Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!
If you are:
this thread is for you ALL!
Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!
We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.
For this round, let’s look at: Decolonization! What does it mean to remake that which has been broken? To restore which was stolen? To reclaim land, power, and culture that was taken by force? This week is about exploring the concept decolonization - the thinkers behind the concept, evidence of it in practice, and anything else you'd like to teach us.
Currently reading The Darker Nations by Vijay Prashad and really enjoying it. It's basically about the political formation of formerly colonized states during the early Cold War and their struggle to continue post-colonial nation building as well as build power and develop a cohesive vision on the world stage.
Really enjoyed the Tehran chapter on cultural work and the importance of developing an independent and vital cultural life as part of developing a post-colonial identity. Reminded me a bit of How To Read Donald Duck, a great book about how America exported culture and ideology through Walt Disney comic books.
I have a question, actually.
Decolonisation of, for example, Africa in the 20th Century was a messy process (and wasn't exactly something the imperial powers wanted to do). I've spoken with someone from a former French African colony who said in his opinion former British African colonies were given better infrastructure and tools to succeed post-colonisation compared to the French ones.
Has anyone read anything about what were or would have been, I guess to put it one way, "best practice" for decolonisation? What sorts of things did / could the colonising powers do / have done to give (for example) newly-independent African nations the best chances of success and to avoid social strife and civil war, among other issues?
Was there any unifying or shared religious believes among the north American indigenous population prior to colonialization? A popular spiritual concept that's promoted among indigenous people where i live is the idea of turtle Island. What's the earliest known documentation of this belief and how widespread was it?