Abstract
The word ‘colonialism’ was very rarely used in the nineteenth century. It carried with it unambiguous connotations of the inferiority of the practices and usages of settlers in the colonies compared with those of the ‘mother’ country. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives but two examples of the usage of the term with the meaning ‘The practice or manner of things colonial’ and only two with the meaning ‘A practice or idiom peculiar to or characteristic of a colony’, where its usage is compared to that of the word ‘provincialism’. In general, the word colonialism connoted that which was local, parochial, provincial, insular and hence narrow, restrictive, inferior. The only other meaning given in the OED, the more abstract ‘The colonial system or principle’, has just two citations, the first of which is from the distinguished jurist A.V. Dicey’s England’s Case against Home Rule, and it reads: ‘English Colonialism works well enough’. Dicey, who wrote four books opposing home rule, was referring to Ireland, though the OED does not notice this.
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© 2011 Tadhg Foley
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Foley, T. (2011). ‘An Unknown and Feeble Body’: How Settler Colonialism Was Theorized in the Nineteenth Century. In: Bateman, F., Pilkington, L. (eds) Studies in Settler Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306288_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306288_2
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