colonialism 
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/15/2021
The Sun Never Set on the British Empire’s Oppression
While nationalist leaders in postcolonial states win political support by invoking heroic struggle to defeat British imperialism, they are very happy to use the repressive laws of colonialism against dissidents today.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/6/2021
Review: ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ Rewrites a Brutal History
The atrocities documented in Raoul Peck's HBO film series on colonization of the western hemisphere are not news. That's part of what fuels the anger driving the film.
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SOURCE: Public Books
3/29/2021
Who's Afraid of Antiracism?
by Chelsea Stieber
Recent books in different genres shed light on the limits of the French governing ideal of republican universalism for a society where racism is real and historically significant.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/18/2021
Napoleon Isn’t a Hero to Celebrate
by Marlene Daut
The veneration of Napoleon on the 200th anniversary of his death reflects a systemic problem in French education, which touts the color-blind universality of French republicanism (which Napoleon destroyed) without acknowedging his policy of attempted genocide in the effort to retake control of Haiti.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
3/16/2021
Fascism and Analogies — British and American, Past and Present
by Priya Satia
"Historical and local specificities mean all analogies are ultimately inaccurate in ways that historians must always make clear. The point of such comparisons, however, is to uncover darker historical truths obscured by prevailing, more flattering comparisons."
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/9/2021
France Eases Access, a Little, to Its Secrets
Historians of France's colonial war in Algeria have long been frustrated by the government's classification policies on documents related to the conflict. It is unclear how much this change will create transparency.
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SOURCE: Open Democracy
3/2/2021
The UK Government’s Obsession with ‘Culture Wars’ is a Threat to Democracy
In the British debate over the public history of colonialism and empire, are conservative government ministers the ones really engaged in "cancel culture"?
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SOURCE: The Guardian
3/7/2021
Trinity College Reckons with Slavery Links as Ireland Confronts Collusion with Empire
Dublin's Trinity College is undertaking a review of its institutional ties to slavery, a project that involves acknowledging the participation of Irish merchants in the Atlantic slave trade.
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SOURCE: Al Jazeera
2/26/2021
‘Moral Evil, Economic Good’: Whitewashing the Sins of Colonialism
by Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Recent efforts to reframe Europe's history of colonialism as a net contribution to human welfare are misguided, argues a scholar of African history.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/23/2021
Having Vaccines Alone isn’t Enough to Defeat COVID-19
by Joyce Chaplin
Early efforts at smallpox innoculation showed the importance of social and political factors in making new medical technologies effective.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/22/2021
Pankaj Mishra’s Reckoning With Liberalism’s Bloody Past
Indian critic Pankaj Mishra argues in a new book of essays that recent liberal concern about right-wing politicians declaring support for "western civilization" ignores the way that liberal colonialists have embraced ideas of cultural supremacy.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/15/2021
The Sinking of a Bust Surfaces a Debate Over Denmark’s Past
"An anonymous group of artists had unscrewed it from its plinth, popped a black garbage bag over its head and ferried it to the edge of the canal, before tipping it in."
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SOURCE: The Guardian
Irish President Attacks 'Feigned Amnesia' over British Imperialism
“I am struck by a disinclination,” he says, “in both academic and journalistic accounts to critique empire and imperialism. Openness to, and engagement in, a critique of nationalism has seemed greater.
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SOURCE: Public Books
2/2/2021
Museums as Monuments to White Supremacy
by Ana Lucia Araujo
Recent protest and scholarship have highlighted the knowledge of major cultural institutions that artifacts in their collections were looted from Africa and other colonized places, and support calls to repatriate the artifacts.
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SOURCE: National History Center
1/25/2021
Virtual Event: Sarah Miller-Davenport: Gateway State: Hawai’i and Cultural Transformation of American Empire, FEB. 1
Please join the National History Center of the American Historical Association for a Washington History Seminar roundtable on Gateway State: Hawai’i and Cultural Transformation of American Empire with author Sarah Miller-Davenport, MONDAY FEB. 1, 4:00 PM EST.
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SOURCE: The Art Newspaper
12/17/2020
French Senate Blocks Restitution of 27 Artifacts to Benin and Senegal in Dispute with National Assembly
The bill under consideration would compel France to return artifacts plundered from Benin and Senegal in the 1890s.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
12/15/2020
The World’s Most Important Body of Water
by Daniel Yergin
The author of a book on the dispute over control of the South China sea examines four critical decisionmakers whose actions shaped the present conflict.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/18/2020
The Thanksgiving Myth Gets a Deeper Look This Year
“There was an event that happened in 1621,” Wampanoag historian Linda Coombs said. “But the whole story about what occurred on that first Thanksgiving was a myth created to make white people feel comfortable.” Native activists hope to disrupt the stories of Thanksgiving by questioning public history and by recovering indigenous food practices.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
11/12/2020
The National Trust is under Attack Because it Cares about History, not Fantasy
by Peter Mitchell
Britain's historic preservation agency has become the target of conservative politicians who have interpreted the Trust's commissioning of a report evaluating the relationship of its projects to slavery as an attack on the nation's historical identity.
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SOURCE: Nursing Clio
11/5/2020
The Racist Lady with the Lamp
by Natalie Stake-Doucet
"Nursing historiography is centered on whiteness. Even worse, nursing history revolves largely around a single white nurse: Florence Nightingale. This, unfortunately, doesn’t mean nurses understand who Nightingale was."
News
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- ‘That Man Makes Me Crazy’: Neil Matkin's Reign at Collin College Draws Scrutiny
- “Containment and Control, Not Care or Cure”: An Interview with Elizabeth Catte on Virginia’s Eugenics Movement
- How White Fears of ‘Negro Domination’ Kept D.C. Disenfranchised for Decades
- The Sun Never Set on the British Empire’s Oppression
- Sounds of Freedom: The Music of Black Liberation
- How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom (Review of Louis Menand)