scholarly journals Finns in the Colonial World

Author(s):  
Raita Merivirta ◽  
Leila Koivunen ◽  
Timo Särkkä

AbstractUtilizing such concepts as “colonial complicity” and “colonialism without colonies”, this chapter examines the case of Finns and Finland as a nation that was once oppressed but also itself complicit in colonialism. It argues that although the Finnish nation has historically been positioned in Europe between western and eastern empires, Finns were not only passive victims of (Russian) imperial rule but also active participants in the creation of imperial vocabulary in various colonial contexts, including Sápmi in the North.This chapter argues that although Finns never had overseas colonies, they were involved in the colonial world, sending out colonizers and producing images of colonial “others”, when they, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, felt the need to project themselves as white and European (not Russian or non-white, such as Mongols). Finns adopted, adapted, and created common European knowledge about colonized areas, cultures, and people and participated in constructing racial hierarchies. These racialized notions were also applied to the Sámi. Furthermore, Finns benefitted economically from colonialism, sent out missionaries to Owambo in present-day Namibia to spread the ideas of Western/White/Christian superiority and instruct the Owambo in European ways. Finns were also involved in several colonial enterprises of other European colonizing powers, such as in the Belgian Congo or aboard Captain Cook’s vessel on his journey to the Antipodes.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Phil Chilton

Abstract Many analysts of the ‘terrorism’ phenomena locate the desire to cause terror as a key definitional concept: terrorists seek to cause terror. Such a conception risks obscuring the motivations for the act of terrorism, it is committed purely to terrorise. The idea that this type of political violence is an act of ‘propaganda by the deed’, however, is one commonly applied by the perpetrators themselves. The anarchist ‘terrorists’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and contemporary ‘jihadists’ both understood their acts, at least in part, as propaganda by the deed. Beyond just the creation of terror propaganda by the deed can be used as an alternative conceptual vantage point to examine and understand the motivations that lie behind acts of terrorism and the material conditions that give rise to these acts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Richard Howard

Irish science fiction is a relatively unexplored area for Irish Studies, a situation partially rectified by the publication of Jack Fennell's Irish Science Fiction in 2014. This article aims to continue the conversation begun by Fennell's intervention by analysing the work of Belfast science fiction author Ian McDonald, in particular King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991), the first novel in what McDonald calls his Irish trilogy. The article explores how McDonald's text interrogates the intersection between science, politics, and religion, as well as the cultural movement that was informing a growing sense of a continuous Irish national identity. It draws from the discipline of Science Studies, in particular the work of Nicholas Whyte, who writes of the ways in which science and colonialism interacted in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland.


Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Teubner

The ‘Historiographical Interlude’ presents a brief overview of the cultural, social, and political changes that occur between Augustine’s death in 430 CE and Boethius’ earliest theological writings (c.501 CE). When Augustine, Boethius, and Benedict are treated together in one unified analysis, several historiographical challenges emerge. This Interlude addresses several of these challenges and argues that trends within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship established some unfounded interpretive biases. In particular, this section will discuss the contributions of Adolf von Harnack and Henri Irénée Marrou, focusing on how they contributed, in diverse ways, to the neglect of sixth-century Italy as a significant geographical site in the development of the Augustinian tradition.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-67
Author(s):  
Nate Holdren

This article takes criticisms of employment discrimination in the aftermath of the creation of workmen’s compensation legislation as a point of entry for arguing that compensation laws created new incentives for employment discrimination. Compensation laws turned the costs of employees’ workplace accidents into a risk that many employers sought to manage by screening job applicants in a manner analogous to how insurance companies screened policy applicants. While numerous critics blamed insurers for discrimination, I argue that the problem was lack of insurance. The less that companies pooled their compensation risks via insurance, the greater the incentives for employers to stop employing people they would have previously been willing to hire.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Himley

In Peru, development dreams have not infrequently been hitched to the expansion of mining and other extractive activities. While the Peruvian state pursued strategies to stimulate mining expansion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the geography of capitalist mining that emerged mapped poorly onto the national development imaginaries of the country’s elites. State-led efforts to mobilize subsurface resources in the service of national-level development conflicted with the tendency for extractive economies to exhibit uneven and discontinuous spatialities. Attention to the long-run unevenness of extractive investment in global resource frontiers such as Peru promises to deepen understandings of both world environmental history and the contemporary politics of resource extractivism. En el Perú, los sueños de desarrollo han sido enganchados con frecuencia a la expansión de la minería y otras actividades extractivas. Mientras que el estado peruano siguió estrategias para estimular la expansión minera a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX, la geografía de la minería capitalista que surgió no se proyectó bien en los imaginarios de desarrollo nacional de las élites del país. Los esfuerzos dirigidos por el estado para movilizar los recursos del subsuelo al servicio del desarrollo a nivel nacional contradijeron la tendencia de las economías extractivas a mostrar espacialidades desparejas y discontinuas. La atención al carácter desparejo a largo plazo de la inversión extractiva en las fronteras de recursos globales, como Perú, promete profundizar el entendimiento tanto de la historia ambiental mundial como de la política contemporánea del extractivismo de recursos.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document