By Zara Kabir
Colonialism is a stain of the old world that continues to bleed into the present. The ghosts of European explorers still haunt us today, their sins forming a heavy cloud that continues to shape and direct discourse on how a post-Colonial global world can learn from their mistakes, not simply escape them. The imperialistic nature of the Age of ‘Discovery’ left many European nations wealthy and the once thriving communities that they pillaged in poverty. Stripped of their culture, language, and artifacts, those living in colonies found the foreign language and practices of Europeans thrust onto them—there is nothing quite more true for those suddenly made subjects of the British Royal Crown.
The British Empire was once the world’s largest and wealthiest empire. Within nearly 70 years since the emancipation of the Indian Subcontinent from British rule and the start of rapid decolonization, we have been able to critically analyze the Empire and the methods through which it colonized nearly 1⁄4th of the world’s population at one time. Postcolonial theory has specifically allowed once colonized peoples to look back on their own histories and better examine the human costs of imperialism. Critical analysis of these complicated and bloody histories has manifested areas of concern, including spaces in which modern colonialism continues to exploit the Empire’s former subjects.
