Historians of the British empire recast their understanding of relations between the metropole and its peripheries in the late twentieth century, notably through the work of the ‘British world’ network and the ‘new imperial historians’. The former emphasized the material, emotional, and financial links between British colonizers across the imperial diaspora; the latter focused on the empire’s impact on Britain, particularly in terms of ‘everyday’ experience. This article critically reviews recent interventions, which extend and challenge these approaches by seeking new ways to juxtapose the macro with the micro, and balance the exceptional with the quotidian; by adopting a more transnational (or global) approach to colonialism; and by rethinking the categories of ‘settler’ and ‘colonizer’. Collectively, these works question the traditional frameworks within which both colonialism and the British empire have been understood. In conclusion, the article considers their impact on the vibrant field of Britain’s colonial legal history.
Filed under: Empire, law, Scholarship and insights | Closed
In nations with a record of historical injustice, guilt about the past is deeply implicated in both efforts towards reconciliation and the construction of national identity. This is as true in notionally postcolonial nations, where past injustice is often denied or avoided, as it is in situations where conflict and injustice have been more recent, overt or visible to the rest of the world. Taking the Australian case as an example, this article considers the dimensions of historical collective guilt, and explores the implications of that guilt for contemporary national identity in postcolonial nations. It argues that until a nation is able to deal with social psychological barriers to addressing historical injustice, it is likely to construct and maintain a narrow and defensive form of nationalism.
Filed under: Australia, postcolonialism, Scholarship and insights | Closed
The Sami people of Northern Europe and Aboriginal Australians are literally a world apart in geographical terms, yet share a common fate as Indigenous minorities emerging from centuries of internal colonisation. Their ancient cultures and languages severely eroded by policies of forced assimilation, their traditional lifestyles and economies damaged, and their political voices marginalised, recent decades have seen their struggles for collective survival rise to political prominence in national and international agendas, with the promise of Indigenous self-determination held out by national governments and the United Nations Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples.
Both the Sami and Indigenous Australians have won important new rights during these decades, yet the outcomes are very different. In this volume – the only collection of essays specifically on the Indigenous peoples of Australia and Northern Europe – the similarities and differences between the Indigenous experiences in the Nordic countries and Australia are explored by renowned experts in the field including Indigenous authors. Some of the contributions are explicitly comparative and based on research experience in both areas, and two essays on New Zealand and Canada provide external points of reference to the volume’s focus on Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia) and Australia.
As always in Indigenous Studies, issues of cultural identity and survival are prominent but there is a special emphasis in many of the chapters on issues of socio-economic development and political representation, and a substantial introduction by the editors sketches out a historical-theoretical framework for understanding Indigenous struggles in First World countries that is critical of some currently fashionable approaches.
Filed under: Australia, Europe, Scholarship and insights | Closed
All of this is to say Brunyeel has a point but I am wary of blaming it all on “settler colonialism” or requiring that good scholarship in the field requires respect for the theory of “settler colonialism.” I am wary of relying too much on the past to decide how things are going to progress in the future. Indian tribes can’t go to the states and feds and say tribes are entitled to some aspect of sovereignty because of what happened in the past. Indian tribes have to earn it, even take it on occasion. No one’s giving anything away.
I think American Indian law and policy is worthy of study because it’s new and dynamic and involves the most modern and creative theories about what sovereignty means in a globalized world. Law schools and political science departments are slow to recognize that. Academic institutions are bit conservative in that way. As Indian law and policy scholars, we can earn recognition and force those staid institutions to do more by showing them more. In some areas of the US, mostly the west, law schools are committing educational malpractice by not compelling more students to at least acknowledge Indian law. North Dakota and Oklahoma law schools, for example, should require Indian law. New Mexico, South Dakota, and Washington state already know this. Everyone who practices in those states in the next 100 years will confront an Indian law question. That’s a fact.
I fear, though I don’t know for sure, that going back to the well of “settler colonialism” is going to open all the doors we want. Fear of the rise of tribal governments is a real thing (you can call that a product of settler colonialism) but it cannot be overcome by resort to the past. Maybe one time you could, but not anymore.
Academics interested in Indian law and policy should be arguing why American Indian law and policy is important as a practical matter. If we can’t do that, then I guess “settler colonialism” is all we have. But good academics will be able to do it.
Filed under: law, Scholarship and insights, Sovereignty, United States | Closed
Jennifer Denetdale examines the 1913 uprising at Beautiful Mountain to illustrate how, through cultural and legal processes, the Diné were transformed into ideal citizens of both the United States and their tribal nation that was increasingly modeled after the settler colonial state. Employing Indigenous feminisms and queer Indigenous critiques, Denetdale illuminates the processes by which tribal nations have been fashioned into heteronormative patriarchies and the necessity of engaging gender in discussions of tribal nationbuilding and decolonization.
Jennifer Denetdale, ‘Return to the 1913 Uprising at Beautiful Mountain’, First Peoples Blog.
Filed under: Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
Editoriale pp. 151-154
Michele Spanò, ‘Sovereign ambiguity: settler colonialism and sovereignty’, pp. 155-186.
Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Natives Settlers Migrants’, pp. 187-204.
Gaia Giuliani, ‘Settler colonialism and race: mapping colours in the Pacific’, pp. 205-234.
‘Settler Colonialism Then and Now. A Conversation between J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Patrick Wolfe’, pp. 235-258.
‘Settler Logics and Writing Indians Out of Existence. A Conversation between J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Jean M. O’Brien’, pp. 259-278.
Mariano Croce, ‘An apology for ambivalence: negotiation as politics’ texture’, pp. 279-306.
Mauro Ceretti, Marie Rebecchi, ‘Recensioni’, pp. 307-314.
Filed under: Scholarship and insights | Closed
fijn, keen, lloyd and pickering edit collection on indigenous participation in settler economies
All chapters available freely at the ANU E-Press website.
Onya, ANU.
Filed under: Australia, Scholarship and insights | Closed
Sung-ta Liu, ‘Settler urban legacies: A case study of Taipei City’, Cities (in press, 2012):
Similar to a colonial state, a settler state is governed by an outside regime. In comparison with conventional colonists, however, the settler rulers regard the settled land as their homeland, rather than just a land with exploitable resources. To secure its legitimacy, the settler government has to strongly control the locals. Democratization could undermine settler rule and the settler state’s built environment could be affected by such a political transition and subsequent political transformation. This article explores the implications of settler urban legacies by examining an iconic landmark and public housing policies in Taipei City, Taiwan. The results suggest that the transition of settler rule has given rise to urban changes related to the interests of the locals. The paper outlines the city’s future urban scene, because settler urban legacies were deeply rooted in the political and urban landscapes of the nation.
Filed under: Asia, Scholarship and insights | Closed
The early modern period (c. 1500–1800) of world history is characterized by the establishment and aggressive expansion of European empires, and warfare between imperial powers and indigenous peoples was a central component of the quest for global dominance. From the Portuguese in Africa to the Russians and Ottomans in Central Asia, empire builders could not avoid military interactions with native populations, and many discovered that imperial expansion was impossible without the cooperation, and, in some cases, alliances with the natives they encountered in the new worlds they sought to rule.
Empires and Indigenes is a sweeping examination of how intercultural interactions between Europeans and indigenous people influenced military choices and strategic action. Ranging from the Muscovites on the western steppe to the French and English in North America, it analyzes how diplomatic and military systems were designed to accommodate the demands and expectations of local peoples, who aided the imperial powers even as they often became subordinated to them. Contributors take on the analytical problem from a variety of levels, from the detailed case studies of the different ways indigenous peoples could be employed, to more comprehensive syntheses and theoretical examinations of diplomatic processes, ethnic soldier mobilization, and the interaction of culture and military technology.
H-net review, Jon Parmenter (Cornell University), here. Snippet:
This volume offers a fertile array of essays exploring the mechanisms and implications of imperial projections of power in the early modern world. Six of the nine contributions relate directly to the Atlantic context, but each in its own way will benefit all historians of early modernity. Atlantic specialists will gain crucial comparative insight into two key phenomena of relevance to their interests, one relatively predictable, the other much less so. First, the significance of “ocean lift capacity,” or the ability to move troops and weapons safely within and between colonies and the metropole, for projecting power abroad receives careful examination in essays by Wayne Lee on North America, Douglas Peers on British India, and Marjoleine Kars on Dutch Berbice (p. 94). Second, and of concern to all authors in the volume, is the degree to which the historical trajectories of overseas empires depended on local indigenous contexts. No recent study does more than this important collection to reexamine the multifaceted inputs of indigenous populations as military allies, trading partners, opponents, and collaborators into the more familiar story of early modern Atlantic/global expansion.
Filed under: Africa, Asia, Canada, Empire, Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
This essay describes the politics of voluntary isolation, an emerging category of indigeneity predicated on a form of human life that exists outside of history, the market, and wider networks of social connection. It traces a recent controversy around one such “isolated” population—Ayoreo-speaking people in the Paraguayan Gran Chaco—to suggest how these politics of isolation may represent a new regime of what Didier Fassin has called “biolegitimacy,” or the uneven political parsing and authorization of valid human life, within global formations of indigeneity. Here, I identify how international human rights law, multiculturalist state policies, humanitarian NGO programs, and genetic science all share an investment in the moral defense of isolated life. I explore how this investment may divide the kind of humanity authorized or claimed as “indigenous” into opposing legitimacies that are set against one another and vertically ranked. The essay argues that what is at stake in this process is not merely a new technique of the self or the enduring romance of the primitive, but the redistribution of the meaning and value assigned to those domains of human life imagined in opposition to social relation itself.
Filed under: Latin America, Scholarship and insights | Closed
