Reference · Knowledge base
The knowledge base.
Every chapter of the archive in one paragraph. Below that, an entity graph — people, places, events and concepts — wired to the chapters that document them. Built for humans and for answer engines.
Topics, summarised
Archive
Unsilenced — An Unflinching Archive of Colonialism
A documentary archive on colonialism, racism, and the long shadow they cast over the so-called modern world.
Updated 1970-01-01
History
A History of Conquest
Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States — five centuries of taking.
Updated 1970-01-01
Timeline of Empire
1452 to today: chronology of conquest, atrocity, and resistance.
Updated 1970-01-01
Why This Was Different
Persia, Rome, the Mongols are not an alibi. Why 'every empire did it' fails as a defence.
Updated 1970-01-01
The Empires
Index of the six European-American empires examined here: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States.
Updated 1970-01-01
Belgian Colonialism
The Congo Free State, the Belgian Congo, and Ruanda-Urundi — the smallest empire with the highest per-capita kill rate.
Updated 1970-01-01
British Colonialism
From the East India Company to the Mau Mau detention camps — the empire on which the sun never set, audited.
Updated 1970-01-01
French Colonialism
Saint-Domingue, Algeria, Indochina, West and Equatorial Africa — and the CFA franc that survives them all.
Updated 1970-01-01
German Colonialism
South-West Africa, East Africa, Cameroon, Togoland, the Pacific — short, brutal, and a template for what came next.
Updated 1970-01-01
Dutch Colonialism
The VOC, Indonesia, the Banda massacre, apartheid's South African origins, and the Caribbean plantations.
Updated 1970-01-01
United States Colonialism
Manifest destiny, the Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, 750 overseas bases — empire by another name.
Updated 1970-01-01
Colonial South Africa
From the 1652 VOC outpost at the Cape to British conquest, the Boer Wars, the 1913 Natives Land Act and the Apartheid state.
Updated 1970-01-01
Atrocities
Atrocities & Erasure
Congo, Bengal, Herero and Nama, Algeria, Tasmania, the Americas — the body of evidence.
Updated 1970-01-01
The Congo Free State (1885–1908)
Leopold II's rubber regime — population collapse, the chicotte, severed hands, and the international campaign that ended it.
Updated 1970-01-01
The Bengal Famine (1943)
Two to four million dead under British wartime policy: requisitioning, denial of relief, and Churchill's grain refusals.
Updated 1970-01-01
The Herero & Nama Genocide (1904–1908)
Germany's extermination order in South-West Africa — the first genocide of the twentieth century.
Updated 1970-01-01
France in Algeria (1830–1962)
132 years of settler colonialism, the enfumades, the 1945 Sétif massacre, and the Battle of Algiers.
Updated 1970-01-01
Tasmania & the Black War (1820s–1830s)
Settler violence and the near-annihilation of the Palawa people of lutruwita.
Updated 1970-01-01
Stolen Credit
Stolen Credit
The science, mathematics and civilisation the West learned from the rest — and then claimed.
Updated 1970-01-01
Reference
The Ledger
Charts, numbers, and evidence — what the body count and the bank statements actually say.
Updated 1970-01-01
Library
Books, documentaries, films, and essays that tell the truth.
Updated 1970-01-01
Visual Archive
The photographs the empire would prefer you not see in one place.
Updated 1970-01-01
Modern
Racism in the Present Tense
It did not end. It changed its clothes.
Updated 1970-01-01
Empire by Other Means
Migrants, refugees, talented workers, sanctions, and the dictators the West quietly prefers.
Updated 1970-01-01
The Colonies They Still Hold
Overseas territories, the Commonwealth, the CFA franc, 750 US bases, brain drain, war contracts.
Updated 1970-01-01
Critique
The Left's Mirror
On pity as a costume for contempt.
Updated 1970-01-01
How the Left Became the Worse Right
An internal critique of the Western left's failure to deliver equality.
Updated 1970-01-01
The Same Logic, Other Victims
Why the industrial domination of animals belongs in this conversation, not outside it.
Updated 1970-01-01
Education
What Schools Skip
The curriculum is a confession written in white-out.
Updated 1970-01-01
Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Stolen wealth is not a metaphor. It is a ledger.
Updated 1970-01-01
Action
What We Can Do
Refusal is a practice, not a slogan.
Updated 1970-01-01
Entities & relationships
Each entity links to the chapters that document it, plus Wikipedia and Wikidata so answer engines can resolve it unambiguously.
Concept
Colonialism
Long-term takeover of one country, region or people by another for political control and economic extraction, typically backed by racial ideology and industrial capital.
Documented in
Reference
Place
Congo Free State
Personal possession of Belgian King Leopold II, 1885–1908. Rubber-quota regime enforced by the Force Publique; conservative estimates of excess deaths range from 5 to 15 million.
Documented in
Reference
Event
Bengal Famine of 1943
Famine in British-ruled Bengal during World War II; modern estimates of excess deaths range from 2 to 4 million, attributed principally to wartime British policy rather than crop failure.
Documented in
Reference
Event
Herero and Nama Genocide
Germany's 1904–1908 extermination campaign against the Herero and Nama peoples in present-day Namibia — widely recognised as the first genocide of the twentieth century.
Documented in
Reference
Place
French Algeria
132 years of French settler colonialism in Algeria, 1830–1962, including the enfumades, the 1945 Sétif massacre and the Battle of Algiers.
Documented in
Reference
Event
Black War (Tasmania)
Settler violence in lutruwita / Tasmania in the 1820s–1830s leading to the near-annihilation of the Palawa people.
Documented in
Reference
Event
Atlantic slave trade
Transatlantic deportation of roughly 12.5 million Africans between the 16th and 19th centuries, of whom about 2 million died at sea.
Documented in
Reference
Concept
Reparations
Partial restitution of wealth, land and recognition extracted under slavery and colonial rule. Precedents include post-war German reparations and the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan.
Documented in
Reference
Concept
Neocolonialism
Continuation of colonial extraction through formally sovereign states — via currency arrangements like the CFA franc, military basing, IMF conditionality and unequal trade.
Documented in
Reference
Organization
CFA franc
Currency arrangement covering 14 African states, established 1945; widely regarded as the longest-surviving formal monetary instrument of European colonialism in Africa.
Documented in
Reference
Person
King Leopold II of Belgium
Belgian monarch (1865–1909) and sole proprietor of the Congo Free State; presided over a rubber-quota regime that killed millions.
Documented in
Reference
Organization
British Empire
From the East India Company to the Mau Mau detention camps — the largest empire in history by area and population, audited here for both takings and killings.
Documented in
Reference
Event
Apartheid
South African legal system of racial segregation enforced 1948–1994, with deep roots in Dutch (VOC) and British colonial rule at the Cape.
Documented in
Reference
See also: Answers · Glossary · Methodology · The Ledger