The electability of settler colonialism: Zachary R. Smith, ‘How Treacherous the Gift’: The Origins of Representative Institutions in Settler-Colonies, PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

The electability of settler colonialism: Zachary R. Smith, ‘How Treacherous the Gift’: The Origins of Representative Institutions in Settler-Colonies, PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2023

04Jul23

Abstract: Settler-colonies are places of tremendous inequality and violence. Yet, at the same time, settlercolonies are also places where elected institutions flourish. What explains the origin of institutions
seemingly founded on ideals of equality and liberty amidst systemic violence and hierarchy? This
dissertation examines the process of elected representative institutional formation in settlercolonies through comparative-historical analysis drawing on original archival research of three
case studies—the South African Cape Colony and Natal and French Algeria—and application of
the findings from these studies to a fourth case, Zionist settlement in early twentieth-century
Palestine. It identifies two necessary conditions for institutional formation: a shared ideological
background of Enlightenment thought and a pre-existing racial hierarchy. Given these necessary
conditions, high values on two causal factors—the relative unity of the settler population and
relative support from imperial authority—explain the timing of these institutions’ creation and
their design. Linking the necessary conditions and causal factors are settlers’ economic
motivations for the protection and accumulation of wealth, which catalyze the process of
institutional formation and influence these institutions’ exclusionary character. In elected
representative institutions, the purported bastions of equality and freedom, settlers built the
bulwarks of their own domination.

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