The empire
never ended.
It only learned
to smile.

For five centuries a small number of European nations — joined later by the United States — built their wealth, their cities, their universities and their sense of moral seriousness on the backs of people they considered less than human. The conquest of the Americas, the Atlantic slave trade, the scramble for Africa, the looting of India, the partitioning of the Arab world, the genocides in Australia and Tasmania, the rubber terror of the Congo, the famines engineered in Bengal, the war on Algeria — these are not unrelated tragedies. They are the chapters of a single book, and the book is still being written.

What changed in the second half of the twentieth century was not the structure but the vocabulary. The colonies were renamed "developing countries." The conquered became "underdeveloped." The plundered became "in need of aid." The murderers became donors. The new vocabulary was kinder, and the bank accounts stayed where they were.

This site is built on a refusal. A refusal to pretend the past is past. A refusal to confuse paternalism with solidarity. A refusal to accept that the descendants of empire get to grade everyone else's homework on civilization, modernity, and progress — while editing their own history out of the textbook.

We are not interested in revenge. We are interested in the record.