Flanagan's opposition to colonialism

Clearly this book has almost as many meanings as it does contradictions, which is to say, an infinite amount. However one theme I noticed throughout the whole novel which we haven't really discussed in class is that of anti-colonialism or anti-mercantilism. Gould, and therefore Flanagan, is very against the idea of a supposedly more civilized culture taking over another and subjugating them for their own needs. He first brings this up in the very first page of Gould's narrative in the Kelpy chapter, when Gould relates how he planted a British flag on Australian soil only to look up and see that it is actually a sheet soiled with remnants from an army officer's tryst with a "Samoan princess". This is obviously a subtle metaphor for the actual motives of the Europeans colonizing native people's in those days; they pretended it was for honorouble reasons but actually just wanted to take advantage of the conquered people, by ways such as sleeping with native women.
Gould brings this theme up many more times throughout the book. On page 134 he refers to the “bastard and idiot issue of the Old World who through theft and terror thought they had a right to rule the New”. Flanagan certainly dispproves of the methods through which Europeans conquered these nations. He not only says this outright, but also through elaborate metaphors. The Commandant creates an elaborate and beautiful palace, constructed based on model's of European mansions of the same design and inscribed inside with words written by Ms. Anne, whom the Commandant sees as the epitome of European ingenuity. However the Commandant's "European genius of progress" sits empty and unused, eventually becoming covered in bird droppings and bought by Peruvians (a New World colonized people) to use the droppings as fertilizer (page 194). In this case, European ideals are revealed to be literally nothing more than bird shit.
It is interesting to think about why Flanagan wrote this theme into his novel. After all, the Book of Fish was published in the twenty-first century, when Australia (and most of the other places mentioned) was certainly no longer a British colony. However, when one views it in light of current events, the theme of anti-colonialism and anti-subjugation is still very applicable. The world powers of today still are occupying less developed countries around the world and subjugating their peoples. For example, on page 45 Gould relates how Quaker missionaries would go to Australia to purchase native women in order to write reports about the abusive effects of purchasing women. This ironic anecdote brings to mine the situation in Iraq today; America went in to the country and actually made the people's situations there worse. It seems as though Flanagan is commenting on phenomena like this throughout his novel.