The Aftermath of Empire w/ Kojo Koram

The rise and fall of the British and Dutch Empire has been inextricably linked to the countries’ identity and politics. Today, as both the United Kingdom and The Netherlands struggle with their own imperial legacy, the shadows of empire loom large. While they no longer exert direct control over their former colonies, many of the legal and economic structures put in place during the era of colonisation still facilitate the system of wealth transfer that drives our world. Its methods of extraction during the imperial age have laid the groundwork for global disparities today. So how did they manage and trap the wealth of newly decolonised nations? Which of these mechanisms are still in place today? And how are the consequences of empire now blowing back across the developed world? 

Kojo Koram is a writer and an academic, teaching at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. In his acclaimed book Uncommon Wealth – Britain and the Aftermath of Empire he discusses the material legacy of colonialism. It analyses the ways in which the financial models of empire have continued to preserve and uphold structures of global inequality well into the 21st century, and shows how its methods of extraction are coming back to bite us now.

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