What's Wrong with Colonialism

by Lea Ypi

There is no question mark at the end of my title. I ask you to grant that something is wrong with colonialism. That in itself is no meagre concession; the history of liberalism is replete with apologies for colonialism as well as condemnations of it. If you think that colonialism is justified, you are unlikely to find my arguments attractive. But if you agree that something must be wrong with colonialism, you might want to know more about what exactly the nature of the wrong is.

It is tempting to answer the question by following one of two prominent strategies for showing the wrong of colonialism: an argument from nationalism and an argument from territorial rights. This article defends an alternative account. It argues that the wrong of colonialism consists in the creation and upholding of a political association that denies its members equal and reciprocal terms of cooperation.

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About the author

Lea Ypi is professor of political theory at London School of Economics, and adjunct associate professor of philosophy at the Australian National University, with expertise in Marxism and critical theory. A native of Albania, she has degrees in philosophy and in literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, a Ph.D. from the European University Institute and was a post-doctoral prize research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. Her latest book, a philosophical memoir entitled “Free: Coming of Age at the End of History,” published by Penguin Press in the UK and W. W. Norton & Company in North America, won the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize. She lives and works in London.