Richard ‘Dick’ Dowling was an Irish-born emigrant to the United States who became famous forhis military exploits for the Confederacy in the American Civil War. In 1998, his Americandescendants unveiled a plaque on the wall of Tuam town hall to commemorate him in his place ofbirth. In 2017, following increased… Read More
For many years, Jean-Baptiste Colbert was praised for his involvement in creating a strong French state. In recent years, however, this status has been called into question, notably concerning his involvement in laying the foundation of the Code Noir, a legal text which legitimised slavery in the French colonies. In… Read More
A mausoleum inaugurated in August 2012 in the town of Affile, located in metropolitan Rome, has been subject to vandalism and protests by various anti-fascist groups. While the local right-wing mayor, Ercole Viri, claims that the publicly funded mausoleum was commissioned to honour Italian war veterans, the structure appears to… Read More
The Columbus Lighthouse of Santo Domingo is an enormous mausoleum which is said to contain Christopher Columbus’ remains. The first plans to build a monument to Columbus date back to the mid-nineteenth century, and a competition to decide the design of the project was launched in 1928. The final project… Read More
The largest Red Army memorial in the world stands 12 metres high at the centre of a popular city park. It includes Soviet flags carved in red granite, sixteen sarcophagi representing each of the Soviet Republics, and a quotation from Stalin declaring that ‘all now recognise that the Soviet people… Read More
The zoo Tierpark Hagenbeck in Hamburg, Germany, was founded in 1907 by Carl Hagenbeck, a trader of wild animals who was notable for his exhibitions of people of colour in Völkerschauen or ‘human zoos’. Since 2020, petitioners and protestors have been demanding a critical reexamination of Hagenbeck’s legacy, calling for… Read More
The Marine Denkmal (Marine Memorial) in Swakopmund, Namibia, commemorates the German imperial soldiers who fought against Indigenous Namibians in the Herero Wars (1904-1908). Amid fraught Namibian-Germany relations and contested national memory politics, this monument has become a reminder of unresolved colonial legacies and traumas. Indigenous Namibian groups have pursued legal… Read More
The small Italian town of Predappio has developed a controversial reputation as a site of neo-fascist ‘pilgrimage’ by virtue of its historical affiliation with the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. The town retains the peculiar distinction as both the birthplace of Mussolini and the location where he was eventually interred in… Read More
The 2016 statue commemorating Mary Seacole at St. Thomas Hospital in London is the first statue in the United Kingdom dedicated to a named black woman. Mary Seacole is remembered for her involvement as a nurse in the Crimean War. However, some argue that her figure has been mythologised and… Read More
Christopher Columbus was a famed Genoese explorer whose 1492 expedition across the Atlantic is famous for his ‘discovery’ of America. Having visited Galway in 1477, a monument commemorating this visit was unveiled in 1992, having been donated by the city of Genoa to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ famous… Read More
In 2018, a statue of Gandhi was proposed to be built in Blantyre, Malawi’s second-largest city. The Statue formed part of a USD 10 million investment from the Indian Government to construct a convention centre named after Gandhi. However, given Gandhi’s controversial writings on race, a ‘Gandhi Must Fall’ protest… Read More
A ‘Comfort Women’ Memorial was unveiled outside Palisades Public Library in New Jersey in 2010. The monument paid homage to the more than 200,000 South Korean women who were victims of sexual exploitation (also termed ‘sexual slavery’) by Imperial Japanese forces before and during World War II. Though the Korean-American… Read More