Historical Institutionalism, Critical Junctures, and the Divergent Legacies of Forced Settlement and Colonial Occupation

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 highlights two critical historical junctures that transformed the patterns of state-building and institutional development associated with forced settlement and colonial occupation. The first critical juncture was the abolition of slavery, which undermined the political control of local white planters and expanded the legal rights and political agency of emancipated Afro-descendants in forced settlement colonies. The second critical juncture was the territorial expansion of colonial occupation, which undermined the legal rights and political agency of indigenous colonial subjects in continental Africa and other developing regions with significant indigenous populations. The theoretical arguments in this chapter incorporate insights from historical-institutionalist scholarship on colonial state-building and institutional development in the Global South. This theoretical framework also demonstrates the limits of existing theories that emphasize the importance of European settlers, British legal and political institutions, Protestant missionary evangelization, ethnic diversity, and geographic determinants of human development and postcolonial democratization.