Colonialism, settler colonialism, and law: settler revolutions and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples through law in the long nineteenth century

Abstract

In his recent book, Replenishing the Earth, James Belich attempts to explain the explosive growth of the Anglo-settler colonies of North America and Australasia during the period from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, commonly referred to as the long nineteenth century. Curiously, however, while both may be seen to be important, Belich does not appear to take into account either nuances of the concept of settler colonialism articulated by settler colonial scholars or the central role that colonial law and legal institutions may have played in settler revolutions of the long nineteenth century. At the same time, many legal historians, including most recently Lauren Benton (in A Search for Sovereignty) and Lisa Ford (in Settler Sovereignty), have covered many of the same colonies as Belich in efforts to explain the outcome of intensifying attempts made to assert sovereignty and legal jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples during the course of the long nineteenth century. However, the transcolonial narratives (or more ‘global stories’) offered in these studies give little attention to either Belich's account of the growth of Anglo-settler societies or the potential added insights that can be gained by taking into account some of the key ideas and arguments advanced by leading settler colonial scholars, including most notably Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini. In the following paper, an attempt is made to encapsulate and integrate the key ideas that emerge from these different literatures into an analytical framework for guiding research aimed at explaining the dispossession of Indigenous peoples through law in the long nineteenth century and the continuing contested assertion of sovereignty and criminal law jurisdiction over Indigenous peoples in settler colonial societies today. In this effort, particular attention is given to drawing out what recent leading settler colonial scholars say and imply about settler colonialism and its legacies, including the ongoing nature of ‘deep colonizing’ through law and other means of Indigenous ‘elimination’, and the continuing attempts made by Indigenous peoples to resist and counter such eliminatory efforts.