Description: Agents of overseas empires considers overseas colonisation as a process initiated by myriad private, individual and institutional actors, whose relationships with governments varied. Instead of regarding colonisation as a phenomenon orchestrated from a governmental centre on to overseas territories or governed in accordance with the ‘centre–periphery’ model proffered by sociology, this collection demonstrates how ‘private interests’ – as they would be termed today – fuelled the exercise and management of power in overseas enterprises. It investigates the extent to which individuals or trading companies both advanced imperial prerogatives and formed colonial societies, whether in conjunction with or in spite of governmental interests. It is from this perspective that the contributors to Agents of Overseas Empires have analysed often understudied primary sources in which commercial companies established their proceedings, and company agents and recruits recorded the fulfilment or failure of their commissions – the records, papers and narratives in which merchant adventurers and colonial sponsors devised and promoted their colonial projects. The authors regard empire as a series of assumptions, failures and innovations in the practices of overseas trade and colonisation, through which European overseas interests became entrenched over the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Abstract: The critically acclaimed film Minari (2021), directed by Lee Isaac Chung, has been recognized for its emotionally moving on-screen representation of a rural Asian American experience. Building on transpacific scholarship, the present essay examines Minari as a narrative of “minor settler grief,” an expression of grief by minor settlers that is closely tied to colonial and militarized aesthetics of earth across the Pacific. The article ties Minari’s Korean American farming efforts in 1980s Arkansas to the intersecting histories of settler colonialism in the US and Japanese empires and South Korean authoritarian developmentalism. It considers the Korean nativist aesthetics of earth at work in Minari, an aesthetics of pastoral fantasy that had served imperialism and authoritarian developmentalism, as well as anticolonial imaginations in modern Korea and the diaspora. The essay argues that minor settler grief functions by obscuring relationalities, such as the histories of Native American removal in present-day Arkansas. Mining these histories and visual references enables a critique of certain expressions of grief that produce settler colonial recognition and forgetting.

Abstract: In Palestine, the eradication of the Indigenous population extends beyond physical displacement and destruction; it entails ecological transformations. Analogous to other settler-colonial contexts, nature is not merely annihilated; rather, it is molded to suit the colonizer’s intentions, resulting in modification. This article examines the eco-resistance by the Indigenous people of Masafer Yatta as an Indigenous response to the environmental impact of the Israeli neocolonial entity. By delineating the tactics employed by settlers in the region to erase the Indigenous presence, the article aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of colonial dominance over Indigenous lives and knowledge across multiple scales. This analysis is grounded in extensive field immersion spanning from 2016 to 2022. The article addresses critical questions: How does Indigenous resistance manifest in the Masafer Yatta region? What strategies have Israeli settlers implemented on the ground to supplant the Indigenous population in the area? How does settler colonial dominance intersect with macro-economic dimensions and policies? While these questions have been explored within Palestine Studies scholarship and literature, this analysis is distinctive in its reliance on the specific case of Masafer Yatta. This area has received limited scholarly attention to date.

Abstract: Monumental landscapes draw attention to the cultural politics of memory as well as the grammars of white supremacy and colonialism in their creation. In this paper, we extend this conversation, examining the entwined historical legacies of Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore. We highlight how critiques of the memorialization of white conquest can inform thinking around the relationships between Anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and the cultural landscape. Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore inscribe a shared grammar of whiteness within the cultural landscape of the United States, linking racial visions of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness. These monuments, built through massive public invesments, enable citizens to symbolically enact white entitlement to the land and renew political claims legitimating continental domination. These monuments attempt to inscribe white conquest as complete, a permanent presence in the cultural and material structure of society. However, the active Black and Indigenous contestation of these landscapes demonstrates that settler colonialism and anti-Blackness continue to be challenged. Thus, as these monuments show, they are also sites of resistance, where activists rupture the seemingly totalizing, oppressive logic of whiteness and white supremacy and demonstrate points of productive convergence in the struggles against anti-Blackness and settler colonialism.

Abstract: This editorial critiques the existing literature on decolonizing global health, using the current assault on health in Gaza as a case in point. It argues that the failure to address the ongoing violence and blatant targeting of health facilities, personnel and innocent civilians demonstrates most clearly the limitations of an approach that is strong on rhetoric and weak on mounting a forthright challenge to the entire system supporting and perpetuating settler colonialism. We propose a more radical rethinking of the position of global health institutions within the current neoliberal system and of the systems of knowledge production that continue to underpin the existing colonial approach to the health of victims of settler colonialism.

Abstract: In this article, we first (re)trace the presence and absence of mining, metals and extractionary practices, what we call MMEs, from environmental and sustainability curricular frameworks United Nations’ Act Now Framework. Then, we critique the swelling markets, mentalities, and mastermindings used to develop and produce “clean” and “renewable” energy sources/solutions. As one of many examples, there is increasing skepticism among Indigenous communities that history may repeat itself as the quest for “clean” results in further displacement and violations of tribal sovereignty (Healy & Baker, Citation2021; Holzman & Waldman, Citation2022; Shah & Bloomer, Citation2018). Notwithstanding our (e.g., authors) academic positionalities in social studies education, one of our conclusions considers the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration between science and social studies on the issue of sustainability through MMEs.

Abstract: It has been over 20 years since Donna R. Gabaccia’s seminal work Italy’s Many Diasporas was published (London & New York, 2000), an overview of the social, cultural and economic history of Italy’s various migrations. Much has changed since then, but this book remains a classic. In this roundtable, historians Lucy Riall, Pamela Ballinger and Konstantina Zanou reflect on the value of Gabaccia’s work and on the historical moment of its production. They discuss with the author the developments in the historiography of Italian and other diasporas during the last two decades, and offer insights on new avenues of research including settler colonialism, race and belonging, migration and environmental change, global microhistory and biography, and the Mediterranean context of Italy’s migrations. This article is based on a public conversation, which took place online on 20 October 2023, between Donna R. Gabaccia, Lucy Riall and Konstantina Zanou, organised by the latter within the framework of the ‘Italian and Mediterranean Colloquia’, Columbia University. The event was co-sponsored by the Italian Department and the European Institute at Columbia University, New York and the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute, Florence, and is available to watch online.

Excerpt: How, as scholars in the environmental humanities, should we approach the fraught concept of wilderness? The following reflections on wilderness discourse are written from our positions as settler scholars in the environmental humanities and as co-convenors of the ASLEC-ANZ Postgraduate and ECR Reading Group. This group was formed in 2021 in response to the ASLEC-ANZ 2021 conference theme, Ngā Tohu o te Huarere: Conversations Beyond Human Scales. Our meetings continued post-conference and we began 2022 with a discussion on ‘Contesting Wilderness’, with readings from Marcia Langton and Malcom Ferdinand. This article stems from that conversation, bringing some of our resulting thoughts to bear on our own experiences as settler scholars living in colonised place. Langton’s influential paper, ‘What Do We Mean by Wilderness? Wilderness and Terra Nullius in Australian Art’ challenges settler notions of wilderness via an engagement with settler-Australian art as just one of many examples of settler cultural expression that relies on an exclusionary and oppressive conceptualisation of ‘protected’ natural areas in Australia. Langton’s overarching argument is that ‘[t]here is no wilderness, but there are cultural landscapes’ (30). It is these landscapes that she interrogates in her paper. Central to Langton’s argument is the fact that wilderness—as a concept and as physical space—is a direct outcome of the dispossession and genocide of First Nations people worldwide. Ferdinand’s piece presents a similar argument in his contestation of the settler concept of wilderness through an exploration of marronage: ‘the practice by which Maroons—fugitive slaves—created communities in remote spaces, including secluded hills, mountains, and swamps, as refuges from where different struggles for their liberation were launched’ (184). Ferdinand’s paper is a direct response to a 2018 paper by Andreas Malm titled ‘In Wildness Lies the Liberation of the World: On Maroon Ecology and Partisan Nature’. Ferdinand argues that Malm effectively silences ‘racialized others’, such as the Maroons, through his Marxist framing and promotion of wilderness as the space in which true freedom lies (184). In light of this silencing, Ferdinand challenges ‘the ability of wilderness discourses to critically confront their colonial foundations’ and their othering of Indigenous and Black peoples, which in turn ignores, for example, the Maroons’ unique
understandings and connections with Earth (184).

Abstract: The paper investigates the ideological and historical roots of the Zionist-Israeli policy and practice of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians to build an exclusivist ethnocratic Jewish state in Palestine. The ongoing Israeli military invasion of Gaza, since October 7th, 2023, shows that the Jewish state of Israel and its political leaders do not conceal their genocidal intent towards the Palestinian population of both Gaza and the West Bank. The intention of Israel in its war against Gaza is to empty or purify this area of its Palestinian residents and replace them with Jewish settlers, building and expanding Israeli settlements in Gaza like Israel has been doing in the West Bank since 1967. Therefore, our study seeks to answer the following question: Why from its inception has ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians been a consistent and coherent goal and policy of Zionism? To answer this question, we need to put the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict in historical context by critically examining the historical roots and ideological foundations of the Zionist settler colonial enterprise aimed at displacing Palestinians to make room for the Jewish state of Israel. Employing the critical discourse analysis of Michel Foucault and the concept of cultural reproduction of Pierre Bourdieu we will critically analyze discourses about population transfer promoted by early Zionist leaders in the pre-state period. In addition, we deploy the concepts of settler colonialism to understand colonial and expansionist character of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. Having critically analyzed relevant literature and closely examined historical and political discourses underpinning Zionism, we have revealed the continuities of the Zionist strategy of the elimination and erasure of the indigenous Palestinian people and building an exclusivist ethnocratic Jewish state in Palestine. From its inception the Zionist movement and ideology has been colonial and eliminationist in its essence aimed at the removal of the indigenous population and replacement of Palestinians with the exogenous colonial settler population from Europe.

Burgis writes in Jabobin that arguments ‘over whether Israelis or Palestinians count as “really indigenous” are beside the point’ (Ben Burgis, ‘No One’s Rights Should Depend on Where Their Ancestors Lived’, Jacobin, 07/03/24; available at: https://jacobin.com/2024/03/rights-ancestors-land-israel-palestine). In the following paragraphs I unpack Burgis’s rhetorical sleight of hand and argue that indigeneity matters. It matters because settler colonialism does.

All tricks begin with trust building exercises. Burgis first assumes what is an ostensibly sensible position. It is an acrimonious debate, but he is trustworthy, someone who is committed to opposing all outlandish approaches. Exhibit 1: Republican congresswomen Claudia Tenney. She lives on ‘stolen land’ (i.e., upstate New York) and represents the settlers who live there (the inverted commas around ‘stolen land’ are in Burgis’s original, but I wonder whether they are needed, since the land was actually stolen). Tenney has recently introduced the ‘RECOGNIZING Judea and Samaria Act’, Burgis notes, demanding that ‘US government documents stop referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as the “West Bank” and start calling it “Judea and Samaria”’. Burgis: ‘She claims that “the term ‘West Bank’” is “used to delegitimize Israel’s historical claim to this land.” The idea seems to be that, because ancient Jewish kingdoms were located there thousands of years ago, and Israeli Jews are descendants of the people who lived in those kingdoms, Palestinian rights are irrelevant. It’s a bit like an extremely high-stakes diplomatic land acknowledgment. Tenney is far from the only one on the Right thinking this way as Israel rains death and destruction on the civilian population of Gaza and pogroms by Israeli settlers terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank’. Tenney is reproachable. Fact.

Enter Exhibit 2: ‘There’s also a misguided — and, I hope, relatively small — segment of Palestine solidarity activists who take the mirror image of this position. They’re rightly horrified by the denial of democratic rights to the Palestinians, and especially by the mass starvation and indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, where the Israeli military has displaced at least 85 percent of the population from their homes since October. This anger leads them to indulge in ugly rhetoric about how the entire population of seven million or so Israeli Jews, the great majority of whom were born in the country, are “settlers” and “colonizers”‘.

The activists are ‘misguided’, they ‘indulge’, their rhetoric is ‘ugly’. Lucky that we have Burgis in the level-headed middle! And then his conclusion: ‘no one’s human rights should depend on their ethnicity or religion or where their ancestors come from’. It sounds plausible. But – wait a second! – I see what he has done there … nice try.

First: being ‘indigenous’ is not only defined by the presumed location of one’s ancestors. Burgis assumes that this is common sense but is misinformed. ‘Indigenous person’ and ‘settler’ come into existence in the context of an unequal relation, a relationship that relies on a logic of elimination and is defined by political structures of domination designed to replace one collective with another. It is called settler colonialism. Burgis uses the scare quotes around ‘settlers’ and ‘colonisers’, but I wonder whether they should be used: one is a settler whether he is personally born in a place or whether he has moved to it, because he is engaging in a specific relationship of domination. Speculating how long it may take before a settler turns into a native is like wondering how long a captain of industry must exploit factory workers before he turns into a proletarian. Settlers are made by movement and conquest. Indigeneity is a consequence of exogenous domination (even the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples agrees). Burgis defines indigeneity without reference to settler colonialism, which is like defining, say, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ (which are also categories brought into existence in the context of a relationship) without referring to patriarchy, or defining ‘proletarians’ and ‘capitalists’ without reference to a particular mode of domination: capitalism. I could go on, but the main point is that it sounds dodgy. Is it deliberate?

Secondly, and in relation to everyone’s ‘human rights’, surreptitiously introduced in the analytical mix even if the ‘activists’ are definitely not saying that ‘settlers’ do not have human rights, let me ask: do they make sense without reference to domination? Does a call to uphold ‘everyone’s’ human rights in the context of genocide seem timely or appropriate? The rhetoric of Indigenous rights is not about ‘historic’ rights to land, it is not even about history; it is about a dehumanising system of domination, and it is about the present – a system and a present that disappear with Burgis’s sleight of hand. So much for being ‘beside the point’: indigeneity is the inevitable outcome of a settler colonial system of relationships. And settler colonialism is the very point of Zionism – replacing a collective on the land with another.

Burgis is happy to critique Zionism, but only if the critique is not about settler colonialism, which is like critiquing ‘capitalists’, provided that no reference is made to the way they accumulate capital: ‘The problem with Zionism is that it’s obscene for anyone’s status or rights in the area where they live to depend on their ethnicity or religion or where their ancestors lived. Zionism should be rejected not because we think Palestinians have a better claim than Israeli Jews to a blood-and-soil connection to the land, but on the basis of the universalist principles that have always formed the rock-solid normative basis of the socialist movement and, before that, were proclaimed by the French Revolutionaries in 1789’.

Again, nice try: true, the socialists and the ‘Revolutionaries’ proclaimed the principles, but they knew that their revolutions had to be victorious before they could be given social meaning. Avoiding a critique of settler colonialism as a mode of domination and then proclaiming that the principles ‘still’ stand when in reality they do not yet stand is a cop out. It is dodgy. Is it deliberate?

Then we get back to Burgis in the middle: ‘Zionism should be rejected because ethnostates are wrong in principle. No nation-state should be a state ‘of’ a specific ethnic or religious subset of its residents, and the most just solution would be a single secular democratic state with equal rights for everyone. People who insist that Palestinians are “indigenous” and Israelis are not, and who think this is what makes the struggle for Palestinian rights legitimate, are embracing the logic of reactionaries […] while reversing the implication. The problem with the Right’s claim that Israel is justified in denying basic rights to millions of people because of historical Jewish claims to “Judea and Samaria” is not that the right-wingers are misidentifying who counts as “truly” indigenous. The wildly reactionary premise is that this is even a relevant question’.

But one sure way of ensuring that the question remains irrelevant is to avoid a sound definition of what ‘indigenous’ means, or an analysis of a specific mode of domination. Settler colonialism is what Zionism set out to do, what it did, and wat it does. It is its achievement. It may stop in the future, and at that point, but only then, the meaning of ‘indigenous’ and ‘settler’ will be reconfigured, as the relationship that constitutes both will be dissolved. I look forward to that time. Does Burgis?