The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political Idea

by Lorenzo Veracini

Many would rather change worlds than change the world. The settlement of communities in “empty lands” somewhere else has often been proposed as a solution to growing contradictions. The lands were never empty. Sometimes the settlement communities failed miserably and sometimes they prospered and grew until they became entire countries.

Building on a growing body of transnational and interdisciplinary research on the political imaginaries of settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination, this book uncovers and subjects to critique an autonomous, influential, and coherent political tradition—a tradition still relevant today. It follows the ideas and the projects (and failures) of those who left or planned to leave growing and chaotic cities and challenging and confusing economic circumstances, those who wanted to protect endangered nationalities, and those who intended to pre-empt forthcoming revolutions of all sorts, including civil and social wars.

This book outlines the global history of a resilient political idea: to seek change somewhere else as an alternative to embracing (or resisting) transformation where one is.

“The political theory of settler colonies has a centuries-long history amounting to a distinct, if little understood intellectual tradition. In The World Turned Inside Out, Lorenzo Veracini reconstructs this tradition for the first time. In seeking to escape the contradictions of the old world, he shows, settlers brought different ones to the new world that continue to structure the polities they founded.”
– A. Dirk Moses, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“In this brilliant tour de force, a major theorist of settler colonialism ranges across the globe to unearth a hidden political tradition with enormous and costly consequences. By revealing how our world has been shaped and reshaped by the fantasy of going someplace else to escape revolution, The World Turned Inside Out has an urgent message: we must confront injustice and crisis right where we are.”
– Jeffrey Ostler, University of Oregon

“Global capitalism has always been driven by the export of people as well as commodities, of people as commodities. In The World Turned Inside Out, Lorenzo Veracino shows us how European migration to settler colonies was propelled by a specific project of domestic polit-ical ‘pacification,’ designed to keep the homeland safe from revolution. In this superbly researched history of the politics, theories and cul-tural practices of settler colonialism, Veracino also reveals the utilitarian casual disregard for the millions of indigenous peoples across the continents whose bereft lives would be lost, disrupted, and forever disempowered as a consequence. This much-needed book uncovers the stark realities behind settler colonialism as it has been practised on every continent.”
– Robert J. C. Young, New York University

“This important book not only salvages the global history of settler colonialism from its traditional nationalist packaging, but also reunites ‘settlerism’ with its alter ego, metropolitan revolutionary movements. At last, the ‘world turned upside down’ meets ‘the world turned inside out.’”
– James Belich, University of Oxford

“With this book Lorenzo Veracini cements his reputation as one of the most ambitious and insightful scholars of settler colonialism. Sweep-ing in its historical and geographical reach, and bold in its arguments, The World Turned Inside Out is a provocative and illuminating analysis of the centrality of settler colonialism in the making of the modern world.”
– Duncan Bell University of Cambridge

“The World Turned Inside Out is a brilliant exploration of settler colonialism as a political tradition in the making, predicated on a search for actual space in order to get away in Europe from existing upheavals or removing those who potentially can cause such an upheav-al. Lorenzo Veracini focuses on such dislocations that brought displacement of indigenous people as part of the history of Western revolu-tion and counter revolution. As such it asks us to rethink both tradition and revolution as transnational and global phenomena that sus-tained the tradition of settler colonialism even after most of these projects ended, preserving inside and outside the West Eurocentrism, racism, and capitalism. While the revisited historical chapters might seem familiar, you are invited here to reappraise them from a new and contemporary vantage point—in the midst of a new era of dislocation, displacement, resettlement and maybe even unsettlement. The hu-man tendency to dislocate (and displace) in order to avoid upheaval, insoluble predicaments and persecution may move in the future be-yond to extra-terrestrial spaces. Before this happens, it is good moment to ponder on its history until today and this is an excellent guide for such a tour into the past before we re-invent a new kind of settler colonialism.”
– Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, Education

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2021

About the author

Lorenzo Veracini is a historian and professor at Swinburne University of Technology’s Institute for Social Research. He is the editor in chief of Settler Colonial Studies and has been a key figure in the development of the field of settler colonialism. His book Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview was published in 2010.

Reviews

[Donovan Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

While dense at times, Vernacini lays out a very compelling understanding of settler colonialism as a method of displacing revolutionary tendencies in the “Old World.” In an age where tech billionaires talk about planetary migration, occupying the digital space, and creating libertarian bastions, the book provides an persuasive understanding of how the “world turned inside out” is nothing more than a fantasy predicated on a fear of revolution.

[Roberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the information and explanations were dense at first but I think this book is extremely important. It rightfully addresses why America lacks any basis for socialism: it is intrinsic to its foundation. What I found most interesting is that settler colonialism is a warped kind of socialism: it is NATIONAL socialism. Repeat that. It is National Socialism (Nazism), yes that’s right settler colonialism is the original Nazism, no hyperbole. It is a society removed from the metropole centered around an identity: typically religiosity or race (usually whiteness). This idea is then displaced, displacing indigenous people in order to root themselves to a world without the struggle of capital-labor, without class distinctions, where one can become a self fulfilled entrepreneur on the graves of other people.