Anthropology and colonialism

While I am reading some of the foundational text of anthropology, I can now see how central the institutions and ideologies behind colonialism are to the history of anthropology. In texts by Malinowski, Bateson, Mead and Evans-Pritchard, for example, the authors hardly mention the colonial structures by name or presence, let alone critically discuss their impact in candid ways. Yet, occasionally the authors mention how one of the practices that they are studying, especially those they consider to be most exotic and perhaps horrifying, are now outlawed by the British Government. "The Government" is seen as worst neutral and as best as a type of civilizing force that rationally outlaws "barbaric or primitive" practices. The impact on culture of these colonial powers never or hardly analyzed. In this sense, colonialism is rendered almost invisible, especially in terms of what this means for an cultural interpretation of a white anthropologist. For a new anthropologist like myself, one must never lose site of the origins of the field deeply embedded in the history of colonialism and empire.

I wonder, who were the first anthropologist to see through the use of this field for colonial control? In what ways is anthropology used today for control of groups of people or even for neo-colonial projects?