Colonial History Research Articles

Staging a ‘Children’s Classic’, teaching racism: Pippi Longstocking ([2005] 2019)

In 2019, the Finnish National Ballet company brought onstage the 2005 Royal Swedish Ballet production Pippi Longstocking, based on Astrid Lindgren’s works for children. This article uses the ballet production as an example of how intertextual contexts complicate choices made in representation, and how canonicity is used to shelter derivative works from criticism. The specific focus is on the compound effect of the choices made by the ballet’s creators to include aspects of Lindgren’s novels that have been criticized for racism by taking recourse to ballet’s own traditions of racist representation. The ballet adaptation draws attention to systemic whiteness in Nordic countries still struggling to acknowledge their histories of colonialism and racism. Simultaneously, the Finnish company’s decision to change the choreography in August 2022 reveals how even an art form as intimately linked with European colonialism as ballet needs to change with the times.

Black bodies and French colonial history: Beyoncé and Jay Z’s ‘Apeshit’ at the Louvre

In June of 2018, Beyoncé and Jay-Z (under the name The Carters) released the music video for their song ‘Apeshit’, from the album Everything Is Love, set in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Through an agreement with the Louvre, The Carters were given free rein to film in front of some of the most famous art pieces in the world. This article focuses on five instances, within the music video, where the juxtaposition between either The Carters and/or their dancers, and certain works of art, merits analysis within the French colonial and postcolonial context. Under consideration are the following scenes: first is the dance scene in front of David’s The Coronation of Napoléon (1807); the second is in front of the Great Sphinx of Tanis (2600 BCE); the third is in front of Géricault’s The Charging Chasseur (1812); the fourth is a scene in a locker room that pans to a bedroom (‘Apeshit’ 00:02:31–00:02:36); the fifth and final is ‘the hair-combing scene’ in front of DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. Each of these scenes speaks to pivotal moments in French colonial and postcolonial history, and through the analysis of the lyrics of the song and the historical context, I provide insight into the rich and deep meaning behind the specific art choices made by The Carters, within the Louvre, for their music video.

When My Brown Got Colored

Abstract This essay is a testimonial of the author’s experiences, memories, and reflections about becoming a person/woman of color, discovering, and unearthing the meanings of racialization, white privilege, and white supremacy in the contemporary United States. The author gives voice to her new migrant experience as a Brown woman from India, positioning her reflections and learnings amidst the history and politics of colonialism and capitalist development, linking it to contemporary neoliberal academia in the United States. By sharing some events and encounters in her relatively short stint in Charlottesville, Virginia, between 2016 and 2019, the author reviews her attempts to critically analyze concepts like women of color, diversity, colorism, privilege, invisibility, and othering. The article further connects some of the author’s experiences of racialization in view of the growing politics of casteism and Brahmanical supremacy in India, locating and reassessing herself in the midst of Trump’s hardened propagation of white privilege in the United States and Modi’s Hindutva, both emanating a politics rooted in racialization, exploitation, and marginalization of the other.

(Mis)Translations of the Critiques of Anti-Muslim Racism and the Repercussions for Transnational Feminist Solidarities

Abstract As critiques of anti-Muslim racism travel transnationally, they get translated in relation to complex histories of imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism, and nationalism. These (mis)translations produce unexpected uses and abuses of anti-Muslim racism as an academic and political concept, with significant consequences for transnational feminist solidarity. This article explores, as a case in point, the emergence of a “Black Turk” identity in millennial Turkey where pious Muslim identity, once marginalized under a secularist state, has reasserted itself by deploying an analogy of Black to pious Muslim. Obscuring the nuances of local power relations, the pious Muslim/secular fault line was oversimplified and mistranslated into the resonant American idiom of the Black/white binary. This analogy and the progressive critiques of anti-Black and especially anti-Muslim racisms were then instrumentalized by an increasingly authoritarian and gender-conservative Islamist Turkish government to legitimize its repressive agendas, even succeeding to garner unexpected sympathy from some feminist politicians and academics in the United States. Naive confidence that such dichotomous racial/religious categories and familiar political vocabularies can guide feminist analyses and politics risks employing a seemingly transnationalist and anti-imperialist but in truth U.S.-centric understanding of non-U.S. struggles for social justice and thwarting potential transnational feminist solidarities.

Anchored by Earth to Starlight: Decolonising Relationship to Sky

The brilliance of the night sky has inspired and intrigued humanity throughout all time, all civilizations, all cultures. It is woven into our survival and vibrancy – mind, body, heart, and spirit – as the human species. The sky transcends space, connecting us to other worlds like a portal. Sky transcends time, connecting us two-legged across past, present, and future. And yet because of the history of colonization, most people in the US who look up at the stars see and know only one system. This single story has been promoted as the only story and is rooted in Western European cultures or the so called ‘Greek system’ of constellations and cosmological philosophies. Presented here will be an overview of an art installation called ‘Anchored to Earth by Starlight – Decolonizing Night Sky’ which is part of a group show called ‘Indigenous Survivance’ (St. John’s University, Art Center Gallery, Collegeville, Minnesota, Aug. 29 through Oct. 29, 2022). The multi-layered experiential exhibit features: a cinematic large-scale project embedded with spoken word art, a series of celestial-terrestrial mixed media paintings, and Indigenous star maps. All work is centred around rebuilding relationship with sky. The hope is that in some way this work helps us to change our relationship with the sky, stars, and people. We are often led to believe that maps are subjective and full of facts, but in truth maps are filled with the bias of the map-maker. Decolonization means pulling back the superficial layer and acknowledging the present as a moment in a wave of time that is intricately linked to past and future. Just as an anchor keeps a ship grounded and centred, relationship to night sky gives us hope, strength, and purpose in these challenging times.

Ideals of counseling practice: Therapeutic insights from an Indigenous first nations-controlled treatment program.

Indigenous Canadians suffer disproportionately from mental health concerns tied to histories of colonization, including exposure to Indian Residential Schools. Previous research has indicated that preferred therapies for Indigenous populations fuse traditional cultural practices with mainstream treatment. The present study comprised 32 interviews conducted with Indigenous administrators, staff, and clients at a reserve-based addiction treatment center to identify community-driven and practical therapeutic solutions for remedying histories of coercive colonial assimilation. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that counselors tailored therapy through cultural preferences, including the use of nonverbal expression, culturally appropriate guidance, and alternative delivery formats. Additionally, they augmented mainstream therapeutic activities with Indigenous practices, including the integration of Indigenous concepts, traditional practices, and ceremonial activities. Collectively, this integration of familiar counseling approaches and Indigenous cultural practices in response to community priorities resulted in an innovative instance of therapeutic fusion that may be instructive for cultural adaptation efforts in mental health treatment for Indigenous populations and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Repair and the 2014 Mount Polley Mine disaster: Antirelationality, constraint, and legacies of socio-ecological disruption in settler colonial British Columbia

In this article I situate the 2014 Mount Polley Mine disaster within centuries-long relations of colonial-modernity in the region currently known as British Columbia, Canada. Guided by the work of Gilmore and Moten, I argue that repairing colonial systems of mass disruption and death requires attending to the logics that enable and normalize these systems of violence. To support this argument, I turn to British Columbia’s early settler colonial history—a violent and destructive history forged through mining—and outline large-scale socio-ecological violence that occurred throughout this period. By turning to this history, I show how these disruptions are connected to the Mount Polley Mine disaster through ongoing and pervasive logics that enable, and often even celebrate, these processes of violence and disruption.

Dealing with a contested past: the Belgian decolonisation debate

In recent decades, a lot of Western countries have been engaged in a heated debate on how to come to terms with their colonial past. Leaving behind the idea that colonial history consists mainly of common achievements, the former philanthropic narrative of ‘modernisation’ and ‘progress’ has been critically analysed and dissected as the awareness of its painful episodes grew. In this vein, the postcolonial history in Belgium is an interesting case to examine, as it has long been one of the most criticised colonial metropoles for the way in which it deals with its colonial past, precisely because Belgium has persisted in focusing on the positive aspect of that past. Consequently, a whole part of this history has not yet been processed and is mainly part of a contested past. Social work practices have long sought to remain neutral in this discussion, but this awareness of history as a dynamic weaving of a multiplicity of different strands of identity also applies directly to the development of social work as a profession. From a social work perspective, it is impossible to retreat into a viewpoint outside of history, as we must become aware that social work practices are deeply embedded in historical and cultural habits from which we cannot disengage. In this article, we argue that social work needs to critically deal with its own confusing history, with which it is interwoven, in order to be able to clarify what contemporary social work represents.

Migrant Mental Healthcare, Conflict, and Embodied Experiences

This provocation draws on my experience as an ethnographic researcher conducting interviews structured by emotion and embodiment with a diverse group of migrants about the barriers they face accessing mental healthcare (Ayata et al.). In conversation with these diversely embodied migrants, their capacity to affect and be affected by power imbalances comes to the fore (Blackman). I reflect on these experiences and explore the nuances of what it means to have (partially) escaped conflict to pursue a future only to be confronted with the ever-present traces of colonial history in a world-city like Amsterdam (Quijano). The conversations gifted to me through these interviews form a backdrop for the complexities of meaning-making that sanctions the presence of newcomers. This essay illuminates the extent to which the thriving cultural sector of Amsterdam obscenely includes sojourners in often conflicting discourses around society, livelihood, and cultural production (De Genova).

Исправительная колония для малолетних преступников в Нижегородской губернии (1878–1917): неизвестные страницы истории

The article is devoted to the unknown pages of the history of the correctional colony for juvenile delinquents in the Nizhny Novgorod province in the late XIX — early XX centuries. The chronological framework of the study is determined by November 26, 1878 — the date of the colony’s foundation — March 2, 1917 — the time of the collapse of the penitentiary system of the Russian Empire during the February bourgeois Revolution. Unpublished office documents from the fund 394 “Committee of the Society of the Nizhny Novgorod Agricultural Correctional Colony for Juvenile Delinquents, Nizhny Novgorod” of the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region were used. The most important normative legal act is the “Charter of the Society of the Nizhny Novgorod Agricultural Colony for juvenile delinquents”, adopted in 1878 and defined the goals of the colony. Among the published clerical documents, we should highlight the Report on the Main Prison Administration for 1882, which gives an idea of the place of the Nizhny Novgorod agricultural correctional colony among penitentiary institutions for juvenile delinquents in Russia at the end of the XIX century. From the pre–revolutionary periodical press, we analyzed the journal “Prison Bulletin” — the publication of the Main Prison Administration. The “Prison Bulletin” raised questions about the organization of Russian correctional institutions for juvenile prisoners. The problem of studying the functioning of the Nizhny Novgorod correctional agricultural colony was addressed by domestic researchers Yu. G. Galai [1], S. Yu. Varentsov [2], L. Yu. Varentsova [3]. The novelty of this article is determined by the introduction of new historical sources into scientific circulation. The author came to the conclusion that the methods of re-education of juvenile delinquents and homeless children were teaching sciences, crafts, cultivation of the land, introduction to work, the formation of religious and moral values. Family education was introduced. The experience of the agricultural penal colony in the Nizhny Novgorod province was widely promoted not only in the Russian Empire, but also at the international level.

Türkiye-Africa Relations: A Case Study of Somalia, Nigeria and Libya from Humanitarian and Security Perspectives

This paper explores Türkiye’s relations with Africa, focusing on Somalia, Nigeria and Libya from both humanitarian and security perspectives. To do so, the study employs the concept of soft power in relation to the security and humanitarian policies that Türkiye has adopted on the African continent. Though Türkiye has no significant colonial history on the continent like other European countries, its relations with Africa in recent decades are no secret and continue to strengthen against all odds. From a relationship that stems from historical links with the Ottoman Empire to more promising and positive impacts on the continent in recent years, it is important to understand these ties amidst the increasing distaste expressed by some African nations towards the West. Using examples of Türkiye’s security and humanitarian deployment in Somalia, Nigeria and Libya, it is perhaps no surprise to perceive the relationship between Türkiye and African nations as a dichotomy between humanitarian and security.

Mapping a Contested Space: Northeast India Through the Ages

Northeast India, home to diverse ethnic communities, has often been described as the cauldron of ethnic violence and insurgencies. The ongoing crisis in Manipur (in the form of a fratricidal war between the Meiteis and Kukis) and the State’s failure to contain it calls for deeper scrutiny of the geopolitics of the region. Whereas the region was once a crossroad that facilitated the movement of these ethnic groups, its transformation into a frontier area during colonial times and as a borderland after India’s partition turned it into a contested space. Further, with the introduction of colonial modernity, the old socio-cultural and economic structures have radically altered the relationship among the communities giving space to necropolitics. In this context, by referring to Rituparna Bhattacharyya’s edited volume Northeast India through the Ages: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Prehistory, History, and Oral History and other research works, this commentary maps the transformation of the territory into a necrospace. In doing so, this study argues that while much of the complications had been foisted due to the colonial map-making process and immigration, an ethnic resurgence had further facilitated the growth of necropolitics in the region. Additionally, the study will focus on the representations of socio-cultural history and politics by relating those to the multifaceted aspect of necropolitics and its entangled colonial history.

Decolonizing Social Work Education and Practice with Students and Community Stakeholders: A Case Example from University of Calgary

ABSTRACTSocial work education in Canada has struggled to identify and disrupt systems of oppression and marginalization, rooted in a history of colonialism and slavery, that continues to reverberate through neocolonial policies, pedagogy, and practice. Universities and social work programs remain white spaces that uphold white supremacy, while actively excluding nonwhite members and their ways of knowing and being in the world. It wasn’t until the deepened retrenchment of anti-Black racism during the pandemic, punctuated by the killing of George Floyd, that a group of educators seized an opening to teach an anti-racist and anti-colonial praxis course for the Bachelor of Social Work students in spring of 2021, the first one of its kind in our faculty. Students were encouraged to engage with Indigenous and racialized community youth to imagine and integrate anti-racist and reconciliatory actions as part of their assignments. This paper shares our experiences co-designing and co-teaching this course together with community partners. We emphasize lessons from the applied pedagogical approaches as well as its implications for social work education and social work practice.

Escaping Empire

Abstract: This article explores the flight of indigenous communities from Philippine lowlands into mountain spaces, a frequent and widespread response to Spanish colonization in the seventeenth century. During this period, indigenous zones of refuge were not exceptional but present in almost every part of Luzon and the Visayas. The shared history of flight and resistance frustrated the ambitions of Spanish missionaries and military commanders for much of the colonial period and beyond. In the uplands, indigenous communities made use of local geographies and ecologies to bolster their resistance and maintain their autonomy. In dialogue with recent scholarship on colonial frontiers and indigenous hinterlands, this article challenges the perception of a colonial dominance that spread inexorably across the archipelago in the seventeenth century. It offers a new perspective on the history of colonization and confronts the perceived upland-lowland divide that has typified Southeast Asian historiography, demonstrating that upland and lowland spaces had shared histories of resistance, migration, and trade throughout the colonial period.

Colonisation and Its Impacts on Melbourne: A Historical Perspective on Urban Development

Prior to the World Wars, European and American empires implemented a colonial model of urban planning in the colonies and concessions under their control. This approach to urban planning was characterised by an imperialist ideology that sought to impose Western standards and values on the territories they governed. This essay explores the manifestation and impact of colonisation on Melbourne, Australia, from its establishment as a British settlement in 1835 to the present day. The essay focuses on the citys colonial background, the manifestation of colonisation in urban development through urban planning and landmark buildings, and the impact of colonisation on living habits, social structures, and cultural traditions. Melbournes colonial history is marked by the displacement and subjugation of indigenous peoples and the exploitation of natural resources for British economic gain. The enduring influence of colonialism is evident in the urban planning, architectural landmarks, and cultural practices of Melbourne city, and has left an indelible mark on its urban, social, and economic development. The legacy of colonialism is reflected in the enduring patterns of power, inequality, and exclusion that are embedded in the citys physical and social landscape. This legacy has also contributed to the persistence of cultural and social hierarchies, which continue to shape the citys urban fabric and its social and economic relations. Furthermore, the effects of colonialism can be observed in the citys built environment, including its urban morphology, architectural styles, and land use patterns, all of which reflect the values and ideologies of the colonial era.

Situating commercial determinants of health in their historical context: a qualitative study of sugar-sweetened beverages in Jamaica

BackgroundNon-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of mortality across the Caribbean and similar regions. Structural determinants include a marked increase in the dependency on food imports, and the proliferation of processed foods, including sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). We focused on Jamaica as a case study and the health challenge of SSBs, and situated contemporary actions, experiences and policies within their historical context to investigate underlying drivers of commercial determinants of health and attempts to counter them. We asked: how can a historical perspective of the drivers of high level SSB consumption in Jamaica contribute to an enhanced understanding of the context of public health policies aimed at reducing their intake?MethodsAn ethnographic approach with remote data collection included online semi-structured interviews and workshops with 22 local experts and practitioners of health, agriculture and nutrition in Jamaica and attending relevant regional public webinars on SSBs and NCD action in the Caribbean. Our analysis was situated within a review of historical studies of Caribbean food economies with focus on the twentieth century. Jamaican and UK-based researchers collected and ethnographically analysed the data, and discussed findings with the wider transdisciplinary team.ResultsWe emphasise three key areas in which historical events have shaped contextual factors of SSB consumption. Trade privileged sugar as a cash crop over food production during Jamaica’s long colonial history, and trade deregulation since the 1980s through structural adjustment opened markets to transnational companies. These changes increased Jamaican receptiveness to the mass advertisement and marketing of these companies, whilst long-standing power imbalances hampered taxation and regulation in contemporary public health actions. Civil society efforts were important for promoting structural changes to curb overconsumption of SSBs and decentring such entrenched power relations.ConclusionThe contemporary challenge of SSBs in Jamaica is a poignant case study of commercial determinants of health and the important context of global market-driven economies and the involvement of private sector interests in public health policies and governance. Historically contextualising these determinants is paramount to making sense of the sugar ecology in Jamaica today and can help elucidate entrenched power dynamics and their key actors.

Unveiling the mainstream narrative and embracing critical voices in the era of internationalisation in higher education: considerations from Latin America

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines narratives of internationalisation in higher education, highlighting three core narratives: a normative narrative that emphasises economic growth and quality education, a critical narrative that challenges internationalisation as a hegemonic market-based force, and a narrative that addresses colonial legacies, the latter two narratives with considerations from Latin America. The study analyses policy documents from international agencies and two influential books, revealing the dominance of normative, Western-rooted narratives and the marginalisation of critical voices that have limited impact on policy. The paper argues for challenging the normative narrative and its neglect of regional specificities and colonial histories in favour of redistributive logics and social inclusion. It highlights the dangers of conceiving of internationalisation as a ‘one size fits all’ approach, focusing exclusively on economic and quality aspects, and suggests that a critical evaluation of internationalisation can contribute to the decolonisation of higher education narratives.

Rupture and reconciliation: the neoliberal logics of Emmanuel Macron’s colonial memory policies

ABSTRACT First as candidate and then as President, Emmanuel Macron has elevated colonial memory policy as a key site for the performance and enactment of the dual values of rupture and reconciliation that underpin his broader programme. While this has led to significant symbolic shifts in the French state’s narrative of its colonial history, this article argues that this memory policy cannot and should not be disaggregated from his wider neoliberal project. Through a detailed contextualisation and analysis of President Macron’s interventions in the field, I contend that colonial memory policy simultaneously reflects, legitimises, and constitutes the ‘neoliberal political rationality’ his administration seeks to perpetuate. Under Macron, a limited recognition of France’s responsibilities for colonial violence has been accompanied by an effort to neutralise the political potency of the past, obscure its enduring legacies, assign authority over it to designated experts and delegitimise those who contest this logic. The article illustrates how memory policy has become a means of sublimating contemporary political demands, arising in part from historic structural injustices, into the manageable and managed process of consensus-making that is the hallmark of neoliberal governmentality.

Towards DAOs of Difference

With this article, I explore the connections between blockchain technology, coloniality, and decolonial practices. Drawing on Sylvia Wynter’s thought on the interdependent systems of colonialism, capitalism, and knowledge, as well as more recent work on the coloniality of digital technologies, I argue that blockchain-based systems reproduce certain dynamics at work in historical colonialism. Additionally, Wynter’s decolonial propositions provide a generative framework to understand countercultural practices with. Inspired by Wynter, Patricia de Vries explores the notion of “plot work as artistic praxis” to ask how artistic work, implicated as it is in capitalist logics, can create space for relating differently in the context of the exploitations of those dominant logics. I apply this notion to examine how Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) in the countercultural blockchain space might contribute to this praxis.

English in Timor–Leste

When Timor–Leste became the first new nation of the 21st century in 2002, one of the many decisions that needed to be made concerned language. Timor–Leste is a country of around one million people, with at least 16 indigenous languages and three foreign languages contributing to its multilingual character. For reasons related to its 400-year colonial history and the resistance to Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, the new constitution declared that Portuguese would be one of two official languages, the other being the indigenous Tetun Dili. The choice of Portuguese rather than English was controversial, and criticised in some quarters, for it appeared to defy geographical location (e.g. Savage, 2012). After all, Australia lies an hour's flight south of Timor–Leste, and English has been adopted as the working language of ASEAN, an organisation which the country has aspirations of joining. English is certainly the regional lingua franca, and very often referred to as the global lingua franca. Not, however, that the constitution was ignoring this reality. As well as naming Portuguese and Tetun as official languages, it named English and Bahasa Indonesia as working languages, and all indigenous languages as national languages. Thus the decisions around language in the constitution laid claims to identity and culture, as well as remaining open to global engagement in trade, technology, education and other contributors to modernisation.