A Decolonial Project for Europe

Abstract

Europe's past is an imperial and colonial past. Often presenting itself as a cosmopolitan continent of nations, it is, in fact, a continent of national projects buttressed by colonial endeavours. These have included colonial emigration and settlement, dispossession, appropriation, extraction, and enslavement. While particular national governments have played a central role – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, for example – populations from across the European continent have also participated. This article sets out the ‘varieties of colonialism’ at the heart of the European project and asks what a decolonial project of Europe might look like. I argue it would be one that places the colonial histories of Europe at the centre of our understandings of the present and which seeks redress of the injustices associated with that history through postcolonial reparative action.