Vancouver sugar refining, the workers' strikes of 2023, and indentured labor at Fijian plantations in the 1910s: Phantom limb of British Columbia's entanglements with coerced labor and global circuits

(Originally posted summer 2024.) Updates are in order. Two things I was exploring in early 2024: While reading on disability, I found Jane Buckingham's recently published piece: "Disabling labour: race, disability and Indian indentured labor on Fijian sugar plantations, 1879-1920," Postcolonial Studies, vol. 27, no.

Contextualizing popular blowback to Canadian copper-mining in Panama, from 2011 to the protests of 2022

(Originally posted elsewhere on 24 March 2023.) If you wanted to know more about the saga of defiance of Canada's open-pit copper-mining in Panama. Here are some the headlines regarding Canada-Panama state disputes--disputes which might obscure the popular distaste animating much of Panama'

The Black pirate and the softening the image of insurrection: Ganser and Warren on Equiano, Emmanuel Appadocca, and maritime slave revolts in Anglosphere literature at times of abolitionist discourse

(Originally posted elsewhere on 14 February 2022.) -- Recuperating the image of the Black pirate and the lessening of Black agency in slave/pirate narratives. Just two excerpts that worked together. (Image in header, by the way, is "Revolt on a slave ship," engraved by Auguste Trichon, circa 1883,

Barnum's circus: Contextualizing racial spectacle, 'ethnographic' display, and 'human zoos' among 19th-century empires

The screenshot above circulated my online social circle today (10 August 2025). It's worth checking-out Sadiah Qureshi's Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

When British naturalists realized that the cause of ecological degradation was the Empire itself: A timeline of European consciousness of 'conservation' and a 'Green Imperialism' ethic

(Originally posted elsewhere in October 2023.) Much to consider! On the motives and origins of some forms of 'environmentalism.' -- Excerpt 1: Since the material resources of colonies were vital to the metropolitan centers of empire, some of the earliest conservation practices were established outside of Europe [but established

What changed about sanitation, charcoal, and the notorious 'fever of Constantinople'?: Curious consequences of ecological degradation in the urban history of Ottoman Istanbul

(Originally posted elsewhere on 3 December 2022.) Piqued my interest. Iwas reading Oziem Sert's 2020 piece in Arcadia. Interesting example of empire being affected by local specificities of ecological degradation (and nineteenth-century climatic effects of industrialization?). In Sert's framing: The publicized, alleged increase of “fever

Resources about context and why to be critical of 'crime panic narratives' in the wake of Black dissent and the 2026 federal crackdown on 'retail theft'

Last month (April 2026), I was reading: Maggie Dickinson and Simone Parker, "Policing the Grocery Store: Crime Panic Narratives and Enclosure in the Wake of Urban Uprisings," Antipode 57, no. 6 (2025): 2349-2368. Which came to mind when seeing this circulate: Beyond DHS power consolidation, gotta consider

The rise of the colonial image of 'man-eating tiger' and 'Himalayan sublime' as anxious British response to anticolonial/Indian agency: Nivedita Nath and Varun Sharma in conversation

(Originally posted elsewhere in December 2023.) Varun Sharma on why the image of the man-eater in British popular fiction "shined most brightly" in a very specific moment of anxious transition between the heyday of empire and ascendant Indian nationalism as a way to yoke-out the understanding

Blackfeet, Chippewa Cree, and American Prairie bison restoration (and state confrontations): Some major pushes in late 2021

(Originally posted elsewhere on 6 December 2021.) Among the primary official reasons that Montana land management agencies and the federal National Parks Service cite as the purpose of killing Yellowstone’s bison every year is the supposed threat that bison pose by potentially transferring brucellosis to cattle, threatening ranching industry.

Contextualizing nickel mining in Guatemala: From Maya people under siege in 2021 to US-backed Canadian acquisition in 2023

(Originally posted elsewhere on 6 April 2023.) You know about the Fenix nickel project in Guatemala? It’s a massive area where nickel is mined via mountaintop removal. The mines have been in operation since the 1960s. The Fenix mining complex was a major asset for the US-backed military

Distinguishing between the Chinese and Indian models of British labor coercion at tea plantations: Subordinating labor to nationalism in twentieth-century India

(Originally posted elsewhere on 2 May 2023.) I was reading about the Chargola Valley workers' strike of 1921. This compelled me to go look at more context. And I was happy to encounter new-to-me framing from historian Andrew Liu. As this is an interview, I think his

Some resources to learn about recent Canadian corporate push to expand mining in Peru and Ecuador

(Originally posted elsewhere on 14 August 2023.) In 2023, "the world's largest mining convention" took great interest in Latin America. Obviously. (Lithium; Andean sites; legacy of Canadian investment.) With the active help of the Canadian federal government, Canadian mining companies now move to expand their power