Settler colonial comparisons: Janne Lahti, ‘Settler colonial violence in the American Southwest and German Southwest Africa’, Historical Encounters, 10, 2, 2023, pp. 63-72 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial comparisons: Janne Lahti, ‘Settler colonial violence in the American Southwest and German Southwest Africa’, Historical Encounters, 10, 2, 2023, pp. 63-72

27Dec23

Excerpt: Colonial violence in the American Southwest and in German Southwest Africa have seldom been compared by historians. Those writing of the US-Apache conflicts have failed to look to colonial theaters around the world, their transnational attention focusing instead on the borderlands of United States, Mexico, and independent Indians. The studies of the generationslong struggle between Indigenous powers, the Spanish Empire, Mexico, and the US for mastery of the current US-Mexico border area have usually stressed Indigenous resistance and their unique military cultures. Violence in the Southwest borderlands of North America was perpetrated by state and state-sanctioned forces, Indigenous polities, corporate mercenaries, and private people and ranged from individual acts of murder to mob lynching and ultimately, genocide. This violence was understood as both a destructive energy and a constructive tool integral to building often ambiguous identities as settlers.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed