Date: Tuesday 14 March 2023
Time: 20:00
Location: Independent School, Delftsestraat 33
Admission: €10,- (regular), €6,- (reduction)
Language: English
On Tuesday March 14 we welcome writer and academic Kojo Koram, author of the acclaimed Uncommon Wealth – Britain and the Aftermath of Empire, for a public talk on the material legacy of colonialism and the ways in which the financial models of empire have continued to preserve and uphold structures of global inequality well into the 21st century.
The rise and fall of the British and Dutch Empire has been inextricably linked to the countries’ identity and politics. Today, as both the United Kingdom and The Netherlands struggle with their own imperial legacy, the shadows of empire loom large. While they no longer exert direct control over their former colonies, many of the legal and economic structures put in place during the era of colonisation still facilitate the system of wealth transfer that drives our world. Its methods of extraction during the imperial age have laid the groundwork for global disparities today.
So how did they manage and trap the wealth of newly decolonised nations? Which of these mechanisms are still in place today? And how are the consequences of empire now blowing back across the developed world?
This programme was conceived by De Dépendance guest curator Hani Salih.
Participants
Kojo Koram
Kojo Koram is a writer and an academic, teaching at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. In addition to his academic writing, he has written for the New Statesman, The Guardian, The Nation, and The Washington Post and has appeared on CNN and Sky News. He is the editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line and author of Uncommon Wealth – Britain and the Aftermath of Empire which was named a Guardian Book of the Year in 2022.
Hani Salih
Hani Salih is a researcher, writer, editor and curator sitting at the edge of a long list of disciplines and practices; Starting with architecture all the way over to systems and policy. Hani is interested in understanding wider contexts to social and cultural phenomena and is currently doing this through his teaching work in architecture and design education.