From Chains to Debt: Slavery, Colonial Lies, and the Persistence of Neo-Colonial Dependency

This paper examines the continuity of exploitation from transatlantic slavery through European colonization to contemporary neo-colonial dependency, arguing that these are not discrete historical episodes but interconnected stages of a global capitalist order. While slavery commodified African bodies and colonization expropriated land and resources, neocolonialism reproduces dependency through debt, structural adjustment, and epistemological distortions. It highlights how cultural and epistemological lies—ranging from racial ideologies and religious iconography to cartographic distortions and demographic engineering—naturalized European domination and legitimized extractive systems. The essay illustrates how colonial inventions, such as artificial borders, population myths, and resource-dependent economies, continue to influence postcolonial governance, identity, and development trajectories. The study contributes to decolonial scholarship by exposing the persistence of colonial knowledge systems in sustaining structural dependency, and calls for epistemic decolonization, cultural reclamation, and economic restructuring as pathways toward equitable global relations.