Colonial Leftovers
As I have traveled around the world I have been constantly surprised to see the ongoing impact of colonization.
Sometimes it is seen in physical structures, institutions, procedures and and sometimes in simple cultural preferences , in activities and sport or in food.
There follows a selection of sobering and instructive scenes and locations.
A mass grave over looking the city of Kigali in Rwanda. The civil war of 1994, between the Hutu and Tutsi’s, that included genocide that the world had not witnessed in modern times, grew out of the Belgium colonial rule. The Belgiums and then French, had racially favored one group over another fermenting hatred for years.
Decades of investigation revealed that the French military had provided weapons too.
The United Nations presence with some brave personel was restricted in its mission.
Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt
Egypt was home to one of the earliest and remarkable civilizations starting around five thousand years back. Yet for all the sophistication and wealth created Eygpt also fell pray to European colonization and British rule. Tahrir Square – or Liberation Square – has long been the gathering point to demand or celebrate freedoms lost or acheived.
Most recently in 2011 it became the focal point of the Arab Spring and revolution.
Kisumu, on the banks of Lake Victoria.
When Great Britain ruled Kenya they built a railway – quite an engineering feat – from Mombasa, through then the tiny junction of Nairobi and on to Lake Victoria.
The objective was to be able to get the produce and resources to the market via the port of Mombasa.
Today the railway is still in use and recently upgraded by China. Out of the frying pan and into the fire?
A view of Mount Kilimanjaro which is in Tanzania on the border with Kenya.
Tanganyika, as it was then called was under the German orbit and Kenya under British control. The mountain was a source of dispute but local tribes signed up with the Germans. A story on the British side at the time, was that Queen Victoria had given the continents other snow capped African peak to her cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. As she already had the other – Mount Kenya a few miles north.
It illustrates the sort of board game that was played by the European powers at the time though!
Bandung Museum, Bandung Indonesia.
In 1955, in the Cold War, a group of 29 recently independent countries met in Bandung, in Java, Indonesia. The aim was to create an independent movement of African and Asian countries, sometimes called a Third Way.
It was hoped that these countries which at the time represented over 50% of the global population, would find common ground. They never really did and the movement withered.
Cricket was first played by the English as far back as the 1600’s. The game was taken, or exported, to the colonies over subsequent centuries. Even to the new United States – although it never really caught on!
Elsewhere, from the Caribbean, parts of Africa, the Sub-Continent to Australia it became THE game.Today any visit to India will demonstrate its ongoing popularity.
Here are multiple games going on in the middle of crowded Mumbai – or Bombay as it was known in colonial times.
A photograph I took in 1982 in Sri Lanka, a country that became independent in 1948 from Britain as fall out of India’s hard won independence.
It was then I started looking at the ongoing legacy of Britains colonisation – something which I had been taught at my Grammar School, a year or two earlier, as having been a good thing for all concerned.
The photograph features 2 very British remnants. A signal box and railway built and then still operated as though it was somewhere in England. Also a venerable Morris 1000 …which could be fixed with a hammer.
Of course, Britain has for years been dealing with the impact of colonization, right on its doorstep . The island of Ireland.
Here in Derry (Londonderry) murals, and a museum today detail the tragic events of Bloody Sunday in that city on 30th January 1972. The killings that day by the British Army re-ignited and led to the decades long ‘Troubles’.
Haiti, Port au Prince. Taken in 2010 a few months after the catastrophic earthquake of that year. So much was destroyed, including the Presidential Palace shown here and probably more than 200,000 lives too.
Whilst Haiti was the first Caribbean country to gain independence from France, the price was huge. Haiti has never recovered and today is terribly poor still and rife with problems.
Sierra Leone, Freetown. A soldier walks past a sleeping man who has found a shady spot under a trailer of all places!
Sierra Leone, a former British colony until 1961 has endured much unrest and wars since then. The country was ill prepared for the rushed independence. Poverty ensured as did civil war. Today still Sierra Leone is still desperately poor.
All bar one country in Africa were colonized. (The one that was not was Ethiopia, which was though occupied for a few years during World War Two). When the ‘winds of change’ blew through Africa from the 1950’s onwards, and the desire for independence took hold, all these countries did eventually become, at least nominally, independent.
The problem was that few were ready, or prepared by their colonizers, for governing themselves. Mostly the European powers left rapidly, sometimes doing seemingly as much harm as possible on the way out. Transfer of power was seldom done, many African countries found themselves with few educated people – and a country to run. In addition economic colonization and consequential dependency continued – and often still does.
Decades of economic struggles and dependency, mean the roads are often terrible! Along with other infrastructure.
Both photographs were taken in West Africa. Road traffic accidents across Africa are common, tragic and a drain on the economy and health services.
Fort Lee, New Jersey with the George Washington Bridge in the background. One of the many sites of the Revolutionary War when the Americans succesfully repeled the British Colonial power.
Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya.
The home of Mahatma Ghandi in Mumbai. He peacefully and succesfully played a major role in acheiving Indian Indeopendence in 1947.
Egypt was a British ‘protectorate’ until 1956 when it became independent. Although it took the Suez Crisis and American nudging for this to final happen.
The famous Winter Palace shown here is in Luxor and on the steps of which the finding of Tutankhamun’s Tomb was announced by Howard Carter in 1922.