“Connections between European pro-empire films and Nazi propaganda: A case study of André Cauvin’s Bwana Kitoko in comparison with Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.”

This project examines how Belgian director André Cauvin drew inspiration for his 1955 colonialist propaganda film Bwana Kitoko from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935). There remain still undiscovered legacies of the Nazi era and Nazi ideology in post-World War II Europe.  Many still view the year 1945 as a clean break, as suggested by the title of Ian Buruma’s Year Zero (Penguin, 2013). Yet many elements of the Nazi era endured well beyond the collapse of the Third Reich, for example, how by 1952 one in three Foreign Ministry officials in West Germany were former members of the Nazi Party. There is an extensive literature on post-war Belgium and the legacies of fascism, Nazi occupation, resistance, and collaborationism in that country. By examining possible cultural inheritances from the Nazi era in the realm of imperialistic propaganda about Belgium’s overseas empire in central Africa, this research extends existing scholarship into unchartered territory.

My article “Afterlives of Nazi Propaganda: André Cauvin and Bwana Kitoko” is slated to appear in the Journal of Belgian History-RBHC-BTNG in 2025.

An Epic Island:  The Untold Story of Mallorca in World History

This book recounts the captivating story of Mallorca while exploring major themes in European and world history.

Why Mallorca?  This beautiful Mediterranean isle has been and continues to be a major yet largely little-known crossroads of exchange.  A small, isolated, and unpopulated landmass at the end of the Neolithic Age, the island fell under Carthage, Rome, Vandals, Moors, the Kingdom of Aragon, and finally Spain.  In recent years, it has come to personify globalization, its inhabitants—including native Mallorcans, Spaniards from the Peninsula, and immigrants from across the EU, South America, China, and the Maghreb—welcome millions of tourists each year.  The tourism industry has led to great prosperity accompanied by environmental degradation and overexploitation of natural resources.

While learning about European and world history, readers also find out about the peoples of Mallorca, its languages, politics, arts, and cuisine (sobrassada, olives, coca de trampó, and porc negre, or Black Majorcan Pig), and everyday life on this jewel of the Mediterranean.

The Belgian Colonial Empire

I am also currently at work on a comprehensive, one-volume history of Belgian overseas colonialism in central Africa to appear in the Polity Press series “The Polity History of Empire.”  https://www.politybooks.com/