Everyone loves going on a journey. For me, my journey shared below concerns decolonisation. We all start from different places since everyone lives in different countries and has a different outlook. My journey began in the UK. Our national consciousness lacks a good understanding of the impacts of colonisation. Better awareness of our complex, exploitative and racist colonial past equips us to strengthen relationships and deal with the challenges presented in our humanitarian and development work thereby advancing our reframing relationships objectives as members of EU-CORD.
I was a history teacher in my 20s in England, having loved the subject in my school days, yet I was largely unaware of Britain’s role and the impact of some of the more appalling activities in the wider world during the British Empire. This changed in January 2018 when Dr Rev’d Duncan Dormoor, General Secretary of USPG, shared his critique of the dark side of colonialism at a GA in January 2018, which was truly shocking. For me, it was the start of a journey of discovery to understand how exploitation drove Europeans to seek profit and would stop at nothing in this quest, which included the Atlantic slave trade, besides other awful injustices. I knew all about Wilberforce and abolition, something I felt proud of, but little about the 400 years before abolition. I knew about it as a fact without appreciating this crime’s breadth, scale and lasting human impact upon all involved and how its impacts are inter-generational.
My journey was all about satisfying my curiosity and to find out more. I read books, visited museums, and discussed the topic. In 2023, I ran an exercise for EU-CORD called ‘Barriers to Reframed Partnerships’. We asked representatives from our partners what the impact today is of decolonisation. ‘Sharing the power’ as opposed to ‘shifting the power’ was one of the most striking messages of this exercise. This phrase suggests that sharing is done voluntarily since it’s the right thing to do and that we all have a positive value-adding contribution to make. This advocates for working together in a common bond of faith with shared objectives of confronting social injustice and extreme poverty in all its forms.
A good place to start is to reference biblical texts where we find universal Christian truth: See Col 3 v11: “There is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all”. Equality is expressed here between all peoples while Galatians 5 v13 expresses the approach to relationships: “serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command ‘love your neighbour as yourself’”.
The historical adaptation of Christian teaching:
I’m an evangelical, bible believing Christian without any theological or historical training in church history. My question is how it came about that the church in the 15th – 19th C was complicit and supportive of exploitation and slavery. Books deal with the facts, events and outlooks but not so clearly the values, attitudes and Christian teachings of the time which approved this.
To find the roots of how Christianity was ‘adapted’ to permit European attitudes to exploitation and profit, we have to go back a long way. Let’s start the story in 1096 when Pope Urban II called the First Crusade to liberate the Holy Land from the invading ‘infidels’. The values involved here whereby Christendom was expanded was through conquest, forced conversion and enslavement of unbelievers. Yet it was Constantine (306-337) who made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. None of this could happen without Christianity accommodating notions of statehood. Theology had to merge Greek concepts of the state with Christian teachings.
From the early church, as described in Acts, where people of all ethnic backgrounds came together to share and worship God, there had to be important steps in Christian thinking to reach a place where colonialism could happen. Theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, synthesised Aristotelian Greek philosophy of the state with Christianity, thereby creating the theological foundations for Christendom. Here, the European entity of the nation-state was regarded as Christian, overseen by the pope, which legitimised violence against ‘others’ both internal to the state and external overseas.
The motivation for exploration between the 15th C and 19th centuries was profit. To build profit-driven inter-continental enterprises, such as the East India Company (1600 – 1874), it was necessary to have more than just ocean-crossing ships, good navigation, maps, firearms and a market for whatever products could be acquired; it also needed a certain outlook on the world, an attitude and approval of exploitation. Crusades provided the initial approach through conquest. Papal decrees in 1452 and 1456 approved Portuguese expansion down the west coast of Africa. The move from state-led Christianity to crusades in the 12th century and colonizing were consistent steps.
Interestingly, in the 1440s, the Portuguese king Henry the Navigator sponsored the exploration of Africa not for discovery purposes but for profit. Soon, human captives were being exchanged at a rate of 9-12 to one horse. (‘Power and Thrones – Dan Jones P583) “Henry was a grand master of the Order of Christ….he sent forth his navigators, conquerors and slavers with the backing of Rome. In 1452 and 1456, the Portuguese received papal licence to ‘invade, conquer, fight and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and other infidels and enemies of Christ’, to conquer their lands and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude’. As a result, immense wealth was accumulated by a small number while for multitudes, immense misery was caused for generations.”
Madeira was used as a model where imported slaves were used to grow valuable products, including sugar. From this success, the model was taken to the Caribbean and the Americas, where generations of Africans were sold as property.
On a visit to a slavery memorial in Nantes, France, I learned that 12.5 million men, women and children were transported into slavery on 27,233 voyages setting out from Europe. 1.5 million never completed the crossing. Having worked at the insurance market Lloyds of London, I came across underwriting documents for the slaves in slave ships being transported as cargo from Africa to the Caribbean!
Dan Jones, the historian in ‘Powers and Thrones’ writes, “The establishment of these far-flung dominions profoundly changed the nature of global commerce, and it shattered and redrew age-old power structures on every continent of the world. It brought unimaginable wealth and prosperity to some individuals and realms and foisted hellish misery, slavery and evil on others.”
The abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1807 cost the British taxpayer an enormous sum to compensate the slave owners. People in the UK were paying taxes up until 2015 to repay government borrowing to pay slave owners for the freeing of slaves. It seems perverse that the descendants of enslaved people living in the UK were repaying the loan for their ancestors’ owners through their taxes. Nothing was paid to those enslaved.
My purpose in recounting this story is to show how values were distorted, and Christianity itself was used to justify and perpetuate this hideous injustice. In the 19th century, many Christians and sympathisers worked to outlaw slavery. However, attitudes have not always changed since colonialism continued up to and beyond the 1960’s.
The 2023 Barriers to Reframed Partnerships exercise
During discussions with partners in Africa in 2023, some pointed out that the conditions of exploitation which led to colonialism in the first place continue to persist day. A more subtle form of post-colonialist control persists in the eyes of many. Awareness of this shared history can help us understand why building bridges and bringing equality into our working relationships with partners and project participants can help build equality and thereby seek social justice through our various programmes as we work together.
How understanding the past helps us to reframe our partnerships
It’s only by looking back that we can see how relationships have been affected by the power exerted by competing European nations seeking profit and not the welfare of peoples colonised. The church’s support of profiteering at that time gives us an awareness that Christianity has participated in these dark practices.
Sathnam Sanghera in ‘Empireland’ writes “If you never face up to uncomfortable facts, you’ll never be able to navigate a path forwards. If we don’t confront the reality of what happened in the British empire, we will never be able to work out who we are and who we want to be.” He argues that, unlike other European countries, and for a variety of reasons, Britain has never faced up to its past. Jason Hickel the economic anthropologist states that “if British people understood colonial history half as well as they understood the details of Henry VIII’s wives, Britain would be a different country.”
Nationally, a ‘selective amnesia’ prevails, celebrating Wilberforce and abolition but not the slave trade that enriched it the previous 150 years.
Equipped with this awareness, it raises the question of how we proceed from here. Some of the answers can be found in the Barriers to Reframed Partnerships Report recommendations, which are summarised below:
- EU-CORD could establish a community of practice similar to the one recently set up for ‘Faith, climate and the environment’ but for ‘Reframing Partnerships’. This could be a cross-programme meeting open to participation from members and partners.
- Listen and build trust: Members based in the ‘Global North’ should ensure that time and space are provided to build trust through listening and understanding colleagues based in the partner countries, finding out what suspicions might exist, what outlooks towards development prevail and what the challenges are. Time spent considering biblical teachings which influence development would help increase mutual understanding.
- Partner-led paths out of poverty: Partners emphasised that they know best the challenges communities face and how to overcome them. Members could help ensure that partners are equipped with appropriate analytical techniques and have the opportunity to express these views.
- Strengthen member–partner relationships: Work with partners to draft analytical studies that could be given to donors to influence their policies and funding decisions. This would also give useful visibility to both members and partners with donors.
- Build equality in partnerships: Seek to move towards ‘true partnerships’ where partners feel valued and respected through being empowered. Partners used the phrase to ‘share the power’ as opposed to ‘shifting the power’.
- Fosters shared learning and development with partner organisations: Collaborates to share knowledge, develop skills, and raise awareness, enabling locally-led responses and leadership to become a lived reality.
- Sensitivity on Human Rights: Where donor human rights approaches are required when working closely with partners to ensure cultural and community sensitivities are respected.
- Gender: Gender issues should be approached with the involvement of men, who should participate in the changes towards women’s empowerment. Traditional paternalistic leadership requires female role models to validate changes.
- Understand the faiths and values of our communities: Time spent understanding community faiths, traditions, and family would help ensure values are shared, and behaviours are influenced to improve programme outcomes.
Medium Term:
Create a workshop aimed at new starters in the aid sector to explain the history of relationships between the Global North and Global South caused by colonialism. This should include an understanding of how this history affects us today. To do this, a small team of well-motivated and informed individuals would need to create such a workshop as an initial pilot. An assessment to evaluate whether there is sufficient interest in such a project would be a useful first step.
Long term dream:
Create a museum explaining the impacts on Indigenous peoples caused by colonialism, addressing the injustices, crimes and exploitation to raise awareness of what happened and how relationships between the Global North and the Global South need to be set on a different footing. This would help address big political issues that challenge us today concerning migration and climate change. A good museum experience raises awareness and makes people reflect and think through how what happened in the past affects us today and speaks to present-day challenges, including the humanitarian and development sector. Present-day museums packed with colonial artefacts provide poor experiential learning experiences. Visits to more modern museums, such as at Caen Memorial Museum and Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, are far more impactful and personal. Perhaps a ‘virtual museum’ could be developed to address the topic, which would benefit from the latest media technologies, global access, interactive possibilities, educational access and lower cost.
Paul Okomu (Action Aid): “At the foot of the cross we are all on equal ground.”
Adrian Hawthorn, Consultant August 2024″The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the consultant and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, stance, or endorsement of the EU-CORD network.”
Recommended reading:
- Partos – Future Brief: Decolonisation of the development sector
- Power and Thrones – Dan Jones
- Empireland – Sathnam Sanghera
- The Earth Transformed (An Untold Story) – Peter Frankopan
- The Weirdest People in the Work – Joseph Henrich
