Colonization and Imperialism in Libraries


Book Description

Former university lecturer and Caribbean immigrant Mark-Shane Scale offers an unsettling look at how the centuries-old legacy of colonialism and imperialism continues to haunt one of the most seemingly innocuous and unexpected of spaces: the world’s modern libraries. Library and information sciences emerged from a noble commitment to making knowledge more easily accessible to the world. Yet, empowering and global library institutions with the ability to facilitate intercultural communication, social cohesion, and conflict resolution, have simultaneously been weaponized as instruments of ideological and cultural propaganda throughout the ages. A meticulous analysis of historical and current library systems and practices crescendos to a visionary proposal for paving the way ahead: a holistic, integrated approach to finally decolonize global libraries in a way that builds an ever-evolving archive of human knowledge and human experience that is truly inclusive of all voices—indigenous, colonized, formerly colonized, and immigrant voices alike. At the height of the information age, this book is a foundational must-read for all librarians, library school students, and library users around the world, a contemporary perspective that boldly lays out a timely and much-needed reform to an institution that might otherwise risk its relevance to the modern global landscape.




Cataloguing Culture


Book Description

How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations – much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how colonialism has operated through the technologies of museum bureaucracy: the ledger book, the card catalogue, and eventually the database. As Indigenous communities reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on the importance of documentation for access to and return of cultural heritage.




The Sound of Silence


Book Description

Colonial encounters between indigenous peoples and European state powers are overarching themes in the historical archaeology of the modern era, and postcolonial historical archaeology has repeatedly emphasized the complex two-way nature of colonial encounters. This volume examines common trajectories in indigenous colonial histories, and explores new ways to understand cultural contact, hybridization and power relations between indigenous peoples and colonial powers from the indigenous point of view. By bringing together a wide geographical range and combining multiple sources such as oral histories, historical records, and contemporary discourses with archaeological data, the volume finds new multivocal interpretations of colonial histories.




Possessing the World


Book Description

Based on an impressive body of information and data, this volume recounts the history of five continents over a long stretch of time and in a comparative approach. From the beginning of European expansion the question was posed: what were the "empire tools" that gave Europe its military superiority, even before the industrial revolution? What was it that enabled Europeans to withstand life-threatening tropical diseases and to control indigenous populations? This book gives a fresh and wide-ranging view of the construction and collapse of the modern colonial empires of Europe, the United States of America and Japan.




Echoes of Empire


Book Description

How does our colonial past echo through today's global politics? How have former empire-builders sought vindication or atonement, and formerly colonized states reversal or retribution? This groundbreaking book presents a panoramic view of attitudes to empires past and present, seen not only through the hard politics of international power structures but also through the nuances of memory, historiography and national and minority cultural identities. Bringing together leading historians, poitical scientists and international relations scholars from across the globe, Echoes of Empire emphasizes Europe's colonial legacy whilst also highlighting the importance of non-European power centres- Ottoman, Russian, Chinese, Japanese- in shaping world politics, then and now. Echoes of Empire bridges the divide between disciplines to trace the global routes travelled by objects, ideas and people and forms a radically different notion of the term 'empire' itself. This will be an essential companion to courses on international relations and imperial history as well as a fascinating read for anyone interested in Western hegemony, North-South relations, global power shifts and the longue duree.




Modern Imperialism and Colonialism


Book Description

For courses in Imperialism/Colonialism as well as the second half of the World History survey course, this textbook addresses modern imperialism and colonialism from a truly global and holistic perspective. From the formation of centralized gunpowder empires in Eurasia and parts of Africa to the demise of the bi-polar Cold War world, Modern Imperialism and Colonialism investigates our evolving understanding of the origins, nature, mechanisms, and demise of modern empires. It evaluates empires as structures and also explores the doctrines, ideologies, and practices of imperialism and colonial rule.




Navigating Colonial Orders


Book Description

Norwegians in colonial Africa and Oceania had varying aspirations and adapted in different ways to changing social, political and geographical circumstances in foreign, colonial settings. They included Norwegian shipowners, captains, and diplomats; traders and whalers along the African coast and in Antarctica; large-scale plantation owners in Mozambique and Hawai’i; big business men in South Africa; jacks of all trades in the Solomon Islands; timber merchants on Zanzibar’ coffee farmers in Kenya; and King Leopold’s footmen in Congo. This collection reveals narratives of the colonial era that are often ignored or obscured by the national histories of former colonial powers. It charts the entrepreneurial routes chosen by various Norwegians and the places they ventured, while demonstrating the importance of recognizing the complicity of such “non-colonial colonials” for understanding the complexity of colonial history.




Pollution Is Colonialism


Book Description

In Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations. Liboiron draws on their work in the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)—an anticolonial science laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada—to illuminate how pollution is not a symptom of capitalism but a violent enactment of colonial land relations that claim access to Indigenous land. Liboiron's creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. In this way, their methodology demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible but is currently being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world.




European Colonialism Since 1700


Book Description

The only textbook to survey the major Atlantic, Asian and African empires of Europe, from 1700 through decolonization in 1945.




Coconut Colonialism


Book Description

A new history of globalization and empire at the crossroads of the Pacific. Located halfway between HawaiÔi and Australia, the islands of Samoa have long been a center of Oceanian cultural and economic exchange. Accustomed to exercising agency in trade and diplomacy, Samoans found themselves enmeshed in a new form of globalization after missionaries and traders arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century. As the great powers of Europe and America competed to bring Samoa into their orbits, Germany and the United States eventually agreed to divide the islands for their burgeoning colonial holdings. In Coconut Colonialism, Holger Droessler examines the Samoan response through the lives of its workers. Ordinary SamoansÑsome on large plantations, others on their own small holdingsÑpicked and processed coconuts and cocoa, tapped rubber trees, and built roads and ports that brought cash crops to Europe and North America. At the same time, Samoans redefined their own way of being in the worldÑwhat Droessler terms ÒOceanian globalityÓÑto challenge German and American visions of a global economy that in fact served only the needs of Western capitalism. Through cooperative farming, Samoans contested the exploitative wage-labor system introduced by colonial powers. The islanders also participated in ethnographic shows around the world, turning them into diplomatic missions and making friends with fellow colonized peoples. Samoans thereby found ways to press their own agendas and regain a degree of independence. Based on research in multiple languages and countries, Coconut Colonialism offers new insights into the global history of labor and empire at the dawn of the twentieth century.