Colonial History Research Articles

The future of higher education and the claim of globalisation: revisioning the past, re-imagining the future

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a rise in policy papers and academic literature about the future of higher education, often formulated within a particular globalist imaginary. The thesis of this article is that this imaginary configures discourses on higher education futures and simultaneously reconstructs the history of higher education in terms of a process of global isomorphism. The prevailing discourse assumes a transition from nation-state-centred to globally oriented universities, emphasising convergence and integration on a global scale. Critically examining this globalist imaginary, the article uncovers several misconceptions in the historiography of higher education under the guise of globalisation. The globalist perspective tends to cast higher education history within a diffusionist framework, ignoring the complexities and nuances of historical development, especially in contexts marked by histories of colonialism. The article advocates for a cultural historiography that acknowledges contextual differences and confronts historical power relations. Challenging the assumptions of global isomorphism, the authors propose a shift in focus to foster a more nuanced understanding of the past of higher education, enabling more interesting and relevant imaginations of higher education futures.

Interrogating the Academy: Higher Education Transformation for the Public Good beyond Diversity in Race and Gender

This article draws on findings from a qualitative study of academics’ role in higher education’s contribution to the public good based on 15 interviews with academics from two universities in South Africa. I argue that if higher education in South Africa is to transform for the public good, the transformation of the university academic staff needs to be taken seriously and move beyond diversity of race and gender. The findings of the study that underpins this article suggest that the attributes of academics must be considered in initiatives that seek to transform the academy. This has implications for meaningful transformation because diversity, in terms of race and gender, does not necessarily translate to transformation in practice. Based on these findings, I suggest what these attributes may be through the concept of “public good academics,” which the academics I interviewed associated with being progressive, reflexive, critically conscious, and socially competent. I conclude that public good academics are aptly positioned to engage in transformational practices. Therefore, the personal attributes of academics do matter and should not be ignored in our thinking and conversations about transformational practices in higher education, especially in South Africa—a country with a history of colonialism and apartheid that has shaped the higher education landscape.

‘Stable and Four-Square:’ A Colonial History of Property-Owning Democracy

ABSTRACT This paper explores the colonial history of the theory of ‘property-owning democracy.’ Focusing on R.R. Torrens’ title registration system, the paper links property-owning democracy to nineteenth-century debates on land rights and title registration. Instituted in South Australia in 1858, Torrens’ system linked the simplification of transactions in land to visions of a property-owning society. Seeking to replace complex land laws, Torrens’ system’s emphasis on speeding up land transactions appealed both to settler society and metropole. This transformation facilitated the dispossession of Indigenous lands and intertwined property law with colonial narratives of progress, liberty, and democracy. Ultimately, Torrens’ vision identified democracy with a new property regime securing the future of property title and political rights. Through a common engagement with nineteenth-century Britain’s ‘land question,’ Torrens’ project in South Australia is linked to the development of the twentieth-century political concept of property-owning democracy. The paper makes the case that exploring land registration debates reveals the importance of secure property rights and human capital in the history of ideas of property-owning democracy. Legal and bureaucratic innovations like the property register were considered to free individuals to invest in their own economic development and create the economic conditions for democracy.

From Coercive to Carceral Conservation: Reframing Conservation through Abolition Ecologies

AbstractCritical social science research on conservation practice has long articulated the tactics that emerge out of a history of carcerality, environmental racism, colonialism, and violence against oppressed peoples. Despite these critiques, there has been little change in how conservation is conceptualised and implemented, resulting in the continuation of violence, racism, and injustice. Abolition ecologies offer a framework to see the world through a carceral lens and imagine an abolitionist future for conservation. Using Kenya as a case study, we outline the three ways that carcerality is apparent in and integral to contemporary conservation practices: legal/juridical, technoscience, and privatisation. Illuminating the carcerality of conservation practices, we posit, allows scholars and practitioners to begin to imagine and work towards a more just and liberatory conservation movement, one that minimises the perpetuation and reproduction of white supremacy, violence, and environmental injustice.

Thinking Geomedia Futures: Indigenous Futurisms, Afrofuturisms, and Counter-Mediations of Temporality, Spatiality, and Digitality

For critical scholars, abiding concerns about geomedia futures have included utopian–dystopian formulations of geomedia in popular culture and governance, the deep harms and inequalities that inevitably flow from technocapitalist geomedia regimes, and the urgent need for a plurality of counter-normative ways of theorizing and engaging geomedia. Toward these concerns, I argue here that Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism hold vital conceptual and analytic insights for thinking and realizing geomedia futures that assemble time, space, and digitality in just and life-sustaining ways. Here, I briefly explore work by geographers, historians, and digital studies scholars that has engaged Indigenous and Black feminist speculative traditions to critique the structural, embodied, and emplaced violence of racial capitalist and settler colonial histories, chronopolitics, and futures. The minoritarian futures expressed and circulated through speculative fiction, visual arts, everyday digital practices, and technocultures by structurally-oppressed groups for whom the future has never been taken for granted hold vital conceptual and analytical insights for thinking geomedia futures beyond the limits of its technocapitalist roots and present structures.

Long-term ecological studies on the oxbow ecosystems development and fire history in the Drava river valley (Central Europe): Implications for ecological restoration

Oxbow lakes are important habitats for many rare and protected wetland organisms and play a role as a storage of pollutants in floodplain. Unfortunately, many oxbows were destroyed due to drainage works and the adaptation of riverbeds to inland transport. Multi-proxy palaeoecological analyses makes it possible to recognise the succession of flora and fauna in the oxbow lakes over centuries and millenia. Insight into the history of the destroyed wetlands ecosystems is especially important for their restoration. We used palaeoecological methods (plant macrofossils, pollen, mollusc, Cladocera, diatoms, macrocharcoal) supported by radiocarbon dating to: (i) reconstruct the succession of the local flora (macrophytes, diatoms) and fauna (molluscs, Cladocera) during the last ca. 3000 years; (ii) provide a background of local to regional vegetation composition and disturbance by fire and human impact in the Drava valleys. (iii) determine natural reference conditions as a basis for the restoration of degraded oxbow ecosystems in the region; Our study revealed that: (i) in the shallow eutrophic oxbow lakes (ca. 2 m deep) occurred numerous submerged ( Najas marina, N. minor, Ceratophyllum demersum, Zannichelia palustris) and floating macrophytes ( Trapa natans, Nymphaea alba, Nuphar lutea), Cladocera and molluscs species (e.g. Borysthenia naticinata, Bithynia tentaculata, Valvata cristata) and we recommend that these species should be included in the restoration of oxbows in this region; (ii) warm climate phases (Roman Period, Medieval Period) likely enhanced the terrestrialisation process and transformation of water reservoirs into peatlands between 1200 and 800 cal. BP; (iii) human activity has led to changes in overall forest composition, including riparian tree taxa, since the beginning of the record and has intensified since the Medieval Period; (iv) the difference in the time and intensity of fires between the northern and southern part of Drava river valley is most likely due to the different history of human colonisation.

NPCC4: Advancing climate justice in climate adaptation strategies for New York City.

The Advancing Climate Justice in Climate Adaptation Strategies for New York City (Equity) chapter of NPCC4 builds on the findings and recommendations from NPCC3 to identify additional metrics and adaptation efforts that can advance climate justice. First, the chapter assesses the efforts of the City to incorporate equity into climate adaptation efforts since NPCC3 and describes how the communities profiled in NPCC3 have implemented and evolved their approaches to addressing the intersecting climate, environmental, and social stressors that they continue to face. Second, it adds to the historical context of climate inequity by linking the bioregion's history of colonization, land dispossession, and slavery building on emerging evidence demonstrating how historical and contemporary land use patterns and decisions shape present and future climate risks and social vulnerability, including climate displacement. Third, it recommends a NYC-focused metric to identify areas of the city that are most vulnerable to the intersection of climate hazards, social vulnerability, and displacement. Finally, it highlights approaches to more equitable and just climate adaptation drawn from local, national, and international examples. As such, the chapter offers best practices that prioritize community-driven climate resilience approaches that are integrated, more equitable, and racially just.

Discontinuing the Term “Stakeholder” From the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory Engaging Partners Team: An Example of the Process of Language Change in an Organization

In this paper, we describe our process of changing language of the National Institute on Aging Imbedded Pragmatic Alzheimer's disease and AD-related dementias Clinical Trials Collaboratory (NIA IMPACT Collaboratory) “Stakeholder Engagement Team” to “Engaging Partners Team” in response to feedback from community partners regarding the problematic connotations of the term “stakeholder.” We present a brief history of the term “stakeholder” and its use in clinical and community-engaged research. Then, we summarize critiques of this term, including its colonial history and potential to reinforce complacency with generational traumas, particularly among Indigenous peoples and communities. We conclude with a detailed overview of our team and organization's multi-step process to discontinue use of the term “stakeholder,” in alignment with a theoretical model of organizational behavior change. This paper highlights the importance of critically evaluating language and responding to community partners. We hope our process can guide other researchers and organizations.

Special Issue on Dispossession and Resistance in India and Mexico: Introduction

As literature on forced land acquisition, land grab, and its integral relationship with capitalist accumulation grows, Hall et al. caution against anticipating resistance to forced land acquisition as the natural or logical response. Instead, they make a call to examine the particular conditions and context within which such processes take place to understand the variety of ways in which “local communities” respond to land acquisition in the name of development. Heeding such caution and carrying the discussion forward, in this special issue, we examine the myriad processes that are unleashed in the aftermath of dispossession from lands and resistance to it in two Global South countries—India and Mexico. While the two nations have divergent histories of colonialism and postcolonial economic trajectories, by examining processes of dispossession and resistance in two countries of the Global South, we hope to initiate a discussion on the heterogenous and diverse forms of capitalist accumulation and people’s responses to them through the medium of a central resource of natural capital and primary factor of production.

Stefan Ouma's Farming As Financial Asset in the Broader Context of Imperialism and Ecological Crises

ABSTRACT: Stefan Ouma's Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes is a valuable contribution to the study of the concrete workings of global finance in agriculture. Through case studies from Tanzania and Aotearoa New Zealand, Ouma's book sheds insight into topics as varied as the colonial history of finance in agriculture, the role of the state, the specific financial actors involved, the difficulties of investigating the specifics of financial investments, and much more. While not addressing the issue of contemporary imperialism, the book touches upon many related topics such as finance's role in furthering inequality, ecological sustainability, and land-driven conflicts. While the author's grasp of the nuances and details of finance-in-farming is commendable, none of the issues brought up by Ouma occur in a political black box but are also arguably parts of the global and complex phenomenon of ecological imperialism with bigger-picture connections that need deeper exploration and theorizing.

Politik Identitas Bangka Belitung Dan Multikulturalisme Pada Film Laskar Pelangi

This research analyzes the representation of identity politics and multiculturalism in the film Laskar Pelangi which is adapted from the novel by Andrea Hirata. Using film analysis and literature research, this research identifies themes of identity politics and multiculturalism expressed in the film's narrative, dialogue and imagery. The research results show that identity politics in the film Laskar Pelangi is reflected through ethnic and religious diversity, unity in diversity, local Malay identity, the role of education as a unifying tool, economic and social disparities, as well as the influence of colonial and local history. Multiculturalism is described through ethnic diversity, friendship across identities, the use of diverse languages and dialects, diversity of celebrations and traditions, equality in education, tolerance of teachers, economic and social interactions, and diversity of family dynamics. This film provides a positive picture of how different identities can unite and become a driving force in achieving common goals through education and solidarity. Overall, Laskar Pelangi shows the importance of building an inclusive and dynamic society by respecting cultural diversity.

Funding sources, colonial legacy, and new firms’ creation in Africa

This study examines the determinants of new firm creation in Africa, focusing on external and internal funding sources and their interactions. It also explores the influence of colonial history by separately analyzing former British and French colonies. The primary goal is to help fill crucial gaps in African literature on the determinants of entrepreneurship. Given Africa's widespread poverty and underdevelopment, understanding what drives entrepreneurship is essential for job creation and economic growth. The study reveals three key findings. First, at the full sample level, remittances are the only external financing source positively associated with new firm creation, while foreign aid and foreign direct investment obstacle it. Internal sources, like savings and credit, do not show significant effects. Second, the subsample analysis reveals heterogeneous results: former British colonies' funding sources align with the overall findings, while in former French colonies, only savings support entrepreneurship. Third, considering control variables, the subsample analysis indicates two distinct entrepreneurship models: opportunity-based in former British colonies and necessity-based in former French colonies. These findings are noteworthy and provide significant policy implications at both national and international levels. Crucially, the positive role of remittances in financing new business initiatives, confirms that migration serves as a mutually beneficial arrangement for both sending African countries and the host countries.

Re-placing Race in the Public Space

In this article I engage with the un- and re-making of monuments in the context of the globalization and mediatization of Black Lives Matter and anti-racist activism. I analyze in particular two examples that display transcultural negotiations of antiracism against the background of different colonial histories: The induction of Josephine Baker to the French Pantheon in November 2021, which opens the space of a key monument of French heritage to a black woman for the first time. The defacing of the statue of the Italian journalist and prominent intellectual Indro Montanelli in Milan in June 2020. The analysis emphasizes, on the one hand, the fluidity characterizing the transnational circulation of language, media and spatial practices. On the other, it points to multiple asymmetries deriving from the globalization and the transculturalization of communication. In order to take both aspects into account, I use a border perspective, and expand the category of ‘monument’ to include processes of un- and re-making heritages. In particular, I de-border the concept of language and crisscross the borders between discursive spaces and material spaces of representation. The article contributes to diversify postcolonial theory by showing that labels such as ‘European’ (post)coloniality or ‘global’ anti-racism are far too reductive with respect to the diversity of colonial histories and postcolonial realities. Accordingly, it pleads for putting transculturality at the core of decolonial struggles within and outside academia.

On the fringes of empire? Rethinking suburbs as colonial spaces in early modern South and Southeast Asia

Abstract This survey challenges conventional perceptions of colonial suburbs in the early modern Indian Ocean world in general, and those under the rule of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in particular. Recent urban research advocates re-evaluating suburbs as intricate and diverse spaces, yet this shift has had limited impact on historical studies of early modern colonialism. The survey highlights the importance of recognizing suburban regions in eighteenth-century settlements such as Cape Town, Cochin, Colombo or Batavia, where significant population growth resulted from inter-Asian and internal migration. These areas fostered ethnic and cultural diversity, disrupting normative ideas of segregation. By shifting the analytical focus from the core to the periphery and exploring colonial histories from an outside-in perspective, the contribution emphasizes the potential of a more horizontal approach to sub/urbanity for understanding early modern colonial societies, encouraging scholars to delve into the intersection of ‘the imperial’ and ‘the urban’.

Land sovereignty in depressed and contested agro-territories: The cases of Portugal and Brazil

This article offers an exploratory operationalisation of the concept of land sovereignty applied to land politics in 2 agro-territories from different countries and continents sharing a common language and deeply linked histories: Portugal and Brazil. These display a similar model of agricultural development, representing a contradiction between the promise of profit based on aggressive exploitation of the territory and the marginalised condition of its population. How this agricultural model took hold in each country and manifested the agrarian question differs according to key socio-historical factors, such as the role of each in the colonial history that links them. Today, however, these agro-territories face similar challenges: human rights abuses, environmental destruction, lack of sound territorial management and fair policies, coupled with the dilapidation of socio-economic infrastructures. This makes them especially vulnerable to climate change, unemployment and poverty, while also caught in a clash between development models: a hegemonic hyper-intensive production model and the peasant-based model that has been resisting the advances of the former. This double jeopardy has prompted us to speak of ‘depressed and contested agro-territories’. Our study shows how, in the case of Brazil, despite physical violence and threats to life, social movements are propelling land reform, linking it to the concept of the social function of land. In Portugal, in contrast, the country’s alignment with neoliberal development has civil society divided about how to contest land use. Our analysis indicates that in both cases: (i) today’s land politics are heavily biased towards a neoliberal, export-based, hyper-intensive agriculture controlled by large corporations, with weak legislation in place to defend both social and environmental rights; (ii) land reform based on land sovereignty and the social function of land is deemed crucial to assist agro-territories in regaining socio-ecological balance and to attain democratisation of land politics by regaining control over land, natural resources and local markets.

German (post)colonialism: Archiving, collecting, exhibiting and repatriating Pacific cultures, a conversation

ABSTRACT In Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2019) Ariella Azoulay highlights how histories of slavery and colonialism and the acquiring, taking, stealing and looting of artefacts from people and communities around the world by Western imperial actors are often two sides of the same coin. This conversation brings together scholars and curators to address these intricate and entangled histories and their legacies in the context of the German presence in the Pacific. Pia Wiegmink, a scholar of transatlantic slavery, interviews Emma Christopher, an Australian historian currently working on a database project to document “blackbirding” in the Pacific, Oliver Lueb, a German curator of an Oceania collection in a German museum, and Imelda Miller, an Australian South Sea Islander curator working with collections and archaeological sites in Queensland, Australia.

Racism and discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic: Experiences of Turkish migrant women in the Netherlands

As observed in numerous historical crisis scenarios, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated unfavorable perceptions of ‘foreigners’ and ‘migrants’ in the Netherlands. The construct of a ‘foreigner’ has been socially fashioned as a label that distinguishes what is dissimilar from the norm, and within the context of the COVID-19 crisis, the concept of the “other” has gained prominence. Building upon this central premise, the present study aims to probe into the occurrence of racism and discrimination directed at Turkish migrant women in the Netherlands, a nation often characterized as progressive and liberal, with an intersectional approach. Considering the increased awareness surrounding Dutch colonial history, exemplified by events like the Black Lives Matter protests, the research also delves into whether migrant women draw connections between their experiences of racism and the historical Dutch colonial past. How have migrant women experienced and reacted to racism during the pandemic? Does the encounter with racism and discrimination prompt an intensified identification with or detachment from their migrant identities? To unravel answers to these inquiries, the article draws from semi-structured interviews with fifteen migrant women alongside a non-governmental representative, an artist, and an activist in the Netherlands. Through the personal narratives of these women, this article illuminates the ongoing discussions surrounding racism and discrimination within the broader discursive landscape of the Netherlands during the pandemic.

Dismantling Colonial Laughter: Tracing Emergent African Diaspora Stand-Up Comedy in French and German

This study redirects attention from English-speaking African diaspora stand-up productions to French and German language expressions of purposively selected comedians with recent immigration history from Africa performing within mainland Europe. Through a socio-historical interrogation of specific colonial histories and joke themes, the paper comparatively explores the French language stage acts of Fary Lopez, Samia Orosemane (France) and Cécile Djunga (Belgium and France) and the German language works of Dave Davis (Germany), Charles Nguela (Switzerland), and Soso Mugiraneza (Austria). The aim is to show how the individuated colonial histories of the nations in which these comics reside and the chronicles of their relations with Africa(ns) and Black peoples feature in joke formulations and satiric jibes of the jokesters. Through these explorations, this essay studies how stand-up comedy’s transformative power challenges societal norms and attitudes using the backdrop of the concurrently heterogeneous and dissimilar colonial histories of the African continent and its diasporas. Moreover, through its focus on non-English expressions, it presents the unique intersections of language, “race,” ethnicity and colonial histories, as well as the geographic and linguistic spread of the African diaspora beyond European nations with direct colonial contact with the continent. Thus, the enquiry posits joke performances as platforms for cultural expression and critique as well as a site within which African peoples negotiate their presence in non-African environments.

Positioning in Turbulent Times: Ottoman Intellectuals and the South African War (1899–1902)

ABSTRACT The South African War of 1899−1902, between Great Britain and the Boer states, marked by British victory, garnered extensive international attention, thus offering a compelling case study on the influence of modern propaganda globally. European and American audiences closely monitored the conflict between the ‘mighty’ British Empire and the ‘little white Christians’. Employing critical analysis, this article scrutinises Ottoman intellectuals’ pro-British propaganda and their stance on the war. Utilising sources like Young Turk publications and memoirs, particularly focusing on Ismail Kemal Vlora’s work ‘The Question of Transvaal’ (1900), it sheds light on their efforts to legitimise British imperialism in South Africa and beyond. Vlora played a pivotal role in leading the Anglophile faction amongst Ottoman statesmen and intelligentsia and his writings offer crucial insights into their perspectives. This study aims to comprehend the views of Anglophile Ottoman intellectuals on colonialism, imperialism, and civilisation, alongside their advocacy for Britain. Centred on Ottoman perspectives of the war, with supplementary attention to colonial South African history, this research unveils how and why the Southern African conflict impacted Ottoman intelligentsia. This study is embedded within the broader context of the South African War’s substantial international ramifications, emphasising its relevance to global historical discourse.

Nature's value and biodiversity ethics in a changing world: Insights from a special issue and questions for the future

Motivated by philosophical quandaries arising from environmental ethics and the moral philosophy of biodiversity, we convened a special issue of Biological Conservation entitled “Ethics and practice of biodiversity science: how hidden moral assumptions impact conservation research and policy,” inviting a range of expert voices to examine these questions from a variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and traditions. We sought to discover how many of the founding value statements of conservation biology were still current, and if new any ones had supplemented or replaced them. Broad initial momentum from a wide range of contributors soon met with the headwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, but we eventually emerged with 34 global contributors representing a diverse array of viewpoints. The contributed pieces range from philosophical investigations of value in Nature, applied conservation ethics for endangered species, the rights and roles of Indigenous peoples, macroevolutionary processes of mass extinction, human well-being and social justice, the history of colonialism in conservation, and subtle cultural differences between global powers with respect to Nature. All speak to often unstated values in conservation science. Finally, we offer some questions of our own stemming from these contributions that might provide new or expanded avenues for investigation.