#Colonialism can’t be forgotten – it’s still destroying peoples and our planet | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/daniel-macmillen-voskoboynik/colonialism-can-t-be-forgotten-it-s-still-destroying-peoples-and-our-
Colonialism and #Nature destruction. 2nd extract of Daniel’s book ’#The_Memory_We_Could_Be ’ (also in Spanish)
The story of colonialism, sanitized and blotted out from the historical consciousness, needs to be recalled, for many reasons – not the least of them because of our concerns about the #climate
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During the 19th and 20th centuries, formal colonialism came to an end. Countries were liberated, new flags unfurled, and rewritten constitutions adopted. But although imperial states were forced to relinquish their hold, their legacies prevailed. Centuries of enslavement, despotism, crushed sovereignty, and ecological demolition, had guaranteed a long afterlife to imperial haunting, and its logics of conquest and predation. Many of the new nation states carried on down tracks laid for them by the colonial powers and continued the process of ecological destruction. Under the banners of development, thousands of communities were evicted and displaced in development programmes.