Colonial History Research Articles

Elite schools and slavery in the UK – capital, violence and extractivism

ABSTRACT Elite schools in the UK are bound to the history of British colonialism. This paper examines the material ties between these schools and the transatlantic slave trade. We combine multiple sources to examine which schools and their alumni accrued substantial economic capital derived from the enslavement of Black people. We find two principal connections: first, in donations and foundations of schools from those who made their fortune in the slave trade; and second, through income of boys attending these schools. Drawing on the Legacies of British Slavery dataset, we show that schools with alumni benefitting from the slave trade include the most prestigious British private schools. Moreover, this paper traces the histories of several secondary schools founded by, or in receipt of, substantial donations from slave-owning families. We argue that extractive, violent forms of colonial capital accumulation have been central to, the formation and maintenance of these elite educational institutions.

Maye Ma Leka – Reframing Congolese-Swedish Colonial Entaglements

This article will discuss an artistic research project exploring a repressed part of Swedish colonial history by unboxing and unfolding a hidden trove of photographs and films amassed by Swedish Missionaries in Congo. The transdisciplinary and transnational research project explores how material traces of Swedish colonial history can support contemporary discourses, processes, and practices of recovery from the colonial period's devaluation of indigenous knowledge systems.  By developing a participatory practice based on artistic research methods, the project contributes new perspectives on critical re-examinations and future knowledge in artistic research. 

Records of Relinquishment

This article focuses on the archive of the Washington Female Orphan Asylum, founded in 1815, and places the study of philanthropy in conversation with scholarship on the archive in histories of slavery, colonization, and trauma. It argues, first, that philanthropic and reform institutions such as the asylum were domestic sites of empire and that their archives reveal the reach of statecraft into the intimate lives of women and families. The article explores, second, the role of emotion in archival research, which can highlight an archive’s construction and its silences. The relinquishments within the asylum’s records provoke emotion; as fragmentary evidence, they testify to trauma and demand the historian’s care.

Afro-Ecuadorian Women, Territory and Natural Resource Extraction in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Afro-descendant women in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, are amongst the most marginalized groups in the country. Living in a region severely affected by environmental degradation due to multiple and overlapping forms of resource extraction, they also face the impacts of drug-trafficking conflicts crossing the Colombian border, as well as institutional and everyday racism. Many of these conditions are rooted in a long history of colonialism. In this article, we highlight the relative absence of Afro-Ecuadorian women’s voices, histories and experiences from research on resource extraction and argue that Black feminist theoretical approaches provide an essential tool for understanding intersections of gender, race and activism, as well as (alternatives to) development, and the impacts of natural resource extraction in Ecuador. In so doing, the article proposes a theoretical framework to open up spaces that situate Afro-Ecuadorian women’s knowledge at the centre of efforts to resist marginalization and extractivism.

Pediatric anesthesia in Australia and New Zealand and health inequity among First Nations and Māori children.

Australia and New Zealand are two countries in the Southern Pacific region. They share many pediatric anesthesia similarities in terms of medical organizational systems, education, training, and research, however there are important differences between the two nations in relation to geography, the First Nations populations and the history of colonization. While the standards for pediatric anesthesia and the specialty training requirements are set by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anesthetists and the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia in New Zealand and Australia, colonization has created distinct challenges that each nation now faces in order to improve the anesthetic care of its pediatric population. Australia generally has a high standard of living and good access to health care; disparities exist for First Nations People and for those living in rural or remote areas. Two influences have shaped training within New Zealand over the past 40 years; establishment of a national children's hospital in 1990 and, more importantly, acknowledgement that the First Nations people of New Zealand (Māori) have suffered because of failure to recognize their rights consequent to establishing a partnership treaty between Māori and the British Crown in 1840. Health inequities among Māori in New Zealand and First Nations People in Australia have implications for the health system, culturally appropriate approaches to treatment, and the importance of having an appreciation of First Nations people's history and culture, language, family structure, and cultural safety. Trainees in both countries need to be adequately supported in these areas in order for the sub-specialty of pediatric anesthesia to develop further and improve the anesthetic and surgical outcomes of our children.

Inhuman Kinship at Insensible Depths

The Afrofuturist mythology of Drexciya rewrites violent colonial histories of dispossession, imagining submarine utopias in which the descendants of enslaved Africans live outside colonial orders. With this submersion, the Drexciyan mythos offers creative visions of oceanic futures—the result of climate change. I therefore ask; what might be learned from Drexciyan relations to the Earth? I first probe Drexciyan–Earth relations through Rivers Solomon’s The Deep (2019), in which Drexciyans espouse a mode of stewardship over the Earth. Taking up a critical problematization of the possibility of relating to an inhuman Earth vastly greater than ourselves, I explore how The Deep navigates the incommensurability between inhuman nature and human/Drexciyan being. I argue that The Deep ’s Drexciyans are constituted across orders of in/non/human matter, an insight I carry over to Ellen Gallagher’s painting Bird in Hand (2006). There, I find a kinship relation with inhuman matter that accommodates the radical incommensurability of the Earth: I articulate this kinship as a transcorporeal mutuality of be(com)ing with the Earth. Whilst recognizing the asymmetry between their own existence and the Earth’s, Drexciyans insist on a difficult kinship with it. Such kinship relations critique Western practices of extractivism, and probe other praxes of inhabiting the Earth.

Bushranger Re-Enactments: Legend And Landscape

The re-enactment of events from Australia’s history as popular entertainment has dropped away in the twenty-first century. Whilst Old Sydney Town attracted crowds from 1973 through to 2003 with its daily parades of British red coats who marched down to an artificially constructed ‘Old Sydney Cove’, Australians today often have a more conflicted view of Australia’s colonial history. If national identity is maintained through acts of ‘remembering’, as suggested by Ian McBride (2001), the past can be a contested issue that impacts on what is accepted as popular representation. Yet the persistence of bushranger escapade re-enactments, though set in colonial times, suggests that issues beyond Australian national identity are at work in maintaining the popularity of such events. Bushrangers in Australia have fuelled imaginative representations in theatre and then later cinema since the early 1800s, with Andrew James Couzens (2019) stating that the Australian “bushranger legend … responds to the historic and mythic characteristics of outlawry” with “the outlaw as heroes”. This paper investigates three specific bushranger re-enactments. In Braidwood, south-eastern New South Wales, from 1865-1867 the Clark Gang, Tom and John Clark terrorized citizens and were known as ‘the bloodiest of bushrangers’. In 2017, the 150-year anniversary re-enactment of the Clark Gangs’ shooting up of the small country town of Braidwood attracted crowds keen to witness, as well as take part in the drama. The second re-enactment occurs regularly through performances by the Gympie Historical Re-enactment Society. Opting to entertain tourists, the group have staged a ‘Bushranger Show’ at numerous sites throughout inland regional Queensland. The third re-enactment occurred annually, until Covid struck, at Canowindra in northern New South Wales. In 1863 the notorious bushrangers, Ben Hall and Johnny Gilbert locked a group of villagers in the Canowindra pub, the re-enactment takes place at the site of these events, the now named Royal Hotel in the main street of Canowindra. These re-enactments are investigated through multiple lenses of performance, place, and politics. The site-specific nature of these performances positions them as specifically different than performances depicting Australian bushrangers in the cinema or theatre.

Semiotic whitening: Whiteness without white people

AbstractIn the borderlands of south Texas, the Mexican and Mexican American social practice of naming includes the use of English‐language names and nicknames, anglicized pronunciations, and English‐language spellings and “misspellings,” all of which potentially index at least two historically informed perspectives: (1) the hegemonic “white gaze”; and (2) a localized, interrogating gaze. In this article, I focus on local naming practices to advance an approach to what I call semiotic whitening—the indexical linking of any phenomenon to the idealized norms of whiteness—to better understand how whiteness works from the perspective of Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in a geographic region (informed by colonial and white supremacist histories) where few white folks reside.

The Fossil Record and Diversity of Pycnodontiform Fishes in Non-Marine Environments

Pycnodont fishes were a successful clade of neopterygian fishes that are predominantly found in shallow marine deposits. However, throughout their long 180 million year reign (Late Triassic–end Eocene), they made multiple incursions into both brackish and freshwater environments. This fossil record mostly consists of fragmentary dental material, but articulated specimens are known from Early Cretaceous lacustrine localities in Spain. This review article aims to document all non-marine occurrences of Pycnodontiformes throughout most of the Mesozoic and early Paleogene. This review highlights two interesting trends in the history of non-marine habitat colonization by pycnodonts: (1) a huge spike in non-marine occurrences during the Cretaceous; and (2) that most occurrences in non-marine localities occurred at the latest Cretaceous period, the Maastrichtian. The high number of colonization events within the Cretaceous lines up with extreme climatic events, such as high temperatures resulting in high sea levels which regularly flooded continental masses, allowing pycnodonts easier access to non-marine habitats. The increased presence of pycnodonts in brackish and freshwater habitats during the Maastrichtian might have played a role in their survival through the K/Pg extinction event. Freshwater habitats are not as vulnerable as marine ecosystems to environmental disturbance as the base of their food chain relies on detritus. Pycnodonts might have used such environments as a refuge and began to occupy marine waters after the K/Pg extinction event.

Settler memory and Indigenous counter-memories: narrative struggles over the history of colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT As with other settler colonies, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen a long-running conflict between a Euro-centric ‘master narrative’ of the historical past and Indigenous counter-narratives. Previous research on these narrative struggles adopts the ‘top-down’ perspective on collective remembering, focusing primarily on how memory entrepreneurs deploy cultural texts and practices to construct particular representations of history. To broaden the methodological scope, the analysis developed in this paper follows the ‘bottom-up’ approach, which makes it possible to map the distribution of collective memories across individuals and investigate their attitudinal effects. By means of a rigorous survey study (N = 1,066), the paper reveals three key findings about collective remembering in Aotearoa New Zealand. First, individuals in the ‘critical years’ of adolescence are more open to weaving Indigenous Māori perspectives into their understandings of history than older generations. Second, when compared to the monocultural master narrative, historical reconstructions that reflect Māori experiences promote a more inclusive understanding of national identity and generate public support for redressing historical injustices against Māori. Third, the empirical analysis finds no evidence for claims made by conservative political actors that creating space for the articulation of Māori histories perpetuates social division and weakens popular identification with the nation.

Not a Monolith: Understanding of Racism and Racialization among Korean, Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Vietnamese Women

The people within the Asian and Pacific Islander racial/ethnic category used in the United States are often misrepresented as a monolithic group when, in reality, the group includes people from over 48 different countries with diverse cultures, languages, and customs. Asian and Pacific Islander people experience racism and racialization in nuanced ways that are influenced by immigrant generations, histories of colonization, and origin countries’ relationship with the US. This study examines the racialized experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander women in the United States. Focus groups were held with 21 Korean, Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Vietnamese women in the United States to explore their experiences of racism and racialization. Data were analyzed using an iterative coding and theme-generation process. Findings indicate that among these groups, there is a heightened awareness of racism both toward their own racial/ethnic group as well as toward other minoritized populations, a recognition of the importance of solidarity among people of color to combat racism and the difficulties in sustaining solidarity, and nuanced ways in which different Asian and Pacific Islander people navigate their own racialization.  

The Terminator in the goldfields: speculative affects in an extractive frontier in Colombia

AbstractThis article analyses the relationships among speculative rumour, everyday storytelling, and financial speculation that impact small‐scale gold mining towns in Colombia. By following the stories surrounding the visit of Arnold Schwarzenegger to Marmato, a mining town in central Colombia, and its consequences, I explore how people speculate about such ‘speculative’ visits so as to reframe the events as part of wider colonial histories. I aim to comprehend the affective constellation of lives criss‐crossed by financial speculation and the political openings created by rumour, storytelling, and fabulation. I argue that people locate the Schwarzenegger visit as part of a crisis‐ridden history that counters the narratives of modern and responsible mining. The argument contributes to the conceptualization of speculation in anthropology, as well as to questions of history, temporality, and politics of extractive frontiers. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2016 and 2019 in the central Andes of Colombia and with governmental and corporate representatives.

Barriers and Facilitators Associated with the History of Colonization on the Vaccination Process of COVID-19 among Indigenous Peoples in Canada

Barriers and Facilitators Associated with the History of Colonization on the Vaccination Process of COVID-19 among Indigenous Peoples in Canada

CONSTRUCTION, DEMOLITION, EXTIRPATION? THE PALAST DER REPUBLIK AND THE CONFLICTING DESIRES OF GERMAN UNIFICATION

ABSTRACTOpened in 1976, East Berlin's Palast der Republik stood until its demolition in 2003 among and against the other buildings on Berlin's Museumsinsel. This article examines the circumstances surrounding the construction and demolition of the GDR's prestige construction and its storied location, now the site of the Stadtschloss and Humboldt Forum. This narrative analysis acknowledges recent vigorous debates concerning Germany's colonial history but focuses in particular on the East German past. In examining the iconoclastic impulse and the corresponding resistance to extirpation in the period since unification, the article questions the social power of the buildings at that site, their political symbolism and what the acts of demolition and reconstruction tell us about political desires and especially about Germany's unsteady handling of history since unification. Had the Palast remained, it is suggested, its awkward presence (whether as renovated structure or as ruin) might have better served the future as a reminder of uncomfortable pasts, a historical monument and a catalyst for ongoing, necessarily difficult discussions about history and heritage rather than an attempt to side‐step East German history.

Exploring the Paradox of Hope and Ambivalence in Short-lived Japanese Colonialism in Indonesia

Unlike the European colonial powers that sought long-term political control and resource exploitation, Japan's colonial ambitions in Southeast Asia primarily emerged during the period of World War II driven by its imperial expansionist goals. The unique nature of Japan's colonial history in Southeast Asia deserves further in-depth research and analysis. This paper explores Japan's colonial policies, highlighting the exploitative nature of its colonial economy and its imperialistic character. While Japan portrayed itself as a liberator and unifier of Asia, opposing Western imperialism, its colonial rule in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, often involved varying degrees of exploitation, coercion, and brutal repression. Furthermore, this paper argues for an understanding of the complex role that this colonial process played in shaping Indonesia's development trajectory. The analysis explores the impact of Japanese colonialism on Indonesia from various angles, including national consciousness, economy, and cultural dissemination. Additionally, it examines the intricate interactions between Japanese colonial authorities and the Indonesian government, people, and democratic activists, which eventually fueled the independence movement in Indonesia.

Rehumanizing Ainu

Abstract This article argues that many contemporary female Ainu performance-activists from the Ainu community of Japan, including a performance scene led by Ainu huci (female elders) at an Ainu cultural education center in Sapporo, Japan, engage in performance of desubjectification, which emphasizes the sameness of their humanity with the dominant Japanese rather than arguing for Ainu ethnic difference or their colonial history. At first glance, their performance and iterations seem detached from the discourse of Indigenous resistance. However, this article demonstrates how such iteration of singularity—sameness—derives from a particular Ainu colonial history and argues that their performance critically eschews colonial and imperial ideas of authenticity, ethnic difference, and the universal human. In doing so, the Ainu performance scene in this article presents itself as a theoretical performance activism against the Western (and Japanese imperial) notion of Indigenous peoples as less-than-human. By using bodies, sound, and sensations, these performers define Ainu Indigeneity in their own terms, and achieve an Ainu Indigenous critique of the “human,” the concept that is built on exclusion and marginalization of ethnic minorities and colonized subjects.

Crisis as Method: Politics, Temporality, and Agency

This special issue demonstrates how theorizing the present in terms of crisis generates insights into contradictory experiences of historical time. The core questions addressed are these: What are the temporal forms through which crisis is expressed today, and what are the political implications? The contributors pay close attention to the nonsynchronicity and the discordance of times that constitute the present. The contributors ask how contemporary crisis can be better understood with reference to long-term and ongoing colonial and racial histories. This article functions as both an introduction to the special issue as well as a development of some of the key theoretical coordinates, first thinking through the relationship between crisis and everyday politics, disentangling crisis theory from its association with determinism, and then showing how crisis theory challenges conventional understandings of political agency. Recent work in Black studies offers significant ways of understanding how subaltern actors improvise and forge unfamiliar forms of agency in times of brutal constraint. With reference to this work, the article argues that understanding crisis not only as an “object” of study but as a “method” has generative implications for theorizing the present.

Pláticas on challenges and possibilities of teaching migration/mobility and displacement otherwise

ABSTRACT In this article we seek to delve into our teaching experiences as educators in a higher education space within the settler colonial context of Australia. We critically and pedagogically self-reflect our pedagogical roles of transforming educational practices in our classroom with the focus of positionality, self-reflexivity and embracing other ways of creating knowledge. By using pláticas as a method, we propose a humanize-sensing/thinking pedagogy, which praxis recognizes the historical differences and the specificity of cultural oppressions by un/learning, when we are teaching. As sentipensantes educators, in this article platicamos our fears, discomfort, un/learning of our teaching, attitudes, embodiment, and we ask: how our lessons might recognize and teach different colonial histories, geographical, ethnic, local/global, cultural, and epistemic frameworks? What does it look and feel like in practice in our classroom? We confirm that teaching in-between many worlds with a de/colonial lens provides a space for possibilities as well as limitations.

The Roots of Ethnic Conflict in Post-World War II Myanmar, Malaysia, and the Philippines

The impacts of colonial history on present-day ethnic relations in Southeast Asia, a region known for its cultural and ethnic diversity, remain significant in understanding the sociopolitical developments within the countries of the region. This paper examines the historical origins and contemporary implications of long-standing ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia, focusing on Myanmar, Malaysia, and the Philippines. I argue that these conflicts stemmed from colonial legacies and can be traced back to each country’s respective colonial periods, which took place at different points in history. From the imposition of territorial boundaries to racial classification and differential treatment, colonial policies resulted in enduring tensions between ethnic populations, which continue to shape ethnic relations in these countries today. British colonial rule in Myanmar fostered tensions between the Bamar majority and non-Bamar minorities, while in Malaysia, disparities between Malays and ethnic Chinese were fueled by British migration policies. In the Philippines, conflicts involving the Muslim minority in Mindanao originated from attempts by the Spanish at Christianization and subjugation, further exacerbated by American imperialism. Despite variations in colonial experiences and timelines, ethnic conflicts underscore the lasting impact of colonization on these countries’ present-day social and political dynamics.

Talk the talk and walk the walk: a novel training for medical students to promote decoloniality in global health

To date, the history of colonialism has permeated nearly every aspect of our conceptions, structures, and practices of global health; yet, there are no published medical school curricula aimed at promoting decoloniality in global health. We developed a pilot course for medical students to examine the history of colonialism, power, and positionality; promote self-reflection; and teach strategies for dismantling coloniality in global health. This five-part course was offered to students completing a scholarly project in global health with a mixed in-person/virtual format and online pre-session preparation materials. A pre-course survey on prior experiences in global health and self-efficacy was administered, and a reflection piece was analyzed for themes. After completion of the course, the students again completed the self-efficacy questionnaire, a course feedback survey and a semi-structured interview that was analyzed for themes. On average, the students felt that the course was relevant to their global health scholarly project and that the course met their learning objectives. There was a trend toward increased self-efficacy in decoloniality knowledge and skills following the course. In the post-course structured interviews, students raised issues reflected in the course materials including local project leadership; how identity, privilege and positionality influence relationships and the ability to attain mutual trust; project sustainability; and power dynamics. Undergraduate medical education in global health equity and decoloniality can play an important role in teaching future generations to dismantle the colonialism ingrained in global health and reimagine a global health practice based on equitable partnerships, community needs, and local leadership.