Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories examines colonial architecture not as a passive residue of empire, but as an active field in which power, memory, violence, identity and heritage are continuously produced, contested and reinterpreted. The volume’s central proposition is that built environments shaped by colonialism cannot be understood through architectural form alone, because their meanings emerge from entangled histories of construction, use, reuse, erasure, conservation, destruction and political remembrance. Bringing together archaeology, architectural history and heritage studies, the book insists that colonial sites are never neutral objects of preservation: they are memoryscapes in which silenced histories, marginalised subjects and unresolved asymmetries continue to surface. Its point of departure is the renewed urgency of decolonial debate after 2020, when the toppling and removal of monuments across the United States, Britain, Belgium and South Africa forced cultural institutions, policymakers and scholars to confront the colonial violence embedded in public space. Against this background, the editors argue that architectural research must move beyond inherited expert narratives and engage in archival troubling, participatory knowledge-making and the recovery of memories excluded from hegemonic historiography. The book is particularly attentive to the German colonial legacy, whose violence in East Africa and South-West Africa has long been obscured by forms of public amnesia, despite Germany’s central role in events such as the Berlin Conference of 1884–85. Through diverse case studies—including railway stations in Bombay, clocktowers on the East African coast, the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, Diamang’s company town in Angola, Maputo’s post-independence urban transformations, the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, colonial remains in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and Berlin’s contested imperial spaces—the volume demonstrates that colonial architecture often survives as difficult heritage, simultaneously valued, rejected, appropriated and politicised. The concept of “shared heritage” is therefore treated critically: while colonial buildings may acquire new transcultural meanings, they may also remain symbols of domination, extraction and dispossession for local communities. The case of the “Half Moon” prisoner-of-war camp near Berlin is especially revealing, since it exposes how colonial memory may persist through fragile material traces, photographs, recordings and archaeological fragments, even when official memorialisation fails. Across its chapters, the book challenges the authority of conventional conservation expertise by foregrounding polyvocality, positionality and democratic participation in the attribution of heritage value. It also resists simple binaries between coloniser and colonised, showing instead how colonial architectures were shaped by global networks, local agencies, hybrid forms, coerced labour, technological transfers and acts of appropriation. Ultimately, Architectures of Colonialism argues that decolonising architectural history requires more than adding neglected buildings to existing narratives; it demands a profound methodological reorientation that recognises built heritage as a political arena where historical violence, cultural identity and future justice remain inseparably connected.
