New Books in Intellectual History Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)
Nov 4, 2025
In this engaging conversation, Joshua Castellino, a professor at Brunel University London, dives deep into the ramifications of colonial crimes and their impact on today's legal frameworks. He discusses how colonial legacies persist through unjust enrichment and presents a five-point plan for reparations that connects historical extraction to the ongoing climate crisis. Castellino critiques existing systems and explores innovative solutions, emphasizing the need for collective actions beyond traditional state boundaries to foster justice and equity.
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Colonial Systemic Constraints
- Colonial systems hardwired sovereign state, fixed territoriality, and extractive economics into global governance.
- These imposed structures limit postcolonial societies' ability to build equitable, sustainable futures.
Global Patterns Of Colonial Harm
- Patterns of colonial harms recur globally and can be categorized to build solidarity across disparate claims.
- Castellino organizes these into a typography of seven core colonial crimes to expose systemic continuity.
Nama and Herero Case Spark
- Castellino's work began after conversations with Nama and Herero communities seeking accountability from Germany for early-1900s genocide.
- That episode revealed recurring systemic processes rather than isolated incidents.
