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In 1885, the Berlin pathologist Rudolf Virchow presented three human skeletons from the colony of German South West Africa to the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. The remains had been looted from a grave by a young German scientist, Waldemar Belck, who was a member of the second Lüderitz expedition and took part in the occupation of colonial territory. In an attempt to re-individualise and re-humanise these human remains, which were anonymised in the course of their appropriation by Western science, the authors consult not only the colonial archive, but also contemporary oral history in Namibia. This allows for a detailed reconstruction of the social and political contexts of the deaths of the three men, named Jacobus Hendrick, Jacobus !Garisib and Oantab, and of Belck’s grave robbery, for an analysis of how the remains were turned into scientific objects by German science and institutions, as well as for an establishment of topographical and genealogical links with the Namibian present. Based on these findings, claims for the restitution of African human remains from German institutions cannot any longer be regarded as a contemporary phenomenon only but must be understood as part of an African tradition of resistance against Western colonial and scientific practices.
-transformative humanitarianism that comes from a position of humility, recognising and supporting local feminist actors, in an effort to transform gender relations both in local cultures as well as within humanitarianism itself. It is not promoting gender equality that is the colonial act, but rather the assumption that local cultures do not support gender equality. Thus, a humanitarianism committed to moving past its colonial history must recognise the ‘role of local actors as agents
genocide in Rwanda to take place. The genocide of the Tutsi was never inevitable, it was foreseen, and it could have been stopped. In contrast to authors like Mahmood Mamdani, who argues that the Rwandan genocide was rooted in Rwanda’s colonial history ( Mamdani, 2001 ), Des Forges, although an historian herself, insists that the genocide was not built into the fabric of Rwandan history but was instead a conscious political strategy undertaken by a modern elite. Because the genocide was a well-developed plan, it could have been prevented and, even after it began, it
legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial histories to economic structures built around international extractive industries and aid dependency ( Benton and Dionne, 2015 ; Richardson et al. , 2016 ; Wilkinson and Fairhead, 2017 ). Externally imposed structural adjustment in the 1980s hollowed out all (non-military) essential state functions. This, in turn, transformed citizens’ relation to and expectations of the postcolonial state and its legitimacy. Exacerbated by experiences
with entitlement would permit the continuation of inequality, with blame apportioned to the poor for their own plight. Indeed, since the entitlement model (as a re-scripting of earlier enlightenment assumptions on the progressive contours of a meaningful life) sought an effective break with colonial history and its lasting effects among the world of peoples, so this bourgeois construct proved capable of moralising the power of political economy and putting development workers at the forefront of the fight to deal with unnecessary suffering in zones of abandonment and
that created independent Bangladesh (1970–72), through the sector’s intervention in Cambodia, El Salvador and elsewhere, its expansion into development and social justice issues, and, finally, the popular fundraising extravaganza of Live Aid in the mid-1980s. Lasse: Placing Biafra in the longue durée of colonial history is indeed significant. There was a colonial baggage of humanitarianism, echoes of colonial optic and colonial iconography; colonialism
The book investigates the concepts and related practices of development in British, French and Portuguese colonial Africa during the last decades of colonial rule. During this period, development became the central concept underpinning the relationship between metropolitan Europe and colonial Africa. Combining historiographical accounts with analyses from other academic perspectives, the book investigates a range of contexts, from agriculture to mass media. With its focus on the conceptual side of development and its broad geographical scope, the book offers new and uncommon perspectives. An extensive introduction contextualizes the individual chapters and makes the book an up-to-date point of entry into the subject of (colonial) development, not only for a specialist readership, but also for students of history, development and post-colonial studies. Written by scholars from Africa, Europe and North America, the book is a uniquely international dialogue on this vital chapter of twentieth-century transnational history and on a central concept of the contemporary world.
the terms of feminist criticism, it may contribute to a more productive dialogue between feminisms and nationalisms in our own times. The second way in which the study of colonial masculinity can open up fresh possibilities is by recasting the unit of study for both metropolitan and colonial histories. For the contextual study of the interaction between the ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali
Throughout the long nineteenth-century the sounds of liberty resonated across the Anglophone world. Focusing on radicals and reformers committed to the struggle for a better future, this book explores the role of music in the transmission of political culture over time and distance. The book examines iconic songs; the sound of music as radicals and reformers were marching, electioneering, celebrating, commemorating as well as striking, rioting and rebelling. Following the footsteps of relentlessly travelling activists, it brings to light the importance of music-making in the lived experience of politics. The book argues that music and music-making are highly effective lens for investigating the inter-colonial and transnational history of radicalism and reform between 1790 and 1914. It offers glimpses of indigenous agency, appropriation, adaptation and resistance by those who used the musical culture of the white colonisers. Hymn-singing was an intrinsic part of life in Victorian Britain and her colonies and those hymns are often associated with conservatism, if not reaction. The book highlights how music encouraged, unified, divided, consoled, reminded, inspired and, at times, oppressed, providing an opportunity to hear history as it happened. The examples presented show that music was dialogic – mediating the relationship between leader and led; revealing the ways that song moved in and out of daily exchange, the way it encouraged, unified, attacked, divided, consoled, and constructed. The study provides a wealth of evidence to suggest that the edifice of 'Australian exceptionalism', as it applies to radicals and reformers, is crumbling.
. Immigration controls are argued to be necessary to keep out people who are not entitled to access, and do not belong in, Britain. A postcolonial critique of immigration law, which understands it as ongoing colonial violence, disrupts law’s pedagogical role, forcing an analysis of contemporary movement that accounts for colonial histories and legacies. As Stuart Hall 225 EL-ENANY PRINT.indd 225 02/01/2020 13:38 (B)ordering Britain argued, the postcolonial ‘marks a critical interruption’ of Eurocentric narratives of global histories.9 For Doreen Massey, postcolonial