All posts tagged: Colonial

Cyprus demands talks on Britain’s ‘colonial’ military bases

Cyprus demands talks on Britain’s ‘colonial’ military bases

Published by Sam Flores

Cyprus will demand negotiations about the future of Britain’s “colonial” military bases on the island, its president has said. Nikos Christodoulides said that when the US-Iran war was over, he wanted an “open and frank discussion” with Sir Keir Starmer about RAF Akrotiri on the south coast and Dhekelia in the east of the island. Debate about the status of the two sovereign bases has been reignited by the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. Britain has faced questions about whether its forces are capable of protecting the two facilities after a drone strike hit a hangar used to house two US U-2 spy planes at Akrotiri. The Navy eventually dispatched HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer, to protect the island, but was beaten there by the French, which had also offered to defend its European Union (EU) ally. Arriving at a summit of EU leaders on Thursday, Mr Christodoulides told reporters: “When this unfortunate situation in Cyprus is over, we need to have an open and frank discussion with the British government with regard to …

Morocco’s old colonial wounds reopened by tribute to French army auxiliaries

Morocco’s old colonial wounds reopened by tribute to French army auxiliaries

Published by Sam Flores

Goumiers, Moroccan tribal auxiliary soldiers who fought for the French army, march in Kenitra, north of Rabat, Morocco, in September 1949. AFP The new addition was the smallest French military burial plot in Morocco: 15 graves of Moroccan goumiers, 20th-century Moroccan auxiliary soldiers, whose bodies had been laid to rest there, in Alnif, an isolated town in Morocco’s High Atlas region, east of Marrakech, nearly a century ago. The unknown soldiers buried there had died in 1933, likely during the battles of Bougafer, a steep rise in the Djebel Saghro mountain range where the French army and its local goumier auxiliaries faced off against the Ait Atta tribe of the Amazigh ethnic minority, during the French campaign dubbed the “pacification” war. By the end of this nearly 30-year war (1907-1934), France had subdued the last pockets of resistance to its conquest of Morocco. The bodies of some Moroccan civilians who worked for the French army were also buried near the goumiers, along with some Alnif residents. The cemetery and its 72 graves were closed in …

What is really behind the West’s colonial nostalgia | Opinions

What is really behind the West’s colonial nostalgia | Opinions

Published by Sam Flores

For many years, the global “rules-based order” was presented as a benign system of global governance established by the West. True, its origins went back to the colonial world and many of its systems reflected colonial racial inequalities, but it was held up as the harbinger of global prosperity and order. In it, the West had magically transformed from a colonial villain to a saviour. But for much of the Global South, the era looked very different. It was experienced as genocide, plunder and displacement. Across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, colonial administrations disrupted and suppressed local systems and industries, engineered cash-crop economies vulnerable to global price shocks, and redrew political authority to prioritise imperial control. Eventually, demands grew for a more accurate accounting of the catastrophe the West inflicted on the rest, for acknowledgment of its historic crimes from extermination to enslavement, and for recompense. That coincided with a reordering of global power that left the West increasingly unsure of itself – no longer the saviours of us, the good guys of history they had long …

A London beat framed by colonial history : NPR

A London beat framed by colonial history : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

EMILY KWONG, HOST: Before she was NPR’s London correspondent, Lauren Frayer was based in Mumbai, covering India. LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: And in India, I was kind of always aware of being a white Westerner in a country with an Anglo-colonial past. So when I turned to, like, preparing for an assignment to cover the U.K., I had absorbed a view of the U.K. through Indian eyes, through the eyes of the colonized. KWONG: Oh, interesting. Right. FRAYER: And yeah. Like, I think arriving in London, I felt like I was, in some ways, going into the dark heart, the root of empire. KWONG: And 2023 was an ineresting year in the U.K. The British prime minster of the time, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian descent, and the Scottish leader, Humza Yousaf, of Pakistani descent. FRAYER: When the British Empire gave up colonial India in 1947, it partitionied… KWONG: Yes. FRAYER: …Colonial India into India and Pakistan. KWONG: Right. FRAYER: So when I arrived here, there was a push for Scottish independence, and people used to …

MAGA wants to be a colonial power

MAGA wants to be a colonial power

Published by Sam Flores

MAGA is rapidly descending into 21st-century colonial fantasy, dressed up in the language of national security and draped in the flag of patriotism. “America First” is currently being reimagined as the public resurrection of a colonial project. Along with Saturday’s military assault in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, which killed around 75 people according to an estimate by U.S. officials, Donald Trump has also bombed targets in Nigeria, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia in his first year back in office. Now his administration is openly encroaching upon Greenland, a NATO ally, which is finally raising bipartisan alarm bells on Capitol Hill.  The resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine sits at the heart of Trump’s imperial project. He has openly embraced this 200-year-old policy, which essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be the domain of the United States. “We sort of forgot about it,” the president said. “It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the …

Lost Spanish Colonial Mission on Texas Frontier Is Rediscovered

Lost Spanish Colonial Mission on Texas Frontier Is Rediscovered

Published by José Betancourt

The long-lost mission of Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo, one of the earliest outposts of Europe’s colonial frontier in Texas, has been rediscovered. An archaeology team from Texas Tech University, in collaboration with Texas Historical Commission archaeologists, found the site in Jackson County, Texas, on a private ranch near the Presidio la Bahía and Fort St. Louis. The mission was established in the 1680s by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, a French explorer and trader instrumental in the French colonization of North America and, by more incidental means, the United States’s claim to Texas. Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo was among the most highly successful efforts to convert the native Karankawa tribe. However, the venture ultimately was his undoing: He was killed during an expedition to locate the mouth of the Mississippi, while the Karankawa destroyed the colony, leaving its members dead, scattered, or abducted. Related Articles Spain occupied the site during its missionary campaign in North America. Still, the settlement was short-lived, and the entire mission was lost when Spain began withdrawing from …