeland of Georgia was defaced – an act <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/defacing-stalin-icon-exposes-deep-divisions-his-home-country-georgia-2024-01-10/">exposing deep divisions</a>.</p>
<p>The number of privately funded monuments to the dictator <a href="https://www.svoboda.org/a/v-rossii-ustanovleny-110-pamyatnikov-stalinu-ih-chislo-rastyot/32619483.html">is increasing</a>, while the memorials to victims of political repression in Russia <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67408650">are disappearing</a>. Yet, activists are still fighting to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/activists-struggle-commemorate-victims-soviet-repression-2023-11-02/">commemorate</a> those who perished.</p>
<h2>Whitewashing history</h2>
<p>Putin, <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-crimea-mythmaking">famously obsessed with history</a>, has been talking about the creation of national history textbooks since 2013. In August 2023, Putin’s wish was finally granted when one of his closest associates, former Minister of Culture <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/putin-russia-medinsky.html">Vladimir Medinsky</a>, presented new textbooks for 10th and 11th grade students: two in Russian history and two in World history. Medinsky co-authored all four. </p>
<p>The 10th grade textbooks cover the period from 1914 to 1945. The 11th grade textbooks cover history from 1945 to the present day and include sections on the current Russian-Ukrainian war, called in Russia a “Special Military Operation” as an official euphemism.</p>
<h2>Warping historical narratives</h2>
<p>The new school textbooks maintain some nuance in their coverage of Stalinism, yet that nuance can be described as “yes, but,” which makes it even more effective in warping the historical narrative. </p>
<p>The 10th grade Russian history textbook, for example, briefly mentions the dramatic consequences of collectivization of Soviet agriculture, including the 1932-33 man-made famines in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor">Ukraine</a>, <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/A_Tragedy_Kazakhstan_Must_Never_Forget/1357455.html">Kazakhstan</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/regional-19321933-famine-losses-a-comparative-analysis-of-ukraine-and-russia/F5C798BC03F12BB0D08CB24DE3D13F00">North Caucasus and other regions</a>. Yet it puts the blame exclusively on the poor harvests and mistakes of the local leadership rather than the Stalinist policies that caused and exacerbated the famines. Ukraine’s great famine, or Holodomor, in particular is considered by many historians and international <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221209IPR64427/holodomor-parliament-recognises-soviet-starvation-of-ukrainians-as-genocide">organizations</a> to be a genocide.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Coffee mugs with images of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Putin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mugs decorated with images of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Soviet leader Josef Stalin are seen on sale among other items at a gift shop in Moscow on March 11, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mugs-decorated-with-images-of-russian-president-vladimir-news-photo/1206547055?adppopup=true">Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Additionally, in the section on World War II, the students learn that the “collective feat of the peasantry” during the war would have been “impossible in the case of the domination of the private landholdings” – in other words, it was only possible under the Soviet system.</p>
<p>The Russian history textbook briefly mentions the “Great Terror” of 1937-38, in which millions were arrested and <a href="https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf">an estimated 700,000 to 1.2 million</a> were executed. Mention is also made of the personal role of Stalin, while also emphasizing the role of private denunciations and authorities of various Soviet republics and regions. But the creator of the Soviet secret police and an architect of the post-revolutionary “Red Terror,” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iron-felix-rises-again-over-russias-spy-service-moscow-2023-09-11/">Felix Dzerzhinsky</a>, is praised for his role in “combating counter-revolution,” “creation of the professional educational system” and “restoration of the railroads.”</p>
<p>All national histories are inherently biased, even <a href="https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/bias-in-history-textbooks/">in democratic societies</a>. Medinsky’s textbooks are, however, a distortion of history. The authors lose any attempt at objectivity while discussing Soviet foreign policy as always defensive and serving to protect everyone whom the USSR occupies and annexes. </p>
<p>The whitewashing of Stalin and his crimes is, I believe, crucial for understanding Putin’s creep toward ever more imperialist ideology and goals. In 2017, Putin <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55948">participated in the opening ceremony</a> for the memorial to the victims of political repressions in Moscow, during which he acknowledged <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1D15DH/">the violence of Stalin’s terror</a> and argued that it cannot be “justified by anything.” Yet his obsession with World War II led him to just that. </p>
<p>Putin and ideologists in the Russian leader circle have increasingly asserted that Stalin’s foreign policy and his leadership in World War II supersede his crimes against his own people. In his 2020 <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putin-real-lessons-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982?page=0%2C1">article in the U.S. journal National Interest</a>, Putin praised Stalin for his great “understanding of the nature of external threats” and actions that he undertook to “strengthen the country’s defenses.”</p>
<h2>The war on historical memory</h2>
<p>The more aggressive Russia’s politics are, the more protective the state is over the Soviet historical legacy. Since 2020, Moscow authorities <a href="https://apnews.com/article/memorial-soviet-repression-crackdown-russia-moscow-dissent-8aa8ca0e4e405445b6310d74c7853960">have not allowed demonstrations</a> traditionally held in Moscow on Oct. 29 to commemorate victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s. </p>
<p>In December 2021, <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-03-03/liquidation-memorial">Russian authorities ordered the “liquidation” of the human rights group Memorial </a>, fully unleashing the war on historical memory. The organization, which was among the three recipients of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2022/summary/">the Nobel Peace Prize</a> in 2022, was blamed by the Russian Supreme Court for “distorting memory about the War,” “rehabilitating Nazis” and “creating a false image of the USSR and Russia as terrorist states.” It is not a coincidence that an attack on the organization that for decades documented the Soviet terror came in the midst of the anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian hysteria and right before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Memorial, however, <a href="https://www.codastory.com/rewriting-history/memorial-human-rights-group-russia-crackdown/">still stands</a>, despite immense pressure from the authorities, attesting to the great power of resistance.</p>
<p>In the newly written Putinist narrative of history, the state and its expansion is always at the center, just as it was during Stalinism. The people are treated according to a proverb favored by Stalin, which sums up his attitude toward the ruthless and brutal measures he imposed: “When the wood is cut down, the chips are flying.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Free does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The whitewashing of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his crimes is crucial for understanding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialist ideology and goals.Anya Free, Faculty Associate in History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192672023-12-18T16:17:09Z2023-12-18T16:17:09ZHow a Victorian trip to Palestine spurred modern ornithology – and left it with imperial baggage<p>Palestine’s natural splendour offered a landscape ripe for scientific “discovery”, description and expropriation by European imperial powers in the 19th century. And in the 1860s an English vicar named <a href="https://www.sacristy.co.uk/books/history/henry-baker-tristram-ornithology#">Henry Baker Tristram</a> claimed its birds. </p>
<p>Tristram was a co-founder of <a href="https://bou.org.uk/about-the-bou/">Ibis</a>, the ornithology journal published since 1859 by the British Ornithologists’ Union. His articles on Palestinian ornithology began with the first issue, when he contributed a list of birds he’d collected during a brief visit there the previous year. The list included a species previously unknown to western science, which was named in his honour as Tristram’s grackle (now more commonly known as Tristram’s <a href="https://ebird.org/species/trista1?siteLanguage=en_GB">starling</a>). </p>
<p>Tristram made a major contribution to the study of birds. At that time ornithology reflected imperial priorities and was concerned with collecting, describing and mapping. His observations of Palestine’s birds, in particular, laid the groundwork for the modern ornithology of the area. </p>
<p>However, his exploits in Palestine, still honoured in the name “Tristram’s starling”, also show why honorific bird names like this have come under increasing <a href="https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/">scrutiny</a>. </p>
<p>Tristram returned to Palestine for a fuller investigation in 1864. He travelled south from Beirut with a group of fellow naturalists and a large baggage train. The account of his ten-month-long journey was published in 1865 as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Land_of_Israel.html?id=Qd8TAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Land of Israel</a>. </p>
<p>This book, and the several <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Tristram%2C%20H.%20B.%20%28Henry%20Baker%29%2C%201822-1906">others</a> he wrote about Palestine, formed part of a growing wave of popular tourist accounts of the Holy Land. They fed the interest and shaped the perceptions of British readers fascinated by the area’s historical and Biblical remnants, its living inhabitants, and the missionary efforts to achieve conversions to Christianity. </p>
<p>Unusually, Tristram and his companions travelled far off the well-beaten tourist and Christian pilgrimage routes throughout Palestine. The Land of Israel includes detailed descriptions of Palestine’s diverse ethnic groups, their domestic, religious, military and economic traditions and practices, and their relationships with one another. </p>
<h2>Imperialism</h2>
<p>Tristram’s descriptions of Palestine’s people in many ways reflected typical British imperial views of “natives”, not least in his use of the terms “childlike” and “savage”, and his comparison of Bedouins to “red Indians”. His racialising and religious views were also shaped by his inclinations as a natural historian – he categorised those he observed according to type, and deviation from type. </p>
<p>At best, his characterisations are paternalistic; at worst, deeply offensive. The terms “debased” and “degraded” repeat often. Of one group near Jericho he writes: “I never saw such vacant, sensual, and debased features in any group of human beings of the type and form of whites”. </p>
<p>Of some Bedouin further south, he observes that “they were all decidedly of the Semitic type, and, excepting the colour and the smell, had nothing of the negro about them. They must, however, be far inferior to the races they have supplanted.”</p>
<p>Occasionally, he acknowledges Ottoman oppression and neglect as the cause of poverty, but in most cases links it to “Moslem fanaticism” and “Oriental indolence”. Although there are exceptions, Muslim settlements and their inhabitants are almost invariably “filthy”, “squalid” and “miserable”. </p>
<p>Of religious sites, he notes many instances of churches which have been “perverted” into mosques. One of his most offensive observations is of a Bedouin sheikh, Abu Dahuk: “like all his followers, he is very dark – not so black as the commonalty, but of a deep olive brown. This may partly arise from the habit of these people, who never wash. They occasionally take off their clothes, search them, slaughter their thousands, and air themselves, but never apply water to their persons”. The odour, he remarks, “is unendurable”.</p>
<p>Conversion to Christianity appeared to redeem this degradation. In the Galilee he notes: “Christianity had here, as elsewhere, stamped the place and its substantial houses with a neatness and cleanliness to which the best of Moslem villages are strangers”. </p>
<p>Conversion also seemed to him to transform racial attributes. Of two Protestant converts he observes that “so much had religion and education elevated them, that they seemed of a different race from those around them”. Among Bethlehem’s Christians, he particularly admires “the handsome faces of the men and women, and the wondrous beauty of the children, so fair and European-like”. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An old brown book cover with the words The Land of Israel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Land of Israel 1872 edition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasmine Donahaye</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Tristram describes Jewish ethnicity in typical missionary terms. The Jews were a “decayed and scattered people”, with “musty and crumbling learning”. At a Protestant missionary tent in Tiberias he notes that “the Polish Jews, very numerous here, were willing to listen … but the native Jews, with whom were mingled a few Moslems, were occasionally very violent in their expressions”. The Jews, he concludes, “are a stiff-necked race”. </p>
<p>During his months in Palestine in 1864, Tristram shot hundreds of birds for his collection, and shot many more during subsequent visits. His surviving collection in the Liverpool World Museum includes, among others, the original 1858 <a href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/whats-type-guide-type-specimens">type specimens</a> of Tristram’s grackle, and 17 Palestine sunbird skins.</p>
<p>Tristram depended on many people – servants, dragomen, muleteers, cooks, collectors and guards – for their expertise, labour and protection, and sometimes even for <a href="https://newwelshreview.com/book/birdsplaining-a-natural-history-by-jasmine-donahaye">saving his life</a>. He also depended on them for help with obtaining specimens. But for that help with collecting he only names one person: “Gemil, with a little training,” he writes, “would soon have made a first-rate collector.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dozens-of-north-american-bird-species-are-getting-new-names-every-name-tells-a-story-217886">Why dozens of North American bird species are getting new names: Every name tells a story</a>
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<p>Those British imperial values that coloured Tristram’s view of Palestine’s people enabled him to name and claim its natural resources for western science, and for personal glory. They also gave him licence to propose that the land itself should be claimed: “Either an European protectorate or union with Egypt seems requisite to save Palestine from gradual dissolution,” he remarked, “unless, which seems hopeless, the Arabs can be induced to cultivate the sod.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219267/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jasmine Donahaye does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>H.B. Tristram was a Victorian clergyman and ornithologist who categorised a list of birds he’d found in Palestine.Jasmine Donahaye, Professor in English Literature and Creative Writing, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186082023-12-08T13:03:35Z2023-12-08T13:03:35ZKenya at 60: the shameful truth about British colonial abuse and how it was covered up<p>It is fairly well known that the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were affected by terrible acts of violence under the British colonial administration. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/britain-maumau-empire-waiting">British government</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/king-charles-stops-short-of-apology-for-british-colonial-violence-kenya">King Charles</a> have acknowledged it, and some victims of violence have taken the British government <a href="https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/blog/2017-blogs/the-mau-mau-case-five-years-on/">to court</a> for these crimes. </p>
<p>Less-known is how much the British imperialist government tried to cover up these violations. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43670796">research</a> reveals how harsh British detention camps in Kenya were, and the extremes to which the colonialists went to conceal information about this.</p>
<p>Much of this violence happened during the state of emergency, which lasted between 20 October 1952 and 12 January 1960. </p>
<p>As militant nationalism, including the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/mau-mau-uprising">Mau Mau rebellion</a>, grew against the colonial state, a state of emergency was declared in 1952. It introduced a raft of extraordinary regulations, akin to wartime powers. </p>
<p>The regulations paved the way for mass arrests, detention without trial, excess capital punishment, summary executions, evictions, fines and the forced resettlement of entire villages. </p>
<p>From 1953 to 1960, between <a href="https://repository.essex.ac.uk/20529/15/LHR%20AM%20Duffy.pdf#page=16">70,000</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2011.611677">150,000</a> Mau Mau suspects were detained without trial in an archipelago of camps. Conditions in the camps were dire and British colonials and loyalist warders meted out violence with impunity. </p>
<p>The Kenya Human Rights Commission <a href="https://www.khrc.or.ke/index.php/2015-03-04-10-37-01/press-releases/826-accept-without-equivocation-responsibility-over-the-atrocious-colonial-rule-british-investments-and-programmes-in-kenya-to-date">estimates</a> that more than 100,000 Kenyans were killed, tortured and maimed during this time. </p>
<p>Using declassified colonial files and government papers, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43670796">my research</a> reveals the pressure that was exerted by the Colonial Office in London to conceal evidence of violence against detainees. It shows how a highly sophisticated propaganda machine controlled the public narrative of violent incidents. </p>
<p>It was a form of state-sanctioned amnesia that hid the victims’ perspectives. It officially depicted the British colonials as rational actors doing a difficult job under the circumstances. </p>
<p>Highlighting this colonial story enriches the present and sheds new light on these events.</p>
<h2>Violence in detention</h2>
<p>I identified flash-points of violence which revealed the brutality of the colonial detention regime. </p>
<p>One of these, known as screening, occurred when an entire village or community was confined and interrogated about their political allegiances. Many were subsequently detained. </p>
<p>To progress through the camp complex to eventual release, detainees (none of whom had been charged with or convicted of any crime) had to confess to their Mau Mau activities. </p>
<p>Camp staff achieved this by using systematic brutality that had been sanctioned by the colonial administration. </p>
<p>One example was the “dilution” technique. This occurred when a small number of non-cooperating detainees were housed with cooperating detainees who – through a concerted psychological and physical attack – would push them to accept the rehabilitation regime and confess to taking the Mau Mau oath. </p>
<p>A variation of this, the Mwea procedure, used physical force to break “hardcore” detainees when they first arrived at the detention camp. Incoming detainees would be abused by prison staff and cooperating detainees until they submitted. </p>
<p>Another form of sanctioned violence was the use of “overpowering force”. This was supposed to be executed by European rehabilitation and prison staff in the form of on-the-spot punishment of no more than 12 strokes using a regulation cane. </p>
<p>From 1953, a policy to compel detainees to engage in work was introduced and disobedience was redefined as a major offence. So when detainees refused to work, they were subject to corporal punishment. </p>
<p>The scene was therefore set for the sanctioned use of violence against detainees. And if people were injured or killed in defiance of a legal order, those consequences could more easily be justified by camp authorities.</p>
<p>These methods of corporal punishment resulted in many injuries and deaths because camp staff regularly exceeded the punishment specified in emergency ordinances.</p>
<p>For instance, on 3 March 1959 at Hola detention camp in the north province, 11 detainees were killed and many more injured after being set upon by guards for “refusing to work”. </p>
<p>The initial official account blamed the deaths on contaminated water. However, the local inquest magistrate revealed the deaths “were due to shock and haemorrhage due to multiple bruising caused by violence”. Still, no one was ever prosecuted for these killings.</p>
<h2>Memory and history</h2>
<p>The history that is remembered is no accident. Writing to the governor and the colonial secretary in 1953, Kenya’s attorney general advised, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/mau-mau-sinning-quietly">if we are going to sin, we must sin quietly</a>”. Thus, a version of British imperialism was projected that relied upon concealment of harsh facts.</p>
<p>The violent architecture of the camps was hidden behind complicated bureaucratic language that stripped away its real meaning. </p>
<p>The British public were spun a narrative by the colonial government about the “rehabilitative” nature of the camps – a way to convert people away from Mau Mau allegiance.</p>
<p>In addition to spin, there was a deliberate attempt to suppress information. I was able to pinpoint significant Colonial Office directives from the late 1950s, which I argue were central to official denial and amnesia. </p>
<p>As British colonial territories were inching toward independence in the mid-20th century, the government in Whitehall <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-history-review/article/abs/legacies-of-british-colonial-violence-viewing-kenyan-detention-camps-through-the-hanslope-disclosure/8B1F91BFF8D1F967A9220DA5F9D47551">redoubled its efforts to bury</a> any evidence that implicated its colonial officials in violations that occurred in territories under British administration. </p>
<p>All top secret classified materials were rapidly centralised in executive offices in Kenya and marked for “European eyes only”. </p>
<p>Certain colonial files were given a particular classification in a “Watch” series prior to Kenyan independence in 1963. This included “all papers which might be interpreted as showing racial discrimination against Africans on the part of the Government”. </p>
<p>The files <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-history-review/article/abs/legacies-of-british-colonial-violence-viewing-kenyan-detention-camps-through-the-hanslope-disclosure/8B1F91BFF8D1F967A9220DA5F9D47551">were then</a> either destroyed or removed to the UK in the 1960s. We know about the classification directives and destruction mandates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/sins-colonialists-concealed-secret-archive">because</a> a paper trail covering those particular processes survived. </p>
<p>It is clear from these directives that evidence of serious human rights abuses would be destroyed in these document purges. Documents deemed to be safe were transferred to the new independent government.</p>
<p>All of these acts meant that the colonial portrayal of the Mau Mau uprising as irrational could be legitimised.</p>
<p>Selectivity over what could be mentioned was a successful colonial strategy, with resonance in how British colonial history is viewed today.</p>
<h2>Apology and reparations</h2>
<p>Those who continue to benefit from Britain’s historical violence are insensitive or unresponsive to the calls for acknowledgement, apology and reparations. </p>
<p>Public statements by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/king-charles-stops-short-of-apology-for-british-colonial-violence-kenya">King Charles</a> and former British foreign secretary <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2013-06-06/debates/13060646000005/MauMauClaims(Settlement)">William Hague</a> recognise that Kenyans were subjected to torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration, but they fall short of a full apology.</p>
<p>There will be difficulty in examining and addressing historical harms. But my research reveals a need to reconcile the colonial narratives with historical facts. This holds the potential to foster genuine compassion and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aoife Duffy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thousands of Kenyans were held in detention camps, and the British imperialist government tried to cover up brutal violations that occurred there.Aoife Duffy, Senior Lecturer, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170692023-12-01T13:40:04Z2023-12-01T13:40:04Z‘Wonka’ movie holds remnants of novel’s racist past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562787/original/file-20231130-25-2x451e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4343%2C1774&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A storyline in the forthcoming 'Wonka' movie is that the central character can change a dutiful young girl's life.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Several years ago, I made a visit to a local book sale and came across a rare 1964 edition of Roald Dahl’s “<a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/176964">Charlie and the Chocolate Factory</a>.” Popular in its own right, the novel has also served as the inspiration for a number of movies, including “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/">Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory</a>” – the classic 1971 movie starring the late Gene Wilder – <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367594/">a 2005 reboot</a> starring Johnny Depp, and “<a href="https://www.wonkamovie.com/">Wonka</a>,” the 2023 version.</p>
<p>As a child of the 1980s, I had voraciously consumed Dahl’s novels, so I knew the book well. But the illustrations in this particular edition looked unfamiliar.</p>
<p>Once I brought the worn and tattered book home and began to read it aloud to my kids, I realized that some passages looked unfamiliar as well. My voice faltered as the Oompa-Loompas – the pint-sized workers in Wonka’s chocolate factory – appeared and Charlie asked, “Are they really made out of chocolate, Mr. Wonka?”</p>
<p>To which Wonka replied: “Nonsense!”</p>
<p>“They belong to a tribe of tiny miniature pygmies known as Oompa-Loompas,” Wonka explains in this version of the book. “I discovered them myself. I brought them over from Africa myself – the whole tribe of them, three thousand in all. I found them in the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before.”</p>
<p>The accompanying black-and-white illustration of several dark-skinned Oompa-Loompas left me stunned.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562541/original/file-20231129-19-ndnz6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of dark-skinned Oompa-Loompas from the 1964 version of Roald Dahl’s ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562542/original/file-20231129-23-7ta15v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of white Oompa-Loompas from a 2011 edition of Roald Dahl’s ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dahl’s book is part of a long history of children’s books that feature racist stereotypes – a list that includes <a href="https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed18335c03319d72f443594c174513">six Dr. Seuss books that were removed from publication in 2021</a>. Other children’s classics, such as “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/racist-history-peter-pan-indian-tribe-180953500/">Peter Pan</a>” and “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/246055/pdf">Mary Poppins</a>,” have also been criticized for perpetuating racism.</p>
<p>As an English lecturer who <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-course-examines-the-dark-realities-behind-your-favorite-childrens-stories-210329">specializes in decoding some of the hidden meanings and dark realities in popular children’s stories</a>, I looked deeper into the blatant racism in the 1964 edition of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” comparing it to a more recent copy from 2011. </p>
<p>Notably, the description of the Oompa-Loompa’s skin had been changed from “almost black” to “rosy-white.” And rather than coming from Africa, they came from “Loompaland.” I learned that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26362342?mag=roald-dahls-anti-black-racism&seq=2">these changes were made by Dahl for the 1974 edition after criticism by the NAACP </a> and others. Dahl’s response was to remove the Black characters altogether.</p>
<p>Yet as philosophy lecturer Ron Novy <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/roald-dahl-and-philosophy-a-little-nonsense-now-and-then/oclc/884017017">points out</a>, even the latest editions of the book still perpetuate racist and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=eiCO730AAAAJ&citation_for_view=eiCO730AAAAJ:9yKSN-GCB0IC">imperialist ideologies</a>.</p>
<h2>Parallels with slavery</h2>
<p>When Wonka describes how he “smuggled” the Oompa-Loompas into the country in “large packing cases with holes in them,” the image clearly recalls slave ships navigating the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm#:%7E:text=The%20Middle%20Passage%20itself%20lasted,15%25%20grew%20sick%20and%20died.">Middle Passage</a>. Wonka’s promise to pay the Oompa-Loompas’ wages in cacao beans, and the admission that no one ever sees them come in or out of the factory, reinforces the Oompa-Loompas’ subjugation to Willy Wonka, who plays the role of their “Great White Father,” as fourth grade reading teacher <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20193551">Katherine Baxter noted in 1974</a>.</p>
<p>Historian Donald Yacovone <a href="https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/roald-dahl-the-caribbean-and-a-warning-from-his-chocolate-factory/">has pointed out</a> that, even in its revised form, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” has long contributed to the perpetuation of white supremacist ideology. Not only do the Oompa-Loompas immediately appear – ready to obey – whenever Wonka clicks his fingers, but Wonka is also repeatedly dismissive of them. He calls them “charming” but tells his visitors not to believe a word the Oompa-Loompas say. “It’s all nonsense, every bit of it!” </p>
<p>Wonka even uses the Oompa-Loompas as experimental subjects. He feeds them gum that turns them into blueberries and fizzy drinks that send one unfortunate man aloft until he “disappeared out of sight” and was never seen again. These experiments seem a grotesque parody of the myriad cases of enslaved and free Black Americans who have been <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/185986/medical-apartheid-by-harriet-a-washington/">subjected to experimental surgeries, treatments and medical neglect</a>. </p>
<p>In both the book’s current version and in the original, he smuggles them into his factory and pays them in cacao beans because they were “practically starving to death” and cacao was “the one food that they longed for more than any other … but they couldn’t get it” on their own. </p>
<p>It’s an absurd assertion that this community of people, originally located in the heart of Africa, cannot access a crop that, while native to the Amazon, <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/709715326#goodreads">is primarily grown in West African countries</a>. That they need Wonka to give them access to the resources of their own land is a damaging colonialist fantasy – one which, as Yacovone notes, has historically buoyed, rather than diminished, the popularity of the novel and the 1971 and 2005 films.</p>
<h2>Maintaining the status quo</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the latest <a href="https://www.wonkamovie.com/">Wonka</a> movie also engages in the type of implicit racism that remains in the revised 1974 version of the novel. The most prominent Black character, a girl named Noodle, played by the talented <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7412362/">Calah Lane</a>, takes a back seat to Wonka in the major events of the film.</p>
<p>The new Wonka almost broke from the tradition of having Wonka played by white men. Early in the new film’s conception, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-glover-willy-wonka-movie-charlie-chocolate-factory-rumor-960382">Newsweek</a> reported that actor, comedian and musician <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Glover">Donald Glover</a> was under consideration for the lead role, a choice that could have at least begun to force a rewrite of the original novel’s racist narrative. </p>
<p>Instead, the film casts Noodle in the position of an unfortunate Black girl who can only hope for a ride on Wonka’s velvet coattails. </p>
<p>“I know things haven’t been easy for you,” Wonka says in the movie. “They’re going to get better.”</p>
<p>“You promise?” Noodle replies, hopefully, and he does promise, highlighting his role as her white savior. Another character in voice-over agrees: “You could change her life, Mr. Wonka. Change all their lives.” </p>
<p>I was initially hopeful about the prospect of a movie that moves away from the novel’s racist origins, yet still imparts the power of imagination on a new generation. Unfortunately, moviegoers may find themselves having to hold their breath and make a wish, as Gene Wilder <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVi3-PrQ0pY">stated in a song</a> from the 1971 movie, for a version that holds no remnants of its racist past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217069/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meisha Lohmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The original storyline for Road Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” contained some stunning parallels to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.Meisha Lohmann, Lecturer in English Literature, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2146262023-12-01T13:38:17Z2023-12-01T13:38:17ZColonized countries rarely ask for redress over past wrongs − the reasons can be complex<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562470/original/file-20231129-20-sljkib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C17%2C3901%2C2404&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian visitors look at a painting depicting the Amritsar Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-visitors-look-at-a-painting-depicting-the-amritsar-news-photo/120271580?adppopup=true">Narinder Nanu/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The king of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/01/1185647423/dutch-king-apologizes-for-the-monarchys-role-in-global-slave-trade">apologized in July 2023</a> for his ancestors’ role in the colonial slave trade. </p>
<p>He is not alone in expressing remorse for past wrongs. In 2021, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/benin-art-returned-scli-intl/index.html#:%7E:text=Twenty%2Dsix%20works%20of%20art,countries%20to%20recover%20looted%20artifacts.">France returned 26 works of art seized by French colonial soldiers</a> in Africa – the largest restitution France has ever made to a former colony. In the same year, Germany officially apologized for its 1904-08 genocide of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/germany-officially-calls-colonial-era-killings-namibia-genocide-2021-05-28/">and agreed to fund reconstruction and development projects in Namibia.</a>.</p>
<p>This is, some political scientists have observed, the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pPXpiXQ45osC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">age of apology</a>” for past wrongs. Reams of articles, particularly in Western media, are devoted to former colonizer countries and whether they have enacted redress – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/learning/should-museums-return-looted-artifacts-to-their-countries-of-origin.html">returned museum artifacts</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-reparations.html">paid reparations</a> or <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/12/20/some-european-countries-have-apologised-for-their-colonial-past-is-it-enough">apologized for past wrongs</a>. </p>
<p>Yet this is rarely the result of official requests. In fact, very few former colonies have officially – that is, government to government – pressed perpetrators to redress past injustices. </p>
<p>My analysis found that governments <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad118">in 78% of such cases</a> have not asked to be compensated for historical acts of injustice against them. As a <a href="https://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/profile/manjari-chatterjee-miller/">scholar of international relations</a> who has studied the effect of <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=22642">colonialism on the present-day foreign policy of countries affected</a>, I found this puzzling. Why don’t more victim states press for intercountry redress? </p>
<p>The answer lies in the fact that colonial pasts and atoning for injustices are controversial – not just in what were perpetrator countries, but also in their victims. What to ask redress for, from whom and for whom are complicated questions with no easy answers. And there are often divergent narratives within victim countries about how to view past colonial history, further hampering redress. </p>
<h2>Focus on perpetrator country</h2>
<p>There is a disproportionate amount of attention paid to whether perpetrator countries – that is, former colonizers who established extractive and exploitative governments in colony states – offer redress. They are <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/summer/germany-japan-reconciliation/">lauded when they enact redress</a> and <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/japans-apologies-on-comfort-women-not-enough/">shamed when they do not</a>.</p>
<p>The processes pertaining to redress within victim countries – the former colonies – gets less attention. This, I believe, has the effect of making these countries peripheral to a conversation in which they should be central.</p>
<p>This matters – success or failure of redress can <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/99/4/1693/7198184">depend on whether victim countries officially push for it</a>.</p>
<p>Take the experiences of two formerly colonized countries that I studied in depth in relation to the question of redress: India and Namibia. </p>
<h2>The Indian experience: Different narratives</h2>
<p>It’s <a href="https://globalchallenges.ch/issue/10/decolonisation-and-international-law/">difficult for a country</a>, particularly a poor developing nation, to take a former colonizer, usually a much richer country, to the International Court of Justice to ask for redress for the entire experience of colonialism. </p>
<p>But most former colonies have never officially asked for some form of redress – be it apology, reparations or restitution, even for specific acts of injustice. </p>
<p>India is an example of the difficulty in building consensus for official redress. Take the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/opinion/1919-amrtisar-british-empire-india.html">Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919</a>, in which British troops killed hundreds of peaceful protesters, including women and children.</p>
<p>The Indian government has never officially <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/india-should-not-ask-britain-to-apologise-for-the-amritsar-massacre/">asked for an apology</a> from the United Kingdom over the incident. </p>
<p>Part of the problem is different groups within India have different narratives about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/29/british-empire-india-amartya-sen">the 200 years of British colonial rule</a>. No one disputes that the Raj was exploitative and violent. But which acts of violence to emphasize? How much responsibility should be assigned to the British? And should any positive attributes of the Raj be highlighted? These are all debated.</p>
<p>Such points of divergence are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad118">reflected in India’s federal and state-issued history textbooks</a>, according to my analysis.</p>
<p>The bloody <a href="https://theconversation.com/global/topics/india-pakistan-75-125381">Partition of India in 1947</a> and the subsequent creation of Pakistan, for example, are blamed on the British in federal and many state textbooks. But it merits just a small paragraph in Gujarati textbooks, where it is blamed entirely on the Muslim League, the founding party of Pakistan. In the state of Tamil Nadu, Partition is mentioned without any description of either the horrors that followed or where responsibility lay.</p>
<p>Different narratives also appear in the Indian Parliament. When the issue of redress came up in 1997 – the 50th year of Indian independence and just before <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/interactive/immersive/queen_elizabeth_70_years_on_throne/">Queen Elizabeth II visited India</a> – politicians agreed that India’s emergence from what politician Somnath Chatterjee described as “<a href="https://eparlib.nic.in/handle/123456789/430">a strangulating and dehumanizing slavery under a colonial imperialist power</a>” was worth celebrating. But on the issue of whether Elizabeth should apologize for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, there was little agreement. Calls from some politicians for an apology were drowned out by others who jabbed at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, pointing out its allies had <a href="https://eparlib.nic.in/handle/123456789/479">never apologized for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi</a>.</p>
<p>As of this writing, the U.K. has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/10/theresa-may-expresses-regret-for-1919-amritsar-massacre">expressed regret for the massacre</a> but never apologized, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/world/asia/jallianwala-bagh-massacre-india-britain.html">infuriating many Indians</a>.</p>
<h2>The long journey for Namibian redress</h2>
<p>Namibia is an uncommon case of redress where the government has officially pushed for an apology and reparations from its former colonizer, Germany. But even then it was a painful, complex and <a href="https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697">time-consuming process</a> dogged by many of the themes that have prevented India and others from seeking formal redress.</p>
<p>Between 1884 and 1919, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/namibia-a-timeline-of-germanys-brutal-colonial-history/a-57729985">Namibia was a German colony</a>, with some communities systematically dispossessed of their traditional lands. In 1904, one of these communities, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/herero-revolt-1904-1907">the Herero</a>, rebelled, followed in 1905 by the Nama. In response, German troops slaughtered thousands in a bloodbath that is today <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/11/6/reckoning-with-genocide-in-namibia">widely acknowledged to be a genocide</a>. Survivors, including women and children, were herded into horrific concentration camps and subjected to forced labor and medical experiments. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of men stand with chains around their necks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Captured Herero fighters in 1904.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gefangene-hereros-1904-05identisch-mit-nr-in-lz-8-news-photo/545965213?adppopup=true">Ullstein Bild via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The struggle to hold Germany accountable began decades ago, with individuals from the Herero and Nama communities calling for accountability and reparations. Germany rebuffed them repeatedly, precisely because the Namibian government did not take up their call. Only in 2015, after the Namibian government officially requested redress, did Germany acquiesce.</p>
<p>In May 2021, Germany <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/germany-officially-calls-colonial-era-killings-namibia-genocide-2021-05-28/">finally agreed to recognize the genocide</a>, apologize and establish a fund of US$1.35 billion toward reconstruction and development projects in Herero- and Nama-dominated areas. </p>
<p>Why did it take so long? For the Herero and Nama, the genocide and loss of traditional lands were always forefront. But for others in Namibia – notably, the dominant political party, the South West Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, which consists largely of members of the Ovambo ethnic community – uniting Namibians to come together in a national, anti-colonial struggle for independence was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hgs/article-abstract/26/3/394/575370?redirectedFrom=fulltext">deemed more important</a> than focusing on the wrongs suffered by any one community.</p>
<p>After independence, the ruling SWAPO <a href="https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/762/1/05029.pdf">prioritized nation-building and unity</a> and cultivated ties with the German government, hoping for foreign aid and economic development. Complicating matters, the Ovambo had not lost their own traditional lands to colonialism in the same way as the Herero and Nama.</p>
<p>For years, government-approved school history textbooks used in Namibian schools reflected the SWAPO narrative. One Ovambo former school history teacher told me that Namibian children learned about the “war of national resistance” and how exploitative colonialism had necessitated that war. But the word “genocide” was never used, and there were no mentions of the suffering of affected communities.</p>
<p>Around 2010, Namibian activists, NGO workers and government officials from all communities began to search for common ground to reconcile the different narratives. Some attempts failed. A 2014 museum exhibition on the genocide collapsed after its financier, the Finnish embassy, withdrew funding – allegedly under pressure, one Namibian expert told me, from the German government. But others succeeded. The <a href="https://nan.gov.na/home">National Archives of Namibia</a> launched a project to collect academic papers on divergent narratives of the liberation struggle and colonial history. </p>
<p>As reconciling narratives progressed, history textbooks were revised to honor not just SWAPO’s version of history, but also highlight the brutalities suffered by the Herero and Nama. They included frank discussions of genocide and colonial atrocities. Against this backdrop, the Namibian government officially initiated a request for redress from Germany. Both governments appointed teams to find a resolution, resulting in the 2021 reparation fund.</p>
<p>Redress between countries is rare. Successful redress even more so. But the example of Namibia shows that it can be done when the governments of victim countries initiate redress. By focusing only on perpetrator states, we miss an opportunity to examine their victims as agents of change, and thereby perpetuate redress as an unusual phenomenon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manjari Chatterjee Miller is affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations.</span></em></p>Fewer than a quarter of once-colonized countries make official government-to-government requests for an apology or reparations.Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations/Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024722023-04-13T10:00:32Z2023-04-13T10:00:32ZTraditional masculinity is a vague, unhelpful term we should abandon – here’s why<p>Most of us think we know what we mean when we talk about “traditional masculinity”. A term commonly used to describe a broad range of men’s traits and behaviour, it includes things like violence and aggression, emotional restraint, and hunger for power and dominance, to more positive characteristics such as reliability, stability, physical strength, independence and integrity. </p>
<p>Men’s homophobia and misogyny can be framed as traditional masculinity, yet when men sacrifice their comforts and health to provide for family, or give their lives to defend their country, this is regarded as traditional masculinity too. The term has many meanings, yet these are rarely explained.</p>
<p>South African psychology researchers <a href="https://www.psychologistbrittany.com/">Brittany Everitt-Penhale</a> and <a href="https://www0.sun.ac.za/psychology/staff/academic-staff/prof-kopano-ratele/">Kopano Ratele</a> maintain that if we want to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21528586.2015.1025826">explore traditional masculinity</a> in a specific context or culture we should not approach it as “a static set of features associated with men that has been timelessly passed down through generations”. In other words, we need to look at its use in its context – geographically, culturally and within specific periods of time.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/shifting-masculine-terrains-russian-men-in-russia-and-the-uk">work</a> looks at how masculinity is defined, experienced and negotiated by Russian men living in Russia and Russian <a href="https://www.rescue.org/article/migrants-asylum-seekers-refugees-and-immigrants-whats-difference">immigrant</a> men in the UK. I used to refer to the term “traditional masculinity” to talk about certain views and attitudes of my research participants, but over time I have come to re-evaluate it.</p>
<h2>What are we talking about?</h2>
<p>When we refer to traditional masculinity, which tradition do we have in mind? The Buddhist <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/the-bodhisattva/"><em>Bodhisattva</em> vow</a> – the commitment to put others before oneself? Or the Jewish tradition of <a href="https://blog.flexfits.com/periods-and-judaism/"><em>niddah</em></a> where men can’t hold hands or hug their wives during or the week after menstruation? Or do we think of the famous English stiff upper lip? There is a wide spectrum of masculinities in any society alongside a plethora of cultural traditions.</p>
<p>Approaching “tradition” as something singular and static doesn’t help us to understand men and masculinities in global and <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/superdiversity-institute/about/about-superdiversity.aspx">superdiverse</a> contexts.</p>
<p>Journalists, activists, academics and organisations such as the <a href="https://eige.europa.eu/publications/gender-equality-index-2021-report/traditional-norms-masculinity">European Institute for Gender Equality</a>, the <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/332974">World Health Organisation</a> and <a href="https://trainingcentre.unwomen.org/RESOURCES_LIBRARY/Resources_Centre/masculinities%20booklet%20.pdf">UN Women</a> often overlook these nuances. It is commonly stated that traditional masculinity reflects old-fashioned ideals of manhood based on the cult of power, ownership, homophobia, sexism, racism – effectively (and falsely) constructing these phenomena as things of the past. </p>
<p>The label is therefore used to describe some men’s behaviour and attitudes as “stuck in the past” or “backward”. This logic suggests that the opposite of traditional masculinity would be modern masculinity – non-violent, enlightened, caring, compassionate, supportive of women’s emancipation and sexual freedoms.</p>
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<h2>Imperial views</h2>
<p>It is common in western commentary to call non-western and migrant men traditional, portraying them as stuck in <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/refugee-crisis-demilitarising-masculinities/">oppressive and backward gender roles</a>. Post-colonial theorist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gayatri-Spivak">Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak</a> famously captured how white British colonisers in India portrayed brown Hindu men as a <a href="http://www.bahaistudies.net/neurelitism/library/subaltern_speak.pdf">problem that needed fixing</a>: “White men are saving brown women from brown men.”</p>
<p>This kind of binary thinking about traditional and modern masculinities is troubling. It conflates chronological and social progress, sustains division of the world into “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2555/chapter-abstract/1360482/The-West-and-the-Rest-Discourse-and-Power-1992?redirectedFrom=fulltext">the west and the rest</a>” and, as I have pointed out in previous <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385221110724">research</a>, popularises the assumption that every country will go through the same stages of development and eventually acquire the same levels of gender equality and sexual liberation as the western world.</p>
<p>Conflating a European understanding of gender and sex with the notion of “progress” and imposing it on the diverse societies of colonised countries was a tactic used by <a href="https://enriquedussel.com/txt/Textos_200_Obras/Filosofos_latinos_EU/Heterosexualism-Maria_Lugones.pdf">European colonisers</a>.</p>
<p>Nigerian scholar <a href="https://easteast.world/en/posts/292">Oyeronke Oyewumi</a> describes how the British “civilisational” mission brought gender discrimination to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba">Yoruba society</a>, one of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. Before British colonisation, Yoruba women had occupied leadership positions and owned land. Conversion to Christianity promoted strict separation between the world of men and that of women and gradually led to women’s exclusion from public life, education, trade and land ownership. </p>
<p>It’s important to remember that all countries and societies in any period exist in one historical time, yet systems such as imperialism and capitalism continue to <a href="https://www.arabstudiesjournal.org/asj-online/decolonizing-middle-east-men-and-masculinities-scholarship-an-axiomatic-approach">stigmatise</a> boys and men who are poor, resistant to western values and beliefs or racialised (meaning, reduced to racist stereotypes) as backward or traditional.</p>
<p>While masculinity is a historically changing concept, we need to bear in mind that dominant masculinities have been shaped by colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44981834">writes</a> that masculinities of the French and British empires were:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bound up with enabling violence – violence sufficient to overcome the considerable military capabilities of the colonised societies … [imperial masculinities] adapted to the need to dominate a colonised population. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Violence against racialised “others” in the name of civilisational progress continues today in the states with pronounced neo-imperial ambitions such as the <a href="https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevstlrev/vol52/iss1/9/">US</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385221110724#bibr12-00380385221110724">Russia</a>. So tradition is hardly enough to understand or explain gendered violence, domination or risk-taking behaviour among men in post-imperial states. </p>
<p>Contemporary Russian masculinities reveal the complexity of the issue. Scholars see Russian masculinities as <a href="https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-the-czar-of-macho-politics-is-threatened-by-gender-and-sexuality-rights-180473">traditional, patriarchal and macho</a>. Yet my <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380385221110724#bibr12-00380385221110724">study</a> demonstrates that Russian men think they are not as “progressive” as European men, but are far less “backward” and “traditional” than Arab or Muslim men.</p>
<p>In essence, such thinking has nothing to do with tradition. It is the same Eurocentric hierarchy of modernity/backwardness in which Russian men see themselves as being somewhere in the middle. </p>
<p>The language we use to talk about social problems associated with men’s aspiration to power and control is critical. Although a seemingly convenient shorthand, the term traditional masculinity is unhelpfully broad, rooted in the history of colonialism and works to deem masculinities of migrants and non-western countries as something that needs to be remedied.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, the term traditional masculinity feeds racism and imperialism. We need to <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">decolonise</a> the discussion and use a more nuanced language when talking about men’s lives and behaviours.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marina Yusupova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rarely explained term is nebulous at best, and can mean many things – negative and positive – to different groups of people.Marina Yusupova, Lecturer in Sociology, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2020272023-03-23T19:21:25Z2023-03-23T19:21:25ZKing Charles’s coronation: Can the British monarchy shed its imperial past?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516779/original/file-20230321-2127-2z8ek7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C565%2C6017%2C3482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla pose for a photo with representatives of the Commonwealth countries during the annual Commonwealth Day reception at Buckingham Palace in May 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Daniel Leal/Pool via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/king-charles-s-coronation--can-the-british-monarchy-shed-its-imperial-past" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>On May 6, 2023, eyes around the world will be on Westminster Abbey in London as King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63543019">are crowned</a>. </p>
<p>The coronation comes at a critical time for the monarchy. Fourteen <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries">Commonwealth countries</a>, including Canada, still have the British sovereign as their head of state, but times are changing. </p>
<p>In 2021, Barbados became the latest Commonwealth country to drop the monarchy and <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/barbados-becomes-a-republic/">become a republic</a>. Jamaica has said it plans to explore the idea in the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardfowler/2023/01/19/jamaicas-prime-minister-pushes--forward-to-make-nation-a-republic/?sh=18cdddbe2c9d">not-too-distant future</a>. </p>
<p>The coronation is an important moment for King Charles to show the Commonwealth and the world that his reign will be modern, more efficient and more sensitive to the legacy of British imperialism. </p>
<h2>A modern coronation</h2>
<p>British coronations have been steeped in pomp and pageantry for centuries, with some ceremonial elements <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/coronations-at-the-abbey/a-guide-to-coronations">going back 1,000 years</a>. But at a time when people <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-64983317">in Britain</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/088d3368-bb8b-4ff3-9df7-a7680d4d81b2">around the world</a> are worried about the cost of living and war in Europe, an expensive <a href="https://www.royal.uk/50-facts-about-queens-coronation-0#:%7E:text=The%20Queen's%20Coronation%20service%20began,the%20crown%20depicted%20on%20stamps.">coronation ceremony</a> could seem insensitive and out of touch. </p>
<p>Buckingham Palace seems aware of these concerns. Media reports have indicated Charles might cut the ceremony down to just an hour and chop the VIP list from a whopping <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/11/king-charles-iii-coronation-date-6-may-2023">8,000 guests down to 2,000</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women stand to one side while seated people watch them. Canadian and Nunavut flags fly in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516790/original/file-20230321-2329-97zqlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In June 2017, Charles and Camilla stirred up some controversy for laughing during a performance by throat singers during an official welcome ceremony in Iqaluit, Nunavut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In January, officials said the ceremony “<a href="https://www.royal.uk/coronation-weekend-plans-announced">will reflect the Monarch’s role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry</a>.” Whatever else Charles decides to cut will further signal how he hopes to be perceived as King. </p>
<p>One message is already coming through. This is going to be a more personal, inclusive coronation than any before. The canopy that is held above Camilla’s head when she is anointed Queen will be <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/02/26/prince-george-could-take-part-kings-coronation-alongside-camillas/">carried by her five grandchildren</a>.</p>
<h2>Colonial past</h2>
<p>The monarchy is also looking to be mindful of its pounds and pence on coronation spending. Last month, it was announced Camilla would wear <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/31704/queen-marys-crown">Queen Mary’s Crown</a>, made in 1911 for Charles’s great-grandmother. This is the first time since 1727 a previous queen’s crown is being reused. The palace says it’s doing so “<a href="https://www.royal.uk/queen-consort-crown-coronation">in the interests of sustainability and efficiency</a>.” </p>
<p>But the crown is also a visible reminder of Britain’s colonial past. Queen Mary’s Crown was designed to show off the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand-why-british-wont-give-it-back-180964660/">Koh-i-Noor diamond</a>. One of the oldest and most significant gemstones in Indian history, it was seen as an heirloom of power and the authority to rule. In 1849, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire “gifted” the diamond to Queen Victoria at the urging of the British colonial government in India. </p>
<p>The diamond eventually became <a href="https://www.thecourtjeweller.com/2016/04/developments-in-koh-i-noor-claims.html">part of the crown jewels</a>. As a symbol of British imperial power, it was shown off in Queen Mary’s crown at the 1911 coronation of King George V. </p>
<p>For years, many have called for the Koh-i-Noor’s return. India’s solicitor-general claimed during a court case in 2016 that the diamond was “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/koh-i-noor-diamond-given-britain-indian-government-crown-queen-mother">neither stolen nor forcibly taken away</a>.” </p>
<p>The Indian government quickly backtracked on this. The culture ministry stated that it wanted to “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/19/india-insists-it-still-wants-back-crown-jewel-koh-i-noor-diamond/">bring back the Koh-i-noor diamond in an amicable manner</a>.” Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have also claimed it at <a href="https://time.com/6212113/queen-elizabeth-india-kohinoor-diamond/">one time or another</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A explainer about the Koh-i-Noor diamond and why it’s controversial.</span></figcaption>
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<p>For the upcoming coronation, the Koh-i-Noor will be conspicuously absent from Queen Mary’s recycled crown. The <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/camilla-queen-consort-queen-mary-crown-1.6756157">Cullinan diamonds</a> that were part of Queen Elizabeth II’s <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-crown-jewels/the-cullinan-diamond">personal jewels</a> will be used. </p>
<p>These stones were cut from the Great Star of Africa, <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-crown-jewels/the-cullinan-diamond">the largest diamond ever found</a>. It was purchased by the British colonial government in South Africa in 1905 and was added into the crown jewels. </p>
<p>Queen Elizabeth’s death in September 2022 has reignited calls for the return of both the Koh-i-Noor and the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/great-star-of-africa-diamond-intl-lgs/index.html">Cullinan diamonds</a>. Such a move could have powerful ramifications for the monarchy, since <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries">India and South Africa remain members of the Commonwealth</a> but without the King as head of state. </p>
<p>There are other signs the monarchy is looking to distance itself from its colonial past during the coronation festivities. On May 26, a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64966167">special exhibit of the crown jewels</a> is planned to open at the Tower of London. </p>
<p>The history of the Koh-i-Noor will be a major feature, and the exhibit promises to “<a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/media-and-press/press-releases-2023/tower-of-london-to-unveil-new-display-in-its-jewel-house-sharing-the-history-of-the-world-famous-crown-jewels-in-the-coronation-year/">explain the stone’s story as a symbol of conquest</a>.” How that story will be presented remains to be seen. </p>
<p>Will the new King help build a more peaceful and inclusive Commonwealth? Will it even be possible for an aging white man, adorned in what to many are the symbols of repression, privilege and colonialism to do so? </p>
<p>Monarchists and critics alike will have to wait to see if the signals of progressive modernism surrounding the coronation develop into meaningful changes to the <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/KingsQueensofBritain/">1,000-year-old institution</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202027/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Vovk receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>The coronation is a critical moment for King Charles to show that the monarchy can be more efficient and more sensitive to the legacy of British imperialism.Justin Vovk, PhD Candidate, Early Modern History, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1996502023-02-28T16:18:19Z2023-02-28T16:18:19ZCocktails, curry and afternoon tea: inside the 1930s London conference that brought Gandhi to Buckingham Palace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512454/original/file-20230227-22-e4fksx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C23%2C1985%2C1470&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Conference attendees, from top left: Sir Syed Sultan Ahmed, Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Ganga Singh, Maharaja of Bikaner, Sarojini Naidu, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Radhabai Subbarayan, Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Dr BS Moonje, Jahan Ara Shahnawaz, J Ramsay MacDonald, Sir Jai Singh Prabhakar, Maharaja of Alwar.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC205_c00681">Indian Round Table Conference,1930-31; Derso and Kelen Collection, MC205, Public Policy Papers, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was the talk of the town. From afternoon teas at Buckingham Palace to lunches, dinners and drinks provided by London’s political hostesses. Between 1930 and 1932, India’s social and political leaders headed to London to negotiate the constitutional future of India in the British empire.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/conferencing-the-international/index.aspx">Round Table Conference</a> is mostly remembered for <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/conferencing-the-international/delegates/people.aspx?id=ab8d0915-8704-469b-a675-875ea21287dd">Gandhi’s</a> unsuccessful participation in the second session – where he failed to reconcile competing Hindu and Muslim demands. But this was only one small part of a conference of over 100 delegates.</p>
<p>Its three long sessions (two months, then three, then one) were captured by the <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/conferencing-the-international/representations/index.aspx">world’s news media</a>. UK prime minister Ramsay MacDonald’s concluding address from <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/1/item/17">St James’s Palace</a>
was filmed and broadcast in cinemas worldwide, as was the positive reaction of Indian delegates. </p>
<p>This was part of the retaliation against <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/mahatma-gandhi-changed-political-protest">Gandhi’s civil disobedience</a> movement of nonviolence and noncooperation against the British government.</p>
<p>Indian nationalists had been growing increasingly impatient for greater self-government in the 1920s. Divisions were rising between religious groups and politicians across the Indian empire. </p>
<p>To break the deadlock the British Labour government agreed to host an experiment in the new art of modern, international conferencing – turned to <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/interwarconf/documents/humanity-imperial-internationalism.pdf">imperial ends</a>. </p>
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<p>The conference was targeted at changing public opinion as much as producing specific political outcomes. Urban landscapes provided the stages upon which international relations were performed, for global audiences.</p>
<p>In my new <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/south-asian-history/round-table-conference-geographies-constituting-colonial-india-interwar-london?format=HB">book</a> I explore the historical geographies of the Round Table Conference. I look at how the city shaped the conference and how the conference helped shape a multicultural – and at times openly racist – imperial capital. </p>
<h2>Imperial London</h2>
<p>Official business took place almost exclusively in ancient <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/1/scales/royal-spaces">palaces</a>. <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/palace-s-interiors/royal-gallery/#:%7E:text=The%2520Royal%2520Gallery%2520is%2520used,was%2520designed%2520to%2520be%2520imposing.">The Royal Gallery</a> at the Palace of Westminster was where the conference opened and it concluded in the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/palace-s-interiors/robing-room/">King’s Robing Room</a> in the House of Lords. </p>
<p>London proved itself well equipped for the challenge of becoming an <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/3/an-international-london">international city</a>. Afternoon teas at Buckingham Palace were held for each session. At the second, Gandhi’s homespun dhoti (referred to in the press as a “loincloth”) and exposed knees caused a sensation. It was, however, the Mahatma’s calmness while under hostile interrogation by King-Emperor George V that averted a political controversy.</p>
<p>London’s religious spaces also played their part. The <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/1/item/29">London Mosque</a> at Wandsworth was a welcome home for Muslim delegates and its imam, Maulvi Farzand Ali, hosted an “at-home” reception for delegates at the Strand Hotel on January 14 1931. Ten days earlier the imam had conducted evening prayers over the body of <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/conferencing-the-international/delegates/people.aspx?id=508cb708-af1e-41b6-bfcf-f617019986f3">Maulana Mohammad Ali</a>, a delegate who died during the conference. </p>
<p>Gandhi’s first meeting was held at the Quaker Friends House in Euston. He stayed with the pacifist social reformer Muriel Lester at the mission house of <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/3/an-international-london/kingsley-hall">Kinsley Hall</a> in the east end, itself part modelled on Gandhi’s ashram at Sabarmati in India.</p>
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<p>London’s secular institutes also entertained delegates during official events and out-of-hours socialising. The government hosted a reception at the <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/3/an-international-london/imperial-institute">Imperial Institute</a>, the grand display space of the products and artefacts of empire in South Kensington (later demolished to make way for Imperial College). </p>
<p>The Royal Institute of International Affairs at <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/1/item/42">Chatham House</a> also opened its library to conference delegates and hosted debates, as did many of London’s learned societies.</p>
<h2>Sleeping, eating and socialising</h2>
<p>All delegates were given an accommodation budget, which many of the richer visitors (mostly the Indian princes and maharajas) topped up to stay at London’s most exclusive hotels. </p>
<p>Others had to stay <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/conferencing-the-international/mappings/london-addresses.aspx">further out</a> in cheaper accommodation that agreed to take Indian guests (many did not). Some elite delegates were members of London’s gentleman’s clubs, clustered around St James’s.</p>
<p>Most were not and the hosting of Indian guests in the majority of clubs was discouraged. As such, an Indian Social Centre was established for the first session at Chesterfield Gardens in Mayfair, where delegates could find cheap accommodation and host guests without fear of racial discrimination.</p>
<p>The food at the Social Centre was provided by chefs from <a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/1/item/41">Veeraswamy’s</a> restaurant, London’s exclusive and oldest Indian restaurant, situated on Regent Street. Cheaper food and less Raj-nostalgic dining could be found in the growing Indian dining scene in Soho, with Shafis affordable restaurant marketing itself as the prime conference delegate gawping spot.</p>
<p>While the conference featured only three Indian women delegates, London’s hostesses influenced proceedings with their lunches, dinners, drinks and “<a href="https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/exhibits/show/3/item/77">at-homes</a>”. Less often recorded, these domestic spaces hosted evening conversations as the intractable problems of Indian constitutional reform rumbled on through the nights. </p>
<p>From palaces to parlours, the imperial capital furnished this international Indian event with the infrastructures that enabled both British and Indian delegates to put their case to the world for the subcontinent’s future, whether within or without the British empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Legg received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/M008142/1).</span></em></p>Britain wanted to showcase its imperial power to the world, through official business in ancient palaces and socialising in the dazzling West End.Stephen Legg, Professor of Historical Geography, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1998322023-02-16T13:12:04Z2023-02-16T13:12:04ZTanzania is ruled with impunity – four key issues behind calls for constitutional reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510162/original/file-20230214-20-egw7ke.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzanian opposition politician Freeman Mbowe (left) flashes a victory sign at a public rally in January 2023.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Jamson/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzania’s president issued a <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/01/tanzania-president-hassan-lifts-the-blanket-ban-on-political-assemblies/">statement</a> in June 2016 announcing a ban on political rallies outside campaign periods. The ban was unconstitutional. </p>
<p><a href="https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/constitution.pdf#page=17">Article 20 (1)</a> of the constitution of Tanzania allows for public assembly. Other laws, such as the <a href="https://media.tanzlii.org/files/legislation/akn-tz-act-1992-5-eng-2019-11-30.pdf">Political Parties Act</a> and the <a href="https://www.tanzanialaws.com/principal-legislation/parliamentary-immunities-powers-and-privileges-act">Parliamentary Immunities, Powers and Privilege Act</a>, give political parties and politicians the right to conduct rallies. </p>
<p>Despite these laws, it took another <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/09/tanzania-ends-ban-political-rallies">presidential statement</a> in January 2023 to unban rallies. This illustrates the power of the president – even over the constitution. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-opposition-rallies-are-finally-unbanned-but-this-doesnt-mean-democratic-reform-is-coming-198436">Tanzania: opposition rallies are finally unbanned – but this doesn't mean democratic reform is coming</a>
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<p>Opposition parties and activists have noted that this great presidential power is a constitutional loophole. The Tanzanian constitution has proved to be weak in protecting itself. </p>
<p>A constitution can protect itself if it has clear checks and balances. With <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/interview-tundu-lissu-discusses-need-constitutional-reform-tanzania">imperial presidential powers</a>, the constitution gives the executive branch of government the upper hand over the two other branches of government: the judiciary and legislature. </p>
<p>Such powers – and their abuse – have led opposition parties and activists to <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-must-face-up-to-calls-for-reform-if-it-wants-to-keep-the-peace-172967">call</a> for constitutional reviews. </p>
<p>There are four reasons driving the agitation for constitutional change in Tanzania: unfree and unfair elections; unchecked presidential powers; political impunity; and the skewed political arrangement between Tanzania and Zanzibar.</p>
<h2>Entrenching dominance</h2>
<p>Recent calls for constitutional change in Tanzania <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/109246/tanzania-whats-really-behind-ccms-refusal-to-change-the-constitution/">began in 2010</a>. A constitutional review commission was set up in 2012, headed by former prime minister <a href="https://www.taas-online.or.tz/members/view/hon-joseph-sinde-warioba">Joseph Warioba</a>. The commission drafted a report, and a constitutional review assembly was set up to debate it. </p>
<p>The review assembly was dominated by members of the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi. They altered the Warioba report and proposed a draft constitution similar to the existing one. A coalition of opposition parties boycotted the process and it stalled. </p>
<p>Maintaining the same constitution has been the ruling party’s strategy. The current constitution facilitates <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2022/2022-07/tanzanias-undemocratic-constitution-is-a-template-for-disaster.html">one-party dominance</a> by entrenching the party’s and president’s power. </p>
<p>Further review was stopped by president <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-john-magufuli-a-brilliant-start-but-an-ignominious-end-157092">John Pombe Magufuli</a>, who came into power in 2015. Magufuli rejected any calls for constitutional reforms – and acted in a way that disregarded the existing law.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-john-magufuli-a-brilliant-start-but-an-ignominious-end-157092">Tanzania’s John Magufuli: a brilliant start but an ignominious end</a>
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<h2>Chasing change</h2>
<p>The four triggers for constitutional reform in Tanzania are related.</p>
<p><strong>1. Repeated unfree and unfair elections</strong> </p>
<p>In Tanzania, unfree and unfair elections began after the constitution was amended <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/tan5.htm">in 1992</a> to allow for multi-party elections. Since then, there have been six general elections. Each has been marred by accusations of an <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/jpola5&div=36&id=&page=">unlevel playing field</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/29/tanzania-announces-election-winner-amid-claims-of-vote-rigging">rigging</a> and violence. The <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/11/1077292">2020 general election</a> was especially violent. </p>
<p>Constitutional reform is crucial to realise free and fair elections. This is because the composition of the electoral commission as provided for by the constitution is bound to be biased. The president, who is often the incumbent candidate and the chairperson of the ruling party, is responsible for appointing the executive director and commissioners of the commission. All election returning officers at the constituency level are also presidential appointees. </p>
<p>The consequence is that electoral officials are likely to be loyal to their appointing authority rather than to the ideals of free and fair elections. </p>
<p>Additionally, once the presidential vote has been announced, the constitution <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/1840340-5593992-b0yrsv/index.html">doesn’t allow for it to be challenged in court</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2. Unchecked presidential powers</strong> </p>
<p>Under the current constitution, the president of Tanzania has enormous power. He or she appoints senior officials in other branches of government and all heads of public institutions. This includes the chief justice, all other judges and the inspector general of police. The president also appoints the controller audit general, who audits government accounts. </p>
<p>Through loyalty, these appointees are likely to enforce the president’s statements even if they are unconstitutional. </p>
<p>Further, the president cannot be prosecuted as per <a href="https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/constitution.pdf#page=29">Article 46</a> of the constitution. The president is protected during and after their tenure in office. Such provisions promote impunity. </p>
<p><strong>3. Impunity</strong> </p>
<p>Impunity in Tanzania plays out where one group of people can do what they like politically, while another group – in particular opposition politicians – faces excessive exposure to an unjust system. </p>
<p>Trumped up charges against opposition leaders, activists and business people deemed critical of the president are popular tools for keeping critics silent. Such charges, facilitated by undemocratic laws, were used during Magufuli’s regime. Magufuli <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/17/tanzanian-president-john-magufuli-is-dead-vp">died in March 2021</a> and was succeeded by Samia Suluhu Hassan.</p>
<p>In the early days of Hassan’s administration, in July 2021, Freeman Mbowe, the leader of the opposition party Chadema, was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/31/tanzania-opposition-leader-freeman-mbowe-appears-in-court-to-face-charges">arrested and charged</a> with terrorism offences. Due to political pressure – and a failure to find evidence – the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60616800">charges were dropped</a>. Mbowe spent eight months in jail.</p>
<p>After his release in March 2022, Hassan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/tanzania-frees-detained-opposition-leader-mbowe-drops-charges-citizen-newspaper-2022-03-04/">expressed her determination</a> to boost the country’s democracy. She has also expressed her resentment of the unjust political system and <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/massive-fraud-at-the-dpp-s-office-as-plea-bargain-money-stashed-away-in-china-4106530">called out corruption</a> at the office of public prosecutions. </p>
<p>But presidential sentiments like these are not adequate as they don’t lead to institutional changes in political structures or norms. </p>
<p><strong>4. The Tanzania-Zanzibar agreement</strong> </p>
<p>This is arguably the most contentious trigger for calls for constitutional reform. </p>
<p>The political relationship between the island of Zanzibar and the mainland, Tanzania, has raised calls for Zanzibari autonomy. The government of the United Republic of Tanzania deals with union matters, as well as all mainland issues. The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar deals with the matters of Zanzibar only. </p>
<p>Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution and this current structure increase the ruling party’s influence in Zanzibari politics. Constitutional debate on this issue is often around <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45342101">four proposed structures</a>: one joint government, two governments, three governments (with the union being the <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/zanzibar-mourns-the-advocate-of-three-tier-system-of-government--1354218">third tier</a>), or a confederation with a central authority. </p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>The underlying call for constitutional reform seeks to uproot the one-party state system to allow for accountability and democratic progress in Tanzania. Under the current constitution, any pronouncements of change are cosmetic, with no sustainable effects. </p>
<p>For Tanzania to realise real and sustainable democracy, a new constitution is necessary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aikande Clement Kwayu has previous received funding from various academic and research institutions. She has volunteered at CHADEMA. </span></em></p>Tanzania’s six-year ban on political rallies shows how the president’s power can override the constitution.Aikande Clement Kwayu, Independent researcher & Lecturer, Tumaini University MakumiraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1976332023-01-16T13:45:14Z2023-01-16T13:45:14ZPope Francis’ visit to Africa comes at a defining moment for the Catholic church<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504210/original/file-20230112-53024-f2g4xr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Francis in Nairobi, Kenya, during his first papal visit to the African continent in 2015. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nichole Sobecki/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During his <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202212020298.html">planned visit</a> to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan in February 2023, Pope Francis intends to be in dialogue with African Catholics – but also to listen to political leaders and young Africans. </p>
<p>This visit comes at a defining moment in what is regarded as a fairly progressive papacy.</p>
<p>Pope Francis has convened a worldwide consultation on the future of the Catholic church. This consultation, called a <a href="https://www.synod.va/en/what-is-the-synod-21-24/about.html">synodal process</a>, began in 2021 and will conclude in 2024. </p>
<p>It is the most ambitious dialogue ever undertaken on bringing changes in Catholic beliefs and practices since the Second Vatican Council’s reforms in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/10/10/162573716/why-is-vatican-ii-so-important#:%7E:text=AP-,Pope%20Paul%20VI%20hands%20Orthodox%20Metropolitan%20Meliton%20of%20Heliopolis%20a,Orthodox%20churches%20nine%20centuries%20before">1965</a>. It is exciting for reform-minded Catholics, but distressing for conservative Catholics. </p>
<p>The ongoing synodal process has exposed the fault lines in modern Catholicism on the issues of women, celibacy, sexuality, marriage, clericalism and hierarchism. How Pope Francis – who marks a decade of his papacy this year – manages these increasingly divisive issues will, in my judgement, largely define his legacy. </p>
<p><a href="https://works.bepress.com/stanchuilo/">My research</a> has focused on how African Catholics can bring about a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/as-pope-francis-visits-af_b_8633590">consensus approach</a> in managing these contested issues.</p>
<p>The big questions for me are how another papal visit to Africa at this point will address the challenges and opportunities that Africans are identifying through the synodal process – and how this plays into the state of Catholicism in Africa.</p>
<h2>The influence of African Catholicism</h2>
<p>The Catholic church is witnessing its fastest growth in Africa (recent statistics show <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/iacs/global-christianity/#:%7E:text=April%2030%2C%202022&text=Following%20recent%20trends%2C%20the%20Catholic,growth%20in%20Europe%20(0.3%25)">2.1%</a> growth between 2019 and 2020). Out of a global population of <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250362/number-of-catholics-in-asia-and-africa-continues-to-rise">1.36 billion Catholics</a>, 236 million are African (20% of the total).</p>
<p>African Catholics are not simply growing in number. They are reinventing and reinterpreting Christianity. They are infusing it with new language and spiritual vibrancy through unique ways of worshipping God. </p>
<p>Given its expansion, the Catholic church in Africa is well placed to be a central driver of social, political and spiritual life. In many settings, the church provides a community of hope where the fabric of society is weak because of war, humanitarian disasters and disease. </p>
<p>The DRC, for instance, has the highest number of Catholic health facilities in Africa at <a href="https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=cZ51EAAAQBAJ&pg=PT649&lpg=PT649&dq=the+Democratic+Republic+of+Congo+(DRC)+has+the+highest+number+of+Catholic+health+facilities+in+Africa+at+2,185&source=bl&ots=c6A8EdULGF&sig=ACfU3U0WBNUa2VbKVLfl4xQMRkmVMeaH2g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwigo7Te88P8AhV1WqQEHchBCSEQ6AF6BAgqEAM#v=onepage&q=the%20Democratic%20Republic%20of%20Congo%20(DRC)%20has%20the%20highest%20number%20of%20Catholic%20health%20facilities%20in%20Africa%20at%202%2C185&f=false">2,185</a>. It is followed by Kenya with 1,092 and Nigeria with 524 facilities. Additionally, bishops have mobilised peaceful protests against violence in the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/4/dr-congo-thousands-of-churchgoers-protest-rebel-violence">DRC</a> and <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/africa/news/2020-03/nigeria-bishops-protest-march-against-extremism.html">Nigeria</a>. </p>
<p>Another major feature of Catholicism on the continent is that it is witnessing a “youth bulge”. Central to Pope Francis’ advocacy for Africa is his appeal that churches, religious groups and governments show solidarity with young people. He calls them “the church of now”. </p>
<p>The pope expressed this most recently in <a href="https://www.aciafrica.org/news/6990/engage-your-history-keep-your-roots-intact-pope-francis-to-african-catholic-students">November 2022</a> during a synodal consultation with African youth. He denounced the exploitation of Africa by external forces and its destruction by wars, ideologies of violence and policies that rob young people of their future. </p>
<h2>Why DRC and South Sudan?</h2>
<p>Pope Francis comes to Africa as part of the synodal consultation. He takes the message of a humble and merciful church to some of the most challenging parts of Africa: the <a href="https://theconversation.com/conflict-in-the-drc-5-articles-that-explain-whats-gone-wrong-195332">DRC</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-sudan-root-causes-of-ongoing-conflict-remain-untouched-133542">South Sudan</a>. </p>
<p>These two countries illustrate the impact of neo-liberal capitalism and the effects of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Together, they have unleashed the most destructive economic, social and political upheaval in modern African history. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/conflict-in-the-drc-5-articles-that-explain-whats-gone-wrong-195332">Conflict in the DRC: 5 articles that explain what's gone wrong</a>
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<p>Pope Francis is coming to listen especially to the poor, to young people and to women who have been violated in conflicts. He also hopes to address the hidden wounds of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-church-sex-abuse-crisis-4-essential-reads-169442">clerical sexual abuse</a> in the church.</p>
<p>Pope Francis will see how war, dictatorship and ecological disasters have denied ordinary people access to land, labour and lodging. These are the “three Ls” he <a href="https://cjd.org/2015/09/08/sacred-rights-land-lodging-and-labor/">proposes</a> as vital in giving agency to the poor. </p>
<h2>Some opposition</h2>
<p>Pope Francis will no doubt receive a warm welcome during his visit. Most African Catholics embrace his message of a poor and merciful church because it speaks to their challenges. </p>
<p>But there are many African Catholics, particularly high-ranking church leaders, who are yet to embrace this reform agenda. The previous two popes encouraged a centralising tendency, which promoted unquestioning loyalty to Rome by African bishops. As a result, these bishops resisted attempts by African theologians to modernise and Africanise Catholic beliefs and practices to meet local needs and circumstances. </p>
<p>This has led to some African bishops being uncomfortable with Pope Francis’ <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html">progressive agenda</a> on liberation theology, openness to gay Catholics, condemnation of clerical privilege and power, and inclusion of women in mainstream leadership. </p>
<p>Rather than being a strong church that looks like Africa, some of the Catholic dioceses on the continent have embraced medieval traditions – like Roman rituals and Latin – that alienate ordinary African Catholics, especially young people. </p>
<h2>Africa’s future role</h2>
<p>Pope Francis has often <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/speeches/2022/november/documents/20221119-cuamm.html">spoken</a> of giving Africa a voice in the church and in the world. </p>
<p>Many African Catholics wonder how this will happen when, for the first time in more than 30 years, there is just one African holding an important executive function at the Vatican. This is Archbishop Protase Rugambwa of Tanzania, the secretary of the <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2022-06/dicastery-evangelization-vatican-praedicate-evangelium.html">Dicastery for the Evangelization of Peoples</a>, a department at the Vatican’s central offices. </p>
<p>Many African Catholics hope that Pope Francis will announce some African appointments to the Vatican during his February 2023 visit. </p>
<p>They also are hoping he will create a pontifical commission for Africa, similar to the <a href="http://www.americalatina.va/content/americalatina/es.html">Latin American commission</a> created in 1958. This will be a significant way of giving African Catholics a voice in the church of Rome. </p>
<p>Pope Francis hasn’t fully recovered from the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/knee-problem-forces-pope-francis-cancel-july-africa-trip-2022-06-10/">health challenges</a> that led to the cancellation of the trip last July. But he is making this trip because <a href="https://www.lastampa.it/vatican-insider/en/2015/11/29/news/pope-opens-holy-door-today-bangui-is-the-spiritual-capital-of-the-world-1.35211106/">he believes</a> that Africa matters. </p>
<p>Through the sessions that the pope will conduct with Africans, especially young people, it’s hoped that the Catholic church in Africa can help address the causes of war and suffering in the DRC and South Sudan, and the obstacles to reforming the church in Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stan Chu Ilo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>African Catholics are growing in number. They are also reinventing and reinterpreting Christianity.Stan Chu Ilo, Research Professor , World Christianity and African Studies, DePaul UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1913862022-10-13T14:21:11Z2022-10-13T14:21:11Z‘Restitution’ of looted African art just continues colonial policies - much more is at stake<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488751/original/file-20221007-22-wnmp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artefact is returned to the king of Benin in Nigeria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/restitution-of-looted-african-art-just-continues-colonial-policies-much-more-is-at-stake-191386&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>The violence of the past is far from over. But it is disguised in many ways, made invisible and normalised. What started with the Spanish, Portuguese or the Ottoman empires continued with the British, French and Russian empires, and now the United States. Imperial political violence continues today in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, to name but a few. </p>
<p>One of the disguises is “restitution”. </p>
<p>I’m a scholar of what I understand as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-9584750">catastrophic art</a> – artworks which were made in worlds that empires destroyed, and were then taken to the imperial centres, or metropoles.</p>
<p>When talking about <a href="https://theconversation.com/benin-bronzes-what-is-the-significance-of-their-repatriation-to-nigeria-171444">returning</a> these artworks, the former imperial states speak of “restitution”. Restitution is taken to mean the return of “objects” to their homes or places of origin. It is confined to individual works of art, and human remains, that were brutally deported and displayed in museums or subjected to laboratory research. It includes animals too. These were hunted and taken to satisfy the interest of imperial science, museums and zoos. </p>
<p>But the language of restitution fails to take into account historical responsibilities. </p>
<p>As I discuss in a recent paper on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-9584750">catastrophic art</a>, restitution fails to note that taking “objects” from Africa went hand-in-hand with the murder or destruction of knowledges in the continent. It thus eliminated the possibility for future knowledge practice and circulation. </p>
<p>Restitution ignores the annihilation of life forms – of social, political, ecological and epistemological organisation – that was perpetrated in Africa by the empires. </p>
<h2>‘Civilising mission’</h2>
<p>I have been working on understanding the British colonial destruction of the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/benin/">Kingdom of Benin</a> in 1897. The destruction was an imperial response to Oba (king) <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ovonramwen">Ovonramwen Nogbaisi</a>’s refusal to submit to control by imperial legislation. The kingdom was first made to disappear in a great fire and then turned into a British colony with a “native council”. </p>
<p>The British empire had already destroyed the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/ashanti-empire-asante-kingdom-18th-late-19th-century/">Ashanti Kingdom</a> (in 1874) in what is today Ghana and the German empire had destroyed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cameroon">Cameroon</a> in West Africa (in 1884). At the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-West-Africa-Conference">Berlin Conference</a> of 1884–85, representatives of predatory empires met and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-colonialism/Partition-of-Africa">divided the continent</a> of Africa between them into areas over which they would have sole rights. </p>
<p>The French destruction of the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/mirambo-ca-1840-1884/">Kingdom of Dahomey</a> in 1892–94 followed. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/germany-is-returning-nigerias-looted-benin-bronzes-why-its-not-nearly-enough-165349">Germany is returning Nigeria's looted Benin Bronzes: why it's not nearly enough</a>
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<p>The political violence of these empires was driven by what they termed a “civilising mission”. This meant conquest of land. And that meant the annihilation of life forms. It destroyed different knowledges and was followed by the extraction of artworks and human remains. Colonial ethnologists and ethnographers had the power to treat destroyed knowledges as “objects” or “artefacts”. </p>
<h2>The murder of knowledges</h2>
<p>As imperialists, they could create theories to prove that plundered knowledges were nothing more than objects. They stripped from these knowledge systems their ability to transmit knowledge. </p>
<p>In the Kingdom of Benin, art was never seen as art alone, but a system of knowledge that shaped life. The critical thinker, poet and Senegal’s first president, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-Senghor">Léopold Sédar Senghor</a>, <a href="https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1675/Leopold_Senghor__The_Spirit_of_Civilisation.pdf">wrote</a> of African art as “social life, goodness, beauty, happiness, and the ‘knowledge of the world’”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A statue of a head behind a glass display case, in the background a man and woman gaze at it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488770/original/file-20221007-16-g739gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Benin Bronze artwork on display in the Humboldt Forum, Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>By denying that the artworks carried knowledge they brought with them, the colonial ethnologist or anthropologist could make scientific knowledge claims about these “objects”. </p>
<p>But the colonialist system of classification, categorisation and hierarchy denied the fact that the artworks carried knowledge they brought with them. This process destroyed the ability and right of an artwork to speak of life forms.</p>
<p>The “objects” were then put on display and turned into spectacles to entertain the masses, or “sleeping beauties”, as the philosopher <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frantz-Fanon">Frantz Fanon</a> put it in <a href="https://theconversation.com/quotes-from-frantz-fanons-wretched-of-the-earth-that-resonate-60-years-later-173108">The Wretched of the Earth</a>. </p>
<p>The empires used spectacle to institute imperial citizenship and to justify violence and destruction in the colonies. </p>
<p>To this day, the <a href="https://www.louvre.fr/en">Louvre</a> in Paris, the <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org">British Museum</a> in London and the <a href="https://www.humboldtforum.org/en/">Humboldt Forum</a> in Berlin continue to lay legal claim to, and to display, “objects” from Benin, Dahomey and Cameroon. The undisturbed display prevents any thinking of the “objects” as the colonial murder of knowledges.</p>
<h2>A call for historical responsibility</h2>
<p>States and museums see themselves under no historical, political or ethical obligation even to inquire into their colonial histories of murdering knowledge. </p>
<p>Quite the opposite. The language of restitution and provenance is a “new” spectacle, a way of remembering colonialism and writing colonial history. Restitution is declared and controlled in the metropoles and governed by museums, provenance researchers, archives and curators there.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/returning-looted-artefacts-will-finally-restore-heritage-to-the-brilliant-cultures-that-made-them-107479">Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them</a>
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<p>In fact, the rhetoric of restitution celebrates colonialism and imperial relations of power.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2017/11/28/emmanuel-macrons-speech-at-the-university-of-ouagadougou">speech</a> at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso on 28 November 2017, <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron">President Emmanuel Macron</a> of France declared that “African heritage must be showcased in Paris but also in Dakar, Lagos and Cotonou; this will be one of my priorities. Within five years I want the conditions to exist for temporary or permanent returns of African heritage to Africa.” </p>
<p>A similar approach was taken in a <a href="http://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_en.pdf">presidential report</a> on restitution that Macron commissioned. </p>
<p>The rhetoric of restitution also unfolded in Germany and Britain, demonstrating that the imperial <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/159783/orientalism-by-edward-w-said/">will to know is the will to dominate</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fazil Moradi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Art stolen from African kingdoms is a knowledge system plundered by colonialists, who must take historical responsibility.Fazil Moradi, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1881212022-08-18T12:39:57Z2022-08-18T12:39:57ZUkrainian people are resisting the centuries-old force of Russian imperialism – Ukraine war at 6 months<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479479/original/file-20220816-16068-oq2vva.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C28%2C4763%2C3130&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People attend an exhibition of Russian equipment destroyed by the armed forces of Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, Aug. 11, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-the-opening-of-the-exhibition-of-russian-news-photo/1242453575?adppopup=true">Olena Znak/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The war being waged by Russia in Ukraine has been described in many ways – an attempt to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481">recreate the USSR</a>, a militant <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/russia-ukraine-putin-eurasianism.html">attempt to create a new Eurasia civilization</a>, or a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ukraine-russia-us-proxy-war-b2073399.html">proxy war between Russia and the West</a>. But whatever Russian President <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/putins-ambitions-seriously-set-back-failures-ukraine-ex-cia-chief-1692236">Vladimir Putin’s ambitions and aspirations</a> were in the past, they have become ever more blatantly imperial and colonial as the fighting continues. </p>
<p>A colonial war, like Russia’s in Ukraine, is one in which a self-styled superior people believes it has the right, even the duty, to do what it feels is good for its inferiors – which conveniently conforms to its own self-interest. </p>
<p>“Colonial” or “imperial” are not just epithets thrown around casually, as are the now-familiar accusations of <a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-putin-and-russia-are-fascist-a-political-scientist-shows-how-they-meet-the-textbook-definition-179063">fascism and genocide, most recently used against Russia</a>.</p>
<p>As polemical as their usage can be, colonialism and imperialism have explanatory power. </p>
<p>Imperialism was an <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/russias-empires-9780199924394?cc=us&lang=en&">antiquated system of domination</a> that attempted to include diverse peoples within a single state under the authority of a purportedly superior institution – emperors, nobles or Übermenschen – or in overseas empires under the control of a foreign master who promised to “civilize” – as they put it – the benighted natives. </p>
<p>Think of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/British-raj">British in India</a> – white men lording it over millions of Indians in the name of a higher civilization. Or the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/summary/House-of-Habsburg">Habsburg dynasty ruling peoples</a> from Spain to the Netherlands to Austria and Hungary via strategic marriage and military conquest. </p>
<p>If empires were diverse and inegalitarian, modern nation-states were supposedly intended by their creators to be relatively homogeneous and egalitarian. <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2259-imagined-communities">Nation-makers recognized popular sovereignty</a> rather than dynastic rule. They operated democratically. The right to rule rose up from the people. </p>
<p>Consider the earliest capitalist states of the 17th and 18th centuries – England, the Netherlands and France – that practiced nation-making at home in Europe. By the time of the French Revolution of 1789, their <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo81816822.html">people were dealt with as equal citizens under the law</a>, not as a monarch’s subjects. </p>
<p>But in their colonies – like the Dutch East Indies or French Indochina – <a href="https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/18905">the locals were subjects of imperial authorities from afar</a>, bereft of rights and sovereignty.</p>
<p>In the historical stories told by nationalists, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/14/empires-with-expiration-dates/">nation-states were supposed to be the legitimate successors of empires</a>. Relatively homogeneous culturally, with rulers chosen by the people, they were products of the modern world, while empires were seen as archaic and doomed to collapse. </p>
<p>But it has not quite worked out that way in the past century. And Russia’s war on Ukraine is a reflection of that.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men, one in a suit, the other in a uniform, talking across a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479478/original/file-20220816-9774-fdxygk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s report in the Kremlin in Moscow on July 4, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraine/209b825923bd40ecaa5b3d85c8a86c26/photo?Query=(persons.person_featured:(Vladimir%20AND%20Putin))%20AND%20%20(Putin%20Ukraine)%20&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1175&currentItemNo=0">Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File</a></span>
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<h2>21st-century imperialists</h2>
<p>Over the past century, those who believed egalitarian and democratic nation-states would logically and naturally succeed empires have gotten a reeducation in political theory. </p>
<p>Nation-states can be imperialist and seek to envelop other nationalities within their territory or dominate their neighbors militarily or economically. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/kurdish-repression-turkey">Turkey treats its tens of millions of Kurds like a colonized people</a>. A nation-state privileging one ethno-religious people, like Israel, <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/palestinians-in-israel-then-and-now">subjects millions of Palestinians to inequitable domination</a>. </p>
<p>Large diverse states, like the United States and India, swing between multicultural egalitarianism, recognizing the rights of minorities, and bouts of xenophobic hostility to those <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-immigration-rule-is-cruel-and-racistbut-its-nothing-new">differing from the majority, white</a> or <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/mass-movement-or-elite-conspiracy-the-puzzle-of-hindu-nationalism/oclc/847441763">Hindu</a>. </p>
<p>Within such states some people are treated more favorably than others. Minorities often experience not only discrimination, but violence. Other large, diverse states, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/world/europe/putin-war-ukraine-recolonization.html">like Putin’s Russia</a>, also vacillate between a multinational nation-state – about 80% are ethnic Russians – and imperial treatment of various subordinate peoples. </p>
<p>The Kremlin elite has promoted a <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/russias-road-to-autocracy/">virulent nationalism to rally the population</a> in its war against Ukraine, which represents a turn toward neocolonialism.</p>
<p>Take Putin’s opportunistic and disingenuous use of the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-vows-that-as-in-1945-ukraine-will-be-liberated-from-nazi-filth/">language of liberation</a>, of <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-claims-that-ukraine-is-committing-genocide-are-baseless-but-not-unprecedented-177511">preventing genocide</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/decrying-nazism-even-when-its-not-there-has-been-russias-invade-country-for-free-card-183695">removal of Nazis</a> as justification for his invasion of Ukraine. He uses that language in the way 19th-century imperialists did when they invaded, dominated and exploited other countries, claiming they were reluctantly undertaking the <a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478">burden that white men had to bear to defend</a> against barbarians and savages. </p>
<p>Having failed to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/nato-sees-russia-war-entering-stalemate-neither-side-can-win-rcna20877">decapitate the Ukrainian government</a>, the Kremlin retreated to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/renewed-russian-attacks-strike-areas-ukraine-86927182">taking territory savagely in the east and south of the country</a>. The <a href="https://uacrisis.org/en/russkiy-mir-as-the-kremlin-s-quasi-ideology">mythology of the Russkiy Mir</a> – the supposed unity of the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian peoples – has been instrumentally deployed by Russia to justify the brutal attack on the very people who were supposed to be the brothers and sisters of the Russians. </p>
<h2>‘Threatened by dangerous inferiors’</h2>
<p>Contrary to Russia’s plans, Kyiv did not surrender. Ukrainians instead <a href="https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2022/0802/1313587-ukraine-russia-resistance-movement/">flocked to the struggle</a> against alien rule. The result of the invasion has been the strengthened resolve of Ukrainians to resist a new colonialism, which they remember having experienced for hundreds of years under the czars and the Soviets. </p>
<p>As a historian <a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ecrn/crn_papers/Suny4.pdf">who has studied</a> <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/history/people/emeritus/rgsuny.html">empires and nations</a>, I believe that once a government like Putin’s has concluded that its existence is threatened by dangerous inferiors, it is motivated to use its greater power and its own righteous sense of historical superiority to bring its enemies under control. </p>
<p>If indirect rule by pliant native rulers or satraps are not sufficient to remove the perceived danger, territorial acquisition is likely to follow. The option left to Moscow as the war grinds into stalemate is direct rule over Ukrainian territory. </p>
<p>Lands under the fragile and contested control of the Russians are already being <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682">consolidated into a newly named territory</a>. A <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/luhansk-governor-says-russia-will-shift-main-focus-donetsk-region-2022-07-04/">governor has been appointed</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/russia-starts-giving-passports-to-ukrainians-from-donetsk-luhansk/a-49207353">passports issued</a>; the <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/02/27/ukraines-breakaway-luhansk-republic-adopts-russian-ruble-a57280">ruble imposed</a> as the official currency. Russia’s maximal goals appear to be to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/19/putin-russia-annex-ukraine-kherson-donetsk-luhansk">take possession of the whole crescent</a> in eastern Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson/Nikolaev as well as Crimea, <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/world/russia-annex-crimea-why-putin-invaded-2014-what-happened-nato-annexation-explained-1424682">annexed already by Russia</a> in 2014.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young woman and a girl stand together amid destroyed homes, looking sad." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479487/original/file-20220816-9595-6ekrue.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Residents look at damaged homes from a Russian rocket attack, Aug. 16, 2022, in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXRussiaUkraineWar/332b1ea4b75f49c48a1a4b05c886f0c1/photo?Query=war%20ukraine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=26850&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/David Goldman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reality bites back</h2>
<p>As a nation-state engaged in consolidating its <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-democracy-separating-fact-fiction-russia-1690505">identity as democratic and Western</a>, Ukraine faces an implacable foe whose current sense of self is embedded in its imperial past and its distinction from the West. </p>
<p>Torn for 30 years of independence <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/22/ukraine-east-west-war-narrows-divide/">between East and West</a>, thanks to Russia’s aggression Ukraine has decisively chosen the West. The imperialist war has given rise to an effective, if desperate, anti-colonial resistance. Ukrainians are more united than ever before. </p>
<p>For Ukrainians, compromise between independence and sovereignty on one hand and subjugation to imperialism <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/07/russias-war-ukraine-how-get-negotiations">on the other appears impossible</a>. Surrendering land to the aggressor, it is widely believed, will only feed his appetite.</p>
<p>Almost six months into the war, the Russians have their own cruel calculus. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has issued a dire warning: The <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/84c4beae-fbd6-4d1e-aeb5-5d147b9621a4">longer the war goes on, the more territory</a> will be seized by Russia and brought into the expanding Russian state. The West’s continued arming of Ukraine, he claims, only <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/sergey-lavrov-russia-expand-ukraine-war-goal/">prolongs the war</a>. </p>
<p>There is, at the moment, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/08/01/russia-ukraine-and-the-decision-to-negotiate/">little appetite on either side for a negotiated settlement</a>. </p>
<p>But in this war of attrition, time and the weight of geography and population <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/world/europe/ukraine-russia-weapons-war.html">are on the side of the aggressor</a>. Russia can <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d60ef086-a252-4d6d-8534-e39ccd541926">outlast its opponents and the West</a>. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-japan-asia-middle-east-14350d5bd6d036c68159d02c2db79698">Overshadowing everything is the nuclear threat</a>.</p>
<p>War is a failure of reason, diplomacy and compromise. The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-middle-east-global-trade-a2c89d94a0f8473b40a1fcde5710bda8">negotiations that allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume</a> demonstrate that some compromise, however fragile, might be reached. </p>
<p>As difficult and unsavory as it is to negotiate with Putin, some end must ultimately be discussed. This is a tragic choice. Yet even empires have their limits, and when faced with determined opposition, they learn the harsh lesson of imperial overreach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald Suny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Democratic nation-states were supposed to be the legitimate successors of empires. It hasn’t quite worked out that way in the past century, and Russia’s war on Ukraine is a reflection of that.Ronald Suny, Professor of History and Political Science, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1885732022-08-12T12:17:16Z2022-08-12T12:17:16ZWhat’s a banana republic? A political scientist explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478789/original/file-20220811-14242-18oqco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=299%2C59%2C3689%2C2697&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. banana growers heavily influenced several Central American governments in the early 20th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/undated-b-w-photo-shows-man-harvesting-bananas-underwood-news-photo/530848788?adppopup=true">George Rinhart/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When someone mentions a “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/banana-republic-definition-4776041">banana republic</a>,” they’re referring to a small, poor, politically unstable country that is weak because of an excessive reliance on one crop and foreign funding. </p>
<p>The term originated as a way to describe the <a href="https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/key-moments/banana-republics/">experiences of many countries in Central America</a>, whose economies and politics were dominated by <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/where-we-got-term-banana-republic-180961813/">U.S.-based banana exporters at the turn of the 20th century</a>.</p>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/us/politics/fbi-search-trump.html">FBI’s August 2022 search of the residence of former President Donald Trump</a>, some Republicans <a href="https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1556788388828684295">compared the U.S. to a banana republic</a>. And in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, <a href="https://www.trendsmap.com/historical?q=bananarepublic">a surge of tweets</a> did the same.</p>
<p>Political instability within the U.S. has little to do with fruit. So why is the term being used?</p>
<h2>Subverting democracy to keep the cash flowing</h2>
<p>In the 1880s, the Boston Fruit Company, which later became the United Fruit Company and then Chiquita, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11320900/banana-rise">began importing bananas from Jamaica</a> and launched a successful campaign to popularize them in the U.S. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pixelated portrait of man wearing a hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=679&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=679&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=679&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478783/original/file-20220811-20-b2ip4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Cuyamel Fruit Company hired mercenary Lee Christmas to overthrow the government of Honduras and install one friendlier to foreign business.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Lee_Christmas.jpg">The New York Times via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As demand for bananas grew, large companies made deals with governments across Central America to fund infrastructure projects in exchange for land and policies that would allow them to expand production. </p>
<p>The growers often depended on authoritarian rule to protect land concessions and quell labor unrest that might shrink their profits. Sometimes, they would actively subvert democracy to reassert their influence. The Cuyamel Fruit Company, for example, supported a <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250033314/thefishthatatethewhale">coup in Honduras in 1911</a> that replaced its president with someone more aligned with U.S. interests. </p>
<p>Another well-known example is the 1954 <a href="https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/07/the-controversial-history-of-united-fruit">CIA-orchestrated plot</a> on behalf of the United Fruit Company against Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. That coup ended the first real period of democracy that Guatemala had known. </p>
<p>The tight relationship between banana exporters and repressive and corrupt leaders ultimately undermined development in the region, exacerbated inequality and left Central American countries weak and misgoverned.</p>
<h2>Hyperbolic rhetoric?</h2>
<p>Responding to the events that unfolded leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/07/05/gen-russel-honor-coup-attempt-put-us-in-the-banana-republic-club/">current and former government officals</a> commented that they resembled the instability of banana republics that were known for ignoring election results and overturning those results with coups – that’s exactly <a href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.616.395&rep=rep1&type=pdf">what happened in Costa Rica in 1917</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1346912246291603465"}"></div></p>
<p>When American politicians and political commentators use the term, they’re often trying to conjure up images of corruption, repression and failures to stop executive overreach. They’re equating government officials with the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/tinpot-and-the-totalitarian-an-economic-theory-of-dictatorship/D461528F9B6C51D862ADE67D88A95DBB">tinpot dictators</a> supported by foreign interests who acted with impunity to govern by force and persecute their opponents. </p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1557190100353785856">A number</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RonDeSantisFL/status/1556803433939755010">of Republican politicians</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1556795946683580416?s=20&t=4iR9vXDJc9lkzI6LNqGtYw">invoked the term</a> in response to the <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fbi-raid-maralago-live-updates-today-1732050">FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1556795946683580416"}"></div></p>
<p>But the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/trumps-mar-lago-raid-doesnt-make-banana-republic/671082/">comparison isn’t apt</a>. It’s true that outgoing leaders are more likely to be investigated and punished by their political opponents in countries with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920905640">strong executives</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920905640">weak judiciaries</a>.</p>
<p>However, holding elected officials accountable for their actions and not allowing anyone to be above the law is actually <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/09/global-investigating-former-leaders-trump-sarkozy/">characteristic of a healthy democracy</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Wilson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US grows hardly any tropical fruit. So why are politicians and political commentators saying the country is at risk of devolving into a banana republic?Matthew Wilson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1847112022-08-05T12:18:17Z2022-08-05T12:18:17ZWhat is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the term<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477260/original/file-20220802-11521-fi7yh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=101%2C39%2C2787%2C1809&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Ronald Reagan, shown here speaking in Moscow in 1980, was an early adopter of neoliberalism in the U.S. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-ronald-reagan-speaks-at-the-spaso-house-may-30-news-photo/849177?adppopup=true">Dirck Halstead/Liaison</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Neoliberalism is a complex concept that many people use – and overuse – in different and often conflicting ways. </p>
<p>So, what is it, really? </p>
<p><a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1008310">When discussing neoliberalism with my students</a> at the University of Southern California, I explain the phenomenon’s origins in political thought, its ambitious claims of promoting liberty and its problematic global track record. </p>
<hr>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/what-is-neoliberalism-a-political-scientist-explains-the-use-and-evolution-of-the-term-184711&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Markets work; governments don’t’</h2>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/">Neoliberalism contends</a> that markets allocate scarce resources, promote efficient growth and secure individual liberty better than governments. </p>
<p>According to the progressive journalist <a href="https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/">Robert Kuttner</a>, the “basic argument of neoliberalism can fit on a bumper sticker. Markets work; governments don’t.” </p>
<p>From such a perspective, government represents bureaucratic bloat and political imposition. Government is wasteful. The verve of capitalism, along with a limited democratic politics, is neoliberalism’s balm for all that ails humankind.</p>
<p>Completing his bumper-sticker mantra, Kuttner continues, “there are two corollaries: Markets embody human freedom. And with markets, people basically get what they deserve; to alter market outcomes is to spoil the poor and punish the productive.”</p>
<h2>Evolution of neoliberalism</h2>
<p>The moniker “neoliberalism” was coined by Austrian economists Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises in 1938. Each elaborated his own version of the notion in 1944 books: “<a href="https://mises.org/library/road-serfdom-0">The Road to Serfdom</a>” and “<a href="https://mises.org/library/bureaucracy">Bureaucracy</a>,” respectively. </p>
<p>Neoliberalism ran contrary to the prevailing economic strategies promoted by <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/collected-writings-of-john-maynard-keynes/oclc/971381838">John Maynard Keynes</a>, <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm">which encourage governments to stimulate economic demand</a>. It was the opposite of big-government socialism, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism/">whether in its Soviet manifestation or its European Social Democratic version</a>. Neoliberalism’s proponents embraced <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/">classical liberal principles such as laissez-faire</a> – the policy of not intervening in markets.</p>
<p>By the 1970s, Keynesian policies were faltering. Hayek’s organization, the <a href="https://www.montpelerin.org/event/429dba23-fc64-4838-aea3-b847011022a4/summary">Mont Pelerin Society</a>, had drawn wealthy European and American benefactors to its ranks and funded <a href="https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/">powerful think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute</a>. These groups refined neoliberalism’s message, making it a viable and attractive ideology. </p>
<p>By the 1980s, neoliberalism had gained ascendancy with <a href="https://history.jhu.edu/faculty-books/the-great-persuasion-reinventing-free-markets-since-the-depression/">Republicans such as president Ronald Reagan</a>. High-ranking officials in the Democratic presidential administrations of <a href="https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/">Jimmy Carter</a> and, later, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/books/review/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-gary-gerstle.html">Bill Clinton</a> also embraced neoliberalism. </p>
<p>Neoliberalism was also championed by conservatives like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot">international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund</a>. </p>
<p>But deregulating free markets had some unfortunate political consequences. It promoted <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/regulation.7729">financial and labor crises in the U.S. and U.K. </a> and exacerbated <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/regulation.7729">poverty and political instability</a>. The crisis was felt from the Global South to the U.S. Northwest, manifesting in the anti-World Trade Organization protests often referred to as the <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/battle-seattle-20-years-later-its-time-revival/">“The Battle of Seattle.”</a> To critics like <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/whats-neoliberal-do/">Frantz Fanon</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/40603">David Harvey</a>, neoliberalism is more akin to neoimperialism or neocolonialism. Basically, they contend, it achieves old ends – exploiting the global working class – through new means.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mural with 'neoliberalismo' written in light-gray text and 'solidaridad' written below it in bigger, red text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476959/original/file-20220801-33954-bmrgfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mural in Havana, Cuba, promoting ‘solidarity’ over ‘neoliberalism.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A. Kammas</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This critique fuels <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neoliberalism-against-democracy-wendy-browns-in-the-ruins-of-neoliberalism-and-the-specter-of-fascism/">another argument</a>: that neoliberalism harbors <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/in-the-ruins-of-neoliberalism/9780231193856">anti-democratic sentiments</a>. What if citizens prefer government regulation and oversight? History demonstrates that neoliberal stalwarts would still <a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/06/neoliberalism-democracy-populist-right">push market orthodoxy over popular opinion</a>.</p>
<p>An extreme example of this was Hayek’s support of the repressive Pinochet regime in Chile. Augusto Pinochet toppled the popular socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. Pinochet was <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110/index.htm">cautiously welcomed by the Nixon administration</a> and looked upon <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-01-02-me-1475-story.html">favorably by both Reagan</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-07-mn-19796-story.html">Thatcher</a>. In their view, Pinochet’s commitment to neoliberalism trumped his anti-democratic character.</p>
<p>This history helps explain the election last year of Gabriel Boric, Chile’s 36-year-old president. Boric <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/can-chiles-young-president-reimagine-the-latin-american-left">ran on an agenda for profound change</a> following a period of turmoil over Pinochet-era policies. His campaign slogan was “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”</p>
<h2>A flawed, contradictory ideology</h2>
<p>Beginning in the 1980s and for a long time after, neoliberalism for many Americans conjured individual liberty, consumer sovereignty and corporate efficiency. Many Democrats and Republicans alike championed it to justify their policies and attract voters. </p>
<p>But, in my opinion, that was only the popular façade of a deeply flawed ideology.</p>
<p>One need only consider the consequences of U.S. bank deregulation after <a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2017/05/04/how-the-2007-08-crisis-unfolded">the global financial crisis of 2008</a> to see what happens <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-guide-to-the-financial-crisis--10-years-later/2018/09/10/114b76ba-af10-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html">when government allows markets to run themselves</a>. Key American <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/12/13/two-recessions-two-recoveries-2/">economic indicators</a> like class inequality also tell the grim story of unchecked markets.</p>
<p>For many Americans, however, the <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/evolution-and-the-american-myth-of-the-individual/">mythology</a> of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/misconception-of-individual-liberty-letters-to-the-editor-1419984888">individual liberty</a> remains strong. U.S. politicians who hint of curtailing it – by, say, proposing more regulations or increased social expenditures – are often branded “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/01/22/is-president-obama-truly-a-socialist/">socialist</a>.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, neoliberalism was a child of its time. It’s a grand narrative born of the Cold War era, claiming to have the solution to society’s ills through the power of capitalist markets and government deregulation. </p>
<p>There is no shortage of articles showing that it has not delivered on its promise. Arguably, it has <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/is-capitalism-a-threat-to-democracy">made matters worse</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Kammas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The word ‘neoliberal’ gets thrown around a lot, often with differing and even contradictory meanings. Here, a political economist explains the origins and evolution of this complex concept.Anthony Kammas, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Political Science, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1855892022-07-20T20:08:08Z2022-07-20T20:08:08ZDeconstructing the cult of Winston Churchill: racism, deification and nostalgia for empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474991/original/file-20220719-18-wqcus9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C1%2C913%2C711&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Only one prime minister is honoured with a statue on the grounds of the Australian National University. Despite the university’s name, it is not an Australian. Rather, the stern face of Britain’s war-time prime minister Winston Churchill greets students on the Canberra campus. Although the ANU was founded in 1946, the Churchill statue is not a gesture of post-war admiration. A replica of a statue in Parliament Square, London, it is owned by the Winston Churchill Trust and was <a href="https://www.environment.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1186409/BI-Open-Systems-House.pdf">erected in 1985</a>. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes - Tariq Ali (Verso)</em></p>
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<span class="caption">The Winston Churchill statue at ANU Canberra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Why would the ANU decide to honour a British prime minister two decades after his death? According to author <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/authors/63-tariq-ali">Tariq Ali</a>, excessive admiration of Churchill, which he calls a cult, is not a result of his wartime leadership in the 1940s but was deliberately cultivated, in Britain and the wider English-speaking world, by his Conservative successors in the wake of the 1982 Falklands War.</p>
<p>For Ali, an Oxford-educated journalist and film maker and towering figure in the international left, the cult reflects a nostalgia for empire. It is now, he argues, virtually uncontested with support from “all three [UK] political parties and the large trade unions”. </p>
<p>A long-standing contributor to the Guardian and editor of the New Left Review, Ali is a prolific and iconoclastic author who has written scathing accounts of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/3971-winston-churchill">Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes</a>, Ali turns his attention not so much to the historical Churchill as his legacy and place in public memory.</p>
<p>Ali’s book is not a conventional biography. He explains that library shelves already groan under the weight of Churchill biographies, several of which, in his opinion, amount to hagiography. Rather the book serves as one long argument (at over 400 pages perhaps unnecessarily long) that the lionising of Churchill’s legacy in books and film is not only historically problematic but deleterious for modern politics. </p>
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<p>Ali asserts, “that Churchill was a racist is indisputable”. He has plenty of primary material to sustain this claim. Instead of the usual blurb, the book’s back cover consists of a series of racist and sexist comments attributed to Churchill. </p>
<p>He informed the 1937 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44510475">Peel Report</a> on the British mandate in Palestine that First Nations in North America and Australia had been colonised by “a stronger race, a higher-grade race”.</p>
<p>According to former British PM Harold Macmillan, Churchill floated “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/From_New_Jerusalem_to_New_Labour/_etNDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=churchill+%22keep+england+white%22+1955&pg=PA25&printsec=frontcover">Keep England White</a>” as a campaign slogan for the 1955 election. Perhaps most damning is the recollection of Churchill’s friend, the politician Violet Bonham Carter: when asked his opinion on China in 1954, he <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Churchill/59wSDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">reportedly replied</a>, “I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails”. </p>
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<span class="caption">Churchill in Paris in 1947.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
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<p>For Ali, it is not Churchill’s racist views but the way they informed his policies that demands more attention. In popular memory, Churchill’s leadership in the second world war attracts the most praise. Ali joins a growing body of literature calling for a reassessment of Churchill’s legacy in light of the 1943 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/1/churchills-policies-to-blame-for-1943-bengal-famine-study">Bengal Famine</a> where more than 3 million Indians (Ali claims 5 million) starved to death under British administration. </p>
<p>Churchill’s view that “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Gandhi_and_Churchill/Z8JjbAVs2vUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%98Indians+breed+like+rabbits%E2%80%99+churchill&printsec=frontcover">Indians breed like rabbits</a>” was surely relevant to his decision not to deliver food supplies to Bengal during this famine as a matter of urgency.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/churchill-and-india-imperial-chauvinism-left-a-bitter-legacy-36452">Churchill and India: imperial chauvinism left a bitter legacy</a>
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<p>Another of Churchill’s “crimes” for Ali was the brutal suppression of the largely communist Greek Resistance to the Nazis. Stalin and Churchill had agreed that Greece should remain within the western sphere of influence after the second world war but this decision led to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Greek-Civil-War">Greek Civil War</a>, which raged from 1944-49 and cost over half a million lives.</p>
<p>In one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/athens-1944-britains-dirty-secret">bloody episode</a> in Athens on 3 December 1944, the British army fired on partisan civilians, many of whom had fought with the Allies against the Nazis. For Ali, “the British Army and its Greek auxiliaries were guilty of serious war crimes, some bordering on genocide”. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, these violent episodes are missing from films like 2017’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtJ60u7SUSw">Darkest Hour</a> which focused narrowly on Churchill’s refusal to negotiate with the Nazis, climaxing with his famous “fight them on the beaches” speech. </p>
<p>Ali does not suggest that Churchill is solely responsible for complex tragedies like the Bengal Famine or Greek Civil War but he argues that it is common practice to assign individual blame to Stalin for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Five-Year-Plans">Five Year Plan</a> or Mao for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Leap-Forward">Great Leap Forward</a>. It follows, he suggests, that Churchill should at least be “added to the list” of those responsible for these deaths. Some might dismiss this as specious logic but Ali challenges the reader to ask if Churchill’s popular veneration in books and films omits important details. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Darkest Hour.</span></figcaption>
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<p>If Ali’s goal is to write a coruscating account of Churchill’s life to balance the flattering ones, he is most effective in the first substantive chapter. </p>
<p>Born into an aristocratic family in Oxfordshire in 1874, Churchill grew up in Ireland where his grandfather was Viceroy. Ali portrays young Churchill as a victim of “parental neglect” who found solace in dreams of imperial glory. Desperate for his father’s elusive approval, he trained for a military career and saw action in the late 19th century both as a journalist and officer. </p>
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<span class="caption">Second Lieutenant Winston Churchill of the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars in 1895.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>From Cuba to India, Sudan to South Africa, Ali provides extended extracts from Churchill’s letters and memoirs to show a consistent enthusiasm for European imperialism and a profound disgust for those he felt should be ruled over.</p>
<p>For instance, when the 22 year old Churchill discovered the mutilated bodies of British soldiers in northwest India (today Pakistan), he denounced the Pashtun perpetrators in his diary as “miserable and brutal creatures” and “pernicious vermin”. There was no reflection on the violence the British army had carried out on the Pashtun or why British rule might be resisted. Churchill is portrayed as the epitome of Rudyard Kipling’s “<a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/">White Man’s Burden</a>” justifying all acts of military cruelty as part of a perceived civilising mission. </p>
<p>There is little original research in this work, or new historical insight on Churchill’s career, but Ali makes his opinion of the existing literature clear. He approves of Clive Ponting’s 1994 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Winston-Churchill-Clive-Ponting/dp/1856192709">revisionist biography</a>, which was one of the first to challenge the the Churchill “myth” of the 1980s, calling it the “most objective” and quoting from it liberally. He is more critical of the biographies written by Liberal politician <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/roy-jenkins/churchill/9781509867967">Roy Jenkins in 2017</a> and historian <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/churchill-9780141981253">Andrew Roberts in 2019</a>. Both, according to Ali, downplay Churchill’s fondness for Mussolini and “tend to side-step his more gory effusions”.</p>
<h2>A recent phenomenon</h2>
<p>Churchill had a long career and his biographies tend to be necessarily lengthy. Following his military career in the late 19th century he entered parliament as a Conservative in 1900, switching to the Liberals in 1904. He was First Lord of the Admiralty during the first world war but was compelled to resign in 1915 following a series of military disasters culminating in the bungled Gallipoli campaign. A tenacious politician, he switched his allegiance back to the Conservatives in 1924. Following Neville Chamberlain’s resignation, Churchill became Prime Minister from 1940-45 and again from 1951-55. He died in 1965. </p>
<p>While Churchill received a state funeral and tributes from around the world, Ali is quick to point out that against a backdrop of international decolonisation, he had his critics too. Ali quotes from Howard Brenton’s 1974 production, the Churchill Play, which opens with a debate about his legacy. “But ‘e won the war” opines one mourner. “People won the war. He just got pissed with Stalin,” comes the reply. </p>
<p>One of the most useful aspects of Ali’s book is highlighting how recently the cult of Churchill formed. He notes that, “rather than a subject of intense historical scrutiny, Churchill has become a burnished icon …”</p>
<p>Ali follows the lead of writer Anthony Barnett who argued in a 1982 issue of New Left Review that the new enthusiasm can be called “Churchillism”. The “Churchill industry” is so successful that a 2002 nationwide <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/parliamentary-archives/Churchill-for-web-Mar-2014.pdf">BBC poll</a> voted him the “greatest Briton” ahead of Shakespeare, Darwin or Elizabeth I. </p>
<p>Ali estimates there are more than 1600 biographies of Churchill, most produced after 1982. Within this cult, Churchill embodies the British fighting spirit and a rugged determination to stand up to evil. Tony Blair presented a bust of Churchill <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/23/heres-the-real-story-about-the-churchill-bust-in-the-oval-office/">to George W. Bush</a> in 2001 in an attempt to draw parallels to the War on Terror. After Obama moved it, Donald Trump symbolically returned the bust to the Oval Office. </p>
<p>But the cult remains most potent in the UK. Boris Johnson’s 2014 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Factor-How-Made-History/dp/1594633983">The Churchill Factor</a> was an unsubtle but ultimately successful attempt to gain political capital from this legacy.</p>
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<span class="caption">A Churchill bust at the US Congress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Reynolds/AP</span></span>
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<p>The structure of Ali’s book roughly follows Churchill’s career but Ali frequently goes off on lengthy tangents that do not necessarily strengthen his case, from a verbose discussion on Vladimir Lenin and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg">Rosa Luxemburg</a> to a potted history of Irish republicanism to nearly 10 pages on the history of Zionism. These digressions are interesting, if contested, but come at the expense of a tighter focus on the book’s subject. The chapter on Japanese imperialism barely mentions Churchill at all except to say he underestimated the military threat Japan posed during the second world war.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-100452">World politics explainer: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is not an academic publication and while the book includes footnotes rather than end-notes (usually a virtue for this reader), they are so sparsely used it is not always clear where the information is coming from. The index is also poor. There is no entry for “Gallipoli” despite Ali placing great importance on Churchill’s mishandling of the campaign. The book is also littered with excessively long quotes, not just from relevant primary sources but extended extracts from other writers too. Several page-long poems also seem to serve no real purpose. </p>
<p>Ali finishes his book with a general assessment of modern international relations. He argues that the US has inherited the British imperial mission and the UK is now “little more than a US satrapy”. For Ali, despite the setback in Vietnam, the US used its military might to preserve the architecture of white supremacy. In a vivid metaphor, the UK and Australia are described as “two-testicle states” for their firm support of the US against China.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, left, reviews American troops at a base in England on the eve of D-Day, June 1944, during World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ali is highly critical of the 2003 War in Iraq and argues an “extreme centre” has taken over politics in many western countries with increasing numbers of young people not seeing any point in voting. Ali draws a link between the War in Iraq and Churchill, arguing that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it’s being carried out in different times and different circumstances, but its aims are no different to that of Churchill’s empire.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Ironies</h2>
<p>Ironically, by seeing Churchill’s long hand as something that continues to shape modern politics, Ali makes him a larger figure than even the high priests of his cult. There would have been more merit in a shorter and more tightly focused book which held up the actual historical Churchill to the romanticised patriot imagined in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Ali is strongest when using primary material to paint Churchill as a racist opportunist. He is weakest when suggesting that his mission was to create an “umbilical chord made of piano wire” so the Americans would continue his work in perpetuity.</p>
<p>Ali’s book is polemical and will have a ready-made audience with those who already see Churchill as a symbol of British imperialism. It is not a balanced (or complete) overview of Churchill’s life but the author will see his scathing account as a needed correction to the plentiful supply of fawning biographies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters gather around the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square during a Black Lives Matter rally in London, Sunday, June 7, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank Augstein/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Churchill statue in London <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-churchill-idUSKBN23F2GL">was vandalised</a> in anti-capitalism protests in 2000, anti-student fee protests 2010, and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In Canberra, the replica has been the target of increased protest since 2020. The Winston Churchill Trust recently came to <a href="https://anuobserver.org/2021/07/16/churchill-statue-to-receive-critical-plaque-and-first-nations-garden/#:%7E:text=Churchill%20Statue%20To%20Receive%20Critical%20Plaque%20and%20First%20Nations%20Garden,-Nathan%20Bow%20Posted&text=After%20lengthy%20negotiations%2C%20the%20Winston,critical%20representation%20of%20Winston%20Churchill.">an agreement</a> with <a href="https://anusa.com.au/advocacy/ethnoculturaldepartment/">the ANU BIPOC department</a> to install a critical plaque as well as a “counter-monument”.</p>
<p>Debates over Churchill’s life and legacy will continue in Britain and around the world. While the contribution to historical scholarship is minimal, Ali’s book is an important addition to the Churchill debates and a warning against political deification.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185589/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin T. Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tariq Ali’s scathing new book assessing Winston Churchill’s life and legacy paints him as a racist opportunist but overstates Churchill’s enduring influence on politics today.Benjamin T. Jones, Senior Lecturer in History, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849032022-06-12T09:05:07Z2022-06-12T09:05:07ZRetracing Belgium’s dark past in the Congo, and attempts to forge deeper ties<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468293/original/file-20220610-17-cj0qik.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and Belgian King Philippe toast at an official banquet in Kinshasa.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/retracing-belgiums-dark-past-in-the-congo-and-attempts-to-forge-deeper-ties-184903&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>Belgian King Philippe and his wife Queen Mathilde recently led a delegation on a <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/234324/belgian-king-and-queen-leave-for-state-visit-to-congo-tomorrow">week-long visit</a> to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The trip was billed as a chance to recalibrate the relationship between the two countries after a dark colonial past. We spoke to Julien Bobineau, who has researched the narratives around Belgium’s history with the Congo, about the visit. And if it could lead to a <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2022/06/07/dr-congo-belgian-king-arrives-in-kinshasa-for-first-official-visit//#:%7E:text=Belgium's%20colonisation%20of%20the%20Congo,the%20king%2C%20echoed%20the%20sentiment.">new partnership</a> between the two countries.</em></p>
<h2>What is Belgium’s history in the DRC?</h2>
<p>There’s a dark history between Belgium and the DRC that started in the 19th century.</p>
<p>Between 1884 and 1885, there were a series of negotiations between European powers to formalise claims to territory in Africa. It culminated in the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780822385035-003/pdf">Berlin Conference</a>. African stakeholders were not involved in the negotiations. </p>
<p>During the conference, Belgian King Leopold II obtained international legitimacy for the ownership of the lands in what is now the Congo. </p>
<p>From then on, he was the private ruler of the État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State), which was 80 times the size of his Kingdom of Belgium. Until his death in 1909, Leopold II never set foot in “his” colony.</p>
<p>But he profited enormously from the Congo’s raw materials. </p>
<p>It is <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/1447211359">estimated</a> that about half of the then 20 million inhabitants of the Congo lost their lives due to the conditions people had to endure to extract raw materials, mainly of rubber. Some historians <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23133898">refer to this</a> as a genocide. </p>
<p>After international protests, Leopold II sold the private colony to the Belgian state in 1908. After the takeover, the country was renamed Congo Belge, but the interests remained the same. In southeast Congo, the Belgians discovered large ore deposits and exported copper, tropical wood, cotton, cocoa and coffee to Europe. </p>
<p>After slavery was officially abolished in 1910, Congolese workers received a wage for their work in the mines and on the plantations. However, this was much less than the payment Europeans received for the same work. </p>
<p>This colonial racism continued in everyday life until the middle of the 20th century. Cities were divided into “white” and “black” neighbourhoods. The Congolese were only allowed to visit the restaurants, bars and cinemas of “white” Europeans with special permission.</p>
<p>From the 1950s, a broad movement <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110709308/html?lang=de">formed</a> in Congo Belge to protest against Belgian foreign rule. Belgian King Baudouin I finally relented and “released” the DR Congo into independence on 30 June 1960. Joseph Kasavubu was elected the first president, with Patrice Lumumba as prime minister. </p>
<p>However, shortly after independence, there was a falling out between the independent government and Western powers, primarily the US and Belgium. They wanted to retain control over the raw materials in the Congo. </p>
<p>After only two months in power, Lumumba was deposed in September 1960. He <a href="https://www.cadtm.org/In-memory-of-Patrice-Lumumba-assassinated-on-17-January-1961">was assassinated</a> by his political opponents in Katanga in January 1961 with the help of Belgian and US secret services. </p>
<p>Belgium’s involvement in the political assassination was concealed until a commission of enquiry, <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/50661/facing-the-truths-of-belgium-s-colonial-past-the-unresolved-case-of-patrice-lumumba-s-death">launched</a> by the Belgian parliament in 1999, found Belgium partially responsible for Lumumba’s death.</p>
<h2>What’s happened to relations since independence?</h2>
<p>There have been three major shifts.</p>
<p>The first is when Joseph-Désiré Mobutu came to power in 1965. An army commander, he <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/mobutu-joseph-desire-mobutu-sese-seko-kuku-waza-banga-1930-1997/">seized power</a> and established an autocratic dictatorship that lasted until 1997. </p>
<p>Belgian-Congolese diplomatic relations were characterised by ups and downs during Mobutu’s reign. On the one hand, Belgium wanted to maintain ties with the former colony for geopolitical and economic reasons. On the other, the Belgian government had to <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-04-29-9704290128-story.html">respond diplomatically</a> to the countless human rights abuses committed by Mobutu’s regime. </p>
<p>This dilemma was exacerbated by two aspects. Firstly, Mobutu repeatedly pointed out Belgium’s moral responsibility to the country resulting from colonial rule, especially in crisis situations. Secondly, there was <a href="https://sciendo.com/article/10.1515/werk-2017-0007">colonial nostalgia</a> among the Belgian population. The colonial rule was romantically glorified in Belgium. </p>
<p>The second shift happened much later. In 2020, the <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en">AfricanMuseum</a> changed its guidelines in dealing with objects from colonial contexts. The <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/de/about_us/restitution">goal</a> was to make negotiations on restitution possible.</p>
<p>The museum, in the Brussels suburb of Tervuren, was founded in 1897 by Leopold II at the height of colonialism. It served many Belgians as their first point of contact with the African colony. Racist images and colonial bias were <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39892/pdf">constructed</a> to justify foreign rule in the Congo. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of ethnographic objects – mainly looted objects, but also “donations” – were brought to Tervuren and are still stored in the museum today. </p>
<p>Following this general paradigm shift, in October 2020, the Free University of Brussels agreed to return human remains from Congo to the University of Lubumbashi. And in March 2022, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-takes-first-small-step-in-returning-art-to-congo/">announced the return</a> of 84,000 Congolese artefacts. </p>
<p>The third shift is King Philippe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/30/belgian-king-philippe-expresses-profound-regrets-for-brutal-colonial-rule">letter</a> to President Felix Tshisekedi on 30 June 2020, the anniversary of Congolese independence. In the letter, the king expressed his deep regret for the colonial injustices committed in the Congo. This was against the backdrop of the global <a href="https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/1796.black-lives-matter-in-belgium-june-july-2020.html">Black Lives Matter</a> movement in which protests against racism and the neglect of colonial history grew within the Belgian population. </p>
<p>It was the first time that a member of the royal family had addressed the Congolese people with such words. On the same day, then Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès also expressed her regret regarding Belgium’s colonial past. It was the first time a Belgian head of state had done this in that way – a paradigmatic turning point in the country’s historical policy.</p>
<h2>What is Belgium’s proposed reparations plan?</h2>
<p>In October 2021, the Belgian parliament <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/117289/parliament-approves-commission-on-belgiums-colonial-past">set up a commission</a> to deal with colonial injustice. Ten experts were tasked with discussing several issues, including possible financial reparations and a stronger anchoring of Belgian colonial history in education curricula and society. </p>
<p>The commission is also to provide the basis for a reorientation of international relations with former colonial territories. </p>
<p>When it comes to the restitution of objects from colonial contexts, the Belgian government has allocated 2 million euros (about US$2.1 million) to research the provenance of the objects. </p>
<p>For many Congolese in the diaspora in Belgium and in the Congo, this doesn’t go far enough. They also <a href="https://information.tv5monde.com/video/philippe-de-belgique-en-rdc-la-population-congolaise-attend-plus-que-des-regrets">demand</a> an official apology for the colonial atrocities. The government and the king have so far only formulated a “regret”.</p>
<h2>What are the possibilities of improved diplomatic ties?</h2>
<p>For relations to truly improve, the Belgian state must acknowledge its historical responsibility more strongly. It must negotiate politically on an equal footing with its former colonies. </p>
<p>Reparations are also an important issue. Even if many Belgians believe that they cannot be held responsible for the crimes of their ancestors, the Belgian economy profited greatly from colonial exploitation – and in principle continues to do so today. </p>
<p>Congolese societies, in contrast, were deprived of the potential to ‘develop’ due to exploitation, slavery and genocide. The different current economic situations prove this historically generated discrepancy for which there must be a compensation.</p>
<p>The broad debate alone can only be conducted in Belgian society alongside Congolese actors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julien Bobineau received funding from the Bavarian Elite Network in form of a PhD scholarship, provided by the Federal Government of Bavaria (Germany). </span></em></p>For relations with the DRC to truly improve, the Belgian state must acknowledge its historical responsibility more strongly.Julien Bobineau, Assistant Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität JenaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1816292022-05-13T10:23:58Z2022-05-13T10:23:58ZThree imperial policies that still influence life in Britain today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462746/original/file-20220512-18-fojzfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C9485%2C7025&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_Federation_Map_of_the_World.jpg">Dennis Sylvester Hurd / Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The revelation that Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-non-dom-an-expert-answers-our-questions-about-the-tax-status-claimed-by-rishi-sunaks-wife-and-other-wealthy-people-180928">claimed non-dom status</a> in the UK for years has drawn renewed attention to an imperialist policy that still holds today. Non-doms may live in the UK, but are considered by the tax authorities to be “non-domiciled” in the country and therefore pay no tax in the UK on their income earned elsewhere. </p>
<hr>
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<p>The backlash to Murty’s non-dom status pointed out that the chancellor’s family benefited from tax loopholes as he raised taxes on the rest of the country. Some <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/81379a7a-5182-4845-b279-570b99406b5e">articles</a> highlighted the irony that Murty, an Indian citizen, was taking advantage of rules originally put in place to protect the money British imperialists were making in India. Non-dom status is one of several polices and provisions that have roots stretching back to the British Empire, not just in India.</p>
<p>At the end of the 18th century, Britain’s “sugar colonies” were still its most profitable imperial possessions. The 1799 income tax – Great Britain’s first such tax – exempted non-resident British subjects from paying tax on incomes derived from outside Great Britain. Thousands of British men and women owned agricultural estates (or portions of them) in the colonies, where enslaved men and women laboured to produce sugar, molasses, rum, indigo, coffee and cotton. The favourable tax treatment these individuals secured is testament to the power of the colonial lobbies in policymaking at the time. </p>
<p>The act’s <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31210007001348&view=1up&seq=97&skin=2021">non-dom exception</a> would have encompassed absentee plantation owners who could claim their time in Britain was only a sojourn, as well as all the thousands of British subjects abroad in the West Indies and South Asia. It helped keep plantation owners flush with the cash they needed to keep the wheels of the imperial economy turning, and provide the goods that would pay the customs and excise taxes to keep the government afloat.</p>
<p>Now, a new generation of international elites are using such relics of empire as non-dom status for their own gain. The difference is that today, people from all over the world can take advantage of the UK’s favourable tax system, while in the past Britons went out into the world to make their fortunes.</p>
<h2>Freeports and free trade</h2>
<p>Other imperial policies from the 18th century are also having a resurgence. The current plan to create eight <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/freeports#where-are-they-located">freeports in England</a> resurrects a strategy deployed by the British government in 1766. Now that the UK has exited the EU, it has the ability to alter its trade policies. The freeports plan will allow for lower taxes, customs duties and other regulations in a defined geographical area, known as a special economic zone, around a port. The government hopes the bundle of favourable policies in a freeport will spur job growth and economic activity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Overhead view of Liverpool cityscape and waterfront at dusk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liverpool, once the centre of global trade, will be a freeport under new plans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/panorama-liverpool-waterfront-evening-1558086938">Alexey Fedorenko / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 18th century, the government aimed to accomplish similar goals through a loosening of trade restrictions. Then, it was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mercantilism">mercantilist</a> system as established by the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/importexport/overview/navigationlaws/">Navigation Acts</a> that most restricted trade. Those laws confined most British trade to British ships, imposed duties on foreign products, and banned British colonies from trading with the other European powers and their colonies. Merchants from New England, for example, could not legally sell food and lumber to the French and Spanish West Indian colonies as they could to the British ones. </p>
<p>The Free Port Act of 1766 marked a significant break in this restrictive trade system. It opened four Jamaican ports and two in Dominica to foreign traders, partially repealing the mercantilist policies that had organised British trade for a century. Trade between British and Spanish colonies subsequently boomed. <a href="https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/147718/ajrutled_1.pdf?sequence=1">Exports</a> of African captives and British textiles from Jamaican ports to Spanish American ones made up much of this enlarged trade.</p>
<h2>Any port in a storm</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, some longstanding policies have been consigned to history, unlikely to ever return, yet their effects continue to be felt. The 1703 Methuen treaty between England and Portugal is one example. As part of a diplomatic alliance forged during the war of Spanish succession, Portuguese wines enjoyed favourable customs treatment in England. The treaty helped solidify the famous wool for wine trade, which the economist <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/david-ricardo/">David Ricardo</a> used to illustrate the power of comparative advantage. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two glasses of red wine on a table with a sunny landscape in the background. Someone is pouring from the bottle into one of the glasses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The British taste for port has its roots in imperial trade policy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pouring-fortified-dessert-ruby-tawny-port-1875862648">barmalini / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The British taste for <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Portugal_Trade/r9DNngEACAAJ?hl=en">port</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8GVgPgAACAAJ&newbks=0&hl=en&redir_esc=y">Madeira</a> wines owed much to the price advantage Portuguese producers held over their rivals. Additionally, merchants in Oporto and Madeira – many of them British – adjusted their products to meet their customers’ taste, showing high levels of entrepreneurship and innovation. The Methuen treaty may be long gone, and dry wines more popular than fortified ones, but a glass of port at Christmas continues to be a British tradition. </p>
<h2>Global Britain</h2>
<p>When we look at Britain’s history, the imprints of empire are unmistakable. In the past, British men and women could make money around the world behind protectionist walls. Today, the UK courts foreign opportunities through liberal regulatory and tax policies.</p>
<p>Following Brexit, the UK is now seeking to redefine its international standing with its “global Britain” slogan. We would do well to remember how British prosperity has long been intertwined with the rest of the world – and what “global Britain” has meant for those who were subject to <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-british-empire-was-built-on-slavery-then-grew-by-antislavery">British</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">imperialism</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hunter Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the tax we pay to the wine we drink, many policies in Britain today have their roots in imperialism.Hunter Harris, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the City of London and the History of Slavery, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1816422022-04-22T10:41:29Z2022-04-22T10:41:29ZColonialism: why leading climate scientists have finally acknowledged its link with climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459297/original/file-20220422-18-oxwv8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4281%2C2843&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Campaigners have long argued for recognising colonialism as a climate-shaping force.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_March_0241_(34210342272).jpg">Edward Kimmel/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)‘s <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/">sixth and latest report</a> on the impact of global warming on our planet, published earlier this month, reiterates many of its predecessors’ warnings: chiefly that climate change threatens <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm">global disaster</a> if we do not act to avert it. Yet it contains one key difference. For the first time in the institution’s history, the IPCC has included the term “colonialism” in its report’s summary.</p>
<p>Colonialism, the report asserts, has <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf">exacerbated</a> the effects of climate change. In particular, historic and ongoing forms of colonialism have helped to increase the <a href="https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65708/4/Climate_Colonialism_pre_print.pdf">vulnerability</a> of specific people and places to the effects of climate change.</p>
<p>The IPCC has been producing scientific reports on climate change since 1990. But in its more than 30 years of analysis, it has never yet discussed the connections between climate change and colonialism: until now.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-key-points-in-the-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-178195">Five key points in the IPCC report on climate change impacts and adaptation</a>
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<p>The addition of one new term to the IPCC’s lexicon might not seem significant. But <a href="https://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eamsp/eng-11-globalization.htm">colonialism</a> is a deeply complex word. Referring to the practice of acquiring full or partial control over another group’s territory, it can include the occupation of that land by settlers as well as the economic exploitation of land to benefit the colonising group.</p>
<p>In Australia, where I come from, British colonists invaded Aboriginal people’s land in the late 18th century and have since worked to establish a permanent settlement there. This was not a peaceful process. It involved violent acts of dispossession including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2019/mar/04/massacre-map-australia-the-killing-times-frontier-wars">widespread massacres</a> of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/islander-labourers">forced removal</a> of those people from their land, and the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997">forced separation</a> of children from their families. </p>
<p>Connecting climate change to such acts of colonisation involves recognising that historic injustices are not consigned to history: their legacies are alive in the present. Researchers <a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2395">have shown</a>, for example, that the scale of bushfires in Australia today – including the catastrophic <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666449620300098">fires of 2019-20</a> – is not being exacerbated by climate change alone. It’s also amplified by the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240">colonial displacement</a> of Indigenous people from their lands and the disruption of their <a href="https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss4/art11/">land management practices</a> that skilfully used controlled burning to help landscapes flourish.</p>
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<img alt="Fires burn in a forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The spread of bushfires in Australia has been influenced by preventing Indigenous people from managing their lands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bertknot/8225104985">Bertknot/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>This is why it’s significant that the term colonialism is not only included within the full, more technical part of the latest report. It’s also included within the concise “<a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf">summary for policymakers</a>”, the most widely cited and read part of the IPCC’s reports.</p>
<p>By connecting climate change to colonialism in this summary, the IPCC is sending a message to the governments and policymakers of the world that addressing the effects of climate change cannot be achieved without also addressing the legacies of colonialism. It’s a message that also acknowledges how the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-what-is-climate-justice">climate justice movement</a> has long campaigned for the recognition of the unequal effects of climate change on different groups of people.</p>
<h2>Timely connections</h2>
<p>Several reasons stand out as to why the IPCC has finally chosen to acknowledge this link. The people most impacted by colonisation have campaigned for – and gained greater access to – the IPCC’s process of creating reports. Previous reports were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2954">critiqued</a> for lacking authors from Indigenous groups and non-Western nations. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">Colonialism was a disaster and the facts prove it</a>
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<p>In the latest report, by contrast, about <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/04/06/ar6-author-selection/">44% of authors</a> are from “developing countries and countries with economies in transition”, up from 37% in the previous report. Authors also come from <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309133310373719">more diverse</a> disciplinary <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-key-points-in-the-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-178195">backgrounds</a>, including anthropology, history and philosophy as well as science and economics. </p>
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<img alt="Five white people sit behind a table on a stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Previous IPCC working groups have been criticised for their lack of diversity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/takver/10078217474">John Englart/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>There has also been a steadily growing body of literature demonstrating the connections between climate change and colonialism since the IPCC completed its fifth report in 2014. For example, Potawatomi philosopher and climate justice scholar <a href="https://seas.umich.edu/research/faculty/kyle-whyte">Kyle Whyte</a> is cited in the latest report for his research on direct links between dispossessing Indigenous people of their land and environmental damage.</p>
<p>Yet for all the significance of the IPCC’s new acknowledgement, it is only one part of the latest report that develops this connection. IPCC reports are composed of three sections produced by different <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">working groups</a>. The first section assesses the physical science of climate change; the second covers the impacts of climate change; and the third deals with potential ways to lessen these effects. Only the second section discusses colonialism.</p>
<h2>Climate history</h2>
<p>As a historian of climate knowledge, I’d argue that an analysis of colonialism should also be included in the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg1/">first section</a> covering climate science. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/habsburg-empire-created-modern-climate-science/575068/">Research</a> is increasingly showing that climate science is rooted in imperialism and colonialism. The historian Deborah R. Coen <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo24768042.html">has shown</a> that key elements of contemporary climate change science owe their origins to the <a href="https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/making-climate-history#:%7E:text=Funded%20by%20the%20Leverhulme%20Trust,physics%20and%20a%20global%20climate.">imperial ambitions</a> of the 19th century <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/austrian-history-yearbook/article/abs/economic-development-in-the-nineteenthcentury-habsburg-empire/7A5B3DD5FAA808EC242CBE4E48D71AE5">Habsburg Empire</a>. It was Habsburg imperialist politics, for example, that helped scientists develop an understanding of the relationship between the development of local storms and atmospheric circulation.</p>
<p>What’s more, much of the historic meteorological data that contemporary climate scientists rely on was produced by colonising powers. Take the data <a href="https://webs.ucm.es/info/cliwoc/intro.htm">extracted by scientists</a> from the logbooks of mid-19th century English ships. This information was recorded as part of an <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26455496?seq=1">effort</a> to better connect territories colonised by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-monarchy-has-benefited-from-colonialism-and-slavery-179911">British Empire</a> and speed up the exploitation of other people’s land and water.</p>
<p>How the IPCC will deal with these types of connections between climate change and colonialism remains to be seen, but I hope it will soon acknowledge colonialism in all three of its working groups. What is already clear is that the links between climate change and colonialism are legion, and involve confronting an uncomfortable range of legacies.</p>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harriet Mercer is a member of the Making Climate History project, which receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>The IPCC’s latest climate report discusses how colonialism has shaped climate, a breakthrough for the climate justice movement.Harriet Mercer, Research Associate in Climate History, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1794102022-03-16T16:01:32Z2022-03-16T16:01:32ZUkraine: Putin isn’t mad – he’s following a long-established great power playbook for conquest<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ukraine-invasion-2022-117045">Russian invasion of Ukraine</a> has confounded everyone. Given its huge economic, reputational and political costs – not to mention the immense human misery it has already caused – how can anyone in their right mind choose to start such a war?</p>
<p>The question of rationality is important when assessing a country’s actions, the likely impact of external pressure on it, including economic sanctions, as well as a potential way out via negotiations.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/competingimperialisms/">research</a> looking at the various style of imperialism in north-east Asia from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century has helped me to get a better feel for Vladimir Putin’s motives behind the invasion, which actually follow a coherent pattern.</p>
<p>I began to see the Russian president’s rationale behind a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, from the <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67828">speech he made</a> on February 22, recognising the two separatists republics in eastern Ukraine. Pronouncements since from both Putin and several Russian officials added further pieces to the puzzle.</p>
<p>The Russian leadership views on Ukraine can be deconstructed into a few basic narratives. These are the claims that certain areas of modern Ukraine are “old age Russian lands” (<em>iskonnye russkie zemli</em>), the idea of historical closeness between the Russians and Ukrainians, and the strategic borders argument.</p>
<p>All of these claims fit a standard toolkit of national appropriation that have been used the world over – from North America to Europe, the Middle East and Asia. But my research has looked at policies of Russia, China and Japan at the turn of the 20th century – and it shows how such claims were used to appropriate territories by different countries across various historical periods.</p>
<p>By looking at the national appropriation of territories in north-east Asia between three competing imperialisms of Russia, Japan and China, we can get a close approximation of how countries with different history, geography and national identities used similar techniques for constructing their national borders.</p>
<h2>How new territory is acquired</h2>
<p>In a forthcoming research paper, due to be published later this year, I highlight four principal ways of territorial appropriation.</p>
<p>First, it is ethnic colonisation. Settling a new land with people from the home country is seen as a necessary step in claiming it as a national territory. In the case of the Russian far east this took the form of a settler colonisation in the late 19th and early 20th century. Once the majority of people are from the same ethnicity as the mother country, the new territory is claimed as national – not just imperial lands.</p>
<p>Both Japan in its colonisation of Hokkaido and south Karafuto (Sakhalin), and China in Manchuria, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780585463858/Sovereignty-and-Authenticity-Manchukuo-and-the-East-Asian-Modern">claimed</a> those territories as their national lands because the majority of people there were Japanese and Chinese respectively.</p>
<p>Putin’s <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181">claim</a> that the Russians and the Ukrainians are one people serves the same aim. It facilitates Moscow’s claims on Ukrainian territories as being essentially Russian and legitimises Russia’s alleged right for a special sphere of influence there – if not an outright annexation.</p>
<p>Second, to strengthen an emotional claim on a territory, the idea of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13537129908719528">ancestral</a> possession is frequently used. In Russia’s case, claiming common ancestry to the ancient state of “Kievan Rus” as well as a common language and the same Orthodox religion serves as a powerful emotional device for a modern appropriation of territories in independent Ukraine that used to be part of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Third, such claims are often reinforced by cultural and mnemonic links made via literature, culture, and celebration of important historical events. This can include distant past such as the baptism of Rus in 988, or the sieges of Sevastopol in 1854-5 and 1941-2 commemorated in popular culture from Count Tolstoy’s <a href="https://mostlyaboutstories.com/leo-tolstoy-the-sevastopol-sketches/">Sevastopol Sketches</a> to a recent film <a href="https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2028991/film-review-battle-sevastopol-biopic-female-sharpshooter-hits-mark">Battle for Sevastopol</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, the strategic borders argument is clearly articulated in Putin’s rhetoric behind the invasion of Ukraine. In both of his <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843">speeches</a> on the eve of invasion he talked about the encroachment of Nato via Ukraine towards Russia’s borders as an existential threat. In December 2021, when discussing Ukraine’s military cooperation with Nato, Putin <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67402">claimed</a>: “We simply have no room to retreat.”</p>
<h2>Strategic security</h2>
<p>Security is a common argument for control of “strategic” territories. For example, Stalin’s “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Finnish-War">winter war</a>” against Finland in 1939 was based on a similar premise of the need to move the border away from Leningrad.</p>
<p>Russia’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15387216.2017.1421474">argument</a> for possession of the Southern Kuril islands, known as the Northern Territories in Japan, is likewise often based on their strategic importance for the control of the Sea of Okhotsk. On the other hand, Japan’s own settlement of those islands and even <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Dominant_Narratives_of_Colonial_Hokkaido/GFBaCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">colonisation</a> of Hokkaido in the second half of the 19th century was often justified as a necessary protection from Russia’s encroachment from the north.</p>
<p>To return to the original question of Putin’s rationality. The lives of many Russians and a far greater number of Ukrainians have been lost. The Russian economy is nearly <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/an-unprecedented-economic-casualty-41413543.html">ruined</a> because of western sanctions. Three decades of painful post-Soviet economic reforms have been undone overnight. For most people this seems crazy.</p>
<p>Yet, the truth is that Putin is following a well-established pattern here. This is not an irrational action but a case of history repeating itself. A great power’s nationalism and obsession with security has overriden any concerns for the economy and wellbeing of its own and neighbouring people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Titov participated in the ESRC-funded project 'Competing Imperialisms in Northeast Asia, 1894-1953'</span></em></p>Putin is following a strategy used by other imperial countries, particularly 19th-century China and Japan.Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1740332022-01-09T13:14:41Z2022-01-09T13:14:41ZThe U.S. failed in Afghanistan by trying to moralize with bullets and bombs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439200/original/file-20220103-58867-171en51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C57%2C4793%2C3099&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The acting foreign minister in Afghanistan's Taliban-run cabinet, Amir Khan Muttaqi attends a session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Council of Foreign Ministers, in Islamabad, Pakistan, in December 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last August, the world watched the chaotic and painful <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rocket-attack-kabul-1.6157938">American departure from Afghanistan</a>. It led to a profound reckoning: how could two decades of war end in such humiliating defeat at the hands of Taliban militants?</p>
<p>In Afghanistan, the list of imperial powers that have tried and failed to exercise control includes the <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-marks-98-years-independence/28685763.html">British in the 19th century</a>, the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-soviet-war-in-afghanistan-1979-1989/100786/">Soviets in the 20th century</a> — and now the Americans in the 21st century. </p>
<p>Afghanistan’s history of occupation suggests a deviation from the standard colonial playbook of using military control to extract wealth elsewhere in the Global South. All this has given rise to the erroneous trope that Afghanistan is a “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/28/afghanistan-graveyard-britain-us-russia-506990">graveyard of empires</a>.”</p>
<h2>Complex legacy of colonialism</h2>
<p>The reality is more complex. Global South nations struggling with the effects of colonialism are ticking time bombs. Global North control creates simmering resentments and resistance.</p>
<p>My research into entrepreneurship amid post-colonial upheaval finds that colonial interference <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib-03-2020-0016">alters the natural progress of development</a> for these occupied countries. Traumatic political, military and social events create deficits that are not easily fixed. Yet I’ve also found that powerful identities around empowerment and self-determination can survive the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3637-9">extremes of colonialism and occupation</a>.</p>
<p>The 20-year Afghanistan war was not just a military exercise — it was also a moralizing attempt by the Global North to construct institutions in their own image. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/afghanistan-shows-the-u-s-folly-of-trying-to-implant-democratic-institutions-abroad-167613">Afghanistan shows the U.S. folly of trying to implant democratic institutions abroad</a>
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<p>The cost? <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-death-toll-in-afghan-mission-158-soldiers-four-civilians-1.1814248">Almost 160 Canadians</a> died, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f">2,448 American service members were killed</a> and, astonishingly, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-b1912816.html">363,000 Afghan civilians</a> perished. Billions of dollars were spent, and another superpower was left humiliated.</p>
<p>Post-colonialism is still very much in play in Afghanistan. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mujahideen-Afghani-rebels">The Mujahideen</a> drove out the Soviets in 1989, and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Taliban">cult-like Taliban</a> surprised everyone, and possibly themselves, with how quickly they took control in the wake of the clumsy U.S. withdrawal. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A soldier holding a gun stands in front of a troop of soldiers walking towards a building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Taliban special force fighters stand guard outside Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021. The Taliban seized Kabul after the last U.S. plane left its runway, marking the end of America’s longest war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Post-colonial theory at play</h2>
<p>The resurgence of the Taliban was consistent with post-colonial theory on identity construction, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203820551">understood to happen in three steps</a>.</p>
<p>First, there was the Eurocentric expectation of mimicry: when confronted by the world’s most powerful military, Afghans were expected to adopt the norms of their occupiers. America and its allies saw themselves as having a superior form of civilization worthy of emulation, doing a favour for Afghans by liberating them from the Taliban.</p>
<p>Second, a hybrid identity was created. Afghanistan became neither Afghan nor American. A <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-a-puppet-government.html">puppet government</a> was installed to force an identity onto Afghanistan by their foreign occupier that would be palatable to the Global North.</p>
<p>Third, there was a space of transition. In this space, people reflect on ongoing uncertainties and their history, and reimagine the future; it is here that the colonized resist and push back against occupying forces.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Groups men walking down a road. A few of them carry guns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Militiamen loyal to Ahmad Massoud, the founder of the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, stand guard in Panjshir, the last region not under Taliban control following their stunning blitz across Afghanistan, in August 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jalaluddin Sekandar)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>A monster of their own creation</h2>
<p>For 20 years, the U.S. was trying to destroy its own flawed, hybrid creation: the Mujahideen. These guerrilla fighters had been trained and armed by Americans to fight in a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/the-taliban-indoctrinates-kids-with-jihadist-textbooks-paid-for-by-the-u-s/">death for country</a>,” suicide-bombing style. </p>
<p>This was not the Afghan way. Rather than blowing themselves up, Afghans had preferred to put down their weapons for tea time, hang out with their adversaries and then go back to fighting them the next day.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/origins-of-the-taliban-and-what-their-history-tells-us-about-takeover-of-afghanistan-podcast-166699">Origins of the Taliban and what their history tells us about takeover of Afghanistan – podcast</a>
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<p>By installing a <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/16/pers-a16.html">corrupt puppet government</a>, the Americans pursued nation-building based on their own western model. This thwarted the natural evolution of Afghan institutions and hung on the country like an ill-fitting suit, with deadly consequences. </p>
<p>The speed with which U.S.-backed president Ashraf Ghani fled, and the occupation government collapsed, heralded a significant transition in Afghanistan. The Taliban stepped into that space of transition with surprising ease. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people walking in front of a wall with a large mural of a man's face on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C79%2C5936%2C3456&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People walk near a mural of President Ashraf Ghani at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Ghani fled the country in August 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)</span></span>
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<p>A majority of Afghans, like any occupied people, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3637-9">want to create their own solutions</a>. For this, they often need help. But that help should not be guns pointed at them by a foreign military. </p>
<p>After two decades of fighting that left so many of their citizens dead, Afghans faced the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-occupation-of-afghanistan-was-colonialism-that-prevented-afghan-self-determination-167615">unpalatable choice between the tyranny of the occupiers or the tyranny of their own people</a> — meaning the Taliban. </p>
<h2>Restructuring the narrative</h2>
<p>This <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58484155">does not mean Afghans are happy</a> with the Taliban. But the current narrative that the Global North is trying to “save” Afghans is an attempt at damage control over a misadventure that cost so many lives. </p>
<p>Afghanistan has been taken back to the same place it was 20 years ago. That requires reconstructing the narrative, because it’s hard to say you’re promoting human rights when hundreds of thousands have been killed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-my-20-years-in-afghanistan-taught-me-about-the-taliban-and-how-the-west-consistently-underestimates-them-167927">What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban – and how the west consistently underestimates them</a>
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<p>The post-colonial situation suggests that, with Afghanistan’s occupiers gone, Taliban rule is a flawed but authentic first step in a long process of transition. This process is more authentic than the one imposed by occupiers, because it allows Afghan society to evolve on its own terms.</p>
<p>Colonialism changes the trajectory of a nation. The political, economic and social structures that normally evolve are interrupted. To prosper, Afghanistan needs partnerships and business investment, not bullets and bombs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>F. Haider Alvi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To prosper after the legacy of imperialism and colonization, Afghanistan needs partnerships and business investment, not bullets and bombs.F. Haider Alvi, Assistant Professor of Innovation Finance, Athabasca UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641182021-07-08T12:37:25Z2021-07-08T12:37:25ZHaiti’s president assassinated: 5 essential reads to give you key history and insight<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410218/original/file-20210707-19-vhpeoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C1597%2C1058&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Haitian police patrol outside the presidential residence in Port-au-Prince on July 7, 2021, after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-haitian-police-and-forensics-patrol-the-area-news-photo/1233850932?adppopup=true">Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/07/world/jovenel-moise-assassinated-killed">assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse</a> risks destabilizing the Caribbean country, which was already in crisis over alarmingly high violence and Moïse’s increasingly undemocratic behavior.</p>
<p>Here’s some essential background on Haiti, starting with the painful history that underlies so much of Haiti’s modern struggles. </p>
<h2>1. France’s ‘extortion’</h2>
<p>Haiti officially declared its independence from colonizer France in 1804 after a revolutionary war staged by enslaved laborers and inspired by the American Revolution. </p>
<p>But the French “never quite gave up on reconquering their former colony,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949">according to Marlene Daut, a historian of Haiti at the University of Virginia</a>. </p>
<p>Between 1814 and 1825, France sent repeated delegations to Haiti to negotiate with its new leaders about restoring some formal relationship with France. When that failed, King Charles X in 1825 decreed that France would recognize Haitian independence, but only if the new country paid France the exorbitant price of 150 million francs. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1342&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335367/original/file-20200515-138639-aqm00i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1342&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A facsimile of a bank note for 30 million francs that Haiti borrowed from a French bank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044094146602&view=1up&seq=131">Lepelletier de Saint-Remy, 'Étude Et Solution Nouvelle de la Question Haïtienne.'</a></span>
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<p>“The sum was meant to compensate the French colonists for their lost revenues from slavery,” says Daut. “Rejection of the ordinance almost certainly meant war.” </p>
<p>Under threat of violence, the Haitian leader, Jean-Pierre Boyer, signed a document agreeing to pay France “in five equal installments … the sum of 150,000,000 francs, destined to indemnify the former colonists.”</p>
<p>The deal forced Haiti to take out enormous loans. The young nation defaulted on them, despite Boyer’s levying punishing taxes on the Haitian people in his failed effort to pay them off. Its debt to France took 122 years to pay off.</p>
<p>“This was not diplomacy,” Daut says of France’s demand for payment. “It was extortion.”</p>
<h2>2. US occupation</h2>
<p>By the 20th century, the United States was the foreign country exerting undue control over Haiti’s ailing economy. </p>
<p>It did so through a <a href="https://theconversation.com/gas-shortages-paralyze-haiti-triggering-protests-against-failing-economy-and-dysfunctional-politics-116337">combination of military might, political maneuvering and private investment</a>, writes Florida State University Professor Vincent Joos, who studies Haiti’s economy.</p>
<p>The American military occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and controlled its government. During that period, the U.S. designed Haiti’s economic and social policies to attract foreign investment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Marines march with palm trees in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229156/original/file-20180724-194146-g900a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">U.S. Marines marching in Haiti in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bettman/Corbis</span></span>
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<p>“In practice, that meant keeping Haitian wages, corporate taxes and tariffs low,” says Joos. “In exchange, the theory went, foreign investment would bring infrastructure development and jobs, benefiting all Haitians.”</p>
<p>Part of the Americans’ plan worked: American agricultural firms did begin profitably growing cash crops like coffee, bananas and sugar in Haiti in the 1910s and 1920s. Later, U.S. businesses and military agencies established rubber plantations and textile factories there.</p>
<p>But Haiti’s export-focused economic model hasn’t benefited its people.</p>
<p>“After decades of extremely business-friendly policies, three-quarters of Haitians still live on less than US$2.40 a day,” writes Joos.</p>
<h2>3. The earthquake</h2>
<p>On Jan. 12, 2010, a massive earthquake left Haiti in shambles – physically, economically and politically. Upwards of 300,000 people were killed and nearly 1.5 million of Haiti’s 10 million people instantly became homeless.</p>
<p>Researcher Joseph Jr Clormeus was in Port-au-Prince that day and survived the earthquake. Some of his colleagues “lost their lives while others were having limbs amputated to escape certain death under the rubble,” he recalls. “Outside, corpses littered the streets of the capital.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man walks over the remains of several homes where bodies of earthquake victims had yet to be pulled from the rubble." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410217/original/file-20210707-23-ewb8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scenes of rubble in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 29, 2010, a few weeks after the earthquake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/haitian-man-walks-over-the-remains-of-several-homes-where-news-photo/107430062?adppopup=true">Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last year, on the 10th anniversary of the quake, Clormeus and co-authors Jean-François Savard and Emmanuel Sael <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-after-the-earthquake-haiti-still-struggles-to-recover-129670">wrote a story assessing Haiti’s stalled recovery</a>.</p>
<p>“Haiti hasn’t recovered from this disaster, despite billions of dollars being spent in the country,” they concluded. </p>
<p>One big problem, according to their analysis: Haiti’s government was weak after decades of dictatorship in the 20th century and a series of unstable democratic administrations in the 21st. </p>
<p>Clormeus, Savard and Sael also blame the international-led disaster recovery effort for Haiti’s continued struggles. </p>
<p>After the earthquake, hundreds of foreign aid agencies and international organizations like the Red Cross flooded into Haiti, intending to help. But “there was no coordination in the interventions of friendly countries in order to optimize the efforts on behalf of the victims,” write Clormeus, Savard and Sael. </p>
<p>The international community “failed to meet a humanitarian challenge of such magnitude.”</p>
<h2>4. Austerity and foreign influence</h2>
<p>The international community has also failed in its efforts to alleviate the privation and struggle of the Haitian people. The average income is $5 a day, and many people live on much less.</p>
<p>Haiti’s government, likewise, remains cash-strapped. It is frequently unable to provide basic services like trash collection or to hold timely elections.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/haitis-deadly-riots-fueled-by-anger-over-decades-of-austerity-and-foreign-interference-100209">The country “runs on borrowed funds,”</a> says Florida State’s Vincent Joos. </p>
<p>Loans sometimes fund 20% of Haiti’s national budget. That gives lending institutions like the International Monetary Fund outsized influence on domestic policies. In 2018, deadly protests erupted over gas prices after Haiti’s creditors recommended ending petroleum subsidies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protesters block a street with debris." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229154/original/file-20180724-194149-1gbrp1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters set up roadblocks to disrupt traffic and commerce along key streets in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The International Monetary Fund’s “de facto control over the economy” of Haiti dates back decades – as do popular uprisings against it, says Joos. </p>
<h2>5. Crisis under Moïse</h2>
<p>Long-standing discontent with Haiti’s unequal economy and its ineffective government grew during President Jovenel Moïse’s 4 ½-year term. </p>
<p>Moïse’s killing followed months of sustained protests demanding his resignation after he refused to vacate the presidency, which was meant to end in February. Moïse said he planned to modify the Haitian constitution to allow presidents to run for reelection, potentially enabling him to stay in office even longer. </p>
<p>“Moïse had been ruling by decree,” Tamanisha John, a Caribbean studies scholar at Florida International University, explained <a href="https://theconversation.com/slain-haitian-president-faced-calls-for-resignation-sustained-mass-protests-before-killing-164131">after the president’s assassination</a>. “He effectively shuttered the Haitian legislature by refusing to hold parliamentary elections scheduled for January 2020 and summarily dismissed all of the country’s elected mayors in July 2020, when their terms expired.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="President Moïse in a black suit, raising his hands in front of an orange backdrop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C29%2C4947%2C3293&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410188/original/file-20210707-17-1kr806h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moïse at the 2018 Summit of The Americas in Lima, Peru. He was assassinated on July 7, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-of-haiti-jovenel-moise-greets-the-press-during-news-photo/946589254?adppopup=true">Manuel Medir/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moïse – the chosen successor of Haiti’s unpopular last president, Michel Martelly – lost the trust of the Haitian people early, according to John. In 2017, the first year of his administration, Moïse was implicated in an embezzlement scandal in which at least $700,000 of public money was allegedly funneled into the banana business he owned.</p>
<p>Though Moïse is dead, his party retains power. Prime Minister Claude Joseph, appointed by Moïse on an interim basis in April after the <a href="https://www.ibtimes.com/who-claude-joseph-haiti-pm-steps-after-presidents-assassination-3246445">sitting prime minister resigned</a>, controls Haiti for now. The country, he says, is in a “state of siege.”</p>
<p><em>This story has been updated to more accurately characterize Moïse’s proposed change to the Haitian Constitution.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Expert background on Haiti, where President Jovenel Moïse’s July 7 killing is the latest in the Caribbean nation’s long list of struggles.Catesby Holmes, International Editor | Politics Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1551402021-04-23T01:44:23Z2021-04-23T01:44:23ZEndless itching: how Anzacs treated lice in the trenches with poetry and their own brand of medicine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396455/original/file-20210422-13-ndzwj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C4%2C990%2C740&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.135565">Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ (Tiaki reference number 1/4-009458-G)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We think we know a lot about Australian and New Zealand soldiers’ health in the first world war. Many books, novels and television programs speak of wounds and war doctors, documenting the work of both Anzac nations’ medical corps. </p>
<p>Often these histories begin with front-line doctors — known as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5229383/">regimental medical officers</a> — who first reached wounded men in the field. The same histories often end in the hospital or at home.</p>
<p>Yet, much of first world war medicine began and ended with the soldiers themselves. Australian and New Zealand soldiers (alongside their British and Canadian counterparts) cared for their own health in the trenches of the <a href="http://anzaccentenary.vic.gov.au/westernfront/history/index.html">Western Front</a> and along the cliffs of <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/gallipoli">Gallipoli</a>. </p>
<p>This “vernacular” medicine spread from solider to soldier by word of mouth, which they then recorded in diaries and letters home. It spread through written texts, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-comfort-of-reading-in-wwi-the-bibliotherapy-of-trench-and-hospital-magazines-158880">trench newspapers and magazines</a>, and through constant experimentation. </p>
<p>Soldiers presented a unique understanding of their experiences of illness, developed their own health practices, and formed their own medical networks. This formed a unique type of medical system.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/flies-filth-and-bully-beef-life-at-gallipoli-in-1915-39321">Flies, filth and bully beef: life at Gallipoli in 1915</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What was this type of medicine like?</h2>
<p>Soldiers’ vernacular medicine becomes clear when looking at one significant example of war diseases — infestation with body lice — which caused <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(16)30003-2/fulltext">trench fever</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/typhusfever/en/">typhus</a>. </p>
<p>The men’s understandings of the effect of lice on the body often contrasted to that of medical professionals. </p>
<p>Soldiers described lice as a daily nuisance rather than vectors of disease. The men sitting in the trenches were preoccupied with addressing the immediate and constant discomfort caused by lice, whereas medical researchers and doctors were more concerned with losing manpower from lice-borne disease.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-on-us-a-close-up-look-at-the-bugs-that-call-us-home-25754">Life on Us: a close-up look at the bugs that call us home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many men focused on the endless itching, which some said drove them almost mad. </p>
<p>Corporal George Bollinger, a New Zealand bank clerk from Hastings, <a href="https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE16663681&dps_custom_att_1=emu">said</a>: “the frightful pest ‘lice’ is our chief worry now”.</p>
<p>Australian Private Arthur Giles shuddered when he wrote home about the lice, <a href="https://transcripts.sl.nsw.gov.au/page/giles-papers-9-may-1914-13-may-1919-arthur-clyde-giles-page-84">noting it</a>: “makes me scratch to think of them”.</p>
<h2>Soldiers experimented</h2>
<p>Soldiers’ reactions to lice, as a shared community, inspired them to experiment and share practical ideas of how to manage their itchy burdens. This included developing their own method of bathing.</p>
<p>When New Zealand Corporal Charles Saunders descended the cliffs to the beaches around Anzac Cove, <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030011851">he would</a> “dive down and nudge a handful of sand from the bottom and rub it over [his] skin”, letting “the saltwater dry on one in the sun”. He also rubbed the sand across his uniform hoping to kill some of the lice eggs in the seams of his shirt and pants. </p>
<p>In some locations, fresh water was scarce and reserved for drinking. Without access to water, soldiers’ extermination methods became more offbeat, creative and original. </p>
<p>Men sourced <a href="https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/4522/keatings-powder-poster">lice-exterminating powders</a>, such as Keating’s and Harrison’s, from patent providers — retail pharmaceutical sellers in the UK or back home in Australia and New Zealand — and rubbed various oils over their bodies. </p>
<p>Yet, one of the most popular extermination methods was “chatting” — popping the louse between the thumbnails.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Soldiers delousing clothing outside tents" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C1097%2C659&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396453/original/file-20210422-17-l1c12p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Five soldiers delousing (‘chatting’) their infested clothing outside their tents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1000712">Australian War Memorial (photograph C00748)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An Australian bootmaker, Lieutenant Allan McMaster, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C92857">told his family</a> in Newcastle it was “amusing indeed to see all the boys at the first minute they have to spare, to strip off altogether and have what we call a chating [sic] parade”. </p>
<p>Corporal Bert Jackson, an orchardist from Upper Hawthorn in Melbourne, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C92683">took his</a> “shirt off and had a hunt, and then put it on inside out”. He said that if he “missed any, the beggars will have a job to get to the skin again”. </p>
<h2>Soldiers shared their knowledge</h2>
<p>These soldiers shared their practices via their own medical networks, such as trench newspapers.</p>
<p>For instance, soldiers wrote humorous poems that also educated their fellow men. Australian Lance Corporal TA Saxon <a href="http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE3673775">joked about</a> lice-exterminating powders in his poem A Dug-Out Lament:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] They’re in our tunics, and in our shirts,</p>
<p>They take a power of beating,</p>
<p>So for goodness sake, if you’re sending us cake, Send also a tin of Keating. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chatting by the Wayside" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396451/original/file-20210422-23-j8lt9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers shared cartoons and jokes about delousing via magazines and newspapers, such as this one in March 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Q91/244, FL3509202)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One image from the trench newspaper “Aussie: the Australian soldiers’ magazine” came with <a href="http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE3508591">the caption</a> “Chatting by the Wayside” that drew on the well-trod joke about the double meaning of the word chatting.</p>
<h2>What can we learn?</h2>
<p>Reflecting on these often-overlooked aspects of the past helps us rethink medicine today.</p>
<p>For marginal groups in particular, access to professional health care can, and has often been, an expensive, alienating, or culturally foreign and abrasive task. So even in today’s globalised world, networks of non-professional medicine are as active as ever.</p>
<p>With many people isolated and at the mercy of much conflicting information, informal medical networks (often found on social media) present an opportunity to allay fears and swap information in a similar manner to how Anzac soldiers communicated via trench newspapers. </p>
<p>Perhaps some forms of vernacular medicine are occurring right under our noses.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-comfort-of-reading-in-wwi-the-bibliotherapy-of-trench-and-hospital-magazines-158880">The comfort of reading in WWI: the bibliotherapy of trench and hospital magazines</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgia McWhinney received funding from the Federal Government of Australia. </span></em></p>Anzac soldiers wrote poetry about body lice, shared treatment tips and experimented with new ways of bathing.Georgia McWhinney, Honorary Postdoctoral Associate, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573872021-04-14T12:37:58Z2021-04-14T12:37:58ZIs magic immoral? It played a role in the development of early Christianity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392916/original/file-20210331-15-f0ppgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3788%2C2109&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Magic fascinated and troubled early Christians as much as it does some people today.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://dmedmedia.disney.com/disney-plus/wandavision/images">Marvel Studios</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Americans are <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-social-thinker/201107/the-harry-potter-effect-the-science-behind-why-we-magical-things">fascinated by magic</a>. TV shows like “WandaVision” and “The Witcher,” books like the Harry Potter series, plus comics, movies and games about people with powers that can’t be explained by God, science or technology, have all been wildly popular for years. Modern pop culture is a testament to how enchanted people are by the thought of <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/witches-pop-culture-sabrina-ahs-charmed-real-world">gaining special control over an uncertain world</a>. </p>
<p>“Magic” is often defined in the West as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405168748.ch16">evil or separate from “civilized” religions like Christianity</a> and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-magic-9780195169416">also from the scientific observation and study of the world</a>. But the irony is that magic was integral to the development of Christianity and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/religion/judaism/ancient-jewish-magic-history?format=HB&isbn=9780521874571">other religions</a> – and it informed the evolution of the sciences, too. </p>
<p>As an expert in <a href="https://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/department-of-religion-and-culture/faculty/shaily-patel.html">ancient magic and early Christianity</a>, I study how magic helped early adherents develop a Christian identity. One part of this identity was morality: the inner sense of right and wrong that guides life decisions. Of course, the darker side of this development is the slide into supremacy: seeing one’s own tradition as <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/bucknell/abusing-religion/9781978807785">morally superior and rightfully dominant</a>.</p>
<p>My work tries to return magic to its proper place as a part of the Christian tradition. I show how false distinctions between magic and Christianity were created to elevate ancient Christianity and how they continue to advance Christian supremacy today.</p>
<h2>The origins of magic</h2>
<p>In Western culture, magic is often defined in opposition to religion and science. This is problematic because <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-magic-9780195169416">all three concepts are rooted in colonialism</a>. For centuries, many European scholars based their definitions of religion on Christianity, while at the same time describing the practices and beliefs of non-Christians as “primitive,” “superstitious” or “magical.” </p>
<p>This sense of superiority helped Europe’s Christian monarchies justify conquering and exploiting Indigenous peoples around the world in a bid to <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo17436706.html">“civilize” them</a>, often through <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/king-leopolds-ghost/9780358212508">extreme brutality</a>. Imperialist legacies still color how some people think about non-Christians as “others,” and how they label others’ rituals and religions as “magic.” </p>
<p>But this modern understanding of magic doesn’t map neatly onto the world of the first Christians. “Magic” has always had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8278">many meanings</a>. From what scholars can gather, the word itself <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20190410?seq=1">was imported from the Persian word “maguš</a>,” which may have described a class of priests with royal connections. Sometimes, these “magi” were depicted as performing divination, ritual activities or educating young boys who would take the throne. </p>
<p>Greek texts retained this earlier meaning and also added <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20190410?seq=1">new ones</a>. The famous ancient Greek historian <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Herodotus-Greek-historian">Herodotus</a> writes that the Persian magi interpreted dreams, read the skies and performed sacrifices. Herodotus uses the Greek word “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D*ma%2Fgos">magos</a>.” <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sophocles">Sophocles</a>, a Greek playwright, uses the same term in his tragedy “Oedipus the King,” when Oedipus berates the seer Tiresias for scheming to overthrow him. </p>
<p>Although these two Greek texts both date from roughly the early 400s B.C., “magician” has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20190410?seq=1">different connotations in each</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two teenage girls walking past a Harry Potter book display at a book fair in China." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393642/original/file-20210406-13-cxk7lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The seven Harry Potter fantasies are the world’s best-selling book series, with more than 500 million novels sold since the first story was published in 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Clarke/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ca.2003.22.2.313?seq=1">Starting in the first century B.C.</a>, Latin authors also adapted the Persian term into “magus.” </p>
<p>While defending himself at <a href="https://www.loebclassics.com/view/apuleius-apologia/2017/pb_LCL534.3.xml">trial for performing “evil deeds of magic,”</a> the second-century philosopher Apuleius claimed he both was and was not a “magician.” He insisted he was like a high priest or a natural philosopher rather than someone who uses unsavory means to get what they want. What’s interesting here is that Apuleius uses one idea of high philosophical magic to combat another idea of crude, self-interested magic. </p>
<h2>Christianity and magic</h2>
<p>The first Christians inherited these varied ideas of magic alongside their Roman neighbors. In their world, people who did “magical” deeds like exorcisms and healings were common. Such people sometimes <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/at-the-temple-gates-9780190267148">explained religious or philosophical texts and ideas</a>, as well. </p>
<p>This presented a problem for early Christian authors: If wondrous deeds were fairly commonplace, how could a group looking to attract followers compete with “magicians”? After all, Jesus and the Apostles did extraordinary deeds, too. So Christian writers made distinctions in order to elevate their heroes. </p>
<p>Take the biblical story of Simon the magician. In <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%208&version=NRSV">Acts 8</a>, Simon’s magical deeds entice the Samaritans and convince them to follow him until the evangelist Philip performs even more amazing miracles, converting all the Samaritans and Simon, too. But Simon relapses when he tries to buy the power of the Holy Spirit, prompting the Apostle Peter to rebuke him. This story is where we get the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/simony">sin of simony</a>: the purchase of religious office. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://keepingit101.com/e307">I’ve discussed elsewhere</a>, texts like this do not depict real events. They are teaching tools aimed at showing new adherents the differences between good Christian miracle workers and evil magicians. The earliest converts needed such stories because <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/at-the-temple-gates-9780190267148">wonder workers looked a lot alike</a>. </p>
<h2>Christianity and morality</h2>
<p>To some ancient people, stories of Jesus’ miracles probably didn’t seem far removed from the deeds magicians performed for money in the marketplace. In fact, the church fathers <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3273846">had to shield Jesus and the Apostles against accusations of practicing magic</a>. They include Origen of Alexandria, who in the middle of the third century A.D. defended Christianity <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/origen-contra-celsum/763A0C668E490E8D550F7D2A6CCCD0F7">against Celsus</a>, a pagan philosopher who <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/divine-man-or-magician-celsus-and-origen-on-jesus/oclc/7837478&referer=brief_results">charged Jesus with being a magician</a>. </p>
<p>Celsus argued that the miracles of Jesus were no different from the magic performed by marketplace sorcerers. Origen agreed the two shared superficial similarities, but claimed they were fundamentally different because magicians cavorted with demons while Jesus’ wonders led to moral reformation. Like the story of Simon the magician, Origen’s disagreement with Celsus was a means of teaching his audience how to tell the difference between morally suspect magicians who sought personal gain and miracle workers who acted for the benefit of others.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A pastel 15th century painting showing Simon the magician held aloft by demons" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393628/original/file-20210406-17-8dbsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In early Christian stories, the magician Simon uses magic immorally to try and gain power and influence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436563">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ancient authors invented the idea that the miracles of Christians possessed inherent moral superiority over non-Christian magic because ancient audiences were as enticed by magic as modern ones. But in elevating Christianity above magic, these writers created false distinctions that linger even today. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify Jesus’s role in early Christianity.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaily Shashikant Patel receives funding from Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech is a state institution, and therefore research awards are technically "government-funded." </span></em></p>Although many modern people tend to see ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ as separate, magic was actually integral to the development of Christianity.Shaily Shashikant Patel, Assistant Professor of Early Christianity, Virginia TechLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459552020-09-11T15:34:46Z2020-09-11T15:34:46ZThe absurdity of empire in JG Farrell’s The Singapore Grip<p>In 2017, the then British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, paid a visit to the sacred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson-caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple">Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar</a>. Approaching the giant Tharawaddy Min bell that hangs in the pavilion, Johnson began muttering lines from Rudyard Kipling’s classic imperial poem <a href="http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_mandalay.htm">The Road to Mandalay</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:</p>
<p>“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a scene worthy of TV political satires like Yes Minister the horrified British ambassador, accompanying Johnson, discretely intervened to remind the minister of the danger of offending his hosts: “You’re on mic … Probably not a good idea”.</p>
<p>The incident seems to capture something of the nostalgic spirit, the hold exerted by past imperial glories incongruously rehashed for the modern world, that characterises the contemporary political landscape. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8010340/">The Singapore Grip</a>, the final volume of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/212463/the-empire-trilogy-by-jg-farrell/">JG Farrell’s Empire Trilogy</a>, is now being screened on ITV as a glossy period drama. The novel is built on an awareness of that same self-mythologising of imperial Britons and points up its absurdity.</p>
<h2>Vainglorious imperialist attitudes</h2>
<p>Farrell is interested in depicting what he called individuals undergoing history: his subject matter, the decline of the British empire. In The Singapore Grip, the focus is on the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in early 1942. The typical Farrellian protagonist – here, Matthew Webb the idealistic son of a deceased rubber magnate – is essentially a bystander to great events. The novel turns on the everyday and the mundane, paying attention to characters’ frantic, incongruous attempts to maintain normality in the face of encroaching chaos.</p>
<p>Although the novel’s celebrated humour is often wry, it sometimes works up to farcical set-pieces which encapsulate the vaingloriousness of the imperial attitudes on show. A high point comes with attempts to fire a female daredevil from a cannon at the Great World amusement park. It is a symbolic enactment of the defence of the colony, which ends with the human projectile missing her target and landing head first in a safety net. Safely captured: “she jumped and arched and flapped like a netted salmon”. </p>
<p>The main target of The Singapore Grip is economic imperialism. Farrell skewers self-serving justifications for indefensible economic practices, which ensure that Europeans cream off the lion’s share of profits from Singapore industries while keeping the local workforce in poverty. At one point, Matthew and his Eurasian girlfriend visit a dying house inhabited by ailing Malay labourers who one-by-one rise from their deathbeds to point an accusing finger at this son of British imperialism.</p>
<h2>Pampered colonialists</h2>
<p><a href="https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/itv-singapore-grip-criticism-asian-characters-colonialism-beats-1234761364/">Early reactions</a> to the ITV adaptation have called out “cultural colonialism” and erasure of Asian bodies. Yet, similar criticisms of the novel would be wide of the mark. </p>
<p>The personal tribulations of the Europeans do offer the main focus, but Farrell punctuates the book with other perspectives. He does so to remind us of those paying the heaviest price for imperial malpractice. </p>
<p>At one point the narrative pulls away from the pampered colonialists to take us into the experience of an elderly Chinese wharf-worker who inhabits a tiny cubicle in a decaying dockside tenement. On a starlit night he leaves the building to visit the privy, oblivious to the first bombing raid over the city by Japanese aircraft which is about to begin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As he returns, stepping into the looming shadow of the tenement there is a white flash and the darkness drains like a liquid out of everything he can see. The building seems to hang over him for a moment and then slowly dissolves, engulfing him. Later, when official estimates are made of this first raid on Singapore (61 killed, 133 injured), there will be no mention of this old man for the simple reason that he, in common with so many others, has left no trace of ever having existed either in this part of the world or in any other. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Far from erasing marginal figures, Farrell reinserts them in a challenge to that very act of historical erasure. </p>
<p>Farrell’s novel is most notable, however, for its comic evisceration of a certain imperial style, a kind of bluster familiar once more as we live through a time in which the inequities of the past are downplayed and patriotic slogans replace a truthful reckoning with the challenges of the present. For us today, JG Farrell’s ability to prick the alluring delusions of the British Empire is more relevant than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Morey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. </span></em></p>JG Farell’s novel mocks the delusions and vanity of imperial attitudes that persisted even as the empire collapsed.Peter Morey, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401432020-08-03T11:58:48Z2020-08-03T11:58:48ZHow the failures of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty set the stage for today’s anti-racist uprisings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349728/original/file-20200727-21-gt3hqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=90%2C67%2C4865%2C3311&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On May 27, 1919, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian President Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and American President Woodrow Wilson met May 27, 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-prime-minister-lloyd-george-italian-president-news-photo/3289187?adppopup=true">Lee Jackson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The racism that is now the target of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/world/george-floyd-global-protests.html">protest across the globe</a> is rooted in the tragic choices of leaders seeking to roll back change a century ago. </p>
<p>Nearly all historians now agree that at the end of World War I, the choice to return to an imperialist world order by the victorious Allied, or Entente, powers – France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States – was a historic error. It not only prepared the ground for the rise of fascism in Europe, but also sparked decades of political violence in Asia and Africa by <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_paris_peace_conference_and_its_consequences">people denied their rights</a> and humanity.</p>
<p>As World War I ended in <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/world-war-i-ends">November 1918</a>, the Spanish Flu pandemic swept across the globe, killing <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence#:%7E:text=The%20horrific%20scale%20of%20the%201918%20influenza%20pandemic%E2%80%94known,and%20civilians%20killed%20during%20World%20War%20I%20combined.">more than 50 million</a> people. <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/210420/worldwide_flu_outbreak_killed_45000_american_soldiers_during_world_war_i">Most vulnerable were soldiers</a> living in crowded barracks and their families back home, where hunger weakened immunity.</p>
<p>Like today, the effect of pandemic was aggravated by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2015/02/02/the-biggest-recession-youve-never-ever-heard-of/#4d41863d3619">economic recession and unemployment</a>. Worse, the people of the defeated German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires <a href="https://www.history.com/news/germany-world-war-i-debt-treaty-versailles">suffered chaos under political collapse</a>.</p>
<p>Amid these multiple crises, the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Paris Peace Conference</a> opened in January 1919. American President Woodrow Wilson personally traveled to Paris to ensure that the conference would make the world “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/woodrow-wilson-racism-self-determination.html">safe for democracy</a>.”</p>
<p>Wilson had promised a new era of peace and justice in his famous <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/fourteen_points.shtml">Fourteen Points</a> statement of war aims, which included an end to secret treaties, the curtailment of colonial empires, the right of all people to choose their own government and a League of Nations to adjudicate international conflicts. </p>
<p>In 1920, like 2020, race became the pivot of a historic turning point. In both moments, world leaders faced a choice: to restore the previous status quo that had produced the crisis – or to embrace the need for a new world order. </p>
<p>The European members of the Entente powers <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allied-Powers-international-alliance#ref1228825">at Paris – Britain, France, and Italy</a> – ignored Wilson’s call for world order based on law and rights. With the implementation of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0043.pdf">Treaty of Versailles</a> in January 1920, they chose to restore a racial hierarchy across the globe, extending their colonial rule over territories once held by the defeated German and Ottoman empires in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. </p>
<p>The treaty, which included establishment of the League of Nations, betrayed not only Wilson’s ideals, but also the Entente’s nonwhite allies and the colonial soldiers who fought in the “war to end all wars.” The racial injustice of the 1919-20 peace settlement sparked decades of political violence – not only in the colonized Middle East, Africa and Asia, but also in the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois went to Paris to try to ensure that racist laws like the U.S. had would not be imposed in Africa to the detriment of African rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2003681451/?loclr=blogloc">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Journey to Paris</h2>
<p>In January 1919, activists from around the world traveled to Paris <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic#:%7E:text=Even%20President%20Woodrow%20Wilson%20reportedly%20contracted%20the%20flu,in%20Spain%2C%20though%20news%20coverage%20of%20it%20did.">despite risks to their health</a>. They embraced Wilson’s Fourteen Points as a chance to remake a broken world system of imperial rivalry that had led to World War I and the deaths of <a href="https://www.geo.tv/latest/212756-world-war-i-in-numbers">10 million soldiers and 50 million civilians</a>.</p>
<p>Among those activists was NAACP leader <a href="http://scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:versailles_peace_conference">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, who had fought against the spread of racist, segregationist Jim Crow laws from southern states to the North. He now feared that a similar legal double standard might be imposed in international law, to the detriment of African rights.</p>
<p>Du Bois asked to join the American delegation at Paris, but the Wilson administration refused him. Wilson feared that Du Bois’ <a href="https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/civil-rights-during-and-after-world-wars/dubois-wilson">call for racial equality</a> might spoil his negotiations with the other conference leaders – prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy – who ruled most of Africa as colonies. </p>
<h2>Claiming rights</h2>
<p>Undeterred, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/world-war-i-american-experiences/about-this-exhibition/world-overturned/peace-and-a-new-world-order/the-pan-african-conference/">Du Bois organized a Pan African Congress</a> to defend Africans’ rights. He understood, as others did in Paris, that racial <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/08/11/742293305/a-century-later-the-treaty-of-versailles-and-its-rejection-of-racial-equality">inequality was the foundation</a> of the old imperial world order.</p>
<p>Like Du Bois and his African allies, <a href="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/06/the-middle-eastern-prince-who-tried-to-change-the-treaty-of-versailles/">Arabs and Egyptians</a> claimed their right to sovereignty. But they found that the Entente leaders also considered Arab Muslims a lower species of human, unfit for self-rule.</p>
<p>Prince Faisal of Mecca gained entry to the conference because his Arab army had fought against the Ottoman Turks alongside Britain, with the understanding that Arabs would <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/08/14/treaty-versailles-michael-neiberg">gain an independent state</a>. But the British broke their promise and denied independence to Faisal’s Syrian Arab Kingdom. They instead <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sykes-Picot-Agreement">joined French colonialists to divide Arab lands</a> between them. </p>
<p>Asians, too, were regarded as an inferior race. Japan had fought alongside the victorious Allies and had <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Treaty-Of-Versailles-And-Japan-F3V33J6WKPTDX">won a leading role</a> at the conference.</p>
<p>But when the Japanese delegation proposed a racial equality clause for the Covenant of the new League of Nations, the conference’s white leaders <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-japan-turned-against-paris-peace-treaty-and-why-it-matters-39527">rejected it</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The five members of the Japanese delegation to the Paris peace conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Japanese delegation, shown here, proposed a racial equality clause for the charter of the new League of Nations. The leading powers rejected it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.28843/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Racial inequality codified</h2>
<p>The Covenant of the League of Nations, drafted by those same leaders at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/League-of-Nations/The-Covenant">Paris in 1919</a>, codified the inequality of races in international law.
<a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp">Article 22</a> denied independence to Arabs, Africans and Pacific Islanders once ruled by the Ottomans and Germans. </p>
<p>In the condescending language of moral uplift, the article designated them as “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Therefore, they would be placed under temporary European rule as “a <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22">sacred trust of civilisation</a>.”</p>
<p>In other words, the League of Nations would administer temporary colonies, called mandates, to tutor uncivilized (nonwhite) people in politics. Racial inequality was enshrined in the very institution, the League of Nations, that was to ensure the governance of international law.</p>
<p>The mandates were imposed by gunpoint, with no pretense to respect self-determination. In July 1920, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria/The-French-mandate">French army occupied Damascus</a>, destroyed the Syrian Arab Kingdom and sent <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Faysal-I">Faisal into exile</a>. Likewise, the British battled mass opposition to claim its mandates in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Iraq/British-occupation-and-the-mandatory-regime">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199796953/obo-9780199796953-0200.xml">Palestine</a>. Meanwhile, South Africa imposed a brutal racist regime upon southwest Africa.</p>
<p>Racial exclusion from the club of so-called civilized nations provoked anti-colonial movements for the rest of the 20th century. </p>
<p>The president of the Syrian Arab Kingdom’s Congress, Sheikh Rashid Rida, foresaw violent consequences <a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/arab-worlds-liberal-islamist-schism-turns-100/?session=1">in his 1921 appeal</a> to the League of Nations. </p>
<p>“It does not befit the honor of this League, which President Wilson proposed to include all civilized nations for the good of all human beings,” he wrote, “for it to be used as a tool by two colonial states. These states seek to use this Assembly to guarantee … the subjugation of peoples.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq#/media/File:FeisalPartyAtVersaillesCopy.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rida prophetically warned that “Syria, Palestine, and other Arab countries will ignite the fires of war in both the West and the East.” The bitter sheikh turned against European liberalism and inspired the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rashid-Rida">founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928</a>. </p>
<p>In the later 20th century, this racial exclusion of Arab Muslims inspired the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/06/30/the-new-islamic-caliphate-and-its-war-against-history/">violent Islamist movements that</a> drew the United States into seeming endless conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.</p>
<h2>Jim Crow stays</h2>
<p>In the United States, racial hierarchy was similarly reimposed by violence. Black veterans returned from Europe to confront <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/wwi/red-summer">lynching and race riots</a>.</p>
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<p>The link between the American racial order and the new world order was made explicit by President Wilson’s adviser, Colonel <a href="https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=2294">Edward M. House</a>. He advised Wilson that racial equality would cost him votes in the South and California. Worse, such a clause could <a href="https://www.guernicamag.com/andrew-s-lewis-wilson-and-the-racial-equality-clause/">empower the League of Nations</a> to intervene in the United States against Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>In March 1920, the U.S. Senate <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/senate-rejects-league-of-nations-nov-19-1919-113006">rejected American membership</a> in the League of Nations precisely because clauses on transnational law enforcement and collective security threatened U.S. sovereignty.</p>
<p>It is no accident that the current crisis in the U.S. has come to focus on racial injustice. Among its several sources are the decisions made 100 years ago by white men from powerful countries who believed maintaining their dominance was more important than seeking peace through justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Thompson received funding for her research from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and American University in Washington, DC. </span></em></p>Suffering a pandemic and the aftermath of a war that killed 50 million, the world in 1920 faced a turning point as it negotiated a new political order. As today, the key issue was racial inequality.Elizabeth Thompson, Professor and Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.