« High settlers: Christopher Cowellm ‘The Height of Health: Sections, Sanatoria, and Settler Colonialism in Northern India, 1815-42’, Architectural History, 69, 1, 2026
Infrastructure is (settler colonial) theft: ,Allison Madia, Caitlin Blanchfield, ‘Colonial misappropriation and infrastructural accumulation: how US federal agencies worked to expropriate O’odham land and water for science’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026 »

Settler colonialism and its logic: Alison Bedford, ‘Settler Colonial Logics: A framework for tracing the ideological currents of European colonisation of the Pacific’, SocArXiv, 2026

09Oct26

Abstract: This paper expands upon Patrick Wolfe’s ‘logic of elimination’ to propose a broader conceptual framework to understand the logics which underpinned European settler colonialism at large. Using the three Pacific voyages of British navigator James Cook between 1768 and 1779 as a case study, the geographic and ideological expansion of empire is positioned as a maritime endeavour which works to draw a singular geographic and political border for Empire. This view of a singular oceanic empire, rather than a collection of diverse and individual nations and peoples is further supported by the integration of the principles of the Doctrine of Discovery. This integration highlights the ways in which settler colonial logics continue to support structures founded on early modern beliefs about race, civilization and faith which, while now condemned by the institutions and cultures which established them, nonetheless continue to shape the lives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial societies around the Pacific and beyond.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed