Finnane & Richards in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review investigate the evidence of genocide against First Nations on the Queensland frontier 1859-1897. They argue that the impact of colonisation needs to be studied carefully using local sources. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12278
A systematic genocide? Army violence against Native Americans was greater when land values increased due to gold mining or RR building & in recessionary election years, according to economist Warren Anderson in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12283
The PhD students in our Research Training Group just launched the website “Imperial Moments. An Anthology”. Professor Elisabeth Piller planned and coordinated the whole project.
The website gives an overview of the various research projects in our RTG.
We would be excited if some of you took the time to browse and discover our research.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
Today in Labor History May 18, 1781: Tupac Amaru II was drawn and quartered in Plaza Mayor del Cuzco, Peru. Tupac II had led a large indigenous uprising against the Spanish conquistadors. As a result of his heroic efforts, he became an inspiration to others in the fight for indigenous rights and against colonialism. The uprising began because of “reforms” by the colonial administration that increased taxes and labor demands on both indigenous and creole populations. However, there was also an ongoing desire to overthrow European rule and restore the pre-conquest Incan empire. And though this would merely replace one feudal power with another, there were also Jacobin and proto-communist elements to the rebellion. Most of the Tupamarista soldiers were poor peasants, artisans and women who saw the uprising as an opportunity to create an egalitarian society, without the cast and class divisions of either the Spanish or Incan feudal systems.
The uprising began with the execution of Spanish colonial Governor Antonio de Arriaga by his own slave, Antonio Oblitas. Tupac Amaru II then made a proclamation claiming to be fighting against the abuses of Spain and for the peace and well-being of Indians, mestizos, mambos, native-born whites and blacks. They then proceeded to march toward Cuzco, killing Spaniards and looting their properties. Everywhere they went, they overthrew the Spanish authority. Tupac’s wife, Michaela Bastidas commanded a battalion of insurgents. Many claimed she was more daring and a superior strategist than her husband.
However, despite their strength and courage, the rebels failed to take Cuzco. The Spaniards brought in reinforcements from Lima. Many creoles abandoned the Inca army and joined the Spanish, fearing for their own safety after seeing the wanton slaughter of Spanish civilians. In the end, Tupac was betrayed by two of his officers and handed over to the Spanish. However, before they killed him, the Spanish forced him to watch them execute his wife, eldest son, uncle, brother-in-law, and several of his captains. They cut out both his wife’s and son’s tongue before hanging them.
As a result of Tupac’s leadership and success against the Spanish, he became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and in the indigenous rights movement. The Tupamaros revolutionary movement in Uruguay (1960s-1970s) took their name from him. As did the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary guerrilla group, in Peru, and the Venezuelan Marxist political party Tupamaro. American rapper, Tupac Amaru Shakur, was also named after him. Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a poem called “Tupac Amaru (1781).” And Clive Cussler’s book, “Inca Gold,” has a villain who claims to be descended from the revolutionary leader.
🏆 Applications for the Amílcar Cabral Prize are open until 26 May.
The prize is intended to honour an article of historical research that deals with any topic or issue relating to the history of anti-colonial resistance and colonial empires.
"The ultimate goal, I suggest, was a translatio imperii; the establishment of an imperial monarchy in the west that could rival the Habsburg empire, and which in time, perhaps, might even come to imitate the universal glory of the Roman imperium. Not the American Atlantic seaboard, but rather the continent of Europe, with its arms, its learning, and its treasure, was the goal of Bacon’s early imperial vision."
#Image attribution: Yale Center for British Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anonymous_-_Sir_Francis_Bacon,_1st_Viscount_St_Alban_-_B1977.14.9772_-_Yale_Center_for_British_Art.jpg
Well, that essay grew in scope and has now become a three-parter! The first part will be about the history of the ideology known as gender binarism, the second part will be about the gay rights movement, and the third part will be my own analysis of how these issues are showing up in present day digital spaces.
PART ONE
We will begin with a couple of articles. The first article is here:
I highly encourage you to read this article, but it discusses how pre-colonial African societies held varying, highly flexible ideas about gender and gender norms. Femininity and masculinity were both quite fluid. However, Western colonialism purposefully destroyed these cultural practices in an attempt to homogenize these societies’ behavior to force them to become “civilized”. Violence, shaming, and criminalization were all used as tools to accomplish this. Today, modern African countries still bear the scars of that colonialism, with transmisia being just as common as it is in the West.
Once again, read it for more information, but this article examines various examples of how some indigenous societies in North America and Asia treasured gender fluidity. Not only did cultural practices include those who lived gender fluidity, they also emphasized the importance of such people in spirituality and storytelling. Despite resistance from these indigenous societies, Western colonialism marginalized these practices and attempted to repress these people as much as possible.
Both of these articles show us how Western colonialism, as well as white supremacist patriarchal ideals of masculinity and femininity as rigid and based in anatomy, were forced upon many indigenous peoples and ended up trampling their relatively flexible gender categories. This, in a nutshell, is what is meant when we discuss gender binarism. It is a Western ideology that forces white, “civilized” gender norms on the racial Other, who is depicted as savage, immoral, and deviant.
PART TWO
In this part, we will be looking at the origin of the gay rights movement through the lens of the involvement of two key trans people of color, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
Let’s do some reviewing. In this article you will find a brief summary of how both Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera became friends and were closely involved with the burgeoning gay rights movement, including their presence at Stonewall and founding of S.T.A.R. :
You can see in this article a mention of how they experienced resistance within the more mainstream gay rights movement. We will expand on this in the next article:
This article is MUCH more in depth. If you’re only going to read one article from this post, make sure it’s this one. While difficult to summarize, I want to draw your attention to a few essential elements. First, the members of S.T.A.R. were predominantly working class and what we would refer to today as trans people of color. Second, they openly allied themselves with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers in a show of solidarity against white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism. Third, the white middle class mainstream gay movement was openly hostile to the members of S.T.A.R. due to that movement’s white supremacist attitudes and adherence to respectability politics, even going so far as to ban Sylvia Rivera from speaking at a Christopher Street Liberation Day in 1973, the first iteration of what eventually became Pride. (She spoke anyway, and you should watch the video, it’s quite stirring: https://vimeo.com/234353103)
Looking at these historical examples, we can see that the gay rights movement suffered immensely from its allegiance to white supremacy and assimilationism. These destructive allegiances fractured the movement, and we see the results today. We have achieved marriage equality (except for disabled folks), the pet issue of white middle class gays, and an ongoing trans genocide simultaneously. Trans people of color suffer the worst, and while we have since then elevated Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera as founding figures of Pride, the Pride parades of today are capitalist white supremacist celebrations of assimilationism with corporations and cops involved in almost every city. Pinkwashing and homonationalism run rampant.
To close part two, you can read more about Marsha P. Johnson here:
PART THREE
For part three, some analysis of my own. Today in the queer community, we are still grappling with the legacy of gender binarism and white supremacy. The fact of the matter is, you cannot dismantle the gender binary without dismantling white supremacy. If you read the history you will see: gender binarism comes from white supremacy and colonialism. The gay rights movement has largely failed to recognize this fact, and our efforts to, as Sylvia Rivera put it, fight for “Gay Power” have been limited and sabotaged by a stubborn adherence to white supremacy. The gay rights movement of the 70s should have heralded the vision, power, and passion of the members of S.T.A.R. and joined their efforts in coalition building, instead of marginalizing them because they were less palatable to the establishment. All because they were poor, not white, and less “polished” (read: civilized).
And we see the legacy of white supremacist Western colonialism even in our queer digital spaces today. For example, I and many other queer and trans BIPOC before me have been raising the alarm about white supremacy on the fediverse for years. We have been speaking at length about how our issues should be centered in digital activism as well. How has this call to action been received?
True to form, white queer and trans people have been extremely hostile to us, claiming that we are participating in transmisia in our efforts to make the fedi a safer space for everyone. To those people I have this to say: it is impossible for you to truly fight transmisia without divesting from white supremacy, the system that invented and forced transmisia on the world. You who fail to align your activism with the struggles of colonized peoples can only ever be agents of white supremacy and therefore agents of transmisia. Many of you will declare your allyship with the colonized and oppressed communities of color, but your actions prove the lie behind your words. False allyship to the colonized and oppressed is just another white supremacist and transmisic tool of destruction.
To close, I will be blunt and specific. For all of you who claim that Ro or WelshPixie are puppetmasters and that those of us working in solidarity with them are members of a cult or are deluded by their manipulations, I have this to say:
You do not have my permission to deny my fucking agency any longer. I am fully capable of speaking for myself as a Black nonbinary transfeminine person. I do not need you or anyone else to tell me how to think or what to believe. I have read the history and I can see the truth, plain as the nose on my face. Furthermore, it is my opinion that any person who examines the facts and is able to renounce their allegiance to white supremacy and gender binarism will believe as I do.
Shame on you for denying my agency! Shame on you for betraying your queer and trans comrades of color with your white supremacist and transmisic ways! Shame on you for participating in a mass disinformation and harassment campaign against those of us FIGHTING to be a part of this community!
Reading the history of colonialism, white supremacy, gender binarism and the gay rights movement and looking at what’s going on now, I have one question.
Everything in this story is leading somewhere amazing. It's emotional, beautiful, touching, surprising and so incredibly moving. Sniffed, snuffled and out and out cried my way through the last part of this book.
@kcfromaustcrime@bookstodon Finally got hold of this beautifully written multi-levelled love story. Like her other two brilliant novels of #historicalFiction, she shows she has done the research and thinking and internalized the stories and feelings of the time and place as well as the relentless control and persecution of the feminine and the 'other'. This 3rd novel is personal for Kent. Highly recommend it.