In 1902 Theoder Herzl, founder of political Zionism, wrote to Great Britain’s Minister of Colonies Cecil Rhodes stating: “You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.” Palestine is the last settler colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding as we enter into the 21st Century.
In centering Palestine’s modern history around settler colonial discourses Dr. Bazian provides a framework to understand and relate to the unfolding events from the late 19th century up to the present in a clear and unambiguous way. Zionism settler colonialism has salient features such as the normative deployment violence, religious justification, having a garrison state to sponsor it, transforming the land and geography and constituting a new colonial epistemology related to it as well as the expulsion and negating the existence of an indigenous population. The book offers a theoretical basis for approaching Palestine as a subject without falling into pitfalls of internationally supported ‘peace process’ that on the one hand affirms the settler colonial rights, problematizes the colonialized and dispenses with the ramifications.
Book launch: December 12th in Amsterdam.
This book brings together the most relevant facts and insights on reparations and it positions the debate on reparations as part of the continuing struggle to decolonize the mind. The goal is to provide material for debate and discussion. It deals with reparations for both trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism more generally. In some sections the discussion focuses specifically on slavery because many propositions and arguments are related specifically to slavery.
The final chapter presents a new economic model for the calculations of reparations. These calculations are based on a mathematical model and a computer program that performed simulations to reveal the damage that the colonizers have caused and the impact on the wealth of the colonizer nations.
This book provides detailed information about the role of the Dutch in slavery including the legacy in the Netherlands itself. It locates their activities past and present, in linking Europe, Africa and the Americas.
It also provides a critical framework on how to analyse the phenomenon of slavery in the Americas and the trans-Atlantics trade in humans.
During slavery it details the primary role of the Dutch in helping other nations such as the Spanish, British, Portuguese and Americans to establish and expand slavery; as well as the role the Dutch themselves played as traders of humans and as traders of goods across the Atlantic, and between the Caribbean and South America. Moreover, it details their role in the plantation economy of Suriname, and in the production of salt in the Caribbean islands.
Institute for Decolonizing The Mind (DTM)
