Jerusalem | The colonial era entered its death throes after World War II. From 1945 through the 1960s, a global order in which European powers took political control of other countries – occupying them with settlers, subjugating the local populations and exploiting the land and its inhabitants for economic gain – unravelled. Dozens of states in Asia and Africa threw off colonial overlords. Colonialism, once equated by the West with civilising progress, became synonymous with iniquity.

More than a half-century later, a broad battle over colonialism and its legacy has restarted. The polemics reflect a world where wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, the “Global South” has risen, and study has intensified in the United States and elsewhere of how different forms of domination and prejudice – whether in the fields of race, class, sex or religion – interlock to oppress minorities.