In different parts of the world a new decolonial movement is growing that challenges long time narratives in knowledge production and social struggle and transforms activism and social movements. It is driven by key factors such as the fall of the west and the rise of the rest, the collapse of the socialist bloc and in general the crisis of Western civilization. This book develops a comprehensive, coherent and integral theoretical framework that draws on different contributions in the decolon...

'Wars Overseas' focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the Eighty Years’ War, the conflict between Spain and the northern Netherlands that led to the creation of the independent Dutch Republic. The Republic was determined to trade in tropical products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, commodities on which the Iberians had had a monopoly for a century or more. To do so, however, it would have to fight. The fledgling State d...

Since time immemorial, wet rice farming has been practised in Java, the main island of the Indonesian archipelago. For those people there was something divine about running water. Such water was attributed to the gods. The Solo, the biggest river of Java, was for them the Bengawan: the auspicious Lord of the Waters. In the nineteenth century, Dutch irrigation engineers arrived from overseas to subject these water gods to their own technical regimes. In terms of their own religious beliefs, th...

This book reviews what is known about the issue of slavery, and argues that the concept of "afterlives" is more helpful than that of "modern slavery" to those seeking to challenge injustice, violence, inequality and oppression in the twenty-first century.

This book reviews what is known about the issue of slavery, and argues that the concept of "afterlives" is more helpful than that of "modern slavery" to those seeking to challenge injustice, violence, inequality and oppression in the twenty-first century.

The 'spatial turn' of missionary places.

Situated at the crossroads of missionary history, imperial history and colonial architecture, the contributions in this volume investigate the architectural staging and spatial implications of the worldwide expansion of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By looking at specific architectural fragments, analysing the insertion of Christian edifices in colonial urban settings, or unravelling the social understanding of missionary place...

A comprehensive history of the interaction between religion and colonization.

Religion in today's Democratic Republic of Congo has many faces: from the overflowing seminaries, the Marian shrines of the Catholic Church, the Islamic brotherhoods and the Jewish community of Lubumbashi, to the 'African' churches of the Congolese diaspora in Brussels and Paris, the healers of Kimbanguism, the televangelism of the booming Pentecostalist churches in the great cities, the Orthodox communities of Kasai...

Every Dutchman is well acquainted with the East India Company (VOC). The West India Company (WIC) however, is lesser known. Furthermore very few know of the episode when the WIC was active on the northern Brazilian coast. This period lasted roughly from 1624 to 1654. Yet this has been an important episode for both the Netherlands and the fledgling Brazil. Towards the end of the 12-year truce with Spain, the Netherlands sought to conquer and colonize the Portuguese part of South America and th...