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Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop
Why countries colonize the lands of indigenous people
Over the past few centuries, vast areas of the world have been violently colonized by settlers. But why did states like Australia and the United States stop settling frontier lands during the twentieth century? At the same time, why did states loudly committed to decolonization like Indonesia and China start settling the lands of such minorities as the West Papuans and Uyghurs? Settling for Less traces this bewildering historical reversal, explaining when and why indigenous peoples suffer displacement at the hands of settlers.
Lachlan McNamee challenges the notion that settler colonialism can be explained by economics or racial ideologies. He tells a more complex story about state building and the conflicts of interest between indigenous peoples, states, and settlers. Drawing from a rich array of historical evidence, McNamee shows that states generally colonize frontier areas in response to security concerns. Elite schemes to populate contested frontiers with loyal settlers, however, often fail. As societies grow wealthier and cities increasingly become magnets for migration, states ultimately lose the power to settle frontier lands.
Settling for Less uncovers the internal dynamics of settler colonialism and the diminishing power of colonizers in a rapidly urbanizing world. Contrasting successful and failed colonization projects in Australia, Indonesia, China, and beyond, this book demonstrates that economic development—by thwarting colonization—has proven a powerful force for indigenous self-determination.
Over the past few centuries, vast areas of the world have been violently colonized by settlers. But why did states like Australia and the United States stop settling frontier lands during the twentieth century? At the same time, why did states loudly committed to decolonization like Indonesia and China start settling the lands of such minorities as the West Papuans and Uyghurs? Settling for Less traces this bewildering historical reversal, explaining when and why indigenous peoples suffer displacement at the hands of settlers.
Lachlan McNamee challenges the notion that settler colonialism can be explained by economics or racial ideologies. He tells a more complex story about state building and the conflicts of interest between indigenous peoples, states, and settlers. Drawing from a rich array of historical evidence, McNamee shows that states generally colonize frontier areas in response to security concerns. Elite schemes to populate contested frontiers with loyal settlers, however, often fail. As societies grow wealthier and cities increasingly become magnets for migration, states ultimately lose the power to settle frontier lands.
Settling for Less uncovers the internal dynamics of settler colonialism and the diminishing power of colonizers in a rapidly urbanizing world. Contrasting successful and failed colonization projects in Australia, Indonesia, China, and beyond, this book demonstrates that economic development—by thwarting colonization—has proven a powerful force for indigenous self-determination.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published January 17, 2023
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June 4, 2023
If historical materialism is to remain useful in contemporary political analysis, it will require a shift away from shoehorning case studies into prefab models (which only serves to reify the canon, with no practical implications), to a creative materialism that seeks to uncover dynamics through concrete study first and only construct models afterwards.
McNamee has contributed to this gold standard with his crispy clear Settling for Less. Going against the grain of traditional marxist and liberal perspectives, he discounts teleological explanations (capitalism <-> colonialism; democracy -> decolonization). Instead, on the basis of an evolving structure of states, settler labour reservoirs, economic development, geopolitical security requirements, counterinsurgency and power projection, he arrives at a series of contingent colonizer episodes (America, Australia, Israel, Greece, Papua Guinea, Ethiopia and Xinjiang, twice) which can be understood by only very limited recourse to ideology. Settlers and states have their own emergent imperatives, which can sometimes be reconciled, and which sometimes turn conflictuous, which narrows state policy avenues. As the mother state develops and urbanizes, migration pathways reverse and the great cities attract instead of repelling surplus populations, sounding the death knell for colonialism and incentivizing the state to oversee an orderly transfer of power. Israel is the glaring exception to the rule, but McNamee illuminates this case masterfully. The vast majority of Israeli settlers live within commuting distance of Israeli hubs, which means the state can colonize on the cheap, without having to construct much infrastructure or 'bribe' settlers with inflated wages. Tellingly, the settlement of Gaza failed exactly because of its remoteness; in spite of ideological fanaticism on part of the state and the Israeli populace, few settlers were willing to trek to this inauspicious region. Though he doesn't mention the failed Nazi German settlement of Eastern Europe, it maps very neatly onto this model. The genocidal cleansing of Poles and Soviet citizens can be understood as the attempt to pacify a border region that could not be resettled by Germans and in which the difference between combatant and civilian was invisible; ethnicity here was a heuristic (a Polish German was much more likely to have cross-border connections and reasons for sabotage than an Austrian). Race supremacy was a post-hoc rationalization but did not inform the cleansing per se. Japanese settlement of Manchukuo and South-East Asia, which did entice over a million willing colonizers, stands in stark contrast to Germany's empty Lebensraum, savagery compensating for the lack of settlers.
Arghiri Emmanuel, in his article "White Settler-Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism" (NLR), already in 1972 pointed out that colonialism cannot be understood without taking into account these settler-state-metropolis scissions. He didn't develop this comprehensively himself, but McNamee has convincingly followed in his footsteps, despite not mentioning him overtly.
McNamee has contributed to this gold standard with his crispy clear Settling for Less. Going against the grain of traditional marxist and liberal perspectives, he discounts teleological explanations (capitalism <-> colonialism; democracy -> decolonization). Instead, on the basis of an evolving structure of states, settler labour reservoirs, economic development, geopolitical security requirements, counterinsurgency and power projection, he arrives at a series of contingent colonizer episodes (America, Australia, Israel, Greece, Papua Guinea, Ethiopia and Xinjiang, twice) which can be understood by only very limited recourse to ideology. Settlers and states have their own emergent imperatives, which can sometimes be reconciled, and which sometimes turn conflictuous, which narrows state policy avenues. As the mother state develops and urbanizes, migration pathways reverse and the great cities attract instead of repelling surplus populations, sounding the death knell for colonialism and incentivizing the state to oversee an orderly transfer of power. Israel is the glaring exception to the rule, but McNamee illuminates this case masterfully. The vast majority of Israeli settlers live within commuting distance of Israeli hubs, which means the state can colonize on the cheap, without having to construct much infrastructure or 'bribe' settlers with inflated wages. Tellingly, the settlement of Gaza failed exactly because of its remoteness; in spite of ideological fanaticism on part of the state and the Israeli populace, few settlers were willing to trek to this inauspicious region. Though he doesn't mention the failed Nazi German settlement of Eastern Europe, it maps very neatly onto this model. The genocidal cleansing of Poles and Soviet citizens can be understood as the attempt to pacify a border region that could not be resettled by Germans and in which the difference between combatant and civilian was invisible; ethnicity here was a heuristic (a Polish German was much more likely to have cross-border connections and reasons for sabotage than an Austrian). Race supremacy was a post-hoc rationalization but did not inform the cleansing per se. Japanese settlement of Manchukuo and South-East Asia, which did entice over a million willing colonizers, stands in stark contrast to Germany's empty Lebensraum, savagery compensating for the lack of settlers.
Arghiri Emmanuel, in his article "White Settler-Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism" (NLR), already in 1972 pointed out that colonialism cannot be understood without taking into account these settler-state-metropolis scissions. He didn't develop this comprehensively himself, but McNamee has convincingly followed in his footsteps, despite not mentioning him overtly.
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October 29, 2023argues that decolonization is the highest stage of capitalism.... the case studies are well-researched and his points well-argued but in the context of the overarching argument the reader will 90% feel a nagging suspicion about cherrypicking. there is a chapter on the end basically addressing this exact question --"have the cases I've chosen affected the answers I've gotten?"--that is only partially convincing, since its only like thirty or so pages (this chapter also claims to be the first study of settler colonialism using "systematically compiled data from around the globe". i call BS)
that being said, even if some of the claims seemed way too huge, one thing that's really great is how mcnamee expands the dichotomy of settler/state versus indigenous peoples to a triangle where the settlers and the states are distinguished.... goes back to looking at history on a small scale to develop theory rather than working backwards-- taking structures/theory and applying it to states retroactively, plus using definitions that center on relationships rather than categorical qualities of the actors involved. the writing itself is really strong as well
i think the scale of his argument was too large for the book to be successful. he took a few countries, used them to argue a theory thats supposed to encompass all colonial history, then had to scramble to fully justify his claims in the penultimate chapter. being the only non-case study, it had to marry the entire book together, and prove that his argument stood for every single country except for indonesia, australia, and china. no set of thirty pages can do that imo (plus im not even all that convinced by the idea that his theory applies to more than those three countries, plus he hard shifted into data-driven analysis with tables and charts, which is a completely different mode from the rest of the book and makes it seem like he's argumentatively backing into a corner)
that being said, even if some of the claims seemed way too huge, one thing that's really great is how mcnamee expands the dichotomy of settler/state versus indigenous peoples to a triangle where the settlers and the states are distinguished.... goes back to looking at history on a small scale to develop theory rather than working backwards-- taking structures/theory and applying it to states retroactively, plus using definitions that center on relationships rather than categorical qualities of the actors involved. the writing itself is really strong as well
i think the scale of his argument was too large for the book to be successful. he took a few countries, used them to argue a theory thats supposed to encompass all colonial history, then had to scramble to fully justify his claims in the penultimate chapter. being the only non-case study, it had to marry the entire book together, and prove that his argument stood for every single country except for indonesia, australia, and china. no set of thirty pages can do that imo (plus im not even all that convinced by the idea that his theory applies to more than those three countries, plus he hard shifted into data-driven analysis with tables and charts, which is a completely different mode from the rest of the book and makes it seem like he's argumentatively backing into a corner)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews