Zionism as Colonialism: A Comparative View of Diluted Colonialism in Asia and Africa

The paper explores and analyzes similarities and differences between French settler colonialism in Algeria and Jewish Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine. This study focuses on the history and historical development of French settler colonialism and Jewish Zionist settler colonialism by deploying the analytical framework of settler colonialism, and the comparative history of settler colonialism. Settler colonial studies and comparative settler colonialism allow for gaining insight into the genesis, and development of settler colonies. The intention behind the application of comparative settler colonialism, specifically in juxtaposing French settler colonialism in Algeria and Jewish Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine is to identify overlaps, similarities as well as differences between these settler polities. The results of this study have shown that French and Zionist settler colonialism share numerous similarities and features. The most important feature that these settler colonialisms adhere to is the logic of elimination, which is defined as policies and practices of settler colonial policies aimed at the dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing, genocide, as well as cultural assimilation of the indigenous populations. In this case, both French and Zionist settler colonialisms have subscribed and followed the logic of the elimination of the natives. Yet as opposed to French settler colonialism, Zionist settler colonialism has been less interested in cultural assimilation and integration of the indigenous people of Palestine into settler society. Another conspicuous difference between French and Zionist settler colonialism is that while French settler colonialism is already defunct, Zionist settler colonialism has managed to survive and persist. The current study contributes to settler colonial studies and the comparative history of settler colonialism. Moreover, our research can inform other studies in the field of settler colonialism, and we suggest that more research into comparative settler colonialism needs to be undertaken.

Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire

Translating Race on the French Stage

This roundtable documents emerging conversations on Indigenous politics and settler colonialism in Asia. It brings together a diverse group of emerging diasporic/Indigenous scholars from the Cordilleras, Surigao, Okinawa, and the Champa Kingdom to examine contemporary issues in Indigenous politics in Asia and their implications for broader conversations on Asian/American Studies and Global Indigenous Studies. This roundtable asks: how might the place-based and regional specificity of Indigenous politics in Asia expand global conversations on Indigenous movements for self-determination and decolonization? How might settler colonialism in Asia inform more transnational and global theorizations of Asian settler colonialism?

The Basel Mission in West Africa, through its large contingent of European missionaries, came to embody the image of the 'white' missionary. The same applied to its initiative for women's mission. The first part of the chapter focuses on Catherine Mulgrave, who immediately challenged the icon of the 'white' female missionary. The second part of the chapter concentrates on two non-European women who stand for the next generation, educated by the Basel Mission and entering on their careers in the context of an increasing presence of European missionary women. Regina Hesse and Rose Ann Miller also embodied an African Christian womanhood, one as a teacher turned missionary wife, the other as a long-term unmarried teacher who stood up for what she saw as her due recognition in the Basel Mission. Together with Catherine Mulgrave these two played vital roles in establishing a Basel Mission community and spreading Christianity among women.Keywords: Basel Mission; Catherine Mulgrave; European; Rose Ann Miller; West Africa

The Basel Mission's project to propagate in West Africa what it considered proper Christian femininity formed part of a larger enterprise with, in many respects, a trans-national character. In the late 1830s, immediately before the Basel Mission decided to re-commence its activities on the Gold Coast, the topic of 'women's mission' began to appear in the discussions of the Basel home board, often with references to Britain and British India. The notions guiding women's mission in Basel, as well as its organisational templates, can be traced to two main sources: concepts of womanhood and organised forms of female agency in Basel, and the corresponding British discourse and organizations. The trans-national connections, in the broad sense of the term, of the Basel Mission brought it into contact with discussions about women's mission in Britain.Keywords: Basel Mission; British; Christian; West Africa; women

In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, European mortality rates in West Africa were the highest in the world. Mortality estimates included nine missionaries sent from the Basel Mission (established in what is now Switzerland) to the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), eight of whom died between 1828 and 1840, mostly from "fevers." In response to high mortality rates, the Basel Mission recruited several Afro-West Indians to work as Christian missionaries in the Gold Coast, mostly based on the presumption that individuals of African descent would better survive the environment. The decision to recruit Afro-West Indians to evangelize on the Gold Coast seemed to the mission to be a rational decision, one not in need of further justification or an overarching theory of race, environment, and disease. Surprisingly, the Basel Mission did not justify this position Biblically either. Once arrived, the West Indian Christian missionaries mostly lived in the Akwapem hills above Accra at an elevation that would have provided some protection against malaria; subsequently, their mortality rates were significantly lower than the European missionaries. After quinine came to be used as a prophylactic against malaria after 1850, thus lowering European missionary mortality rates, no more Afro-West Indians were recruited by the Basel Mission.

Reviewed by: A Legacy of Exploitation: Early Capitalism in the Red River Colony, 1763–1821 by Susan Dianne Brophy Ted Binnema Brophy, Susan Dianne–A Legacy of Exploitation: Early Capitalism in the Red River Colony, 1763–1821. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022. 298 p. Susan Brophy explains that two events—the production of celebratory vignettes by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 2015 and the public inquiry that followed the 2014 murder of Tina Fontaine—inspired this book. It examines the history of the Red River Colony, primarily between 1812 and 1817, as a case study. Brophy approaches the history of the colony through a Marxist framework which she has modified to be “more appropriate for the study of settler colonialism” (p. 5). Her central arguments are not about the Red River Colony per se. In her introduction, Brophy explains that her “objective in this book is to contest two rival ideas: that the transition to capitalism and settler colonialism alike necessarily entailed a shift from violent chaos to peaceful order, and that the relative lack of violence as the direct, primary means of compulsion in exchanges with Indigenous producers implied equanimity or complicity” (p. 10). And on the second-last page of the book, she concludes that “patently, the existing Marxist framework for understanding capitalism as a mode of production requires a foundational rethink when it comes to the settler colonial context, and my close study of the Red River Colony lends veracity to this thesis” (pp. 186–187). Scholars interested in developing an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated Marxist lens through which to understand the process of dialectical materialism may appreciate this new book, but those interested in a contextual history of the Red River Colony will be disappointed in it. Unlike many scholarly studies that relegate theoretical discussions almost solely to introductions and conclusions, theoretical considerations permeate throughout. Finding the framework established by Marx and Engels inadequate, Brophy relies heavily on the work of Marxist revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), a scholar who thought about the historical connection between capitalism and imperialism. In her Accumulation of Capital (1913), Luxemburg argued that capitalism could persist (workers within the capitalist mode of production could afford the goods they produced) only if capitalists were permitted to exploit people outside the mode of production to purchase its surplus goods, supply inexpensive resources, and provide cheap labour. Luxemburg argued, however, that “natural economies”—ones in which there was little surplus production, little demand for foreign products, and a close connection between the means of production and labour—were useless to capitalists, and therefore capitalists need to annihilate or transform such economies. She averred that any evidence that these transformations were peaceful is illusory. The framework put forward by Luxemburg, with some modification, is the one upon which Brophy bases her analysis and arguments. Brophy appears to have begun with a position and sought to gather the evidence to support it. Ignoring almost all of the relevant documents in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Brophy appears to assume a Romantic image of Indigenous societies and economies, and the motivations that led Indigenous people to participate in the fur trade. While Brophy claims to take Indigenous people seriously, she portrays them very superficially, without attention to the complex circumstances they faced. Instead, she finds them interesting only insofar as they shed light on the [End Page 194] newcomers. Documents can certainly be mined to find enough evidence to make some of her arguments plausible—for example that the “relative autonomy of the Indigenous producers was a primary factor in the merger” of the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company (p. 182). However, even though she recognizes Indigenous agency, Indigenous people are nonetheless reduced to bit players in the service of a grand theory that the history of Red River was “a microcosm of the larger transition to capitalism that occurred in the settler colonial context of Canada” (p. 185). The typical historian’s attention to the thoughts and intentions of the historical actors (Indigenous or non-Indigenous) is rarely evident. Brophy interprets historical events and developments superficially, emphasizing the evidence that can support her interpretation, but neglecting other evidence. The treatment of...

On Mitigating Islamophobia

This chapter examines the ideological and social context in which the Basel Mission emerged and scrutinises the changing meaning of Pietist purity over the nineteenth century. The Basel Mission drew upon the support of wealthy and powerful patrician families from Basel and far-flung Pietist networks across Europe and beyond. However, it swiftly transformed into a grassroots movement, funded by small donations from a large number of people in urban and rural areas of Switzerland and Germany. The Basel Mission’s evangelising efforts abroad were linked to charitable activities at home, which tackled the ostensible problem of de-Christianisation within Europe and fundamentally depended on voluntary work, especially by women and children. Although healing had been part of Pietism ever since the movement gained momentum, most adherents had reservations about the morality and efficacy of scientific medicine, discernible in their preference for healing and deliverance theology. The Basel missionaries’ prolonged experience of death and illness in West Africa, however, allowed for the reformulation of Pietist concepts of purity and healing through the integration of scientific theories of disease and hygiene.

The increasing expansion and intensity of European imperialism overseas produced new knowledge on purity, health and cleanliness, which affected the development of hygiene. This chapter begins by exploring the Basel Mission’s activities on the Gold Coast since 1828 and in Cameroon since 1885, which included far-reaching economic, social and medical policies. The involvement of the Basel Mission in delivering health care to the population in West Africa was increasingly valued by imperial policy-makers. There was a marked shift between 1885 and 1914 from an initial emphasis on the health and survival of white colonists to the teaching of hygiene to the resident population in the colonies, ostensibly for their own benefit. The improvement of “indigenous hygiene”—as it was referred to during the colonial period before World War I—became a key concern of colonial governments in Africa around 1900, for both economic and cultural reasons. The tropics provided a setting in which the Basel Mission doctors not only gained scientific reputation but also political authority.

This thesis compares fluctuating views of colonial dwellings in nineteenth and twentieth century Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Brisbane (Australia). It explores how dwellings built for elites of the colonial period have undergone changes over time; in response to changes in societies, and expectations of social status. Through the comparison of two distinct former colonies, a transient and a settler colony, this thesis will highlight how within colonial dwellings, colonial histories are viewed and reflected in contemporary society.Elites of the countries monopolised associations with, set expectations for, and established standards in colonial dwellings: Sri Lanka experienced a drastic change in ruling class post-independence, while within Australia, the social hierarchy of the settlers evolved gradually. The domestic architecture reflects this continuous evolution of postcolonial society in relation to reminders of the colonial past. Colonial dwellings of Brisbane have played an integral role in the development of a regional architectural type; in Colombo colonial dwellings continued to influence postcolonial architecture and society.How did colonial dwellings relate to the lifestyles of elites? How are colonial dwellings being occupied and used in (post) colonial as well as contemporary society? How do contemporary iterations of colonial dwellings view their (colonial) histories? The comparison of colonial dwellings, parallel to changes in societies, and the evaluation of the structure, people, use, and motivations, will answer these questions.Secondary research supplemented by novels, memoirs, and photographs will create a comprehensive foundation regarding dwellings of the colonial era; while case studies support the arguments regarding contemporary perceptions and uses. The narratives presented through interviews will provide raw insights into the mindset of the users of the dwelling, allowing this thesis to view their actions with regards to the dwellings and the motivations behind them.Thus, this thesis investigates how the structural and social differences present in Colombo and Brisbane are reflected in colonial dwellings as they evolved through the (post) colonial era to the present.

By the late nineteenth century, the British people enjoyed a range of leisure and recreational facilities which their forebears could scarcely have dreamed of. Indeed many of the mass enjoyments of the modern world were well-established features of British life by the 1890s. Modern soccer was played by thousands and watched by millions; cricket too was a popular, participatory and spectator sport. In fact there was a host of games and sports which were newly-codified, nationwide and immensely popular — in schools, in commercial stadiums and in more informal settings — on open spaces, in streets and parks. This was true of tennis, athletics, rowing and rugby (of both varieties). Moreover all of these sports — and more besides — were at the same time being rapidly adopted in a great number of different societies around the world. Black South Africans played football, the descendants of slaves swiftly took up cricket throughout the Caribbean and of course white settlements around the world turned to the leisures of their ‘Mother Country’ — Britain.1

Citizenship education in British settler colonies is no straightforward issue. The history of colonization, imbued with racism, and the ongoing presence of settler peoples and their institutions and government on unceded First Nations land, creates deep citizenship dilemmas. For many years British settler states, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and America, have sought to silence and subdue First Nations peoples through policies and practices that marginalize Indigenous languages, knowledges, and histories. The institution of education has played a key role in these acts of marginalization. This chapter explores the ethical and political dilemmas of citizenship and education in these contexts. It examines the citizenship tensions produced by settler colonies occupying First Nations land, the making of the settler citizen through education systems dominated by whiteness, and the limit points for citizenship education under these conditions. It is argued that justice and citizenship education may be incompatible and that a stance of “anti-citizenship” may be the only possibility for a pathway toward justice in these settler colonial contexts.

Citizenship education in British settler colonies is no straightforward issue. The history of colonization, imbued with racism, and the ongoing presence of settler peoples and their institutions and government on unceded First Nations land, creates deep citizenship dilemmas. For many years British settler states, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and America, have sought to silence and subdue First Nations peoples through policies and practices that marginalize Indigenous languages, knowledges, and histories. The institution of education has played a key role in these acts of marginalization. This chapter explores the ethical and political dilemmas of citizenship and education in these contexts. It examines the citizenship tensions produced by settler colonies occupying First Nations land, the making of the settler citizen through education systems dominated by whiteness, and the limit points for citizenship education under these conditions. It is argued that justice and citizenship education may be incompatible and that a stance of “anti-citizenship” may be the only possibility for a pathway toward justice in these settler colonial contexts.