Settler Colonialism

Settler Colonialism

$1.25

Friday, May 3rd, 2019

By Lorenzo Veracini

Metropole

Components

Indigenous

Population

Settlers

Settler Colonial Phenomenon

Definitions

Lorenzo Veracini

About The Author

"a relationship of domination between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people re made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and of their ordained mandate to rule". (Pg 5) - Jürgen Osterhammel

“Where white settlers became numerically pre-dominant, colonial rule made peoples out of new states; where indigenous societies remained the basis of government, the state was fashioned fromexisting peoples” (Pg 5)- A. G. Hopkins

"The primary object of settler-colonization is the land itself rather than the surplus value to be derived from mixing native labour with it. Though, in practice, Indigenous labour was indispensable to Europeans, settler-colonization is at base a winner-take-all project whose dominant feature is not exploitation but replacement. The logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct – invasion is a structure not an event."(Pg 9).

-Patrick Wolfe

Indespensability

Dispensability

Associate Professor in history and politics at Swinburne’s (Australia) Institute for Social Research. His research focuses on the comparative history of colonial systems and settler colonialism.

Important Terms

Colonialism: the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

Colony: [1] "a political body that is dominated by an exogenous agency"

[2] "an exogenous entity that reproduces itself in a given

environment" (pg3)

Metropole: Mother Country, Country of origin

Migrant/Emigrant: "Migrants can be seen as appellants facing a political order that is already constituted" "Migrants, by definition, move to another country and lead diasporic lives" (Pg 3)

Settler: "Settlers are founders of political orders and carry their sovereignty with them" "settlers, on the contrary, move to their country (pg 3)

“emigrant joined someone else’s society, a settler or colonist remade his own” (Pg 3)

Settlers, unlike other migrants, “remove” to establish a better polity,

either by setting up an ideal social body or by constituting an exemplary model of social organisation. (Pg4)

Questions

Headline 4

• Do you think the differences between settler colonialism and colonialism are large enough to have it be its own area of study?
• Think about a country that experienced settler colonialism in its history, do you feel that that the effects of that mode of colonialism impact the country differently now than other modes?