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Castle, Barbara British Labour Party politician who was Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1945 to 1979, making her one of the longest-serving female MPs in British history. Castle was a supporter of both the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United Kingdom, and was a leading figure in protesting the British government's conduct during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya (1952-1960). Castle visited Kenya in 1954 during the rebellion and made a famous speech in Parliament exposing governmental deception over the Hola Massacre in 1959. -
Cavendish, Charles British politician and soldier who was Inspector General of Imperial Yeomanry during the Second Boer War. -
Cavendish, Frederick British politician in the nineteenth century, whose appointment as the Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1882 was cut short by his murder by Irish republicans, known as the Phoenix Park Murders. -
Cavendish, Spencer, 8th Duke of Devonshire British politician in the nineteenth century. Cavendish served in a number of government positions, including Secretary of State for War (1866; 1882-1885), Chief Secretary for Ireland (1871-1874), and Secretary of State for India (1880-1882). -
Césaire, Aimé French-speaking poet, author and politician from Martinique, founder of the Négritude movement. Césaire was deputy for Martinique in the French National Assembly (1945-1993), president of the Martinique Regional Council (1983-1988) and mayor of Fort-de-France. He fought for departmentalization and autonomy through the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais, which he founded in 1958. He led an ambitious cultural policy in Fort-de-France, which included transforming the city's urban fabric. Césaire and his wife Suzanne Roussi (1915-1966) founded the anti-colonial and surrealist literary magazine Tropiques (1941 to 1945). Césaire's most famous works include Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), Discours sur le colonialisme (1955) and Une Tempête (1969). His work has been a major source of inspiration for anti-colonial thinkers the world over, notably Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), a former student of Césaire, and Édouard Glissant (1928-2011). -
Charles II King of Scotland (1649-1651) and King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1660-1685). Charles granted a royal charter to the slave-trading Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa and made investments in the company. He was later founder and patron of the Royal African Company alongside his brother the Duke of York. -
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz Queen consort of Great Britain and Ireland (1761-1818) -
Chautemps, Emile Minister of the Colonies (1895) and the Marine (1914). -
Christie, Agatha Mary Clarissa, née Miller British detective fiction writer, creator of the characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She was married twice, the second time to the archaeologist Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on several field trips in Iraq, Syria, and other places in the Middle East. These trips were enabled by the fact of British imperialism in the region. They were also associated with the cultural predation of twentieth-century archaeology. Christie's husband, Max Mallowan, was a devoted admirer of Gertrude Bell, whose enormous political influence on mandatory Iraq remains a contentious legacy. As the first director of the Iraq Museum, Bell designed Iraq's first antiquities law, which allowed archaeological excavators to remove 50% of their finds; these were priceless antiquities currently housed in museums in the West. Many of Christie's widely loved and enjoyed detective novels are set in Middle Eastern locales. They are replete with Orientalist stereotypes. -
Churchill, Winston Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945; 1951-1955) The British Empire fundamentally shaped Churchill's life and career. From 1896 to 1901, Churchill fought as a soldier in several colonial conflicts, including in India, Sudan, and South Africa. He wrote a number of books recounting his military experiences with the Empire, including The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), The River War (1899), London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900), and Ian Hamilton's March (1900). During the interwar years, Churchill held many ministerial offices and briefly served as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1921 to 1922. Churchill's first term (1940-1945) was dominated by the Second World War and its consequences for the British Empire. His second term (1951-1955) was marked by Britain's postwar transition and conflicts over decolonisation across the globe, including the Mau Mau Rebellion and the Malayan Emergency. -
Clauzel, Bertrand French military general and colonial administrator. Clauzel was Governor-General of Algeria from 1830 to 1831 and 1835 to 1837. -
Clayton, Robert Member of the Court of Assistants to the Royal African Company (1672-1682) and Lord Mayor of London (1679-1680). Clayton also acquired a large plantation in Bermuda through his wife Martha Trott, who was the daughter of a Bermuda merchant and factor. -
Clive, Robert British East India Company official -
Cobbett, William English radical pamphleteer, journalist, and politician. Cobbett held strongly racist views and was an important working-class opponent of the British abolition movement in the early nineteenth-century. -
Cobden, Richard British Radical and Liberal statesman and manufacturer in the nineteenth century. -
Codrington, Christopher Slave-owner and colonial administrator in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Barbados. Codrington was Governor of the Leeward Islands from 1699 to 1704, as well as being a major benefactor of All Souls College, Oxford and their formerly named Codrington Library. -
Coeur, Jacques Grand bourgeois parvenu, il devient le grand argentier du roi Charles VII en 1439, dans le contexte de crise de la fin de la guerre de Cent Ans. Il réorganise la fiscalité et développe le commerce, notamment avec l’Italie et l’Egypte. Sa chute est aussi spectaculaire que son ascension, elle le contraint à l’exil. Il meurt sur l’île de Chio lors d’une expédition navale contre les Turcs. -
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Colbert was Intendant of Finances, Secretary of the Maison du Roi, and State Secretary to the Navy under Louis XIV. He developed industry and trade, reorganising state finances, laws, and the navy. The navy was a crucial military tool for French colonialism. Under Louis XIV, France was one of the most powerful colonial empires, with a large presence in North America and the Caribbean. Colbert founded the French West India Company and French East India Company in 1664. Thanks to the slave trade, the fur trade, and other resources extracted from far away lands, France experienced unprecedented commercial growth. Louis XIV charged Colbert with writing set rules to organise slavery, which had been abolished in the kingdom in 1315, but was practised in its colonies, especially in the Caribbean. Colbert thus compiled rules sent by local governors and turned it into a piece of legislation coined the "Code Noir", which became a royal edict two years after he died. -
Cole, Galbraith Lowry British army officer and colonial administrator. Cole served as Governor of Mauritius from 1823 to 1828 and then the Cape Colony from 1828 to 1833. -
Colston, Edward English slave trader, merchant, philanthropist, and politician. Colston was a Member of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692 as well as Deputy Governor from 1689 to 1690. He was also Member of Parliament for Bristol from 1710 to 1713. -
Columbus, Christopher Italian colonial explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. His four transatlantic voyages, starting from 1492, paved the way for the European colonisation of the Americas. -
Combe, Michel French soldier who helped to create the Champ d'Asile, a short-lived French colony founded by 120 Bonapartist officers, in Texas in 1818. Combe later fought in Algeria.
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Constantine, Emperor Fourth-century CE Roman Emperor, who was declared emperor in York on the death of his father. During his reign, Christianity started to become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire; Constantine's role and motives in this process is debated. Since the eighteenth century, Constantine's legacy was viewed with suspicion; the historian Edward Gibbon blamed him personally for the superstition and corruption that, in Gibbon's view, led to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. -
Cook, James British colonial explorer, cartographer and naval officer in the eighteenth century. Cook is most well know for his three voyages (1768-1771; 1772-1775; 1776-1779) in the Pacific Ocean, which set off British colonial expansion into the region. During his first voyage, Cook's first encounter with the Māori people in New Zealand ended in the deaths of nine Māori. In 1779, during his third and final voyage, Cook was killed trying to take Kalaniʻōpuʻu hostage, who was the ruling chief (aliʻi nui) of the island of Hawaii at the time. The legacy of Cook's expeditions, and in particular its consequences for the indigenous people of the Pacific Ocean, has been highly contested in the present. In 2019, for instance, the British government expressed its regret for the killing of Māori people during Cook's first voyage, although it stopped short of a full apology. In 2024, a statue of Cook in Melbourne, Australia was sawn off in protest over the Australia Day public holiday, with the words "THE COLONY WILL FALL" graffitied on the plinth underneath. -
Coram, Thomas English sea captain and philanthropist who created the Foundling Hospital in London. Coram founded a shipyard in Massachusetts in 1694, and was later appointed as a trustee of the Georgia Colony in 1732. -
Cotton, Stapleton, 1st Viscount Combermere British Army officer, politician, colonial administrator and slave-owner. Cotton came from a family with extensive involvement in British slave-ownership in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. Sir William Stapleton (?-1686) was Governor of the Leeward Islands from 1671 to 1686 and acquired a number of estates in Antigua, St Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat. Stapleton Cotton (1773-1865), Baron Combermere (from 1814) and Viscount Combermere (from 1827) inherited the family interest and became the co-owner of two enslaved labour-estates in St Kitts and Nevis in the 1820s. Upon abolition, Cotton received £3,739 in compensation for 227 enslaved people on his estate in St Kitts, and £3,465 for 193 enslaved people on his estates in Nevis. In 1862, Cotton transferred his Caribbean estates to his son Wellington Henry (1818-91), 2nd Viscount Combermere, with the family interest in the region lasting into the early twentieth century. In addition to his involvement in slave-ownership, Cotton also served in various capacities as a military officer and colonial administrator in the Caribbean, Ireland, and India. From 1817 to 1820, Cotton served as Governor of Barbados, before later becoming Commander-in-Chief in Ireland from 1822 to 1825 and India from 1825 to 1830. -
Coulson, William Lisle Blenkinsopp English army officer and animal welfare campaigner in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. -
Courbet, Amédée French naval officer and colonial administrator in the nineteenth century. Courbet was Governor of Nouvelle-Calédonie from 1880 to 1882, before going on to fight in French Indochina. -
Cowen, Joseph British politician in the nineteenth century. Although a Liberal, he supported Disraeli's aggressive imperial foreign policy in Parliament. -
Crompton, Samuel British inventor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who invented the spinning mule. -
Cromwell, Oliver English military and political leader in the seventeenth century. A pivotal figure in British history, and one whose historical reputation has long been the source of debate, Cromwell's colonial legacy is symbolised by the war in Ireland (1649-1653) and the capture of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655. Jamaica became one of Britain's wealthiest colonies through the use of enslaved African labour, with the British occupying the island for the next three centuries. -
Curzon, George, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston Viceroy and Governor-General of India (1899-1905). -
Cuvier, Georges French naturalist, zoologist and racial theorist. Cuvier was an important figure in the development of scientific racism in the eighteenth century and nineteenth centuries. He is also known for the scientific examinations and abuses he performed on a Khoikhoi woman named Sarah Baartman (1789-1815). Baartman spent her early childhood on farms in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the period of Dutch colonial rule. In 1810, Baartman was taken - potentially by force - to London by Scottish military surgeon Alexander Dunlop and Hendrik Cesars. She was then subject to cruel racist exhibitions across Europe for the next five years, including by Cuvier himself in 1815. Baartman died in 1815, but her body was subjected to further scientific experimentation, abuse and violence after her passing. Cuvier later dissected Baartman's body and preserved her remains in the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Her remains stayed in France until they were repatriated and buried in South Africa in 2002, after a request made by Nelson Mandela to the French government in 1994. -
d'Orléans, Ferdinand-Philippe Prince Royal of France (1830-1842) who fought in Algeria in the 1830s and 1840s. -
Darwin, Charles English naturalist, geologist, biologist and the founder of the theories of evolutionary biology and natural selection. -
de Beauharnais, Joséphine Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie was born in 1763 in Trois-Ilets, Martinique, on the family home. In 1779, at the age of 16, she married Alexandre de Beauharnais in France, from a noble family of landowners in Saint-Domingue. The marriage went badly, but the couple had two children, Hortense and Eugène. After her husband's execution in 1794, she became a prominent figure in the Directoire. It was here that she met Napoleon Bonaparte, a rising officer. They married in 1796. Although she played a central role in Bonaparte's political rise through her connections, she had little influence on his decision to re-establish slavery in 1802. Until her repudiation in 1809, Josephine was a key figure at court, helping to reconcile the regime with the former aristocratic elite. She died at the age of 51 in her estate at Malmaison. -
de Boigne, Benoît Colonial general who fought in India in the late eighteenth century and made a fortune from colonial land holdings there. His first marriage was to an Indian woman variously identified as 'Halime Banu', 'Nur Begam', or "Hélene Bennett". They had two children, a daughter named 'Banu' or 'Anna (1789–1804) and a son named 'Ali Bakhsh' or 'Charles Alexander' (1792-1853). Benoît de Boigne's colonial fortune enabled him to become a major philanthropist in his home town of Chambéry in Savoie. His brother Claude Pierre Joseph Leborgne de Boigne (1762-1832) was a colonial administrator in Santo Domingo. -
de Champlain, Samuel French soldier, author and explorer who went to Mexico, Panama and North America in the early seventeenth century. de Champlain a été deux fois gouverneur de la Nouvelle-France (1626-1629 ; 1633-1635).
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de Crussol, Jacques French colonial explorer in late nineteenth century Africa. -
de Galaup, compte de La Pérouse, Jean-François Officier de marine et un explorateur colonial français du XVIIIe siècle. -
de Gaulle, Charles French army officer and statesman in the twentieth century. de Gaulle was the leader of Free France (1940-1944) and Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic (1944-1946) during the Second World War, and later Prime Minister of France (1958-1959) and President of France (1959-1969). -
de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, Simón José Antonio Venezuelan military and political leader in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. -
de Lamoricière, Louis Juchault French military general and colonial administrator. de Lamoricière was Governor- General of Algeria from 1845 to 1847. -
de Lesseps, Ferdinand French diplomat and entrepreneur in the nineteenth century. de Lesseps was the developer of the Suez Canal (1854-1869) and also led the first attempt to build the Panama Canal (1879-1888), which ended in failure. -
de Liniers, Jacques Spanish military officer and viceroy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. de Liniers was Viceroy of the Río de la Plata from 1807 to 1809. -
de Mahy, François Césaire A member of Réunion's Creole elite - his family were slave owners and his father was mayor of Saint-Pierre and a colonial councillor - he studied at the Collège Royal in Saint-Denis de Bourbon, then at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris. Doctor of Medicine in 1855, he returned to Saint-Pierre de la Réunion in 1857, where he practiced as a physician until 1870. In November 1870, he was one of two moderate Republican deputies elected on the island, and held office until his death in 1906. A member of the colonial party and the colonial group in the Assembly, he actively supported conquest projects. He played a decisive role in the colonization of Madagascar. In January-February 1883, he was acting Minister of the Navy and Colonies, and organized an expedition against Grande-Île, in which a battalion of Creole volunteers from La Réunion took part. He multiplied his efforts to involve France in the takeover of the country. He was not satisfied with the imposition of a protectorate in 1885, and spoke out tirelessly to convince the French elite of the need to colonize Madagascar, not only as a member of parliament, but also as Honorary President of the Congress of French Geographical Societies, and finally as Minister of the Navy and Colonies, a post he held again from December 1887 to March 30, 1888. After the country's annexation in 1895, he supported Gallieni's "pacification" campaigns, which resulted in 50,000 to 100,000 deaths among the inhabitants of Madagascar. In 1898, François de Mahy displayed his anti-Dreyfus commitment and joined the Ligue de la Patrie, founded in reaction to the founding of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme. -
de Miranda, Francisco Venezuelan military leader and revolutionary in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. -
de Saint-Vérent, marquis de Montcalm, Louis Joseph French soldier in the eighteenth century. Montcalm was the commander of the French forces in North America during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). -
de San Martín y Matorras, José Francisco Argentine military general in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. San Martin one of the primary leaders of South America's struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire. -
de Vimeur, Jean-Baptiste Donatien, comte de Rochambeau French commander-in-chief during the American Revolutionary War.