Introduction: The Settler Colonial Situation

Abstract

The expectation that every corner of the globe would eventually become embedded in an expanding network of colonial ties enjoyed widespread currency during the long nineteenth century. A theoretical analysis of what is here defined as the settler colonial situation could perhaps start with Karl Marx and Friederich Engels’ remark that the “need of a constantly expanding market for its product chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe”, and that it “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere”.¹ “Nestle”, “settle”, “establish connections”: Marx and Engels were effectively articulating in 1848 what had become a transnational system of diversified colonial intervention. It was a typology of colonial action that depended on local circumstances and opportunities: there were different colonial empires, and there were different modes of empire. Settler colonialism, “the colonies proper”, as Engels would put in 1892 underscoring analytical distinction between separate forms, was one such mode of colonial action.² Sometimes capable of displacing established colonial traditions, more rarely giving way to other colonial forms, settler colonialism operated autonomously in the context of developing colonial discourse and practice.