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On settler nationalism and nationalists and settlement: Timo Särkkä, ‘Imperialists without an empire? Finnish Settlers in Late Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Rhodesia’, Journal of Migration History, 1, 1, pp.75–99

17Jun15

Abstract: This article discusses settler identity formation, in the colonial polity known as Rhodesia, using Finnish nationals as a case study. It studies the involvement of Finns in natural resource extraction in Rhodesia at a time when the colonial economy and settler domination were still in their infancy, and examines both Finnish participation in colonial practices and the limitations of Finns as colonialists. White settlers in Rhodesia have typically been categorised as ‘Europeans’ partly because of their sense of representing a generalised idea of Western civilisation and partly in order to underline contrasts between black and white experiences in the history of colonialism. By focusing on the more specific provenance of the settlers (their nationality and country of origin), it is possible to reveal idiosyncrasies through which we can appreciate settler identity formation more precisely. Finnish settlers, in their various capacities as prospectors, soldiers, hunters and planters, adapted ideas and identities that cannot easily be disentangled from those of colonisers.


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On Chinese settler expansion: Patrick Fuliang Shan, Taming China’s Wilderness: Immigration, Settlement and the Shaping of the Heilongjiang Frontier, 1900-1931, Taming China’s Wildernes, Ashgate, 2014

17Jun15

Description: Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, historically known as Northern Manchuria, remained a sparsely populated territory on the northeastern frontier. For about two centuries, the rulers of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) – whose historical homeland was in Manchuria – enforced a policy that prohibited Chinese immigration and settlement and maintained the region’s reputation as the Great Northern Wilderness. Yet, as this new study demonstrates, by the early 20th century the Chinese government reversed its previous policy and began to encourage immigration into Heilongjiang, turning a backwater into a thriving frontier region.

Covering the period between the reversal of the anti-immigration policy around 1900 and the Japanese occupation of Heilongjiang in 1931, this book investigates this distinctive frontier and the impact upon it of the settlement of four million Chinese settlers during a thirty-one year period. Following an introduction providing a background to the period covered, the study is divided into five chapters. The first chapter looks at patterns of immigrations, settlement and the features of the newly developing frontier society. Chapter two then deals with land possession, tenure and relations amongst the newly arrived settlers. The third chapter discusses the transformation of the ethnic make-up of the region, and the move from a largely nomadic culture to one of settled farmers. Chapter four probes the social problems these changes caused, particularly banditry. The final chapter revises commonly held notions about Russian dominance of the region, arguing that Russia’s influence was limited to the railway zone. Taken together, these chapters not only provide an overview of a territory undergoing rapid and sustained change, but also provide insights into wider Chinese history, as well as adding to the on-going scholarly interest in border and frontier studies.


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A comparative analysis of settler colonial establishment: Ashley Sanders, Between two fires: The origins of settler colonialism in the United States and French Algeria, PhD Dissertation, Michigan State University, 2015

17Jun15

Abstract: This dissertation is a comparative study of the establishment of settler colonies in the American Midwest (1778–1795) and French colonial Algeria (1830–1848). It examines how interactions between the Indigenous populations, colonists, colonial administrators, the military, and the métropole shaped their development and advances the theory of settler colonialism. This study centers on the first fifteen to twenty years of conquest/occupation in the American Midwest, focusing specifically on southern Illinois and Indiana, and the province of Constantine, Algeria. Despite differences in geography, relative size of the military presence and Indigenous demographics, the process of establishing settler colonies in both locations followed similar trajectories. The study analyzes the founding moment of initial military occupation in Indiana/Illinois in 1778 and Constantine in 1836–1837 as well as subsequent land policies, settlement, and Indigenous resistance movements.

I argue that settler colonies in the American Midwest and Algeria resulted from a bottom-up process in which settler desires for land and greater economic opportunities compelled them to migrate (or emigrate) and stake their claim to these territories. This movement then served as a catalyst for initially makeshift colonial policies that only became systematized over time. The relationship between settlers and the Indigenous populations in both locations, as well as administrators’ responses to prevailing circumstances on the ground shaped the establishment of stable settler governments.

This research broadens our conceptions of American history and deepens our understanding of the processes by which settler colonies formed and “worked.” Settler colonialism’s legacy continues to influence geopolitics, national policy decisions, and people’s daily lives. Hence, the formation and eventual structures of settler colonies help researchers explain the founding of many contemporary societies and, taken together, recast empire, settler roles, and Indigenous actions within colonial contexts.


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Developing the contemporary technologies of settler colonial governance: Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent, Philippe Le Billon, ‘Staking claims and shaking hands: Impact and benefit agreements as a technology of government in the mining sector’, The Extractive Industries and Society, 2015

17Jun15

Abstract: Seeking to avoid or resolve conflicts with local communities, extractive industries have increasingly sought to negotiate agreements with the aim of not only compensating for operational impacts, but also sharing project benefits. We compare these impact and benefit agreements (IBAs) with two other major ‘technologies of government’—free entry and environmental impact assessments. Special emphasis is placed on the role of IBAs in (re) producing power structures in a context of neoliberal governance, and more specifically, in Canada’s politics of recognition and reconciliation toward Aboriginal communities. We suggest that these agreements represent a technology of government, which create distance between the formal governmental institutions and other actors in the mining sector, especially companies and affected Aboriginal peoples with territorial claims. While IBAs often represent an improvement on the other two previous technologies, they also constitute a withdrawal of state responsibilities toward Aboriginal communities that potentially maintains uneven negotiating power, affects conditions for consent, and disciplines Aboriginal self-conduct toward extractive projects. As such, IBAs can come to (re) produce conditions allowing the maintenance of structures of power found under neoliberal governance.


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Testing indigenous sovereignties: Julian Brave Noisecat, ‘Labor Rights And Tribal Sovereignty Collide At Indian Casinos’, Huffington Post, 15/06/15

16Jun15

Excerpt: The [Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing for a bill that would exempt tribes from the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, the Great Depression-era law that covers collective bargaining in the private sector] reveals ongoing tensions between labor and native rights about whether the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, the agency that enforces the law, can adjudicate disputes between tribal businesses and their workers. The jurisdiction of the NLRB in Indian Country has been a contentious issue between unions and Indian Nations that extends back to the Indian Gaming Regulatory ACT of 1988.


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Settlers looking at settlers: Miriam Billig, Udi Lebel, ‘Introduction: Judea and Samaria Jewish settlers and settlements – cultural sociology of unsettled space’, Israel Affairs, 21, 3, 2015 pp. 309-312

15Jun15

Introducing a special issue on ‘Judea and Samaria Jewish Settlers’.


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Looking at settlers: Ami Pedahzur, Holly McCarthy, ‘Against all odds – the paradoxical victory of the West Bank settlers: interest groups and policy enforcement’, Israel Affairs, 21, 3, 2015, pp. 443-461

15Jun15

Abstract: The settlers constitute a minority group whose goals are becoming increasingly unpopular among Israelis. As a result, the degree of legitimacy granted to them by the government gradually eroded over the years. However, their project still thrives. Their impressive success can be attributed to their focus on the bureaucracy. As early as the 1960s, the settlers engaged in a constant effort to identify actors in state and semi-state agencies that had common interests with them. At first they mobilized supporters from within those agencies. Later they made any effort to fill available positions with their own people. Today, the settlers’ movement in Israel has fused itself with the relevant elements within the bureaucracy to a degree that many state agencies serve as extensions of the settler movement.


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Looking at settlers: Yaakov Herskovitz, ‘ Settlers versus Pioneers: The Deconstruction of the Settler in Assaf Gavron’s The Hilltop’, Shofar, 33, 4, 2015, pp. 173-189

15Jun15

Abstract: This paper engages in a close reading of settlers, settlements, and the portrayal of settler ideology in the novel The Hilltop. This trailblazing novel from 2013, written by Assaf Gavron, foregrounds the image of the settlers in the West Bank and their relationship to the State of Israel. The paper explores this relationship through a discussion of settler ideology and how this set of beliefs comperes to Zionist ideology at large. Thus, the images of the settler and of Zionist pioneers are coupled and reexamined.


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Managing the living and the dead: Shaira Vadasaria, ‘Necronationalism: managing race, death and the nation’s skeletons’, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 2015

15Jun15

Abstract: This paper examines the construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ‘Museum of Tolerance (Jerusalem)’ over Mamilla Cemetery, one of the largest Muslim burial grounds in the region. Tracing the politics of death as exercised through the excavation of the cemetery, I consider how access to settler colonial memory is managed and renewed through the purging of Indigenous corporeality. Inspired by Achille Mbembe’s sobering account of necropower, this paper conceptualizes power as a system of domination inscribed through the colonial management of deceased racial subjects and asks how we might understand systems of settler colonial power arranged through dehumanization of the already dead. I contend that the capacity to govern life after death is still firmly rooted in the reach of colonial power, and that by attending to the excavation and erasure of Mamilla Cemetery’s deceased Palestinian subjects, we see a particular configuration of sovereignty defined through a calculus of absence. Identifying this practice of settler colonial nation building as ‘necronationalism’, I consider how power over life after death becomes the very terrain through which a nation is imagined.


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On indigenous and migrant struggles: Harsha Walia, ‘In Conversation with MM&D Editor Jo-Anne Lee’, Migration, Mobility, & Displacement, 1, 1, 2015, pp. 55-65

13Jun15

Excerpt: I think for all movements, but particularly the migrant justice movement, it is so imperative to understand our responsibilities to indigenous nations, to the lands on which we’ve come to reside, to not perpetuate settler-colonialism. And one of the ways in which settler-colonialism operates of course is to tell immigrants this story, this false story that we’re being accepted into and need to be grateful to the Canadian state and to whiteness, when again, in fact, whiteness is not indigenous to these lands. And so I think it is so important for us to know and to act in solidarity with the true stewards of these lands. And that’s an important gesture not just symbolically but because, it is also imperative to decolonize our own understanding of how we’re migrating and where we’re migrating to.


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