{"id":510,"date":"2020-09-04T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/?page_id=510"},"modified":"2020-10-03T08:45:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T06:45:57","slug":"10-europe-boundless","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/jewish-perspectives-on-the-crises-of-an-idea\/10-europe-boundless\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe Boundless"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n
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Installation Europe Boundless. Photo: Dietmar Walser<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\nSince the 15th<\/sup> century, the interest of the European powers had been concentrated on overseas areas. This was owed to scientific curiosity, missionary fervor, craving for power, and\u2014most of all\u2014 greed. Indigenous populations frequently paid for European ambitions with their life or their labor while the local elites would often collaborate with their new masters. All European maritime powers were colonial powers, even though some\u2014such as Germany\u2014only for a brief period.\r\nWith the attainment of independence from Spain, the Netherlands had started already in the early 17th<\/sup>century to build a colonial empire. Part of it was, for instance, the \u201cDutch East Indies,\u201d today\u2019s Indonesia, whose population had to carry out forced labor for the Netherlands\u2019 benefit over centuries. One of the early European critics of colonialism was David Wijnkoop (1876\u20131941) who espoused a democratic Indonesia. The son of a prominent rabbi founded the Communist Party of Holland and its party organ \u201cDe Tribune.\u201d The magazine vehemently supported the Indonesian independence movement and aimed for its readership to solidarize with the island peoples.\r\n

^ David Wijnkoop, ca. 1935, \u00a9 Nationaal Archief\/Collectie Spaarnestad<\/span><\/em><\/div>\r\n< Harry van Kruiningen, election campaign poster of the Communist Party of Holland, 1933, \u00a9 International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam<\/em>\r\n\r\n> Workers battling the oil pollution in the Niger Delta caused by Shell, \u00a9 Ed Kashi<\/em>\r\n\r\nAfter the Second World War, a process began for which the economist Moritz Julius Bonn (1873\u20131965) had already previously coined the term decolonization. Between 1947 and 1990, all former European colonies\u2014in part, through paying the price of armed conflicts\u2014gained their independence, among them also Nigeria, which was a British colony until 1960. However, by no means did this put an end to the systematic exploitation of regional natural resources and of the local population for the benefit of European interests as pursued, for instance, by the Shell Group.\r\n\r\nThe company traces back to the Jewish dealer in curiosities Marcus Samuel (1799\u20131872) in London who imported shells to England. One of his sons expanded the business into an oil-producing, -refining, and -transporting company. Ultimately, the early-20th<\/sup>-century merger with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company brought about Royal Dutch Shell, today a global corporation that faces, time and again, massive lawsuits. According to expert estimates, two million tons of crude oil have flown into the Niger Delta in the past fifty years as a result of poor safety standards implemented by the corporation. Environmental pollution strips the population off their livelihood and drastically reduces their life expectancy. Moreover, Shell is accused of complicity in killing environmental activists in Nigeria.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the 15th century, the interest of the European powers had been concentrated on overseas areas. This was owed to scientific curiosity, missionary fervor, craving for power, and\u2014most of all\u2014 greed. Indigenous populations frequently paid for European ambitions with their life or their labor while the local elites would often collaborate with their new masters. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":624,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"categories":[64,44,63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/510"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":758,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/510\/revisions\/758"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}