edwebbempireseminar

Pap Ndiaye, a 56-year-old history professor specializing in American politics, looks the very model of a soft-spoken academic in tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses.  Ndiaye is the first Black education minister of France. A similar historical milestone in the United States would have been prominently noted in articles about his sudden rise in politics. But in a country that prides itself on being officially colorblind—to the extent that the government keeps no statistics on the racial or ethnic makeup of its population—this fact was omitted even in press coverage of his critics, who fretted that he would fling wide the doors of French classrooms to American-style “wokisme.” (That word resonates with some French parents and politicians the same way “critical race theory” does with some Americans.)

Blanquer focused on the teaching of basic skills and introduced free breakfasts for children in poor neighborhoods; he may be best known today for a group he co-founded dedicated to French republican principles like secularism and humanism and critical of what they perceive as the contagion of “woke” ideas from American campuses

Critics view an emphasis on racial matters as a nefarious U.S. import —like Coca-Cola, only with the risk not to the consumer’s waistline but to the national psyche, which they say will be debilitated by American-style culture wars.

When Prime Minister Victor Orban recently spelled out his vision of Hungary's frontiers, he joined a club of expansionist leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping, and members of the Indian power elite who define their countries’ borders in civilisational rather than national terms.Speaking on Romanian territory in the predominantly ethnic Hungarian town of Baile Tusnad in Transylvania, a onetime Austro-Hungarian possession home to a Hungarian minority, Mr. Orban echoed the worldviews of Messrs. Xi and Putin.

a worldview also embraced by members of India’s Hindu nationalist elite that endorses a country’s right to expand its internationally recognized borders to lands inhabited by their ethnic kin or territories and waters that historically were theirs

he civilisationalist concept of Akhand Bharat embraced by his ideological alma mater.The concept envisions an India that stretches from Afghanistan to Myanmar and encompasses nuclear-armed Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.

Birmingham grew on the back of slavery and colonialism – and, indeed, the city’s gunmakers and chain-makers were the main suppliers of slavers and imperialists. One day there may perhaps be a Bristol-like reckoning of this, or perhaps not. The city is also the home of those remarkable political creeds “liberal imperialism” and “liberal unionism” – which meant elevated rights for those fortunate enough to be on this island, and no rights if you were under this island’s power. Now forgotten, those political ideas put Birmingham – and the house of Chamberlain in particular – at the heart of British politics for sixty years from c. 1880 to 1940. And you can perhaps trace back British exceptionalism to the “liberal imperialism” and “liberal unionism” of Joseph Chamberlain and his supporters.

Aesthetic choices have long shaped how American audiences see the world. Historically speaking, the West’s visual vocabulary tends to champion a fascination “with abjection and violence” in foreign subjects, whether that be the sinister depictions of Japanese people in World War II propaganda, Native American mascots in sports, or distressed communities in Africa and the Middle East.

Using repetitive, stereotyped tropes to signify that China is exotic, authorientalism visually links these tropes to abuses of government power, thereby promoting the view that authoritarianism is part of the essential character of Chinese-ness. It conflates the culture and the government, and reinforces the state’s own frequent claims that authoritarianism is innate to Chinese history or society.

Hong Kong was under British colonial rule for more than 150 years, from 1841 after the First Opium War between Britain and Qing Dynasty until July 1, 1997, when the city’s sovereignty was handed over to the People's Republic of China. The news about the death of the 96-year-old Queen triggered strong emotional reactions on Hong Kong social media over the weekend. September 12 was a public holiday to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, but instead, thousands of Hongkongers flocked to offer flowers and place condolence messages outside the British Consulate-General.

Some pro-Beijingers were upset about Hongkongers’ praise of the late British Queen, accusing them of whitewashing the repressive nature of the city’s colonial history.

after the 1967 riots, the colonial government stopped using the Sedition Law to repress government critics, and it fell into obscurity. Ironically, in the aftermath of the 2019 anti-China extradition protests, the colonial relic was resurrected to punish dissents in Hong Kong, as exemplified in the sedition charges of Stand News staff members in 2021. The most recent case is the sentencing of five to 19-month imprisonment for a set of children’s book

In the 19th and early 20th century, the civilising mission through which colonialism was justified was supported by western feminists who spoke in the name of a ‘global sisterhood of women’ and aimed to ‘save’ their brown sisters from the shackles of tradition and barbarity. Today, this imperialist feminism has re-emerged in a new form, but its function remains much the same – to justify war and occupation in the name of ‘women’s rights’ . Unlike before, this imperialist feminist project includes feminists from the ‘Global South’. Take, for example, the case of American feminists, Afghan women and the global war on terror (GWoT).

there was one claim that proved instrumental in securing the consent of the liberals (and, to some extent, of the Left) in the US – the need to rescue Afghan women from the Taliban. This justification for the attack on Afghanistan seemed to have been relegated to the dustbin of history in the years of occupation that followed, reviled for what it was, a shameless attempt to use Afghan women as pawns in a new Great Game.  As the United States draws down its troops in Afghanistan, however, we have begun to see this ‘imperialist feminism’ emerge once again from a variety of constituencies both within the United States and internationally

how easily liberal (and left-liberal) guilt can be used to authorise terrible deeds

"The United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries," he said in his address before the 193-member General Assembly. "The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn't borne out by America's current policy or public opinion."

The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war -- rightly concerned about issues back home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world -- may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill

In addressing the conflict in Syria, Obama said U.S. aims were largely humanitarian. "There's no 'great game' to be won, nor does America have any interest in Syria beyond the well-being of its people, the stability of its neighbors, the elimination of chemical weapons, and ensuring it does not become a safe haven for terrorists,"

In a 2008 biography he wrote of an antislavery campaigner, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, described the trade in human beings as an indefensible barbarity, “brutal, mercenary and inhumane from its beginning to its end.” Fourteen Caribbean countries that once sustained that slave economy now want Mr. Hague to put his money where his mouth is. Spurred by a sense of injustice that has lingered for two centuries, the countries plan to compile an inventory of the lasting damage they believe they suffered and then demand an apology and reparations from the former colonial powers of Britain, France and the Netherlands.

Britain has already paid compensation over the abolition of the slave trade once — but to slave owners, not their victims. Britain transported more than three million Africans across the Atlantic, and the impact of the trade was vast. Historians estimate that, in the Victorian era, between one-fifth and one-sixth of all wealthy Britons derived at least some of their fortunes from the slave economy.

Caribbean nations argue that their brutal past continues, to some extent, to enslave them today. “Our constant search and struggle for development resources is linked directly to the historical inability of our nations to accumulate wealth from the efforts of our peoples during slavery and colonialism,” said Baldwin Spencer, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, in July this year. Reparations, he said, must be directed toward repairing the damage inflicted by slavery and racism.

Why is the world’s safest, most powerful country its biggest defense spender, more than triple the next spender (China)?

as a percentage of GDP defense has been hovering around 4-5% since the end of the Cold War. Nothing big has changed recently, but for an increase in DoD’s budget after 9/11 that is now being scaled back. The USAF is decades ahead of the Chinese and Russians in stealth and UAVs. We’re weaponizing space. We have ten times the number of nuclear warheads the Chinese have. (The Chinese are actually very responsible on MAD, not wildly overbuilding like we did, but no one ever gives them credit for that.) We have 11 carrier groups; China has zero. If you look at the total US national security budget – because a lot of defense-related spending in the US is done outside of DoD as a gimmick to make the DoD number look smaller than it really should be – it’s actually closer to 8% of GDP: DoD + VA + DHS + the intel community + DoE (which pays for US nukes) = $1T per annum. If Chalmers Johnson is right, we have bases of one kind or another in something like 2/3 of the world’s countries. If anything we look like an imperium, like the Delian League morphing into the Athenian Empire. But one Obama official says ‘leading from behind’ and we don’t charge into Syria – despite charging into Libya and Obama’s first term surge into Afghanistan – and suddenly it’s national security crisis. Good grief, think-tankers. Don’t be so lazy.

the blissful unwillingness to learn even the most obvious lessons from the GWoT: that the US – yes, even America – can’t do occupations well