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1. Toward Anti-racism Education in the African Context

Author:
George Sefa Dei and Niketa Afia Peters
Publication Date:
03-2025
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cairo Review of Global Affairs
Institution:
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
Abstract:
What would African educational systems look like without colonial influence? Answering such questions may guide educators in the various communities of the African continent to imagine something re-centered around indigenous experiences. Anti-racism is an important part of that answer
Topic:
Education, Colonialism, Indigenous, and Racism
Political Geography:
Africa

2. Takers Not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth of colonialism

Author:
Anjela Taneja, Anthony Kamande, Chandreyi Gunaray Gomez, Dana Abed, Max Lawson, and Neelanjana Mukhia
Publication Date:
01-2025
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than in 2023. Five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, crises of economy, climate and conflict mean the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned- 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism, corruption or monopoly power. Our deeply unequal world has a long history of colonial domination which has largely benefited the richest people. The poorest, racialized people, women and marginalized groups have been and continue to be systematically exploited at huge human costs. Today’s world remains colonial in many ways. This must be reversed. Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised. Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest people who benefit the most.
Topic:
Inequality, Colonialism, Cronyism, Monopoly, Justice, Reparations, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Episode 6: The 100 Years' War on Palestine

Author:
Sahar Aziz and Rashid Khalidi
Publication Date:
04-2024
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), Rutgers University School of Law
Abstract:
This episode delves into one hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, while backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. Host Sahar Aziz (https://saharazizlaw.com/ ) and this week’s guest, historian and distinguished Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, will discuss the origins and consequences of this non stop aggression against the Palestinians – which is also the subject of his latest book: ”The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.
Topic:
History, Zionism, Colonialism, and Palestinians
Political Geography:
Britain, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and United States of America

4. Neither Settler Nor Native:The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities with Mahmood Mamdani

Author:
Mahmood Mamdani
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), Rutgers University School of Law
Abstract:
Professor Mahmood Mamdani examines how the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority. He proffers that political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors—victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries—based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native.
Topic:
Political Violence, Minorities, Colonialism, State, Identity, Settlers, and Natives
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. A Palestinian Gandhi or an Israeli de Gaulle? Why the Context of Violence Matters

Author:
Sharif Elmusa
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cairo Review of Global Affairs
Institution:
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
Abstract:
Questioning why there hasn’t been a Palestinian Gandhi or Mandela ignores the history and context in which Palestinian resistance occurs, especially the abiding violence visited on the Palestinians since 1917
Topic:
Colonialism, Violence, BDS, Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, Nelson Mandela, and Charles de Gaulle
Political Geography:
Middle East, India, Israel, South Africa, Palestine, and West Bank

6. Cultivating change: the long-term impact of forced labour in Mozambique

Author:
Margherita Bove, Rute Martins Caeiro, Rachel Coelho, Sam Jones, and Patricia Justino
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Following the abolition of slavery, various forms of compulsory labour were adopted by colonial powers to develop their economies. This paper analyses the contemporary consequences of compulsory cotton production—a forced labour system that operated in colonial Mozambique from 1926 to 1961. During this period, the Portuguese colonial government granted geographic concessions to private companies, within which smallholder farmers were forced to cultivate cotton for payment in cash. Women bore the brunt of this regime, but in doing so often took on responsibilities traditionally reserved for men and engaged in active resistance strategies. Employing a spatial regression discontinuity, we explore the enduring impact of this exposure to forced cotton cultivation on present-day human and social capital, focusing specifically on rural southern Mozambique. Our estimation strategy relies on the arbitrarily defined historical borders of the concessions, which reflected the tendency of concessionaires to absorb as much territory as possible, often ignoring agronomic conditions. Drawing on bespoke individual-level survey data collected along the concession border, we find lower educational outcomes among women in former concession areas. However, this is counterbalanced by positive effects on social capital, in the form of higher levels of civil participation, more progressive attitudes towards gender norms, and an increased presence of women in leadership positions. These results suggest that exogenous ruptures that push women outside traditional boundaries can help to reinforce their role in society.
Topic:
History, Women, Colonialism, Human Capital, Social Capital, Forced Labor, and Cotton
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

7. The Long Shadow of Structural Marxism in International Relations: Historicising Colonial Strategies in the Americas

Author:
Samuel Parris and Armando Van Rankin
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Over the past decades, Marxist-inspired approaches from the field of International Historical Sociology (IHS) have theorised the relationship between 16th and 17th Century European colonial expansion and the development of relations of production and economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic. In this article, we argue that such attempts – from Dependency Theory (DT), World-Systems Theory (WST), and Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) – are premised on a structuralist perspective which overextend the notion of capitalism and under examine the sphere of production, rendering divergent and distinct strategies of European colonialism a homogenous and under-historicised process. Embracing theoretical innovations from Geopolitical Marxism (GPM), we dispute this unitary logic of expansion, instead applying a radical historicist methodology to demonstrate that British and Spanish colonial strategies in the Americas (intra-imperial free trade vs. mercantilism) were shaped by nationally specific class relations (capitalism vs. feudalism/absolutism), generating unique patterns of settlement on the ground (mineral extraction vs. cash-crop production). Promoting historicism thus allows Marxist International Relations to better recognise "the 'making of' the international order" during the period of European colonial expansion from the 16th century onwards, and, in doing so, further understand its enduring legacies.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, International Political Economy, Socialism/Marxism, Colonialism, International Historical Sociology, and Radical Historicism
Political Geography:
South America, Central America, and North America

8. Perspectives on the 1972–1973 massacre and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Burundi

Author:
Isidore Nsengiyumva
Publication Date:
07-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
Abstract:
How do we repair and reconcile a society broken multiple times by years of political violence and cyclic mass atrocity events? Reconciliation processes in post-conflict societies tend to favour state-led peace processes to aid individuals and communities alike to heal, make sense of the past while also imagining and forging an interdependent future together. The Burundi Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established in 2014, has the mandate to investigate past crimes and mass violence events dating from 1885 to the 4 December 2008 ceasefire with the aim of aiding truth-telling, reconciliation and transitional justice. The paper comments on how the TRC shapes ongoing healing, reconciliation and transitional justice efforts in post-conflict Burundi. This paper uses desk-based research to draw insights from documented works and reports of the TRC between 2018 and 2022. The TRC’s findings sparked multiple narratives and public discourse in the Senate which further led to the re-examination of the 1972‒1973 massacre, the legacy of colonisation and its impact in cementing ethnic divisions that led to cyclic mass violence in Burundi.
Topic:
Transitional Justice, Colonialism, Violence, Reconciliation, Narrative, and Truth and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Africa and Burundi

9. Race Politics and Colonial Legacies: France, Africa and the Middle East

Author:
Hisham Aïdi, Marc Lynch, Zachariah Mampilly, Baba Adou, and Oumar Ba
Publication Date:
05-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
In February 2020 – the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic – the Project on Middle East Political Science held a preliminary meeting at Columbia University in New York to explore the origins of the Africa-Middle East divides that treat North Africa as part of the Middle East and neglect states such as Sudan and Mauritania. Columbia was an appropriate place to begin such a dialogue. Two decades ago, when two of us (Aidi and Mampilly) were graduate students at Columbia, the Institute of African Studies was in serious crisis. The Ugandan political theorist Mahmood Mamdani arrived and launched an initiative to decolonize the study of Africa to counter Hegel’s partition of Africa by transcending the Saharan and red Sea divides, and by underscoring Africa’s links to Arabia, Asia and the New World. To that end, we co-organized a second conference on racial formations in Africa and the Middle East looking at race-making across these two regions comparatively, including the border zones often left out of both African and Middle Eastern Studies: the Sudans, Amazigh-speaking areas in the Sahel, Arabic speaking areas on the Swahili coast and Zanzibar. This workshop represents the third in our series of transregional studies across the Africa-Middle East divide.
Topic:
Politics, Post Colonialism, Race, History, Colonialism, Islamophobia, and Racialization
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, Europe, Sudan, Middle East, France, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Mauritania, and United States of America

10. One Universal Civilization: Superiority and Eurocentric Conception of the Rest

Author:
Fadi Zatari and Omar Fili
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Sakarya University (SAU)
Abstract:
The prevailing notion suggests a universal or human civilization, positing all as subsets of a shared human experience. This article critiques this perspective, arguing that the contemporary concept of human civilization is predominantly synonymous with Western civilization. This article will elucidate its argument by drawing upon the insights of Western scholars in the field of civilizational studies. Subsequently, it will undertake a critical examination and assessment of the Western discourse, evaluating its outcomes as evidenced in contemporary foreign policy shaped by the historical backdrop of colonialism. The article uses direct quotations and historical narratives to not only scrutinize the inclination to depict Western civilization as singular, extraordinary, and unparalleled but also to highlight the persistent tendency to undervalue the importance of other civilizations, often termed as 'the rest'. It relies on primary materials authored by Western scholars concerning the notion of civilization, supplemented by secondary references citing influential intellectuals in the field. In addition to primary sources such as interviews and contemporary statements regarding pertinent events, secondary sources encompass literature on civilization within the framework of global south studies. The notion of Western civilization is depicted as a constructed political construct utilized to perpetuate Western hegemony, engender othering, and perpetuate colonialist agendas. This dynamic persists even in the post-Cold War era, wherein ongoing Western hegemony perpetuates dominance over non-Western powers. Instances reflecting this neo-colonialist paradigm include the US intervention in Iraq, the conflict in Afghanistan, and the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza as of late 2023.
Topic:
Colonialism, Civilization, Eurocentrism, and Superiority
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus