Subjects Archives: History

Shortly before reopening their doors on 27 August 2020, the British Museum removed a bust of its slave-owning founding father, Sir Hans Sloane, from a pedestal to a glass cabinet.

For a materialist conception of history, it is necessary to understand that the world cannot be consciously changed without understanding it correctly.

For Samir Amin’s anniversary on Sept 4, Global University for Sustainability invited Samir’s friends to reminisce their interactions with Samir and celebrate the very rich life that Samir lived.

‘Once they are taken to be ideas about a historical world-system, whose development itself involves “underdevelopment,” indeed is based on it, [Marx’s theses] are not only valid, but they are revolutionary as well.’

By redefining a range of categories, Wallerstein seeks to reconstruct the scenario of the world, using a kind of political economy of culture to replace various Enlightenment thoughts—the presuppositions of various social sciences and their classification systems.

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the teaching of history as a form of indoctrination with Professor James W. Loewen.

Samir Amin’s works are not the only things he left behind. His legacy was a guide to those who want to change the world.

Trump’s rhetoric adheres to a longstanding tradition of political paranoia. To understand it, twenty-first century radicals could benefit from an unlikely source: the postwar writings of Richard Hofstadter.

Japan was ready to surrender, making the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki two days later, totally unnecessary and morally indefensible, say a panel of scholars in two video discussions.

“Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet.”

In modern times, China has been the ultimate challenge for imperialists: it’s independence being an enigma to Europeans and Americans. From Marco Polo to Mike Pompeo, China has been a mystery to Christian crusaders.

Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative that reframes U.S. history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.

Many people from divergent ethnic backgrounds, speaking various languages, and possessing different cultures now share a common experience of inequality in the United States. Yet there is an absence of unity among these constituencies, in part because their leaders are imprisoned ideologically and theoretically by the assumptions and realities of the past.

On 30 June 2020, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the former Belgian Congo’s independence, the news went viral over the planet: Philippe, King of the Belgians, had conveyed regrets for the colonial past, and particularly for the time when Leopold II owned the Congo as a personal possession (1885-1908), to the Congolese head of state and to the Congolese people.

If the people of Kosovo can hold the CIA-backed gangsters who murdered their people, sold their body parts and hijacked their country accountable for their crimes, is it too much to hope that Americans can do the same and hold our leaders accountable for their far more widespread and systematic war crimes?

‘The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of [Iroquois Confederacy] settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.… the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed.’ —Commands from George Washington to General Sullivan on May 31, 1779

As monuments to Columbus and confederate heroes topple and Democrats ponder which militarist they wish to glorify in their replacements, it is critical to realize that statues which go up are at least as important as the ones that come down. Perhaps the best nominee for a new statue is Hatuey, who led the first guerrilla warfare against European invasion of the western hemisphere.  

This is the Radical Reviewer taking a look at Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

The struggle against systemic racism and the police state in the U.S. is integral and linked to the struggle against U.S. wars of aggression overseas.

U.S. counties where lynchings were more prevalent from 1877 to 1950 have more officer-involved killings