HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

Subjugation, Marginalization and Extinction

Conflicts with the indigenous population were influenced by the political and social organizational forms of the natives.⁶⁰ Thus, indigenous societies that lived in small, loosely organized groups based around the family were more easily subjugated than populous kingdoms or chiefdoms.⁶¹ 

 In South Africa, the Khoikhoi, who were mobile cattle herders and whose organizational form was based on the weak authority of chiefs, were integrated comparatively quickly into the emerging colonial order of the Dutch. By contrast, the powerful chiefdoms of the Bantu-speaking Xhosa were subjugated by means of a bitter conflict that lasted a century.⁶² Unlike the Native Americans of North America, the Aborigines of Australia, and the Khoikhoi, the Xhosa and other African peoples did not die as a result of diseases brought by Europeans. Consequently, the settlers never became a majority in the Cape Colony.

In Nouvelle, France (Quebec), and in Nieuw-Nederland (New York), a less conflictual coexistence developed, as the purpose of establishing the colony was to trade furs, and settlement remained restricted to a specific region.⁶³ The basis of the existence of the indigenous population was never threatened in the way that it was in the British colonies in North America with their much larger, land-hungry populations.

Due to Canada's vast size and the fact that it was climatically less attractive to prospective immigrants, the land question never became as serious a problem there as it did in the United States. In the United States, even a territory like Oklahoma, which had been promised in perpetuity to the Native Americans (some of whom had been forcibly resettled there), was ultimately opened up for settlement as a result of pressure from the settlers.

In Australia, the Aborigines were able to withdraw to the arid interior. Those that remained near the coast became culturally marginalized and often alcohol dependent and were despised by the white settlers after just a few short decades of contact. Outside of Africa, only the Maoris were able to hold their own against the settlers for a longer period.

Their marginalization occurred so late that they were able to recover quickly demographically, and in the late 20th century, they were able to claim back many lost territories through the courts. Additionally, colonial myths in New Zealand tended to emphasize the peaceful coexistence of whites and Maoris⁶⁴ and not – as in South Africa, Australia, and the United States – racial separation.

Racism

The idea of a civilizing mission, which was employed in the 19th century in particular to legitimize British and French imperialism, played a large role in how the settlers defined themselves ideologically – as civilizing triumphalism, as was the case in the United States, or as a defensive racist superiority complex, which was apparent in all of the African settler colonies.⁶⁵ 

 In Africa, the settlers were dependent on the labor of the indigenous population, and they consequently established systems of extreme exploitation accompanied by strict racial separation.⁶⁶ As they needed the natives as workers, settlers in Africa did not engage in genocidal campaigns against them. Outside Africa, by contrast, land was the most contentious resource, and the natives were consequently expelled and driven to extinction.⁶⁷ 

 Similarly, the reservations for the indigenous population in the African settler colonies served the function of using territorial racial separation to maintain the settlers' system of privileges while retaining access to cheap mobile labor. In countries where the settlers constituted an overwhelming majority, such as Canada and Australia, they attempted to do the opposite, to forcibly assimilate the natives.⁶⁸ 

Additionally, there was a form of truly global racism in the late 19th century, which was directed against competition from Asian immigrants and resulted in immigration restrictions. In French Algeria, the native Jewish population, who, unlike the Muslims, had obtained French citizenship, were viewed with animosity by both the settlers and the Muslims.