Book Description

This book tackles the historical relationship between colonial violence and monuments in Africa, Europe, the Indian subcontinent, North America, and Australia. In this volume, the authors ask similar questions about monuments in each location and answer them following a parallel structure that encourages comparison, highlighting common themes. The chapters track the contested histories of monuments, scrutinizing their narrative power and examining the violent events behind them. It is both about the history of monuments and the histories the monuments are meant to commemorate. It is interested in this nuanced relationship between violence, monuments, memory, and colonial legacies; the ways different facets of colonial violence—conquest, resistance, massacres, genocides, internments, and injustices—have been commemorated (or haven’t been), how they live in the present, and how pertinent they are in the present to different peoples. Legacies of colonial violence, and continued reinterpretations of the past and its meanings remain very much ongoing. They are still very much unsettled questions in large parts of the world. Colonial Violence and Monuments in Global History will be essential reading for students, scholars, and researchers of political science, history, sociology and colonial studies. The book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.