The Anti Empire Project with Justin Podur

A podcast event! I teamed up with a co-host, Sina Rahmani of The East is a Podcast, to interview Manan Ahmed, author of The Loss of Hindustan – The Invention of India. The interview is about history, identity, imperialism – the usual! – but all centered on the concept of Hindustan and the way history … Continue reading "AEP 81: The Loss of Hindustan – with Manan Ahmed and Sina Rahmani"

For however long the construct of “Modern Western Civilization” has existed, its Eastern foil has been the Ottoman Empire. And for as long as we’ve been taught the glories of the West, we’ve been taught about Ottoman “decline”. We talk about the Ottoman Empire, show that the history is a little bit more complicated than … Continue reading "Civilizations 34: Islam & Imperialism pt1 – The Ottoman Em...

Justin reads the Afrocentrists and makes a pitch; David hangs on to the universalist perspective, as we talk about all the racist rewriting of history, the famous racist literature of imperialism, and the stunningly racist statements by public figures of the 19th century, from Kipling to Roosevelt and more.

I was a guest on the fantastic podcast, In the Context of Empire, where I spoke with co-host Matt McKenna about lots of things, but mainly about how imperialist propaganda works. 

The old saying goes that Science ain’t an exact science, and nowhere is that more true than with the Scientific Racism of the 19th century. From its predecessors in the 18th century, we get into the unholy trinity of Pearson, Galton, and Fisher. We talk about craniometry, phrenology, IQ testing, “race development” (now called International … Continue reading "Civilizations 33b: Scientific Racism"

Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species was read by Lord Elgin before he burned down the palace in Beijing and by Marx, who was so excited he asked Darwin if he could dedicate a volume of Capital to him (Darwin politely declined, not wanting to offend religious sentiment). We talk Darwin and the … Continue reading "Civilizations 33a: Darwin and 19th century scientific advances"

Racism, imperialism, repression of sexuality, hypocrisy, pugilism, world fairs, parades, animals on display, worship of a royal family… we look at the Victorian era and the Queen herself. Good thing we’ve come so far since those days… right?

On March 1, I was on a panel hosted by the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, the Canadian Peace Congress, World Beyond War, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, and Just Peace Associates. The topic was “the Arrest of Meng Wanzhou and the New Cold War on China”. Other panelists were Radhika Desai, William Ging … Continue reading "AEP 80: My comments on The Arrest of Meng Wanzhou and the New Col...

By pure coincidence, we are publishing this episode on the day the world contrasted the the Alaska Summit – a US-China meeting in March 2021, in which China told the US to stop posturing, to the humiliations of the Boxer Protocol of 1901. In this episode, we talk about the terrible famines of 1876 and … Continue reading "Civilizations 31: The first anti-imperialist uprising of the 20th century: Yi...

By the 1860s it was Korea’s turn to face the dilemma of how to deal with the imperialists. Qing China and Meiji Japan had a lot to say about what they thought Korea should do. We talk about the attempts to reform, Donghak Uprising in Korea, and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5.

I’m joined by Nora Barrows-Friedman and Asa Winstanley, both of the Electronic Intifada podcast. We’re piecing together the story of how lifelong anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn of the UK Labour Party was taken down by a smear campaign, which began by targeting those around him. Having taken him down, the smear campaign continued and managed to … Continue reading "AEP 79: Sorry for using the word “Corby...

India had Plassey in 1757, China had Opium War 1 in 1839, and Japan had Commodore Perry’s visit in 1853. After centuries of keeping the imperialists at bay, Japan found them knocking down the gates. And in a series of events studied by everyone in Asia but never imitated, Japan went from having a brief … Continue reading "Civilizations 29: Japan joins the imperialists, 1853"

I bring Carl Zha on for another Kung Fu Yoga episode, this time about Canada. We discuss the unanimous declaration by the Canadian parliament (followed by the Netherlands parliament days later) in February 2021 that a genocide is taking place in Xinjiang. What’s really behind this declaration, and how can Canadian history, and Chinese history, … Continue reading "AEP 78: A look at Canada, as it de...

Having burned the palace of the ruling Qing dynasty, the imperialists decided to take their side and help them defeat the Taiping. As Zeng Guofan’s encirclement strategy takes hold, the imperialists are running the Ever Victorious Army with figures like Garnet Wolesley (who fought Louis Riel in Canada) and Charles Gordon (who we’ll meet again … Continue reading "Civilizations 28c: Taiping Rebellio...

Anjuli Raza Kolb is the author of Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror 1817-2020, new from University of Chicago Press. It’s a huge book with many threads, so in this discussion we pick up one: the idea of “colonial science”, how imperialism manages to co-opt and use every type of knowledge; and the question of … Continue reading "AEP 77: Talking Epidemic Empire, with Anjuli Raza Ko...

In the midst of the most destructive war in China’s history, the imperialists decided it was time to sack and burn China a second time. In this episode, on the Second Opium War, we talk about the deepening imperialism, get you into the bizarre imperialist mind of Lord Elgin as he rationalizes the burning of … Continue reading "Civilizations 28b: Opium War 2, 1856-1860"

The end of the first Opium War was just the beginning of the horrors China faced under imperialism. Beginning in 1850, China was rocked by a 10-year long civil war that took an estimated 20-30 million lives. You read that correctly. In the middle of that war, the imperialists attacked China again and fought a … Continue reading "Civilizations 28a: The worst civil war in history – Taiping Rebellion...

We reach back in time a little bit to start the Civilizations Series on 19th century China – now known as the century of humiliation. The Opium War was one of the moments that turbo-charged imperialism. We tell the story the way Civilizations does – going back and forth between the imperialists and the local … Continue reading "Civilizations 27: Opium War 1, 1839-40"

By 1885, the Indian Act was in place, most Indigenous people were forced onto reserves, and the nadir of Canadian colonialism (so far) was set. Part 3 of 3 our series on Canada takes us through the residential school system and the racialist ideologies openly expressed throughout this phase of Canadian history.

Along with colonialism, smallpox and the driving to extinction of the beaver and then the buffalo played an immense role in the creation of what is now Canada. We tell the story of these factors in the development of Canadian colonialism from the days of New France and the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Riel … Continue reading "Civilizations 26b – Canada pt2: disease, extinctions, and colonialism up...

Part 1 of at least 3 on Canada, this one sets up the story of Canadian colonialism with some required historical touchpoints about Canada’s devolution into independence from Britain, the story of Confederation as a series of business deals, and the role of racism in Canadian immigration policy. 

The Paris Commune was so much more than a short bloody two-month interlude in European politics. In this episode, the story of the Paris Commune as related by Karl Marx in his address to the International Workingmen’s Association. From passing debt relief programs to tearing down militarist statues, the Paris Commune was a real revolution, … Continue reading "Civilizations 25: The 1870 Paris Commu...

In 1865, Paul Bogle led an uprising in Jamaica that was repressed with extreme violence by the British, led by Jamaica’s Governor Eyre. The reaction was disproportionate and the story was big news in Britain, leading to a committee questioning Eyre’s brutality and a counter-committee forming to defend him. Both committees have some big names … Continue reading "Civilizations 24: Jamaica 1865 – Mor...

We conclude our 4 part series on the American Civil War following WEB Du Bois’s book Black Reconstruction in America, talking about the brief, glorious moment of potential for genuine racial equality in the United States. In some ways, despite the gains made a century later, we still live with the consequences of the fall … Continue reading "Civilizations 23d: American Civil War pt4 – the Rise and...

Opposing a series of Farm bills that will render them destitute and further enrich India’s billionaires, a farmer’s movement has converged on Delhi demanding that the legislation (passed in September) be repealed. I talk to historian Navyug Gill about the laws, the history, and the politics of the Farmer’s movement in India, a sustained opposition … Continue reading "AEP 76: Punjab Farmer’s Moveme...