There is another side to war

Translation: Iman Ma'ruf Presentation: Sinan Anton Number of pages: 408 The vast majority of books that engage with the planetary crisis and attempt to identify its roots and the factors that influenced and exacerbated it, start their narrative from the era of capitalism's rise, or the Industrial Revolution. What distinguishes Ghosh's approach is that he does not stop there, but also returns to the era of settler colonialism and the beginnings of colonial modernity to gain a deeper understanding of the series of violent changes it caused in the world. From reshaping the land and commodifying it, to transforming the relationship with it into a monopolistic consumerist relationship, to waging a genocidal war against the indigenous populations, or against their systems of life and the destruction of their cultures, which in their beliefs and practices was a relationship of coexistence and sanctification, not possession. The land and the network of beings and plants connected to it, and still are, in their beliefs and practices, are a living system, with no space for exploitation, profit, or depletion, and merely a resource for capital accumulation, as seen from the perspective of colonial modernity. Ghosh uses the story of nutmeg and its transformations and path as a commodity, and the colonization of the Panda Islands as an allegory that structures the book's thesis, linking the practices and ideology of settler colonialism, modernity, and capitalism, which together created and intensified the planetary crisis. Ghosh moves from the Panda Islands and what the Dutch colonizers and the Dutch East India Company—considered pioneers of capitalism—committed there, to North America, to continue what he calls "perpetual wars" (whose repercussions continue today with toxic waste dumped in protected lands) against indigenous peoples in the 17th century and beyond. These wars were not only against bodies but against systems of life, and were "biopolitical" wars. "Colonialism, genocide, and the structures of organized violence are the foundations upon which industrial modernity was built." Dr. Sinan Anton, Iraqi poet and novelist