settler colonial studies blog

The settler colonies as land relief: Dimitrios Theodoridis, ‘Colonialism and Trade: Ecological Foundations of British Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 53, 1, 2022, pp. 1-23

16Jun22

Abstract: The British colonies, which contributed the lion’s share of Britain’s geographical expansion during the nineteenth century, also provided the largest material contribution to Britain’s industrialization, and much-needed ecological relief (in the form of land), through trade. Nevertheless, not all types of colonialism mattered equally. The biggest land relief came from the settler colonies in British North America and Australasia. The slave-based colonies were not as instrumental in alleviating Britain’s land constraints as the nineteenth century progressed.

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‘Greater Ireland’ as a settler colonial polity: Jimmy H. Yan, ‘Renegotiating Ireland, Transnational History, and Settler Colonialism in White Australia: Unsettling Greater Ireland?’ Radical History Review, 143, 2022, pp. 109-124

16Jun22

Abstract: Efforts to transcend island histories in Irish historiography have predominantly centered a narration of white settler pasts as an outer boundary of Irish history. This article works through the disjunctions between differently situated transnational turns in Irish and Australian historiographies by interrogating metaphors of extension, including “Greater Ireland” in the former historiography. It proposes that to decenter the nation as a historical unit, transnational Irish history requires a critical tension with white settler, and not only Irish, methodological nationalisms. The article surveys the critical possibilities presented by the transnational turn in Irish historiography while questioning its limits, with attention to the paradigm of a transnational Irish revolution. It then flags possible directions for a closer dialogue between transnational Irish history and postnational historiographies of white settler colonialism. An unsettling of discrete historiographical boundaries remains a necessary condition for tracing histories of Ireland beyond, below, and outside the nation.

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Property is settler colonial infrastructure: Andrew Brooks, Astrid Lorange, ‘Torrens Title: property, race and (infra)structures of feeling in the settler colony’, Race & Class, 2022

16Jun22

Abstract: This article argues that property law can be understood as a key infrastructure of settler-colonial sovereignty. Rather than a simple importation of British law, the frontier mentality of the colonial outpost allowed for the implementation of a new legal framework for the allocation and registration of land. Taking the example of Torrens Title allows for an analysis of the ‘structures of feeling’ that are generated by, and that naturalise in turn, the possessive claim to property. We consider how the history of property as fungible commodity is entangled with the history of racialisation, and how Torrens Title shows the material and affective dimensions of settler law and of the long struggle to resist its illegal claim to sovereignty. We analyse the 2018 video essay Drawing Rights by Rachel O’Reilly, considering the troubled relationship between white possession and the unbroken sovereignty it denies, yet which remains a constant threat to the settler state. Her work articulates what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls ‘infrastructures of feeling’, which, we argue, describes the way anti-colonial consciousness can materialise against structures and attachments of settlement.

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Settlers to Manchuria: Nobuko Toyosawa, ‘Going to Manchuria: Imperial Japan, Migrant Workers, and the Mobilization of Tokyo’, Asian Studies, The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12), 1, 2022, pp. 709-714

16Jun22

Abstract: The emigration movement to Manchuria began in full scale with the establishment of Manchukuo in 1932, when approximately 300,000 Japanese people migrated to northeastern China to the end of the war. Recent scholarship on Manchuria has focused on non-state, non-elite actors, unlike postwar scholarship that centered its attention on national economic and political elites in order to critique the governing structures and their operation. Following this trend, this paper explores the settlers from Tokyo who were poor but dreamed about renewing their lives in Manchuria, thereby supporting the Japanese empire. Considering the sheer number of settlers who participated in the emigration movement, cases of Tokyo might not reflect largely on the national efforts. However, Tokyo occupied an indispensable place in the emigration campaign by modeling the patterns and structures that would form the national agenda. This paper examines why many people willingly supported the occupation of foreign land and analyzes the complex apparatus that structured and managed the mobilization operation without imposing a cohesive authoritarian regime. The paper concludes that what enabled such popular participation was a widespread culture of imperialism made evident in the action of the poor Japanese citizens who chose to become farmers in Manchuria.

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The pillars a settler memory: Susan Slyomovics, ‘Commissioning memorial reconciliation: the Stora Report and Algeria’s Ottoman Cannon in France’, Modern and Contemporary France, 2022

15Jun22

Abstract: On January 20, 2021, historian Benjamin Stora released a report commissioned by the government of Macron intended to achieve a reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria. This article focuses on the report’s proposals concerning a disputed monument, the famous Ottoman cannon known as ‘Baba Merzoug’. Seized in July 1830, the month France invaded Algeria, and spoliated to Brest, France, it was transformed into a monument renamed ‘La Consulaire’. How does ‘statuomania’ animated by the erection of numerous war memorials operate in France and what is the symbolism of columns as memorializing monuments? Moreover, how does the Stora Report for Algeria compare with the prior 2018 Macron government-commissioned Sarr-Savoy Report that called for immediate restitution of sub-Saharan artifacts housed in French museums?

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Settler colonial ‘vulnerabilities’: Emma Barnes, ‘Critiquing Settler-colonial Conceptions of “Vulnerability” through Kaona in Mary Kawena Pūku’i’s Mo’olelo, “The Pounded Water of Kekela”‘, Transmotion, 2022

12Jun22

Excerpt: As a structure, settler colonialism does not exist in isolation, but intersects with heteropatriarchy and capitalism. It is the triangulation of these structures that has produced our current climate crisis and continues to monopolise mitigation strategies. As Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill explain, “settler colonialism has been and continues to be a gendered process” (9), and it is the gendered elements of settler colonialism and its use of “vulnerability” that this article seeks to explore in relation to climate change responses. I argue that the colonial and “masculinised nature of contemporary climate change governance” (George 115) now weaponises gendered vulnerability to climate change to perpetuate the colonial myth that Indigenous women need to be “instructed, led and managed” (Fordham et al 8) and prevents Pacific Island women from leading adaptation strategies to drought and disaster management. As Robinson suggests, “Attempts to delay solutions that effectively address climate change can thus be framed within the larger regime of US colonialism and imperialism” (320), and it is for this reason that the concept of climate change “vulnerability” needs to be analysed within the context of the Pacific’s settler-colonial history.

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The fires of settler colonialism: William J. Curtis, The Slater Fire Was the Product of Settler Colonialism, MA dissertation, California State Polytechnic University, 2022

12Jun22

Abstract: The Slater Fire of 2020 burned in Karuk aboriginal territory overseen by the Klamath National Forest. It burned over 200 homes to the ground and ravage over 100,000 acres of forest. This thesis argues that state-enforced fire suppression policies and methods are tools of settler-colonial erasure and the continuation of genocidal violence towards Karuk people. It analyzes the conflict between interests of the colonial state on one side and Indigenous resistance and survival on the other. Fire is an essential tool for the survival of Indigenous cultural identities, the material security of said populations, and the health of the environs that they have inhabited since time immemorial. In describing the history of this conflict, this work synthesizes historical narratives with critical analysis to demonstrate the aims of state sponsored fire suppression, and to illustrate the necessity of Indigenous populations’ ability to apply cultural fire. Settler colonial studies serve as the analytical foundation for this piece of research. Settler colonialism functions as a crossroads of critical theories that illuminate various ways that the settler state perpetuates regimes of erasure and genocidal violence towards Indigenous peoples and their lands. Ecological frameworks critical of settler land and resource management practices and policies are utilized to demonstrate the effects of settler-colonialism on Karuk spaces and peoples. The lived experiences and histories of Karuk people are a central feature of this thesis that have been accessed via interviews with cultural practitioners and community members and the analysis of various historical sources. This thesis illustrates the connection between genocide perpetrated towards Indigenous peoples during the 19th century and ongoing genocidal violence inherent within fire suppression and land management regimes maintained within the United States of America.

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Settler colonialism on the frontiers of discourse: Annie Rehill, ‘Taché’s Voyageur is not Cooper’s Frontiersman: Differences between Canadian and U.S. Concepts of “Frontier”’, Comparative Literature Studies, 59, 2, 2022, pp. 370-401

09Jun22

Abstract: Historically, concepts of what constituted a “frontier” developed differently in Canada and the United States. Portrayals in literature of those who inhabited these geographic spaces also are typified by notable differences between the former French and English colonies, yet U.S. literary critics today sometimes conflate the two situations, apparently under the assumption that what applies to the United States pertains in the same way to Canada. The historical reality is far more nuanced. As one example, among the Englishmen who spent time among native cultures, marriage into the culture of “the other” was rare; by contrast, the practice was not at all uncommon among the French who predated the English in Canada. A comparison of two nineteenth-century works—Forestiers et voyageurs by Canadian author Joseph-Charles Taché and The Pioneers by U.S. author James Fenimore Cooper—develops these observations to show how English-origin ideas of “frontier” and “frontiersman” cannot be assumed to apply in discussing Canadian works of literature.

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Settler colonialism on the discursive frontier: Talia E. Kibsey, Settler Colonialism on the Discursive Frontier: An Analysis of People vs. Fossil Fuels and the US Settler Carceral-State, MA dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, 2022

09Jun22

Abstract: This thesis examines Indigenous environmental justice discourse within the context of the U.S. carceral settler-state to advance a conceptual framework I name discursive frontierism. I use rhetorical analysis informed by critical and cultural theory to help make visual—and visible—the ways in which colonial frontierism operates in discursive spaces. I analyze the language of the carceral settler-state, including embodiment and affect as communicative language, as well as the language of Indigenous and Indigenous-led resistance. In the first half of the thesis, I argue that the language of the settler-state discursively constitutes Indigenous peoples as criminals and colonial subjects in order to justify their removal. The second half of this analysis finds the language of Indigenous land and water protectors to model and declare “survivance”—an active and continuing “sense of presence over absence” that both renounces dominance and victimry, and preserves traditional knowledge systems and ancestral connections (Vizenor 2018). I conclude that discursive iterations of Indigenous survivance meaningfully thwart the U.S. state’s efforts to advance occupation of discursive territory and further settle the discursive frontier.

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Mimicry subverts settler colonialism: Stephanie Haney, ‘Mimicry as a Method of Subversion in Indigenous Art’, Canvas Journal, 2022

09Jun22

Excerpt: As outlined above, mimicry in Indigenous artwork is used to undermine the colonial state and settlers by discounting its prestige and mocking its artistic integrity. Mimicry is achieved by utilising traditionally European materials or stylistic elements to express Indigenous beliefs and cultures. This enables Indigenous artists to re-establish their art as civilised and enlightened, subsequently normalising the European equivalent. Furthermore, this allows the artist to preserve and adequately depict Indigenous identity by inserting Indigenous figures and entities into Eurocentric landscapes. In their work, Monkman and Belmore do both things. Each artist uses characteristically European mediums to reimagine settler art through an Indigenous lens, specifically from the Renaissance era. The Renaissance is an epoch that reflects the pervasive and institutionalised Western bias within art history.¹³ This is because art that emerged from this period connoted a level of sophistication and prestige that non-Western art could not achieve under the dominant Eurocentric aesthetic. Artistic practices of non-Western countries during the Renaissance era were typically marginalised,¹⁴ as their styles were deemed “primitive” and inferior. This type of Eurocentric narcissism is also undoubtedly reflected in settler colonialism: propelled by the idea that European society was the most civilised, enlightened, and, therefore, worthy of the most land. The status of Renaissance art reinforces a binary of “civilised” and “uncivilised” cultures. Thus, mimicry of art from this era can be conceptualised as an attempt to subvert the hierarchy.

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