Did you know that the library lends board games? The following titles are perfect for a snowy winter’s day:
- 1812: The Invasion of Canada
- Amerigo
- Carcassonne
- Colonial Europe’s Empires Overseas
- A Few Acres of Snow
- New Amsterdam & the Dutch West India Trading Company
- Puerto Rico
- Settlers of Catan
- Zulus on the Ramparts!: The Battle of Rorke’s Drift
All are available for two-week loans at the service desk in the McLennan Library. Just bring the call number to a staff member.
And please don’t lose any pieces…
I find it kind of strange that more than half of these games are overtly centred on settler colonial fantasies (with varying levels of abstraction). In “Zulus on the Ramparts!” 140 British soldiers (or “Heros”) are faced with the exciting challenge of killing off 4000 Zulus, and in “New Amsterdam and the Dutch West India Trading Company”, European nobles must build businesses and trade with the Lenape Indians, “a process that gets more complicated as players claim more land and push the Lenape camps farther up the Hudson River.” I can imagine that “Colonial Europe’s Empires Oversees” might also strike some students as more entertaining than others.
You are absolutely correct in pointing this out. These games were originally purchased a couple of years ago for a history summer course on settler colonialism and its effects on indigenous peoples. The games were used as an innovative teaching tool by the professor.