Settler Colonies

A rise in "settler colonialism", accompanied the Age of Imperialism as settlers displaced indigenous peoples to claim land for themselves. This process had been underway in North and South America but continued during the 19th century as new settler colonies sprang up in Africa.

Notes

  1. The settlement of the Caribbean islands through the forced migration of Africans does not come under the concept of settler colonies dealt with here.
  2. The exploitation of the Han Chinese from the Yellow River southward, the presence of Indians in southeast Asia, the settlement of Madagascar by Javanese, the spread of Polynesians in the Pacific region, the settlement of Taiwan and Singapore by Chinese people, the settlement of Tamils in northern Sri Lanka, the settlement of former slaves in Sierra Leone and Liberia are just a few examples.
  3. If the political institutions were stable or if, as in the US, expansion led to a segmentation into politically similarly organized states, it is possible to talk of immigration societies. In this case, further immigration did not fundamentally alter the basic characteristics of the society, but modified them.
  4. For a typological, systematic description, see Osterhammel, Kolonialismus 1995, pp. 10ff.
  5. For an overview of the whole of America, see Socolow, Population 1992; Hennessy, Frontier 1978.
  6. Pietschmann, Iberoamerika 1980, pp. 22ff.; Elliott, Imperial Spain 1970, p. 70.
  7. Metcalf, Family 1992; Bernecker / Pietschmann / Zoller, Brasilien 2000, pp. 89ff. See also Reinhard, Expansion 1985, vol. 2, pp. 128ff.; Russell-Wood, Patterns 2007, pp. 169ff.; Oliveira Marques, Geschichte Portugals 2001, pp. 268ff.
  8. Mancall, Native Americans 1998; Appleby, War 1998, pp. 74ff.
  9. Bosma / Raben, Being "Dutch" 2008; Taylor, Batavia 1983. However, this also applies to the fur trade in North America, see the classic study by Van Kirk, Tender Ties 1980.
  10. Blussé, Strange Company 1986, particularly chapters 2 and 5.
  11. Belich, Replenishing 2009, pp. 181f., 336ff., 361, 376; Osterhammel, Verwandlung 2009, chapter 7; Bayly, Birth 2004, chapter 12.
  12. Ohlmeyer, Colonization 1998, pp. 130ff.
  13. Stolberg, Sibirien 2009, pp. 16f.
  14. See the various contributions in Elphick, Shaping 1989; Penn, Forgotten 2005; Etherington, Great Treks 2001.
  15. Elphick / Malherbe, Khoisan 1989, pp. 20ff.
  16. See the overview in Reinhard, Expansion 1990, vol. 4, p. 119. On how the settler colonies perceived each other, see the instructive comparison in Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen 2011.
  17. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft 2005, pp. 284ff.; Iliffe, Tanganyika 1994, pp. 151ff.; Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation 2006.
  18. Jewsiewicki, Rural Society 1983, p. 114.
  19. Galenson, Indentured Servitude 1984.
  20. Hughes, Fatal Shore 1986.
  21. Stolberg, Sibirien 2009, pp. 31, 47ff.
  22. Condon, Loyalist Arrival 2005, pp. 202f.
  23. Bumsted, Fur Trade Wars 1999; Harper, Migration 1999, p. 80.
  24. Lambton, Report 1839.
  25. Keegan, Colonial 1996, pp. 61ff.
  26. Macintyre, Australia 1999, pp. 122ff.; Voigt, Australien 1988, pp. 172f.
  27. McDonald, To Each His Own 1987.
  28. Reinhard, Expansion 1988, vol. 3, p. 123.
  29. Ageron, Modern Algeria 1990, p. 30.
  30. Denoon, Settler Capitalism 1983.
  31. Abun-Nasr, Maghrib 1993, p. 266; Ageron, Modern Algeria 1990, pp. 53f.
  32. Kappeler, Vielvölkerreich 1992, pp. 50ff.; Stolberg, Sibirien 2009, pp. 30ff.
  33. Heideking, USA 1996, p. 22. On town meetings, see Anderson, New England 1998, p. 199.
  34. Moore, How the Fathers 1998.
  35. Darwin, Empire Project 2009, pp. 159ff.
  36. McCracken, Cape Parliament 1967, pp. 13ff.
  37. Leys, European Politics 1959; Palley, Constitutional History 1966, chapters 10 and 11.
  38. "Dominions" was a term used from the early 20th century in the British Empire to refer to the largely autonomous, white-dominated settler colonies. On the settlers in Southern Rhodesia, see also Hodder-Williams, White Farmers 1983; Mutambirwa, Settler Power 1980.
  39. Mahaffie, Land of Discord 2003.
  40. Maxon, Revolutionary Advance 1989, p. 77; Berman / Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley 1992, Book One: State and Class, pp. 88ff., 104ff., 194ff.
  41. For an in-depth discussion, see Mamdani, Citizen 1996, chapter 4.
  42. Ageron, Modern Algeria 1990, pp. 53f.; Penvenne, African Workers 1995, pp. 62ff.; Newitt, Mozambique 1995, pp. 441ff.
  43. Huttenback, Racism 1976; Marx, Globalizing 2011.
  44. Turner, Frontier 1996; Waechter, Erfindung 1996, chapter 3. On the transfer to other contexts, see Cross, Frontier Thesis 1970, as well as Lamar, Frontier 1981 and Coleman, New Zealand 1958.
  45. Interestingly, Richard White used the new term "Middle Ground", because frontier has a different meaning in American historiography: White, Middle Ground 1999, pp. 50ff. On the application of the frontier concept to developments in pre-colonial Africa, see Marx, Grenzfälle 2003.
  46. Cadigan, Newfoundland 2009, pp. 86f., 93f.
  47. For a South African example, see Thompson, Survival 1975.
  48. Utley, Lance 1998; Isenberg, Destruction 2008, p. 128.
  49. Denoon / Wyndham, Australia 1999, p. 549.
  50. Belich, Making Peoples 2001, chapter 11.
  51. Barman, West 2004, chapter 8; Fisher, Contact 1977, chapter 8; Duff, Indian History 1997, pp. 85ff.
  52. Richter, Native Peoples 1998, pp. 363ff.
  53. The persistence of cultural patterns with simultaneous adaptation to the new environment and the racial hierarchy of Cape society are particularly well described by Lester, Networks 2001, chapter 3.
  54. Belich, Replenishing 2009, pp. 339ff. See also the various articles in Davis, Railway Imperialism 1991.
  55. Kappeler, Vielvölkerreich 1992, pp. 40, 104f.; Stolberg, Sibirien 2009, pp. 31ff., 44.
  56. See also the study by Smith, Frontier 1976.
  57. See also Kennedy, Islands 1987; Mosley, Settler Economies 1983.
  58. Cf. Nauright / Chandler, Making Men 1996.
  59. Macintyre, Australia 1999, pp. 133ff.
  60. A very good new publication with articles on intercultural encounters is Daunton, Empire 1999.
  61. This does not apply to the non-settlement colonies, in which it was precisely societies that had no experience of central political structures which put up successful resistance. Setter colonies developed differently because settler militias that were also decentralized fought the indigenous population and forced it to provide labor in the colonial economy. In contrast, in the non-settlement colonies, they were important as agricultural producers.
  62. Marx, Südafrika 2012, pp. 73ff.; Giliomee, Afrikaners 2003, chapter 5; Mostert, Frontiers 1992.
  63. On Nouvelle France, see the classic study by Eccles, Canadian Frontier 1999, for a special emphasis on the contrast with the USA: Fischer, Champlain's Dream 2008. On Nieuw-Nederland: Trelease, Indian Affairs 1997; Heijer, WIC 2002, pp. 81ff.; Kroes, Dutch 1991.
  64. Belich, Making Peoples 2001, pp. 284f.
  65. See, for example, on South Africa: Marx, Kolonialkrieg 2004.
  66. On legal discrimination and racial separation, see Marx, Siedlerkolonien 2004, pp. 86ff.
  67. South-West Africa remains an exception because the army leadership was responsible for the massacre, while the settlers and missionaries called for lenience towards the Africans because of the latter's importance as labor: Zimmerer, Krieg 2003, pp. 48ff.; see also Gründer, Deutsche Kolonien 1985, pp. 115ff.
  68. In Canada, see Neu / Therrien, Accounting 2003.
  69. Newfoundland was an exception. After relinquishing its dominion status in 1934, 14 years later, it joined the Canadian Federation: Cadigan, Newfoundland 2009, chapter 9.
  70. Although the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya did not lead directly to decolonization, it can nonetheless be described as an independence war directed against the settlers. It can, therefore, be counted among the wars of decolonization, which were typical for the settler colonies: Kershaw, Mau Mau 1997, chapter 7.
  71. On Angola and Mozambique, see MacQueen, Decolonization 1997, pp. 224ff.