Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter

From Belgium’s reckoning with its brutal colonial past to Novia Scotia’s lobster wars, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

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Belgium’s reckoning with a brutal history in Congo

Neil Munshi
Financial Times

The cleaners who came for King Leopold II in Brussels this July knew what to do. Many times over the past few years, they have used chemicals to dissolve words such as “assassin”, “racist” and “murderer” scrawled across the statue on the Place du Trône. As before, they removed the blood-red paint protesters had dumped on his hands. But this time they missed a spot: the fingertips and palm of his curled right hand were still crimson. As protests following the killing of George Floyd in the US reverberated around the world this summer, Belgium, like many other countries, experienced its own reckoning: with a brutal colonial past, with the systemic racism that inhibits its black citizens today and with the question of what exactly it owes to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which it exploited for 75 years.

With thousands taking to the streets to protest police brutality, racial profiling and racism, Belgium’s leaders came under pressure to respond. In a June 30 letter to DRC President Felix Tshisekedi on the 60th anniversary of the country’s independence, King Philippe for the first time expressed his “deepest regrets” for the “acts of violence and cruelty” committed by Belgium and linked that period to racism today. If not quite an apology, it was a big step for an institution that was still celebrating bringing its civilising mission to Congo not long ago. That same month, Belgium’s parliament launched a truth, reconciliation and — crucially — reparations commission to examine its plunder of Congo under Leopold II and the following half-century of colonialism. [continue reading]

Rosa Luxemburg: an interview with Dana Mills

Katherine Connelly
Counterfire

Katherine Connelly interviews Dana Mills, author of a new biography on Rosa Luxemburg, on her crucial contribution to revolutionary thought

KC: Dana, thank you so much for giving up your time to talk to us today about your new biography of Rosa Luxemburg. I wanted to start with a really beautiful quote that you pick out from one of her letters:

‘I want to affect people like a clap of thunder, to inflame their minds not by speechifying but with the breadth of my vision, the strength of my conviction, and the power of my expression.’ (p.28)

I think that’s also a very good description of the way in which you convey Rosa Luxemburg in this book. It reflects what she was like, the kind of world she yearned for and her view of emancipation. There’s a fantastic part at the beginning where you describe her love of literature and her love of nature and her brightness – both in terms of her intellect and temperament – against the dark times in which she was organising. You present us right from the first pages with a Rosa Luxemburg that the reader wants to sit down and talk with. So I wanted to ask you first of all how did you first encounter Luxemburg and what did that mean to you? [continue reading]

The National Trust is under attack because it cares about history, not fantasy

Peter Mitchell
Guardian

The National Trust is in trouble. Earlier this week, 26 MPs and two peers from the recently formed “Common Sense Group” wrote to the Daily Telegraph recommending that the heritage organisation’s funding applications to public bodies be reviewed in light of its having “tarnished one of Britain’s greatest sons [Winston Churchill] by linking his family home, Chartwell, with slavery and colonialism”. The same paper reported on the Trust’s AGM, portraying it as a revolt of disregarded members, such as “Diana from Leicester”, who complained that the “majority of members just want to see beautiful houses and gardens, not have others’ opinions pushed down their throats”. The Trust, it is darkly hinted, “could face an official investigation”, a prospect that Lady Stowell, head of the Charity Commission, has done little to downplay.

The National Trust’s major crime was to have produced a report in September that examined Trust properties’ relationship to the slave trade and colonialism. It explored how the proceeds of foreign conquest and the slavery economy built and furnished houses and properties, endowed the families who kept them, and in many ways helped to create the idyll of the country house. None of this is news to most people with a passing acquaintance with history, and the report made no solid recommendations beyond the formation of an advisory group and reiterating a commitment to communicating the histories of its properties in an inclusive manner. So, why the dramatics? [continue reading]

The Nova Scotia Lobster Wars

Ivy Knight
Food & Wine Magazine