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Silence
Silence. One day I visited a bookstore. It’s one of those clinging to survival in an increasingly post-book world. Aimed at a “discerning” audience it carries a rich diversity of titles – fiction and non-fiction on virtually every topic. It is particularly well stocked with historical works – Europe, America, Australia, Germany, Britain, France and others. Plenty to choose from. But that day I was looking for Italian history. I was looking for my history, for “Italy”. I found the Italian history section. It consisted of two books. One was a book on Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of South America, misclassified as “Italian”. The second was a book on the mafia. Here was all…
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How old is the idea of abolishing foreignness?
Today it is entirely natural to think that every person in the world is endowed with certain rights, ones that transcend foreignness and apply absolutely universally. We call these “human rights,” and we take them entirely for granted: We believe earnestly that everyone is indiscriminately entitled to them at birth, that we must safeguard them at almost all costs, and that anyone who violates them must be put to justice. Such a line of thinking is so dominant—perhaps even culturally hegemonic, though in a good way, if that is possible—that we may even tend to assume that this has always been true, that is, everyone has always had such rights,…
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What ended chattel slavery in the British Empire?
The question of how legal chattel slavery in the British Empire came to an end is an important question to ask. It is far from a historical curiosity. The end of legal slavery in the British Empire potentially contains lessons on how the human rights abuses of our own time might be addressed. Given the political and commercial interests invested in the continuation of slavery and the slave trade how could change ever have come about? Slavery in the British Empire: Hochschild In this video, Adam Hochschild, talks about why chattel slavery in the British Empire ended. He discusses the different stories that have been told (and not told) about this…
