Professor Erik Linstrum on how and why we pursue the history of colonial violence

Erik Linstrum’s essay,  “A History of Violence: Pursuing the Ghosts of the British Empire,” was recently published in the Berlin Journal. A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin. In the essay, Professor Linstrum notes that “The traumas of the present have a way of reactivating those in the past, bringing neglected truths to light; these events might anger us but also help us to see our history more clearly. It is this kind of “presentism”—no longer, incidentally, the epithet among historians that it once was—which makes colonial violence such an urgent subject now."

To read the article, click the link below:

https://www.americanacademy.de/a-history-of-violence/