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Posts tagged with: Richt Luzie Louisa

Blinding Nationalism; shared colonial histories, isolated struggles for acknowledgement

by Luzie Louisa Richt

To understand our shared history of slavery and colonialism, there are not only the century-old racial boundaries that have to be crossed, but also the seemingly-ignored national ones. Presented with new research findings from the side-wings of the Dutch colonial history as a non-national history, I wondered why we perceive of Europe’s colonial legacy as nation-specific endeavor, separating and isolating histories along the geographical lines of the imagined communities of nation-states.
Motivated by realizing my lack of knowledge of the German colonial history due to a privileged ignorance, I was surprised to discover the similarities of the colonial legacy of the Netherlands and Germany. Discussing my own situatedness, I want to plead for the broadening of our conception of history into multiple, nation-independent strands that, despite their contradictions, their discrepancies, allow to sketch a bigger picture and connect us, regardless of our inherited appeal to divide ourselves along ethnical, cultural and national lines. read on…

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