Decolonising Political Modernity: From Ocean to Museum

This book applies a decolonial perspective to key categories of colonial modernity, such as racism and nationalism, explores oceanic thinking as an alternative and proposes a UK museum of colonial modernity based on a critique of several existing European museums. It analyses historical and contemporary manifestations of racism and nationalism, particularly in British society. Drawing on the concept of colonial modernity, it traces the origins of racism to the colonial expansion and exploitation that began in the fifteenth century and continues to shape the world today. The book is distinctive in its interdisciplinary approach, engaging with history, politics and museum studies. It is also innovative in its comparative analysis of selected French, Dutch and Belgian museum exhibits using a decolonial lens. The book sets out a nuanced account of the complexity of representing race, ethnonationalism and colonial modernity in a museum context, using oceanic thinking to present alternative visions of belonging.