If Sweden seems pure as the driven snow compared to the major imperialist powers such as England, the USA and France, that is only a function of how low the bar has been set. In my last post I tried to show how indigenous peoples got screwed by the dominant nationality bent on creating a modern capitalist powerhouse. Now I will look into the question of Sweden’s footprints in Africa, a continent that most of us—including me until I began researching the matter—considered untouched by the reputedly benign northern European state.
If there’s any term that captures the essence of European colonialism, it is the “scramble for Africa”, a project largely associated with England, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium. Believe it or not Sweden was a player as well. This is all laid out in copious detail in an article by David Nilsson titled “Sweden-Norway at the Berlin Conference 1884–85: History, national identity-making and Sweden’s relations with Africa”. Sweden and Norway had a common monarch in this period—King Oscar II whose visage adorns the brand of sardines seen in your local supermarket. Norway had been taken over by Sweden in the Napoleonic wars, just another indication that it was as capable of territorial aggrandizement as any other European empire-builder.) Nilsson, like Gunlög Fur whose scholarship on the persecution of Sami I referred to in my previous article, is part of the generation of younger Swedish scholars who are taking a fresh look at the nation’s dark past. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/07/09/swedish-imperialism-in-africa/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
