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Colonialism Quotes

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

WarPeaceJusticeVietnamAntiwarColonialismPacifism
Author:Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Madame, he said, when Aunt Theodosia finished her story and flashed her famous medal around the room, do you realize King Leopold cut the hands off workers who, in the opinion of his plantation overseers did not fulfill their rubber quota? Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot who worked to death and brutalized and eventually exterminated thousands and thousands of African peoples.”

RacismCapitalismColonialismBrutalityComplicityDespotic
Book:The Color Purple
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“South Earth Summon (Naskaristana 2800) I am the Son of South Earth, my spice-tolerance is superhuman, but lies-tolerance is nonexistent - my resilience knows no mortal limit, but I have zero tolerance for intolerance. I speak more languages than most northerners, I've devoured more scriptures than most northerners, I have assimilated more cultures and disciplines, which is why I say, there is no north, no south, when it comes to virtues and vices of human nature. So I'm not saying South is better than the North, but reparations are foundational to civilization; enlightenment was born in the South of Earth - math, medicine, poetry, philosophy, theology, almost everything was invented in the South, then the Northerners barged in, and pretended they invented astrophysics. I come from the other half of the world that has been systematically reduced to footnotes of northernized history normalized as world history, now I am a bigger giant than all your white giants combined, now I speak, and you listen.”

ColonialismImperialismWorld HistoryDecolonizationReparationsCultural AppropriationWhitewashGlobal SouthAncient CivilizationScientific History
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“Unified Global South (Sonnet 2687-2688) White bias doesn't affect only white people, it affects colored people as well. For example, US citizens can practically travel to the entire world without visa, despite being the most undeserving, while rightful Africans cannot travel even within the continent without visa. This is why I say, white is not a color, white is a mindset of exploitation. If you want to rescue your plundered dignity, first you gotta decolonize your own mindset. Philosophy alone doesn't advance a society, you gotta build the infrastructure for it. For example, make the entire Global South Visa Free for all its citizens, and I guarantee, within a hundred years the Global South will be the Powergrid of the Human Race, like it once was, until the predators of Europe contaminated the world with their unwelcome touch. Foster the psychology, policy will follow. Foster the intent, intelligence will follow. The ultimate mission is a unified humanity, but practical integration of the human race beyond color and culture is not possible until we decontaminate the planet of every last trace of colonial vice legislated as virtue.”

ColonialismInfrastructureGeopoliticsDecolonizationNation BuildingCultural AppropriationPan AfricanismGlobal SouthColonial MentalityPan African
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Colonials Go Home! (Forest Fascist Reserve, Sonnet) Colonials go home, not to England or Europe, but straight to the jungle! Only place wild animals are beautiful, is in the dog-eat-dog spaces of the wild. Don't worry, once in a while we'll visit, like we visit any of your fellow animals. If anything, visiting you will inspire us further, to never deviate from integration. Nevertheless, there is still another way, you don't need to be deported back to the jungle. If there is even a smidgen of humanity in you, now is the time to bring it out, and get help. Otherwise, we can easily trace your family tree, back to the time your family lived in it. Once we do, all nine billion of us will chip in, and hire a couple of cargo planes to deport all you bigots to a forest fascist reserve.”

Social JusticeNationalismBigotryFascismIntoleranceColonialismHate CrimeNeonaziFascistAnti Fascism
Book:Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience
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“Crazy Horse was dead. He was brave and good and wise. He never wanted anything but to save his people, and he fought the Wasichus only when they came to kill us in our own country. He was only thirty years old. They could not kill him in battle. They had to lie to him and kill him that way. I cried all night, and so did my father.”

DeathColonialismImperialismNative AmericansLakotaAmerican IndiansCrazy HorseBlack ElkOglala Lakota
Book:Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
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“The Whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the Agikuyu. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off. The hot water must have gone into his head. Nevertheless, his words about a woman on the throne echoed something in the heart, deep down in their history. It was many, many years ago. Then women ruled the land of the Agikuyu. Men had no property, they were only there to serve the whims and needs of the women. Those were hard years. So they waited for women to go to war, they plotted a revolt, taking an oath of secrecy to keep them bound each to each in the common pursuit of freedom. They would sleep with all the women at once, for didn't they know the heroines would return hungry for love and relaxation? Fate did the rest; women were pregnant; the takeover met with little resistance.”

ColonialismAfricaKenyaAfrican LiteratureKenyan LiteraturePost Colonial Literature
Book:A Grain of Wheat
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“Serve Britannia (The Sonnet) Let us build a new Britain, A Britain with actual heart's beauty, Where we shall right our wrongs, Instead of boasting our atrocities. Let us build a new Britain, Where commoners are king and queen, Where unlike our tribal ancestors, Our habit is not occupation but caring. Let us herald a new Britain, Where there is no exit only inclusion, Where no one bows to no one for honor, And each lives with self-determination. Serve Britannia! Britannia, serve as aid. Britain never again shall make others slave.”

ColonialismBritish EmpireBritish HistoryUnited KingdomBrexitDivide And ConquerBritish PoliticsAbolish MonarchyBritish ImperialismBritish Literature
Book:Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race
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“The anti-clericalism of some Belgians falsified history by attributing the low level of education to "the racism of the missionaries", while it was they who provided education and educated the African elite with the first university priest Stefano Kaoze in 1917”

EducationRacismColonialismCongoBelgiumBelgian CongoBelgiansMissionaries
Book:The Greatest Fake News of All Time: Leopold II, The Genius and Builder King of Lumumba
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“In short, there is a great deal of stagnation among the settlers and the medium-sized enterprises. The native there is often mistreated, exploited and has no medical care. In the Menteau farm, we observed a considerable number of varicose ulcers, which hardly exists at UM and La Forminière. There is no dispensary on this farm. The small settler can succeed in the Congo, one can doubt it, he lives by the exploitation of the native whom he makes work like a convict and moreover, he takes back his meager salary by selling him bad goods. The settler is often doubled as a trafficker, they complement each other, the system truck. Besides, the whole colonial edifice rests on the negro's shoulders. He alone is the source of profit, thanks to the excessive exploitation of which he is the object. In a colony, where there are few transport routes, where those that exist demand exorbitant prices, where there is little or no mechanical handling, no workhorse, only the degradation of the workforce - work can maintain the commercial level of the cost price. Large companies have the merit, through their tools, their medical assistance, their works of providing more treatment and of not wasting manpower.”

ColonialismCongoBelgiumBelgian Congo
Author:King Albert I of Belgium
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“Congo reformers like Morel, much to the annoyance of Hochschild, advocated either German or British colonization of the area (Congo). Morel’s view, according to Hochschild, speaking ex cathedra from the hallowed seat of modern California, “seems surprising to us today” and was among his “faults” and “political limitations.” Quite the opposite. The moment the Belgians colonized the Congo in 1908, a miraculous improvement was noted on all fronts. Seeking to debunk colonialism, Hochschild’s book demonstrates the opposite. This is the first and biggest lie at the heart of King Leopold’s Ghost.”

ColonialismLeopold IiBelgiumAdam HochschildBelgiansLeopold S GhostBruce GilleyKing Leopold S GhostEdmund Dene Morel
Book:King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.
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“Constitutional government, especially in a small country, takes a great deal of time, and causes sight to be lost of the questions, which lone can secure to the country a political future. I have many a time that I saw you feeling more and more interest therein, and I am very anxious that it should be so, for it is time to be seriously occupied with those questions; otherwise Belgium will find herself at the tail of all other countries. I have heard that an association of German princes is actively occupied in an attempt at colonization in Texas…”

United StatesGermanyTexasColonialismBelgiumColonizationLeopold ILeopold I Of Belgium
Author:Leopold I
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“One of the conceits of forgetting in the United States is the idea that colonialism ended in 1776 when the new country declared independence. Central American countries, too, celebrate their independence heroes and wars as historical milestones. But in both regions, the colonial roots ran deep and profoundly shaped the new countries. In the United States, independence meant a surge of settler colonial expansion that incorporated Central America into its sights. In Central America, colonial racial hierarchies shaped the new nations even as the United States imposed new forms of neocolonial rule.”

HistoryUnited StatesColonialismCentral America
Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
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“This is exactly what it means to be caught in the colonial matrix of power. It is to be constantly suffering from lack of options, and constantly finding oneself in such a position that all the choices available have already been chosen for you. As a result, you are constantly trapped and unable to think or do otherwise. You are consistently deprived of the possibility of working with other possibilities.”

KnowledgeColonialismImperialismCritical ThinkingCurriculumDecolonizationDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“For me, to decolonize knowledge production does not mean to dismiss or never engage with Western knowledge. Rather, as many decolonial thinkers have repeatedly pointed out, it means that the terms of engagement must change. It means that we should not only engage with Western knowledge, but also deeply engage with knowledge from all over the world. It means that we must not use Western knowledge as a compass to measure the value of other forms of knowledge produced around the world…[T]o decolonize knowledge production is to reject and dismantle the Western hegemony of knowledge production; the Western control on what counts and what does not count as knowledge.”

ThinkingKnowledgeCreativityColonialismCurriculumDecolonizationHegemonyDecoloniality
Author:Louis Yako
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“One of the most serious damages caused by the domination and hegemony of Western knowledge is that it makes you dismiss knowledge from every other part of the world – even your own – as less than or inferior. To decolonize, then, means to believe in our ability to be producers not just consumers of knowledge. In any walk of life, being just a consumer carries the danger of being deprived and impoverished as soon as the suppliers choose to block their production from you (be it knowledge, goods, mobility, and so on), which is precisely what happens when the West practices its favorite vicious game of sanctioning and cornering any country or group of people that dares to challenge its hegemony, or seek to change the rules of the game as we know it.”

KnowledgeColonialismImperialismCurriculumDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“If I could summarize everything I have learned from my praxis, it is this: Every human being can and must contribute to this world. I believe that contributing to the world in meaningful ways is non-negotiable. Yet at the same time, most people never realize their dreams of making meaningful contributions. Most people I have met in most places, including in the West itself, feel unfulfilled. They feel alienated from what they love and what they do, regardless of where they are or what they do. Fulfilment seems to be reserved solely for the few privileged elites primarily interested in dominating everything under the sun, including knowledge production.”

PowerSelf RealizationFulfillmentColonialismImperialismCurriculumDecolonizationDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“While the imperial university continues to pay lip service to letting the subaltern speak, make no mistake: the subalterns have never been silent. They have always been thinking, writing, doing, and sensing. The problem has always been with the shortsightedness and racism of the colonizers and the imperial spaces where certain knowledge gets produced and promoted, while other knowledge gets silenced, mutilated, and buried under the rubble of indifference and arrogance.”

KnowledgeColonialismImperialismCurriculumHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge ProductionSubaltern
Author:Louis Yako
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“Dismantling and destroying Iraqi education was not just ‘collateral damage’ from the occupation: it was part and parcel of the occupation forces’ deliberate efforts to restructure the Iraqi state, society, and identity as many testimonies in this study make clear.”

WarConflictColonialismImperialismIraq WarCurriculumHigher EducationMiddle East Conflict
Book:Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile
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“كلما ازداد تعدي أوروبا على الشرق في القرن التاسع عشر ازدادت ثقة الجمهور [الغربي] بالإستشراق. لكنه إذا كانت هذه الزيادة في الثقة قد تزامنت مع نقصان الإصالة، فلا ينبغي لنا أن ندهش كثيراً، لأن أسلوب الإستشراق منذ البداية كان يقوم على إعادة البناء والتكرار”

EuropeWestEastColonialismOrientalism
Book:Orientalism
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“Western borders are currently being reasserted in the context of economic crisis, to protect the global ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’. And reactionary feminism is complicit with this capitalist and neo-colonial project. It foregrounds narratives of scarcity; it claims resources and support for the ‘good’ women rather than the ‘bad’.”

ColonialismSex WorkFar RightWhite FeminismTransphobia
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“Hiba S. is one of the pioneer Iraqi women academics and authors in the field of media and journalism, currently exiled in Amman. During a visit to her office in summer 2014, Hiba shared that the early days of the occupation in 2003 were the most difficult she had ever experienced. She recollected: ‘I was sitting in my garden smoking when I suddenly saw a huge American tank driving through the street. I saw a Black soldier on the top of the tank. He looked at me and did the victory sign with his fingers. Had I had a pistol in my hand, I would have immediately shot myself in the head right then and there. The pain I felt upon seeing that image is indescribable. I felt as though all the years we had spent building our country, educating our students to make them better humans were gone with the wind.’ Hiba’s description carries strong feelings of loss, defeat, and humiliation. Also significant in her narrative is that the first American soldier she encountered in post-invasion Iraq was a Black soldier making the victory sign. This is perhaps one of the most ironic and paradoxical images of the occupation. A Black soldier from a historically and consistently oppressed group in American society, who, one might imagine had no choice but to join the military, coming to Iraq and making the victory sign to a humiliated Iraqi academic whose country was ravaged by war. In a way, this image is worthy of a long pause. It is an encounter of two oppressed and defeated groups of people—Iraqis and African Americans meeting as enemies in a warzone. But, if one digs deeper, are these people really 'enemies' or allies struggling against the same oppressors? Do the real enemies ever come to the battlefield? Or do they hide behind closed doors planning wars and invasions while sending other 'oppressed' and 'diverse' faces to the battlefield to fight wars on their behalf? Hiba then recalled the early months of the occupation at the University of Baghdad where she taught. She noted that the first thing the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) tried to do was to change the curriculum Iraqi academics had designed, taught, and improved over the decades. While the Americans succeeded in doing this at the primary and high school levels, Hiba believed that they did not succeed as much at the university level. Iraqi professors knew better than to allow the 'Americanization of the curriculum' to take place. 'We knew the materials we were teaching were excellent even compared to international standards,' she said. 'They [the occupiers] tried to immediately inject subjects like "democracy" and "human rights" as if we Iraqis didn’t know what these concepts meant.' It is clear from Hiba’s testimony, also articulated by several other interviewees, that the Iraqi education system was one of the occupying forces’ earliest targets in their desire to reshape and restructure Iraqi society and peoples’ collective consciousness.”

WarColonialismImperialismIraq WarHigher EducationDecolonizationHegemonyMiddle East ConflictMiddle Eastern Studies
Book:Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile
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“Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They’ve lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years.”

ChristianityTraditionIslamConformityColonialismMistrustWestern CivilizationDecadenceHegemonyMoroccoSocial ConventionWesternizationFrench MoroccoSocial Pressures
Book:The Spider's House
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“Decolonizing knowledge shouldn’t put us in the position of only producing knowledge as a reaction to Western knowledge. Our existence should not become one in which everything we produce is to justify our intellectual existence vis-à-vis the West. It means to produce what we see as important, fit, and nurturing to our communities, countries, and cultures, in separation from the West and its colonial and imperial agenda. This way, we will ensure to not waste our energy in simply reacting to the West to justify the value of our contribution to knowledge.”

ThinkingWisdomCreativityColonialismImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialitySubaltern
Author:Louis Yako
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“Second…decolonizing is about reeducating ourselves in ways that allow us to reconnect with our own souls, minds, and bodies. To rebuild all that has been damaged by the colonial wounds and the disciplinary institutions we dealt with throughout our lives. It is indeed about reeducating ourselves in such ways that we realize our full potential to contribute to our communities and to the wider world. We must learn (or relearn) how to harvest the fruit of knowledge from every part of the world, not just the West.”

WisdomKnowledgeSelf WorthColonialismImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonial Option
Author:Louis Yako
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“One of the biggest and most invisible – which in the long run becomes visible— wounds of coloniality is to make those at the receiving end of it question themselves; their physical, mental, and spiritual value and meaning; their ability to think, invent, innovate, and theorize. It happens so slowly, viciously, and unconsciously that many people suddenly see themselves at a point where the only expertise and knowledge they deem valuable come to them from the heart of Europe and North America. The colonized, slowly but surely, become at once the dagger and the wound to themselves. We come to such a place where we cooperate with the dagger against our own wounds. It takes a long time and reflection to realize that the wound (the colonized mind) will never stop bleeding so long as it is cooperating with the dagger (coloniality).”

ThinkingWisdomCulturePowerColonialismImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“For example, the colonized people have ‘regimes’ and ‘dictators’, whereas the West has ‘democracies’; the people in the ‘first world’ ‘tolerate’ cancer chemotherapy and ‘tolerate’ refugees or other religions and beliefs; if you go to work and settle in the West, you are an ‘immigrant’, but when Westerners come to plunder your country and get overpaid jobs (often despite mediocre qualifications), they are ‘expats’; and on goes the list of how we devalue ourselves and glorify our killers and plunderers without even realizing it simply through the language we use daily.”

ColonialismExploitationImperialismThird WorldDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityPlundering
Author:Louis Yako
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“The role of the academy as a colonial and imperial space par excellence, which in the age globalization and corporatization of practically everything, has become the biggest enemy of knowledge and the decolonial option. In fact, the academy has become a space that instead of creating options, is doing everything in its power to deny most people options and keep itself as the only game in town.”

WritingKnowledgeColonialismImperialismAcademiaCorporate CultureHegemonyAcademicsDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“I hope it is clear to anyone who has a shred of critical thinking skills that those who fund research projects in Western universities are anything but kind-hearted and generous, and that their intentions are anything but benevolent or intended solely for the objective advancement of knowledge. It is usually more about controlling who gets to produce certain knowledge about others, because nothing maintains the myth of exceptionalism like ensuring that knowledge only comes from the West, and particularly from selected or even appointed individuals.”

WritingPowerResearchColonialismPhilanthropyImperialismAcademiaHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“Thank You Hitler (The Sonnet) Thank you Hitler for showing the worst of humanity, I am sorry that we couldn't place you on a pedestal. Things would've been different if you were not a nobody, Particularly if you had a background royally honorable. Apparently if you have an empire to your name, You can get away with the most heinous of atrocities. If you have that blue blood running through your veins, Tyranny, oppression, are deemed as acts of great dignity. The common notion is, everything nazi is sick and sinister, At the same time, everything british is great and glorious, Despite the fact that it was the british empire that was, An international force of evil unlike the nazi bastards. Nazism is an enemy of humanity, there is no doubt. Only if we felt so for the empire as we do for the krauts!”

TyrannyOppressionColonialismNazismBritish EmpireHumanist PoetryNazi GermanyBritish ImperialismEast India CompanyBengal Famine
Book:Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race
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“How come Hitler is a bigger villain than the British monarchy, when Hitler invaded only 11 countries, while the British empire invaded 90 percent of the globe, that is, over 170 countries, and caused multiple times the massacre than the Nazis did!”

ColonialismImperialismGreat BritainBritish EmpireRoyal FamilyAbolish MonarchyCoronationBritish ImperialismBritish MonarchyHeil Hitler
Book:Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch
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“How come Hitler is a bigger villain than the British monarchy, when Hitler invaded only 11 countries, while the British empire invaded 90 percent of the globe, that is, over 170 countries, and caused multiple times the massacre than the Nazis did! And while modern Germans are well aware of the nation's horrific past, and try their best to right the wrongs, like civilized, conscientious humans ought to, in barbarian britain however, over half the population still stand proudly behind the monarchy, let alone recognize the animal filth it represents, which till this day is unparalleled by any other animal regime. Now to the reason why Hitler is officially a villain, but not the British monarchy. Hitler invaded white countries, while the British empire invaded mostly colored countries - and since colored life is cheap, but white life is priceless, Hitler is branded a villain, while the Brits are designated "explorers" and "bringers of civilization", a tradition which has been proudly inherited by the modern day British Empire - the United States of America.”

ColonialismImperialismGreat BritainBritish EmpireCoronationBritish ImperialismBritish MonarchyHeil Hitler
Book:Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch
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“Hochschild insists on calling the EIC an example of “colonialism”, stretching the term beyond its meaning. European colonies were governed by and accountable to the institutions of a liberal state at home. That was the fundamental structural fact of a European colony, meaning the characteristic that explains its behavior. This fundamental fact was absent from the EIC. This explains its evolution and eventual takeover by Belgium. The EIC was a second-best solution to the absence of colonialism. Hochschild will have none of it because his intention all along was to use his tale as an indictment of European colonialism (“A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa”, as the subtitle put it). A fevered ideological agenda does not collapse a valid conceptual distinction.”

ColonialismCongoCongo Free StateAdam HochschildLeopold S GhostBruce GilleyKing Leopold Ii
Book:The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind
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“Comparing the EIC to the Nazis is grotesque. Hochschild has nothing to say about this odious rhetorical maneuver, an insult not just to Jews but to the Congolese who fought and remained loyal to the memory of the EIC. Referring to my essay as “polemical” in defense of a book that makes regular references to Auschwitz is rich indeed.”

ColonialismCongoCongo Free StateAdam HochschildLeopold S GhostBruce GilleyKing Leopold Ii
Book:The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind
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“Hochschild’s sweet reason in his letter on the complex question of European colonialism appears to have abandoned him while writing the book (or is newfound). “Communism, Fascism, and European colonialism each asserted the right to totally control its subjects’ lives,” he wrote grandly in the book. How is it possible that he now writes about the “subtle and complex business” of assessing colonialism?”

ColonialismCongoCongo Free StateAdam HochschildLeopold S GhostBruce GilleyKing Leopold Ii
Book:The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind
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“I am glad that Hochschild admits that the photographs in his book are fake. Still, to his point, I do not doubt that the traditional African hippo whip was used by EIC officials. Nor do I doubt that chains were used to confine prisoners in the EIC when prisons were not available. Nor do I doubt that the Arab tradition of chopping off the hands of fallen enemies persisted well into the EIC era, even among natives employed by the government or concession companies. So what? If Hochschild’s argument is that the area should have been colonized from the start (as his hero Edmund Morel argued), I would agree. If his argument is that the EIC should have been financed by liquor imports or village hut taxes rather than the 40 hours per month labor requirement for those who could not pay individual taxes, I will side with the King.”

ColonialismCongoCongo Free StateAdam HochschildLeopold S GhostBruce GilleyKing Leopold Ii
Book:The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind
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