r/Colonialism

Beit Sahour, a predominantly Christian Palestinian village east of Bethlehem, the traditional site where angels announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, was informed just in time for Christmas that an illegal Israeli settlement will soon be built on its land, turning the village into two heavily militarized enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlers.

The village mayor, Dr. Elias Iseed (himself a Palestinian Christian), in a memorandum addressed to Christian and humanitarian organizations, dated the 2nd of this month, writes:

“The construction of an illegal Israeli settlement just behind Osh Ghurab will disrupt our entire community, beginning with the displacement of the people living on that land, followed by the constant fear of settler attacks against the residents of Beit Sahour, which will ultimately force our citizens to emigrate.

In fact, the West Bank has already witnessed a sharp escalation of settler violence. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 757 settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have been recorded since January 2025, a 13% increase compared to 2024. These attacks include assaults, destruction of property, and intimidation, often perpetrated with impunity. Human Rights Watch has already documented the forced displacement of Palestinian families, describing the situation as a crime against humanity, which is now reaching the peaceful city of Beit Sahour.”

Pemmican is dried meat pounded into powder, combined with rendered fat in equal proportions by weight, and pressed into bars with dried berries. That is the entire recipe. Three ingredients. No refrigeration. No cooking required to eat it. A shelf life measured in months to years under the right conditions. One pound of pemmican delivers approximately 3,000 to 3,500 calories, a full day of sustenance for an active adult, in a package you can carry in your coat pocket.

The Cree, Lakota, Blackfeet and dozens of other Plains nations had been making it for generations before the fur trade era, and when European explorers and traders encountered it they immediately understood what they were looking at. The Hudson's Bay Company built an entire industrial supply chain around it. Robert Falcon Scott took it to Antarctica. Ernest Shackleton's men ate it on the ice after the Endurance was crushed.

William Clark wrote in his journal near what is now Great Falls Montana in 1805: the Hunters killed 3 buffaloe, the most of all the meat I had dried for to make Pemitigon. The spelling is characteristically Clark, creative and phonetic, but the reference is unambiguous. The Corps of Discovery made pemmican from bison on the trail and first encountered it as a prepared food at the formal feast hosted by the Lakota Sioux early in the journey.

The journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Gary Moulton and published by the University of Nebraska Press, are the most thoroughly documented food record in American exploration history and pemmican appears in them as a staple of survival rather than a curiosity. These men were eating nine pounds of fresh meat per man per day on good days and boiling candles to eat on bad ones. When they made pemmican they were thinking about the bad days.

In Myanmar, there's a weird romanticization of British Burma, mostly due to how (un)well the country has been going since independence. Even before the coups and civil war, the government basically destroyed the Burmese economy with the Burmese Way to Socialism.

Plus at independence, Burma was (relative to her region), a fairly rich country and was I believe even called the Rice Bowl of Asia which probably contributed to it.

My father when asked what the Burmese golden age was, answered the colonial period because and I quote "The Myanmar people weren't in charge." He also once claimed that the only thing Myanmar people invented was jealousy.

#Never_Forget 🇩🇿

Tried my hand at making one of these memes with some of the most infamous figures of Western/European colonization:

Christopher Columbus

Queen Victoria

King Leopold II

Captain Cook

Hernan Cortes

Cecil Rhodes

Francisco Pizarro

Admiral Matthew Perry

I visited the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux around 2 years ago and I have been searching for this painting ever since, but I can't seem to find a lot of information about it, the title or the name of the artist who made it.

Can anybody help me out on this one?

The full title appears on a banner: Universalior Cogniti Orbis Tabula, Ex recentibus confecta observationibus (Map of the entire known world, made from recent discoveries).

The Portuguese place names suggest that Ruysch may have used sources of that origin, which is reinforced by the name "Terra sancte crucisx", "Terra de Santa Cruz" (the first name given by the Portuguese to Brazil) and by other details, such as the presence of Taprobana (Sumatra) and Madagascar, or the numerous details that appear in India with other lands explored by Portuguese sailors.

Between 1543 and 1639, Japan maintained commercial and religious contact with Portugal and Spain. The newcomers were called nanbanjin, "southern barbarians," after the maritime route that brought them from Macau and Manila. The term was descriptive, without any derogatory connotation. From this contact, a specific pictorial genre emerged: Namban art. Folding screens, mother-of-pearl lacquerware, panels, and kakemono (portraits) are where Japanese painters portrayed Europeans with meticulous ethnographic attention.

What fascinated them most was their physical appearance. Large, prominent noses, almost always exaggerated to the point of becoming an identifying mark of Europeans (the folding screens call them tengu-bana, "tengu noses," like those of the demon in Shinto folklore). Round, light-colored eyes, in contrast to the almond-shaped eyes of the Japanese. Full beards, sometimes red or brown, which is why they were also nicknamed akahige, "red beards." Wavy or curly hair, never straight. Tall stature, upright posture, and expressive hand gestures.

Their clothing seemed equally strange. Satin breeches (calças tonosamas), loose shirts with starched white ruffs (the ruffs of Austrian fashion), short cloth capes, tall conical or wide-brimmed hats, high leather boots, and long, straight swords at their belts. The complete opposite of the samurai's kimono and wakizashi. The Kanō painters depicted every textile detail with almost documentary precision.

The typical scenes on the Namban screen follow a fixed pattern. On the right side, a Portuguese carrack anchors in Nagasaki Bay. The captain-major disembarks accompanied by his entourage, under a distinctive black parasol. On the left side, the procession moves through the port city toward the church or Jesuit residence, where it is greeted by priests in black cassocks (Jesuits), Franciscans in brown habits, and the Japanese population, both converted and curious. Among the procession are African slaves wearing turbans, Asian servants, merchants carrying rolls of silk and barrels, and exotic animals: monkeys, leopards, Arabian horses with trappings, and European greyhounds.

Catholicism is the central theme. Churches with bell towers, crosses, and arched porticoes; processions; priests celebrating Mass; rosaries and breviaries on display. Namban folding screens offer a Japanese perspective on the Christian era.

Many Namban painters were Japanese Christians trained at the Jesuit art school in Arima (Kyushu), founded by the Italian priest Giovanni Niccolò in 1583. There, converted Japanese artists were taught European oil painting, perspective, and shading techniques. From that school emerged altarpieces, depictions of the Virgin Mary, and Christ figures, all executed in Western techniques with Japanese features. Painters also returned to the great Kanō and Tosa schools and adapted the Namban style to large-format folding screens.

The genre died out with the closure of Japan. In 1639, the Tokugawa shogunate expelled the Portuguese, persecuted Christians, and prohibited any representation that evoked contact with foreigners. The surviving screens ended up in European collections (Lisbon, Porto, Rome, Madrid) or remained hidden in Japanese homes. Today, some ninety Namban screens are preserved in museums in Japan, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Each one is a unique ethnographic document: the first extensive portrait that an Eastern civilization made of Europeans at the height of their global expansion.

Recommended bibliography:

– Alexandra Curvelo, Os Biombos Namban, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisboa, 2018.
– Yoshitomo Okamoto, The Namban Art of Japan, Weatherhill, 1972.
– Charles R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650, University of California Press, 1951.

An interesting essay on what it means to be colonized