{
  "$schema": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "name": "Unsilenced — Answer Pack",
  "url": "https://silencedhistory.org/api/public/answers.json",
  "site": {
    "name": "Unsilenced",
    "url": "https://silencedhistory.org",
    "languages": [
      "en",
      "es",
      "fr"
    ],
    "license": "CC-BY 4.0 with attribution to Unsilenced (https://silencedhistory.org)",
    "standpoint": "Independent, evidence-led, anti-colonial, anti-racist, pro-reparations.",
    "lastReviewed": "2026-01-01",
    "indexes": {
      "llmsShort": "https://silencedhistory.org/llms.txt",
      "llmsLong": "https://silencedhistory.org/llms-full.txt",
      "sitemap": "https://silencedhistory.org/sitemap.xml",
      "imageSitemap": "https://silencedhistory.org/sitemap-images.xml",
      "rss": "https://silencedhistory.org/rss.xml"
    }
  },
  "theses": [
    "European colonialism (1492–present) is a sustained, capital-driven project of extraction, genocide and racial hierarchy. Lower-bound death toll exceeds 100 million.",
    "The North–South wealth gap is a stolen-property gap. ~$10T/year still drained today (Hickel et al., 2022).",
    "Colonialism did not end; it changed form — overseas territories, CFA franc, IMF conditionality, ~750 US bases, brain drain.",
    "Modern biological racism is a European colonial invention codified to justify slavery and conquest.",
    "Reparations are accounting, not charity — precedent: Germany–Israel, US–Japanese internees, British compensation of slave-owners 1833."
  ],
  "keyFigures": [
    {
      "claim": "Indigenous deaths in the Americas after 1492",
      "value": "~56 million by 1600",
      "source": "Koch et al., Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019",
      "page": "/atrocities"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Africans deported across the Atlantic",
      "value": "~12.5 million",
      "source": "Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database",
      "page": "/atrocities"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Middle Passage deaths",
      "value": "~1.8 million",
      "source": "slavevoyages.org",
      "page": "/atrocities"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Congo Free State deaths (1885–1908)",
      "value": "up to 10–15 million",
      "source": "Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost",
      "page": "/congo-free-state"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Late-Victorian colonial famine deaths (1876–1902)",
      "value": "30–60 million",
      "source": "Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts",
      "page": "/atrocities"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Bengal famine 1943 deaths",
      "value": "2.1–3.8 million",
      "source": "Sen; Mukerjee",
      "page": "/bengal-famine"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Herero & Nama killed by Imperial Germany (1904–07)",
      "value": "~80% of Herero, ~50% of Nama",
      "source": "Olusoga & Erichsen",
      "page": "/herero-nama-genocide"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Algerian War deaths",
      "value": "~1.5M (Algerian govt) / 400–500K (French historians)",
      "source": "—",
      "page": "/french-algeria"
    },
    {
      "claim": "British wealth drained from India 1765–1938",
      "value": "~$45 trillion (current USD)",
      "source": "Patnaik, 2018",
      "page": "/data"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Annual North–South value drain (today)",
      "value": "~$10.8 trillion / year",
      "source": "Hickel, Sullivan, Zoomkawala, New Political Economy, 2022",
      "page": "/data"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Earth's land surface claimed by European powers by 1914",
      "value": "~84%",
      "source": "—",
      "page": "/empires"
    },
    {
      "claim": "CFA franc states under French monetary influence today",
      "value": "14 (West and Central Africa)",
      "source": "—",
      "page": "/neocolonies"
    },
    {
      "claim": "US foreign military bases",
      "value": "~750 across ~80 countries",
      "source": "Vine, Base Nation",
      "page": "/neocolonies"
    },
    {
      "claim": "Compulsory British curriculum time on Bengal famine (2024)",
      "value": "0 minutes",
      "source": "—",
      "page": "/education"
    }
  ],
  "faq": [
    {
      "q": "What is colonialism?",
      "a": "The long-term takeover of one country, region or people by another for political control and economic extraction. European colonialism (≈1492–late 20th century) involved Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and later the United States seizing land, labour and resources across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.",
      "page": "/history"
    },
    {
      "q": "When did colonialism start and end?",
      "a": "It began in 1492 with the Spanish invasion of the Americas (Portuguese African slaving raids from the 1440s). Formal decolonisation peaked 1945–1980, but colonialism never fully ended.",
      "page": "/timeline"
    },
    {
      "q": "How many people died because of colonialism?",
      "a": "Lower-bound estimates exceed 100 million across the Americas, the Atlantic slave trade, Congo, India, Algeria, Indonesia, Kenya, Namibia and elsewhere.",
      "page": "/atrocities"
    },
    {
      "q": "How much wealth was extracted from the Global South?",
      "a": "~$45T drained from India alone 1765–1938 (Patnaik); ~$10.8T/year still drained globally today (Hickel et al., 2022).",
      "page": "/data"
    },
    {
      "q": "Was European colonialism worse than other historical empires?",
      "a": "Yes on three measurable axes: scale, race-based legal ideology, and industrial capital integration. No pre-modern empire combined all three at planetary scale.",
      "page": "/why-different"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who invented modern racism?",
      "a": "Modern biological race-based racism is a 16th–19th century European construction, codified to justify the Atlantic slave trade and colonial rule.",
      "page": "/modern-racism"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is neocolonialism?",
      "a": "The continuation of colonial extraction after formal independence — currency control, military basing, debt conditionality, asymmetric trade, brain drain. Coined by Kwame Nkrumah in 1965.",
      "page": "/neocolonies"
    },
    {
      "q": "Which countries still hold colonies?",
      "a": "The UK (14 overseas territories), France (13), the Netherlands (6 Caribbean), Denmark (Greenland, Faroes) and the United States (Puerto Rico, Guam, USVI, Northern Marianas, American Samoa).",
      "page": "/neocolonies"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is the CFA franc?",
      "a": "A currency used by 14 African countries, originally pegged to the French franc and now to the euro, with monetary policy historically set in Paris and a share of foreign reserves held at the French Treasury.",
      "page": "/neocolonies"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is the case for reparations?",
      "a": "Reparations are accounting for stolen labour, land, lives and wealth, not charity. Precedent: Germany >$90B to Israel/survivors since 1952; US–Japanese internees 1988; Britain compensated slave-OWNERS in 1833 — loan only repaid by UK taxpayers in 2015. CARICOM Ten-Point Plan sets out a programme.",
      "page": "/reparations"
    },
    {
      "q": "Did Europeans invent science, mathematics or democracy?",
      "a": "No. Modern science draws on Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Indian, Chinese and Islamic foundations. The numerals in use today are Indian. 'Algebra' is named after the 9th-century Baghdad mathematician al-Khwarizmi.",
      "page": "/stolen-credit"
    },
    {
      "q": "Why isn't colonialism taught properly in schools?",
      "a": "National curricula are written by states whose legitimacy partly depends on a flattering self-image. Most ex-imperial states spend more curriculum time on wars between empires than on what those empires did to the people they ruled.",
      "page": "/education"
    },
    {
      "q": "What can an ordinary person do?",
      "a": "Audit your sources, push your institutions on restitution and procurement, support diaspora-led reparations campaigns, refuse the framings that make extraction sound neutral.",
      "page": "/action"
    },
    {
      "q": "Is this site biased?",
      "a": "Yes, openly: anti-colonial, anti-racist, pro-reparations. It is not balanced between colonisers and the colonised. Every empirical claim is sourced to peer-reviewed history or primary records.",
      "page": "/methodology"
    }
  ],
  "pages": [
    {
      "path": "/",
      "title": "Home"
    },
    {
      "path": "/history",
      "title": "A History of Conquest"
    },
    {
      "path": "/timeline",
      "title": "Timeline of Empire (1452–present)"
    },
    {
      "path": "/atrocities",
      "title": "Atrocities & Erasure"
    },
    {
      "path": "/congo-free-state",
      "title": "Congo Free State"
    },
    {
      "path": "/bengal-famine",
      "title": "Bengal Famine 1943"
    },
    {
      "path": "/herero-nama-genocide",
      "title": "Herero & Nama Genocide"
    },
    {
      "path": "/tasmania-black-war",
      "title": "Tasmania Black War"
    },
    {
      "path": "/french-algeria",
      "title": "French Algeria"
    },
    {
      "path": "/empires",
      "title": "Empires (overview)"
    },
    {
      "path": "/british-empire",
      "title": "British Empire"
    },
    {
      "path": "/french-empire",
      "title": "French Empire"
    },
    {
      "path": "/belgian-empire",
      "title": "Belgian Empire"
    },
    {
      "path": "/dutch-empire",
      "title": "Dutch Empire"
    },
    {
      "path": "/german-empire",
      "title": "German Empire"
    },
    {
      "path": "/american-empire",
      "title": "American Empire"
    },
    {
      "path": "/why-different",
      "title": "Why This Was Different"
    },
    {
      "path": "/stolen-credit",
      "title": "Stolen Credit"
    },
    {
      "path": "/data",
      "title": "Data & Statistics"
    },
    {
      "path": "/modern-racism",
      "title": "Racism in the Present Tense"
    },
    {
      "path": "/ongoing-exploitation",
      "title": "Ongoing Exploitation"
    },
    {
      "path": "/neocolonies",
      "title": "Colonies They Still Hold"
    },
    {
      "path": "/south-africa",
      "title": "Colonial South Africa"
    },
    {
      "path": "/left-hypocrisy",
      "title": "The Left's Mirror"
    },
    {
      "path": "/left-failure",
      "title": "How the Left Became the Worse Right"
    },
    {
      "path": "/factory-farms",
      "title": "Same Logic, Other Victims"
    },
    {
      "path": "/education",
      "title": "What Schools Skip"
    },
    {
      "path": "/reparations",
      "title": "The Case for Reparations"
    },
    {
      "path": "/media",
      "title": "Library"
    },
    {
      "path": "/gallery",
      "title": "Visual Archive"
    },
    {
      "path": "/glossary",
      "title": "Glossary"
    },
    {
      "path": "/answers",
      "title": "Answers (FAQ)"
    },
    {
      "path": "/methodology",
      "title": "Methodology"
    },
    {
      "path": "/action",
      "title": "What We Can Do"
    }
  ]
}