Imperial sunset: A French version

L'Idée Coloniale en France 1871–1962 by Raoul Girardet, Paris; La Table Ronde, 1972, pp. 332; 29 francs.     

Decision Making and Uncertainty: Bayesian Analysis of Potential Flood Heights

This paper provides a case study of a method to estimate the value of additional information, before its acquisition, to aid decision making in the face of uncertainty. The approach employs conditional simulation in a Monte Carlo framework to conduct a Bayesian assessment of the value of information in an explicitly spatial setting. This paper demonstrates the procedure as applied by a hypothetical decision maker concerned with coastal flood control where flood damage is dependent on the spatial distribution of elevation. A set of known survey points provides the decision maker with limited knowledge of elevation. The method explored in the paper allows the decision maker to ascertain the potential value of additional survey information in terms of its ability to reduce uncertainty about flood damage.     

On Younghusband, the Last Great Imperial Adventurer by Patrick French

For years,I have been longing to write a reactionto the book entitled Younghusband,the Last GreatImperial Adventurer.Patrick French,the author of this book,is not aTibetologist but in 1994,Harper Collins published hisbook Younghusband,the Last Great ImperialAdventurer.Soon after that,two different Chinesetranslations came out-both in China and overseas(Zheng Minghua is the translator of the former,veryslightly abridged into one volume,and XinjiangPeople's Publishing House,2000,Urumqi).In 1999,Marco Polo Cultural Career Stock Ltd.published thesecond version in two volumes.     

Imperial Remains and Imperial Invitations: Centering Race within the Contemporary Large-Scale Infrastructures of East Africa

In this paper we combine infrastructure studies and black radical traditions to foreground how imperial remains deeply inform the logics that bring forth contemporary large-scale infrastructures in Africa. The objective, prompted by the ongoing avid promotion of such architectures on the continent, is to contribute to an analysis that centres race in these projects. Our argument is that these initiatives have to be understood in relation to inherited material and discursive scaffoldings that remain from the colonial period, through what we refer to as imperial remains and imperial invitations. These remains and invitations demonstrate how recent mega infrastructures inhere, in their planning, financing and implementation, a colonial racialism, despite rhetorical claims to the opposite. Empirically, we draw, principally, on China built and financed infrastructure projects from Kenya, and theoretically upon black radical traditions in order to foreground a longer genealogy of black pathologising and resistance to it on the continent.