A day after this blog post was originally published, the statue was removed. For details see local news report at NBC Philadelphia. During this past weekend , the city of Philadelphia, like dozens of cities across America, erupted in mass protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, an… Read More
The Colonel Marmaduke George Nixon statue (‘Nixon memorial’) stands at the intersection of Mangere and Great South roads in Otahuhu, a suburb of South Auckland, New Zealand. A contentious figure in New Zealand colonial history, the suitability of the public-nature of the memorial was called into question in 2017 after… Read More
The June 2020 global Black Lives Matter protests and the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence on June 30th brought increased scrutiny of Belgium’s colonial past under the leadership of King Leopold II to the forefront of public consciousness. During this period, the Brussels monument of King Leopold was defaced as… Read More
In the past decade, Harvard University has taken great strides to acknowledge the legacy of slavery on campus. Slavery provided an impetus for the creation of resources at Harvard, and several enslaved Black and Indigenous individuals of former university presidents even resided on campus at specific points. Centuries later, Harvard… Read More
The Stone Mountain Park Memorial is the largest Confederate memorial in the U.S., and the controversy around it demonstrates that the American Civil War’s emancipatory purpose remains contested more than a century-and-a-half after its end. Despite multiple protests, and a gubernatorial campaign running on a platform against the monument’s continued… Read More
Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’ are components of a project initiated by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1996 to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. The memorials, in the form of cobblestones installed in public streets, now number in the tens of thousands across Europe and beyond. However, they have also been… Read More
The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II in Washington, D.C., United States, is a monument to the 112,581 Japanese Americans incarcerated by the U.S. Government during World War II. It also commemorates Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. Military. The inscriptions in the memorial received criticism… Read More
Jan van Riebeeck arrived at Cape of Good Hope in 1652. His mission was to create a station for the Dutch East India Company’s ships. This meant colonising the lands inhabited by the Khoikhoi. To keep them from accessing his land, van Riebeeck planted a wild almond hedge. The hedge… Read More
José Miguel Gómez was a celebrated military general who led Cuban forces during the wars of independence against Spain in the 19th century and served as Cuba’s second president between 1909 and 1913. The monument was first inaugurated in 1936. The statue has consistently been a source of contention. It… Read More
In 1902 as requested in his last will and testament, British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes was buried atop a granite hill in Zimbabwe’s world-famous Matobo National Park. Almost 120 years later, the site of his grave has become increasingly contested in light of his intimate involvement with colonisation and exploitation. Read More
Nicknamed the ‘Slaughterer of Banda,’ the figure of Jan Pieterszoon Coen has become increasingly contested in recent years. The statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen in Hoorn has been a disputed monument since its unveiling in 1893. The statue has been smeared with red paint and graffiti numerous times in the… Read More
The late nineteenth century saw the systematic killing of the Selk’nam indigenous group members at the hands of European settlers in Punta Arenas, Chile. Until 2007, the official state narrative surrounding the fate of the Selk’nam failed to recognise the genocidal dynamics underpinning the dramatic decline in their population. Instead,… Read More