Decolonial Sweden - a book talk by Dr Michael McEachrane

Sweden is often displayed as an ethnoracially homogenous country without any colonial history: an open and tolerant human rights champion, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and in solidarity with the Global South. For over twenty years, authors Michael McEachrane and Louis Faye have been challenging this account, pointing to Sweden’s involvement in colonial histories and legacies, its racialized nationhood, and embedded colonial structures. This important new book reflects a decolonial turn in research, emphasizing that coloniality is far from over, and that challenging global injustices remains an unfinished and open-ended process. Chapters in the book consider the resistance of the Sámi people to Swedish colonialism, whether Sweden owes the Caribbean reparations for its colonization of Saint Barthélemy and involvement in the transatlantic trade, Sweden’s involvement in a colonial global economy, and how white European identification is embedded in Swedish politics, nation-building, and society. 

Michael McEachrane is a 2024-2025 Racial Justice Fellow at the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Among his publications are Sverige och de Andra: Postkoloniala perspektiv (Natur & Kultur, 2001), Emotions and Understanding: Wittgensteinian Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Afro-Nordic Landscapes. Equality and Race in Northern Europe (Routledge, 2014).

Organised by The UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation