At the first Zionist Congress in 1897, delegates agreed to pursue the colonization of Palestine. But at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903, Theodor Herzl presented a proposal for a colony in East Africa – he presented it as a mere stepping stone to Zion, but it caused bitter divisions among the delegates. We tell … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 11: Theodore Herzl, the Uganda Plan, and the Zionist Scramble for East Africa"...
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr 25 min
From the Imperial British East Africa Company to the British East Africa Protectorate, we trace the missionary mischief that led to the British taking Uganda and the many wars (called “expeditions”) that led to the British taking Kenya. In the process you’ll meet Mwanga of Buganda, Kabarega of Bunyoro, and the treacherously assassinated Arap Samoei … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 10: Saving souls and stealing cattle – the British take Uganda and Kenya"...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 44 min
Our fifth and concluding episode on the Scramble in South Africa is on the (Second) Boer War from 1899-1902. We talk about how it started and why, the military details, the concentration camps, the struggle to keep it a “White Man’s War” for fear of a Lincoln showing up, and the implications (it’s clear who … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 9e: South Africa pt5 – The Boer War 1899-1902"...
Jan 15, 2022•2 hr 2 min
Sooner or later every anti-imperialist is smeared as a “tankie” and this week was Vijay’s turn. First his views were falsified, then he used the word “modernization” in a tweet! So, in this interview, we take a deep dive into debates about “modernization”. Repudiating liberal and colonizer’s attacks on Indigenous societies (which they falsely claim … Continue reading "AER 101: China and Imperialist Media Strategies with Vijay Prashad"...
Jan 13, 2022•58 min
The Scramble for Africa cannot be encapsulated in the career of any single imperialist, but if it could, that imperialist would be Cecil Rhodes. From the Rhodes Scholarship to the falling statues, Rhodes’s impact is still ubiquitous today. We look at the words and deeds of the exemplar of the Scramble, from his beginnings to … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 9d: South Africa pt4 – The Hubris of Cecil Rhodes"...
Dec 28, 2021•2 hr
Continuing the history of the Scramble for South Africa, we talk about the Boers, the Dutch settlers and their attacks on the Africans and then on the British conflicts with them, up to the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley that might just be the event that set off the entire scramble. South Africa’s unbelievable mineral … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 9c: South Africa pt3 – The Boers before the War"...
Dec 16, 2021•1 hr 48 min
Part 2 of our series on the Scramble in South Africa takes us back to the Zulu modernizer, Shaka, in the early 19th century, all the way to the end of the Anglo-Zulu War between the British imperialists and the Zulus ruled by Cetshwayo. The land theft and swindling you’ve come to expect from the … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 9b: South Africa pt2 – The Zulus from Shaka to Cetshwayo"...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 27 min
I’m joined by Navyug Gill from William Paterson University to talk about the historic victory of the Indian Farmers who, after demonstrating for a whole year at the cost of 750 lives, succeeded in forcing the repeal of three laws that would have immiserated agriculture in India, done away with the government procurement system, and … Continue reading "AEP 100: Debriefing the Indian Farmers’ Victory with Navyug Gill"...
Nov 29, 2021•43 min
The wealthiest and most powerful state in Africa is South Africa, and its fate has been pivotal to the whole continent. This was no less true during the Scramble for Africa, which is why this series will have multiple episodes on South Africa. In this one, the so called “frontier wars” between the Europeans and … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 9a: South Africa pt1 – Frontier Wars and Settler-Colonialism"...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 35 min
Episode 1 of Dan Freeman Maloy’s series Lin3r Notes. Frequent guest and collaborator Dan Freeman-Maloy (@lin3rnotes on twitter) has a new substack, “Check the Liner Notes” (https://freemanmaloy.substack.com/), and will be podcasting on related topics here on AEP. This episode is about the Canadian / British imperial WWI commemoration, Remembrance Day, and some of the literary … Continue reading "Lin3r Notes 1: On the racist who wrote “Lest We Forget”"...
Nov 09, 2021•54 min
This one is about the precolonial African powers in the Congo – Zanzibar’s representative Tippu Tip, Msiri of Katanga, and a few others (but mainly these two). We talk about their rise in the context of growing European power, and their eventual fall to Belgium – although as you’ll see it wasn’t exactly Belgium, but … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 8: Belgium Steals Congo"
Nov 07, 2021•1 hr 21 min
After six episodes of preparation we are ready to talk about the famous Berlin Conference of 1884 where Africa was actually carved up. Along the way you meet some of the most legendary villains – Stanley and Leopold (though you still haven’t met Rhodes), also Livingstone and Brazza. We end in Berlin itself and at … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 7: The Continent Carved Up at the Berlin Conference 1884"...
Oct 30, 2021•1 hr 39 min
The British imperialists take Sudan. First, they send Gordon, acting in the name of the Khedive of Egypt. That doesn’t go so well. The next expedition culminates in the brutal battle of Omdurman in 1898, the quintessential colonial military mismatch and the demonstration for the colonial use of the machine gun. We tell Gordon’s story … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 6: Sudan – the fall of Gordon and the rise and fall of the Mahdi"...
Oct 23, 2021•2 hr 7 min
Fifth instalment in our Scramble for Africa series is the story of Abyssinia (aka Ethiopia), which managed to maintain its independence during the Scramble for Africa despite all the efforts of the would-be Italian colonizers (who would be back in the 20th century, but not during the Scramble). We focus on the rulers of Abyssinia … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 5: How Menelik Kept Ethiopia Independent at the Battle of Adwa, 1896"...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 30 min
In 1882 at the battle of Tel el Kabir, Garnet Wolesley (who had suppressed the Riel Resistance in 1870) defeated the Egyptian nationalists led by al-Arabi. This was the final blow in a long imperialist campaign to take Egypt from the ambitious modernizers that had ruled it from the 1820s. The epic financial swindle involved … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 4: Britain Takes Egypt with Finance (and War), 1882"...
Oct 11, 2021•1 hr 42 min
I am back with journalist and activist KJ Noh, retired SF Judge Julie Tang, and activist/writer Dan Freeman-Maloy. Meng Wanzhou is free and back in China! We painted a pretty pessimistic picture for you in AEP 95 before the ruling, then poof! The Canadian election happened and Meng was on a plane back to China! … Continue reading "AEP 99: The Meng Wanzhou Victory Lap"
Sep 29, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Our third instalment before we really dig into the actual scramble for Africa is to give you a flavor for how we’re interpreting what we read. Lenin wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism as an explanation for WWI, but much of what he wrote was about Africa; WEB Du Bois wrote an essay with … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 3: Theories of Imperialism"
Sep 28, 2021•2 hr 6 min
I’m joined by Aidan Jonah, editor of the new media outlet The Canada Files, which has an anti-imperialist point of view and an investigative journalism methodology. We talk about some of the Canada Files’s recent investigations, about the relative paucity of anti-imperialist perspectives on Canada (with noble exceptions of course), and about the ambitions plans … Continue reading "AEP 98: On the Canada Files, with Aidan Jonah"...
Sep 22, 2021•55 min
In this special short episode, the whole plot summary of Siegebreakers, a pro-Palestine thriller novel that imagines how the Palestinians will eventually break the siege on Gaza, is SPOILED. If you don’t like spoilers, you should skip this one. If you’re the type who needs to know what happens in a book or movie before … Continue reading "AEP 97: Special Siegebreakers Spoiler"
Sep 15, 2021•13 min
Take a tour with us of a few of the African kingdoms that tried to resist the slave trade – before, in some cases, giving in. King Affonse of Kongo, Queen Nzinga of Matamba, Agaja of Dahomey (and others from that kingdom), the Asante in the west, and then east we have Abyssinia, the Bachwezi, … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 2: Africa resists the slave trade"
Sep 11, 2021•51 min
I’m joined by Davarian Baldwin, who is Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College, to talk about his new book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities. Davarian’s book helped a lot of ideas about the university and where it’s been headed click in my … Continue reading "AEP 96: Universities are Plundering Cities, with Davarian Baldwin"...
Sep 03, 2021•1 hr 2 min
A new Civilizations series on the Scramble for Africa. We begin our series on this decisive event in world history with a multi-episode survey of pre-colonial Africa. In this episode we talk about the devastation wrought by the European slave trade and focus on Africa’s West Coast (then known as the Gold Coast) before the … Continue reading "Scramble for Africa 1: Pre-Scramble Africa – the Slave Trade and the Gold Coast"...
Aug 27, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Journalist KJ Noh and retired SF Superior Court judge Julie Tang join me to talk about the Meng Wanzhou case, in which Canada has kidnapped a Chinese executive at US request in 2018. As we await judgement which may come in October or November after the September Federal Election, British Columbia judge Heather Holmes has … Continue reading "AEP 95: Waiting for Heather Holmes’s judgment in the Meng Wanzhou case"...
Aug 25, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Joe Emersberger and I discuss some questions about Afghanistan after the Taliban take over the country and the US leaves. Was this really a defeat or a controlled handover for the US? What is Pakistan’s role? China’s? What is with the mystique around the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, whose UK-trained son is now claiming to … Continue reading "AEP 94: Taliban Takes Over"
Aug 22, 2021•46 min
I talk to Nora Loreto – podcaster, journalist, and author of Take Back the Fight: Organizing Feminism for the Digital Age and Spin Doctors: How Media and Politicians Misdiagnosed the COVID-19 Epidemic. We talk about Nora’s journalism on COVID-19, about anti-feminist backlashes of various kinds, about contemporary feminism and the continuing relevance of organizing in … Continue reading "AEP 93: Take Back the Fight with Nora Loreto"...
Aug 13, 2021•50 min
A year and a half ago I approached my high school history teacher with the idea of launching a podcast with a massively expanded version of the content of the “Modern Western Civilization” course he taught me in high school in the 1990s, to include the whole world and the people’s histories. We’re just about … Continue reading "Civilizations 38: What is history? And have we been doing Critical Race Theory all along?"...
Aug 09, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Joe and I answer some questions listeners sent in about our new book about Venezuela, Extraordinary Threat, from Monthly Review. Questions include: Was Venezuela “once-prosperous” before Chavez? Has Maduro been true to Chavez’s vision? What’s the COVID vaccination situation? Can we comment on Hong Kong? What is the internal social base of US imperialism in … Continue reading "AEP 92: Q/A on Extraordinary Threat, our new book on Venezuela"...
Jul 22, 2021•47 min
Another episode of Kung Fu Yoga with Carl Zha, where we talk about the Indian and Chinese angles on world events. With the US withdrawing from Afghanistan like thieves in the night, the greatest agent of chaos may be gone (or mostly gone, for now) and country’s neighbours (Iran, Russia, the Central Asian republics, Pakistan, … Continue reading "AEP 91: Kung Fu Yoga – US withdraws from Afghanistan and panics about China, with Carl Zha"...
Jul 20, 2021•1 hr
General Jacob Smith was reprimanded for his order to commit atrocities in the war against the Philippine Republic, but he was not alone in giving such orders. The US war in the Philippines set the stage for more than a century of counterinsurgency, atrocities, and pretexts like the civilizing mission and the responsibility to protect. … Continue reading "Civilizations 37f – Yankee Imperialism pt6 – “The more you burn and kill the more it will please me”: The US assault on the Philippines"...
Jul 19, 2021•2 hr 8 min
Joe Emersberger and I talk to Reed Lindsay, journalist and filmmaker with Belly of the Beast, a media organization focusing on Cuba and Cuba-US relations. Among their films is a 3-part series called the War on Cuba available on YouTube. Reed was at the recent demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in Havana and talks about how the … Continue reading "AEP 90: Cuba demonstrations and Cuba blockade, with Reed Lindsay"...
Jul 15, 2021•35 min
