We present a new dataset with 15 indicators for the political, economic and social impact of colonialism. This dataset and our four indices for the impact of colonialism create for the first time the opportunity to compare directly the levels of colonial transformation for a sample of 83 African and Asian countries. Some of our exploratory findings on the interrelation of the dimensions show that in British colonies political domination was in general less direct and less violent. Plantation colonies experienced more investment in infrastructure and more violence during decolonization. The correlations between indicators for economic distortion (trade policy, trade and FDI concentration) show that the economic re-direction of some colonies towards a more exclusive exchange with the metropole country was an interdependent process. In general, a more intense political domination came along with a higher level of economic transformation. If an area was transformed economically, however, a social transformation was likely to take place too, but these processes should not be confounded. In areas that were politically united for the first time under colonialism, economic distortion and social transformation were more profound.

We investigate the demographic effects of forced labor under an extractive colonial regime: the Cultivation System in nineteenth-century Java. Our panel analyses show that labor demands are strongly associated with mortality rates, likely resulting from malnourishment and unhygienic conditions on plantations and the spread of infectious disease. An instrumental variable approach, using international market prices for coffee and sugar to predict labor demands, addresses potential endogeneity concerns. Our estimates suggest that without the abolition of the Cultivation System average overall mortality in Java would have been between (roughly) 10 and 30 percent higher by the late 1870s.

The Colonial Dates Dataset (COLDAT) aggregates information on the reach and duration of European colonial empires from renowned secondary sources. By aggregating secondary sources, rather than collecting from primary sources, the new dataset reflects the accumulated knowledge in the discipline and relieves researchers from making hard to justify choices between different historical datasets.

Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001) established that economic institutions today are correlated with expected mortality of European colonialists. David Albouy argues this relationship is not robust. He drops all data from Latin America and much of the data from Africa, making up almost 60 percent of our sample, despite much information on the mortality of Europeans in those places during the colonial period. He also includes a "campaign" dummy that is coded inconsistently; even modest corrections undermine his claims. We also show that limiting the effect of outliers strengthens our results, making them robust to even extreme versions of Albouy's critiques. (JEL D02, E23, F54, I12, N40, O43, P14)

These files contain the replication commands and data for Paine, Jack. 2018. "Redistributive Political Transitions: Minority Rule and Liberation Wars in Colonial Africa"

The dataset contains the digitized version of a map created by Hildegard Binder Johnson in 1967, showing the locations of Potestant and Catholic mission stations in Africa around 1923/27. The map provides greater coverage of mission stations established in colonial times than other currently used data sources, and we have shown that using it in analyses can can lead to substantively different findings.

Data and code for replicating the results in the main text and supplemental material.

When asked if people felt that their country's former colonies are now better or worse off because of colonization, the most common response was that colonization had left neither a positive nor negative legacy on these countries today, and the second most common answer was that the respondents did not know. In Britain and Japan, approximately one third of respondents felt that their countries' former colonies were now better off as a result of colonialism, while only 13 percent of respondents in Germany felt this way. Belgium and Italy had the highest share of respondents who felt that their countries' former colonies were now worse off due to colonialism. France had the highest combined share of respondents who felt their former colonies were better or worse off, suggesting that they had the strongest opinions on the subject; in contrast to the seventy percent of Germans who felt that their former colonies were neither better nor worse of or did not know how to answer.

Postulating grievance-based mechanisms, several recent studies show that politically excluded ethnic groups are more likely to experience civil conflict. However, critics argue that endogeneity may undermine this finding since governments' decisions to include or exclude could be motivated by the anticipation of conflict. We counter this threat to inference by articulating a causal pathway that explains ethnic groups' access to power independently of conflict. Focusing on post-colonial states, we exploit differences in colonial empires' strategies of rule to model which ethnic groups were represented in government at the time of independence. This identification strategy allows estimating the exogenous effect of inclusiveness on conflict. We find that previous studies have tended to understate the conflict-dampening impact of political inclusion. This finding suggests that grievances have been prematurely dismissed from conventional explanations of conflict, and that policy makers should consider conflict resolution methods based on power sharing and group rights.

What explains states’ sub-national territorial reach? While large parts of the state-building literature have focused on national capabilities, little is yet known about the determinants of the unevenness of state presence on the subnational level. To fill this gap, we look at early attempts at state-building: we investigate the processes of state penetration in the former colony of German East Africa. Contrary to previous studies – which largely emphasized antecedent or structural factors – we argue that geographical patterns of state penetration have been driven by the state’s strategic imperative to solidify control over territory and establish political stability. We test our propositions using an original, geo-referenced grid-cell dataset for the years 1890 to 1909 based on extensive historical records in German colonial yearbooks and maps.

What forms of politics come with the contested ideas of the Anthropocene and resilience? Rather than taking these ideas as a given and looking at their political consequences, I will ask what politics enters at their points of construction, where they are understood as being constructed computationally. This allows me to read across from the Anthropocene and resilience to the other forms of computational anticipation that are becoming pervasive at the level of everyday life. As truth claims that depend on algorithms, I will argue that all of these constructions derive their authority from an entanglement of computation and science. Under current conditions, this entanglement brings it's own political tendencies, which can be characterised as colonial. To counter this implicit colonialism I will draw on the feminist and post-colonial approaches of standpoint theory. I believe this offers an alternative to the current entanglements of anticipatory computation, and allows us to re-work it into a post-colonial politics of algorithms and atmospheres.

Abstract The field of International Relations (IR) is barely ‘international’. Scholars have voiced their concerns and as a result, we have witnessed calls for diversity and inclusion in IR, be it in publication or in syllabi. Notwithstanding, the misrepresentation of non-Western scholars in the production of knowledge is significant. This article sheds light on the dynamics of publishing from a non-Western perspective and reinforces Post-Colonial epistemological critiques in IR. Based on the latest dataset from the International Studies Association (ISA)’s journals, this article argues that the current setting of IR journals is not suited for and receptive of non-Western scholars and epistemologies.

For questions, please contact Patrick Ziltener (zaibat@soziologie.uzh.ch).

The data contain estimates of numeracy across regions of Western Sudan (Senegal, Gambia and Western Mali) between 1770 and 1900, as well as correlates linked to factor endowments, European trade and early colonialism.

Urban forests associated with green infrastructure for sustainable outcomes are particularly critical in the Global South, where some of the world’s fastest-growing cities are located. However, compared to temperate cities, the drivers of urban tree species distribution in tropical cities remain understudied. In this study, we quantify the spatial distribution and abundance of urban forests in the tropical city of Georgetown, Guyana. British colonialism has shaped this city, including forced movement of peoples under slavery from Africa and indentured servants from the Indian Subcontinent. We studied how this multicultural context has influenced tree species distributions in the capital city of the only Anglophone country in South America. We quantified the abundance of tree species using a stratified sampling design to distribute transects across fifteen neighborhoods that vary in distance to the colonial center of the city and ethnic composition. We recorded a total of 57 unique species, the majority of which (73%) were cultivated for their edible fruits. We identify tree species that likely represent Guyana’s unique multicultural heritage by comparing our species list to flora in nine cities in neighboring countries (Venezuela and Brazil) with different colonial histories. This international comparison identified a set of tree species that occurred only in Guyana. Relationships between ethnic composition and colonial history and tree species distribution were weak at the neighborhood scale, where proportion of East Indian residents had little explanatory power and distance to colonial center was correlated with abundance of only some species groups. This apparent discrepancy between neighborhood and national scales may relate to the establishment of Guyanese food as a unifying national identifier across ethnicities. The prominence of edible fruit trees in our study suggests a set of species that could be incorporated into urban planning to strengthen biocultural linkages, foster cultural integration, and promote food security.

Scientific practices stemming from colonialism, whereby middle- and low-income countries supply data for high-income countries and the contributions of local expertise are devalued, are still prevalent today in the field of palaeontology. In response to these unjust practices, countries such as Mexico and Brazil adopted protective laws and regulations during the twentieth century to preserve their palaeontological heritage. However, scientific colonialism is still reflected in many publications describing fossil specimens recovered from these countries. Here, we present examples of ‘palaeontological colonialism’ from publications on Jurassic–Cretaceous fossils from NE Mexico and NE Brazil spanning the last three decades. Common issues that we identified in these publications are the absence of both fieldwork and export permit declarations and the lack of local experts among authorships. In Mexico, access to many fossil specimens is restricted on account of these specimens being housed in private collections, whereas a high number of studies on Brazilian fossils are based on specimens illegally reposited in foreign collections, particularly in Germany and Japan. Finally, we outline and discuss the wider academic and social impacts of these research practices, and propose exhaustive recommendations to scientists, journals, museums, research institutions and government and funding agencies in order to overcome these practices.

Files included:

Table S1. Sabinas, La Popa and Parras basins fossil publications by foreign authors

Table S2. Araripe fossil publications by foreign authors (vertebrates and plants)

Table S3. Preliminary list of Araripe fossil arthropod publications

Table S4. List of palaeontology museums and postgraduate courses in Brazil with palaeontology advisors

Table S5. List of palaeontology museums and postgraduate courses in Mexico with palaeontology advisors

Translation S1. Complete article in Portuguese

Translation S2. Complete article in Spanish

Appendix A. Laws in Brazil (includes English translations)

Appendix B. Laws in Mexico (includes English translations)

Colonization records include documents from two government agencies that raised money and support for the removal of formerly enslaved people to Liberia. As early as 1691, the Virginia General Assembly began passing laws that forced free Black Virginians to leave the Commonwealth. Fears around insurrection and the desire to control the Black population gave rise to institutions dedicated to removing free people of color from Virginia.

The General Assembly passed an act in 1833 "making appropriations for the removal of free persons of color" to the western coast of Africa and established a board of commissioners charged with carrying out the provisions of the act. “The Board of Commissioners for the Removal of Free Persons of Color records, 1833-1856,” contain correspondence, lists, minutes, oaths, and resolutions. Included are lists of free Black individuals who emigrated to Liberia (including the name of the ship), lists of free Black individuals willing to emigrate, and resolutions to send money to the American Colonization Society and to those who transported the free Black people to Liberia. Also included is a report of the Board of Commissioners, 1835, containing a list of free Black people transported to Liberia and including their names, ages, and where they had lived in Virginia.

The General Assembly passed an act on April 6, 1853 to create the Colonization Board of Virginia, (chap. 55, p. 58). This act also created appropriations to fund the voluntary transportation and removal of free Black individuals to Liberia or elsewhere in West Africa through the efforts of the Virginia branch of the American Colonization Society. Statutory members of the board included the Secretary of the Commonwealth, the Auditor of Public Accounts, the Second Auditor of Public Accounts, and four other competent members appointed by the Governor. An annual tax was levied on free Black men between the ages of 21 to 55 to help finance the operations of the board. The Colonization Board was authorized to reimburse the agents of the Virginia Colonization Society for transportation costs only after receiving satisfactory proof that the formerly enslaved individuals had been transported out of the state. The Virginia Colonization Society arranged for the actual passage of free Black individuals, and at each meeting the Board received affidavits for particular free people who had already been transported, along with evidence that the individuals were free or born of free parents, that they were residents of Virginia and that they had already been transported to Africa or that they had embarked to another state for transportation. The Board was required to keep a journal of its proceedings, showing all actions taken and monies disbursed, and was also required to submit a biennial report to the General Assembly showing the name, age, sex, and locality of each person removed. The board held its last meeting on August 14, 1858, after the preceding session of the General Assembly failed to extend its existence. The Virginia Board of Colonization journal of proceedings includes lists of the names and ages of free Black individuals transported from the commonwealth to Africa, as well as the county, city, or borough from which they were transported, and in some instances also includes the name of the ship and names of former enslavers.

Data in this collection is drawn directly from the original historical records and may contain terminology which is now deemed offensive.

These are the data that go with the paper "Words are monuments: Patterns in US national park place names perpetuate settler colonial mythologies including white supremacy" (available 6 April 2022) by the above authors. Our code (and these data) are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5712009. This archive is here for folks who just want the data. This is the full dataset with name explanations and references for the explanations, traditional Indigenous place names for settler colonial place names (where available), additional categories for sorting, and more.

Note: .csv files can be opened in Excel and Google Sheets.

column info:

A: Unique ID per row

B: National Park place name is in

C: Place name according to NPS visitor map

D: Feature type (mountain, island, picnic area, etc.)

E: Name type (person, non-human animal, plant, etc.)

F: Natural or human constructed (human constructed includes so-called "ruins", as well as visitor centers, etc.)

G: Is the word from an Indigenous or western language?

H: Is it a traditional Indigenous place name?

I: If it is Indigenous is it the name of an Indigenous person or people?

J: Is it a translation of a traditional Indigenous PN?

K: Word meaning class (similar to column E)

L: Erasure -- see paper for definitions of each class below and decision trees

• Yes
• potentially
• no information
• not erasure - evidence it is a traditional Indigenous PN or settler built with western PN
• translation of traditional IPN)

M: Dimensions of racism and colonialism -- see paper for definitions of each class below and decision trees

• No (traditional Indigenous PN, western built with western PN, or erasure as only problem)
• Name itself promotes racist ideas and/or violence against a group
• Named after person who supported racist ideas (but not physically violent)
• Named for a person who directly or use their power to indirectly perpetrate violence against a racial group
• Western use of Indigenous name (Appropriation)
• Other - truly does not fit any other classes
• No info - cannot find explanation
• Colonialism - memorializes colonialism
• Relevant western use of Indigenous name (i.e., appropriation of traditional name)

N: Derogatory

• Yes
• Potentially
• No info

O: explanation of name found in research

P: Link to resources explaining name (for full citation for books cited, e.g., "name year" entries, see Table S1 in the paper).

Q: Link to resources explaining name (if second link or source available)

R: Indigenous name found in research

v1.0.0 did not include columns O-R by mistake; corrected in this version update.

The U.S. landscape has undergone substantial changes since Europeans first arrived. Many land use changes are attributable to human activity. Historical data concerning these changes are frequently limited and often difficult to develop. Modeling historical land use changes may be necessary. We develop annual population series from first European settlement to 1999 for all 50 states and Washington D.C. for use in modeling land use trends. Extensive research went into developing the historical data. Linear interpolation was used to complete the series after critically evaluating the appropriateness of linear interpolation versus exponential interpolation.

Replication material and supporting documents for Fails and Krieckhaus (2010).