Ayahs Abroad: Colonial Nannies Cross The Empire
South Asian maids and nannies journeyed to Britain by the thousands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with returning colonials.
The Delhi Durbars
Elaborate demonstrations of British royal ceremony fused with Indian tradition, these assemblies were meant to assert political dominance over Indian subjects.
Resisting British Hunters in India
In nineteenth-century India, many locals stood up against British hunting—sometimes at the cost of their own lives—as a means of cultural conservation.
Poland’s Colonial Dreams
With the resurrection of a Polish state in the aftermath of World War I, Poland seriously flirted with colonialism—in Liberia.
Decolonizing the Language of Overseas France
School systems in French Polynesia and New Caledonia are attempting to revitalize vernacular languages that were suppressed under French colonialism.
What Are Colonies For? France and Algeria, 1848
Algeria was a safety valve for the Second Republic: a place to funnel the militant working class to subdue them as colonists and farmers.
“Microcosms of Empire” in the Colonial Grand Hotel
While Singapore's iconic Raffles Hotel may be marketed as a tranquil throwback to a bygone age, it also reveals the complicated truths of imperialism.
Spanish Colonists were Desperate for European Food
Spanish colonists in the Americas were terrified that their essential humors would change if they ate local food.
Exposing the Sexual Hypocrisy of European Colonists
In the early twentieth century, white colonizers’ exploitation of women in West Africa’s Gold Coast stoked anti-colonial politics.
Fruit Geopeelitics: America’s Banana Republics
The one-way movement of wealth in the banana trade contributed to the political and economic conditions that challenged its hegemony after World War II.