Colonialism

The process of forcibly imposing on other peoples territorial hegemony (in contrast to the nonterritorial hegemony of imperialism and neocolonialism) by the colonizing power.[1] The actual practice of colonialism is termed colonization. By its very nature, colonialism carries with it the imperative of the abrogation of the rights of the colonized as subsumed by the Natural Law of Prior Claim; and therefore colonization is always a two-stage process: conquest followed by the imposition of structures of hegemony (which range from forces of direct coercion to forces of economic subordination to forces of ideological manipulation [such as education and other aspects of culture]), by the colonizers. This entire process should not, it is important to stress, be regarded as an entirely one-way street in which the colonized lie supine as victims; on the contrary, even in defeat on the battlefield they do not abandon other forms of resistance elsewhere in the economy, polity and society generally—thereby exhibiting historical agency, as one would expect of thinking beings. Further, in my classes, colonialism refers specifically to that of the modern era (see imperialism for an explanation of the distinction). At the same time, unless indicated otherwise, colonialism in my classes refers to that variant of it that we may term settler colonialism. Note that as one can deduce from the foregoing, colonialism, by its very nature, was also an inherently racist project. Only racists can take over other people’s lands, regardless of the justification—in the case of the European colonialism, “the white man’s burden,” etc. However, most European peoples would not have considered colonialism as racism at all. (In fact, in a most bizarre way—characteristic of those who arrogantly think they belong to a “chosen” race—even at the height of barbaric predation, exploitation, and oppression they thought they were doing something good for those they had colonized.)

[1]. It should be pointed out that “colonialism” is another one of those highly contested concepts (like imperialism)—see the discussion by Ostler (2004), for example, in his introduction, paying particular attention to his footnotes (as well as the sources indicated for imperialism).