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colonialism

National Interests

By Anuradha Bhagwati, Jamelle Bouie, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jason Stanley, Illustrations by Agata Nowicka

September 8, 2020

On July 30, 2020, we invited Anuradha Bhagwati, Jamelle Bouie, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Jason Stanley to discuss our current state of affairs and a few of the larger political themes that animate them.

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The arrival of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) and Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) in a Frisian village in the Netherlands on November 24, 2012. (Patrick Post / Hollandse Hoogte)

Who Is Zwarte Piet?

By Emily Raboteau

Winter 2014

A holiday tradition in the Netherlands involving blackface has sparked a debate about race, the legacy of slavery, and the vestiges of colonialism. Emily Raboteau told the story in our Winter 2014 magazine.

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That British Commonwealth

By Herbert Heaton

Summer 1928

Empire to Commonwealth: Thirty Years of British Imperial History. By Walter Phelps Hall. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $4.50. Students' edition $3.50. The Third British Empire. By Alfred Zimmern. New York: Oxford University Press, American Bra [...]

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Sayings

By Mary Austin

Autumn 1933

A wise saying is probably the earliest form of a popular story, taking place as an observed experience many times before it is shaped as an incident.

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T. E. Lawrence and the Character of the Arabs

By Jeffrey Meyers

Fall 2004


In a letter of December 1910, the young T. E. Lawrence defined civilization as "the power of appreciating the character and achievements of peoples in a different stage than ourselves." No Englishman had a greater understanding of the past glory of Arab civilization and the modern contrast between nomads and city folk; of the desert tribes and customs; of homosexuality and asceticism, fanaticism and religion; of the Bedouin methods of warfare, their blood feuds, bribery, plunder, and massacres; of the heights and depths of the Arab character.

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