Category: Colonialism
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Japan’s Empire and the Crushed Hopes of the “Colored Races” of the World
Figure 1: 1938 pamphlet issued by the Negro Commission of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA By Dr Sherzod Muminov For a few early decades of the twentieth century, Japan came to be seen as a champion of the colonized peoples around the world. Behind this image stood Japan’s meteoric rise as the…
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Ghanaian Racial Citizenship in the Soviet Union and U.S., 1957-1966
By Nana Osei-Opare On May 25, 2020, a white American police officer, Derek Chauvin, and two other police officers murdered George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man. Floyd’s murder sparked global outrage and a reckoning on anti-Black racism. Even right-wing television evangelist Pat Robertson, a staunch pro-police supporter, criticised Chauvin’s actions. Floyd’s murder and the global…
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Deep Mapping Migrant Settlerhood: Unfolding histories of Finns in Canada
DR SAMIRA SARAMO At the turn of the twentieth century, Finnish migrants, drawn by the familiar landscape of lakes, forests, and rocky outcrop, settled in the rugged wilderness of Northern Ontario in Canada and overcame the harsh conditions of the early years through their inherent Finnish characteristic of “sisu” (determination, perseverance, guts)… or so the story…
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James Forbes’ Mango and the Art of British Indian Empire
Apurba Chatterjee In 1765, James Forbes, a mere Scottish lad of less than sixteen years of age, set sail to India following his appointment as a Writer for the English East India Company (EIC) in Bombay. Forbes was to stay in India for eighteen years, and he gradually rose to prominence as the Collector of…
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Historians Call for a Review of Home Office Citizenship and Settlement Test
21 July 2020 Historians Call for a Review of Home Office Citizenship and Settlement Test We are historians of Britain and the British Empire and writing in protest at the on-going misrepresentation of slavery and Empire in the “Life in the UK Test”, which is a requirement for applicants for citizenship or settlement (“indefinite leave…
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How to Run an Empire: Early Modern Style
L.H. Roper Dr C. Annemieke Romein recently offered a very helpful discussion here of how the habitual misunderstanding and misuse of nineteenth-century characterisations of ‘-isms’ and ‘the state’ continue to obscure our understanding of the nature and history of European government prior to 1789. With Dr Romein’s permission and assistance, this post will extend her…
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Edgerton & Empire: Nationalism, Imperialism and Decolonisation
Liam Liburd One of the indirect and unintended side-effects of the tragic murder of George Floyd by an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department in late May has been a renewed effort to confront Britain’s own history of racism, especially that in the form of colonialism. Activists have taken aim at the symbols of this…
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Worrying about the Field of the History of Emotions in Ireland – A report
Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi Back in November, when the world was still in a relatively ‘normal’ state, I asked Dr Hannah Parker about the possibly of writing a report for the new History website concerning a series of events I was organising under the title, “Worrying about the Field of the History of Emotions in Ireland”.…
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Do Mention the War: Discourses of Sacrifice and Obligation in White Rhodesian Society, 1964-1965
David Kenrick. Contemporary political discourse in Britain is saturated by sepia-tinged memorialisation of the Second World War. Parties across the country’s growing political divide invoke slogans and imagery redolent of the ‘blitz spirit’ or ‘going it alone’. Far from being a recent development, politicians have long sought to use these memories for contemporary purposes. In…
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Not a bit “English”: Architecture, Emotions and Empire in a “Muslim World”
Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi. In 2011, I visited the Morsalin Hospital in Kerman (southern Iran) for the first time. I intended to work on the revitalisation plan of a historic hospital for my MA dissertation, and I was advised to focus on this hospital – I was told that the Morsalin hospital was the first contemporary…
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