Colonialism
Worldmaking After Empire
Building on a PhD project, Adom Getachew’s “Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination” (2019) explores the ways some leaders and struggles for freedom and dignity were engaged beyond nation-building (of what would become the independent country) but also worldmaking as they engaged with international systems (economic, legal, political). A few notes: “The nationalist movement […]
Tags: #Adom Getachew #anti-imperialism #Colonialism #postcolonial state #Worldmaking
Native Colonialism
The people of Ethiopia defeated European attempts to colonize it. However, Dr Yirga argues that in embracing western education and erasing local history and tradition, the institutions and laws put in place colonizing processes, what he calls ‘native colonialism’. This is one of the most interesting books I have read of recent, highly recommended to anyone interested […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Education #Ethiopia #Native Colonialism #Tradition
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), a pseudonym meaning ‘he who enlightens’, was the leader of the independence struggle in Vietnam and served as the President of North Vietnam (1945-1969). He was a leader of the anti-colonial struggle in Asia, advocating for revolutionary action long before the establishment of the Community Party in 1930. A short book, […]
Tags: #Anti-colonial struggle #Colonialism #Equality #Ho Chi Minh #Imperialism #Revolution #Struggle #Vietnam
Confronting Empire
Eqbal Ahmad (1933-1999) is a fascinating activist academic; not the least because he came into his own in the 1960s in North Africa, largely in Algeria, where he worked with Frantz Fanon in the struggle for liberation. He was also quite close with Edward Said. He was born in India, studied in Pakistan, then the […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Confronting Empire #Eqbal Ahmad #Fanon #Post-colonial
Define and Rule – Mamdani
Mahmood Mamdani has written a number of essential reading books, including When Victims Become Killers, as well as Citizen and Subject and Neither Settler Nor Native (reviews on those to come in future posts). Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity (2012) is the W. E. B. Du Bois lectures, presented in three chapters (Nativism: […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Define and rule #Ethnicity #Mamdani #Race
A Dying Colonialism – Fanon (1959)
Fanon is well known for his Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and Wretched of the Earth (1961). Another of his works, A Dying Colonialism (1957), seems less spoken about (originally titled L’An Cinq, de la Revolution Algerienne). The first chapter reminded me of Said’s Orientalism, which was written much later (1978). Going back to Orientalism, […]
Tags: #Colonialism #decolonization #Dying Colonialism #Europeanization #Frantz Fanon
Xala
From Sembene Ousmane’s 1974 novel Xala, translated in 1976 to English: “The colonialist is stronger, more powerful than ever before, hidden inside us, here in this very place.” (p. 84) “All your past wealth – for you have nothing left – was acquired by cheating. You and your colleagues build on the misfortunes of honest, […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Decolonizing #Oppression #Sembene Ousmane #Xala
Kofi Annan – Interventions
Kofi Annan (1938-2018) was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006, a turbulent time to say the least. He penned “Interventions: A Life in War and Peace” (2012) with Nader Mousavizadeh to provide some of the high, lows, challenges and successes of his time leading the UN. The book is a recounting […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Kofi Annan #Leadership #Security Council #United Nations
An Untold Story of a Medical Disaster in Colonial Africa
“All the villagers, women and children included, gathered, as they did every year, for their injection of Lomidine. The preventative administration of Lomidine to entire populations, then called “total Lomidinization,” was a priority and a source of pride for this postwar colonial health services. The technique’s efficacy was unprecedented: a single injection of Lomidine conferred […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Lomidine #Lomidinization #Sleeping Sickness #trypanosomes
The Black Man’s Burden
The role of institutions in development has becoming increasingly important, most notably in the recent works “Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy” (2006) and “Why Nations Fail” (2012). Before these books, Basil Davidson wrote “The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State” (1992), which places a large emphasis on the role of […]
Tags: #Basil Davidson #Black Man's Burden #Colonialism #decolonization #Institutions
About me
Logan Cochrane
Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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