Will Brehm  0:00
Lachlan McNamee, welcome to FreshEd.

Lachlan McNamee  0:03
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Will Brehm  0:09
So, congratulations on your new book. It is absolutely fantastic. So well researched. You have a very particular definition of colonization in your book. Can you tell me what that definition is? How do you understand colonization?

Lachlan McNamee  1:14
So, in my book, I define colonization as a process of state building involving the displacement of indigenous peoples by settlers. So, kind of drawing on the original Roman definition of the word. Colonization originates in the Latin word colonist or farmer. So, it was coined to describe the process of the Roman Empire would annex new territories, it would send farmers to those territories to kind of claim that area on behalf of the state. And it’s kind of an ecological definition in some ways. We talked about bees or birds or other animals colonizing territories, we’re talking about particular species moving into a new territory and setting up shop. And so, when I use the word colonization referring to human beings, I’m using it to refer to a process by which people who are ethnically distinct kind of move into a territory, kind of displace a preexisting population, and establish their own kind of state

Will Brehm  2:11
Interesting. So, in a way, some of the key pieces of this definition are land and sort of that ecological focus, as you say. And then it’s sort of a process of the state, as well as the settlers who are actually the ones going into this new territory. So, how does this particular definition sort of connect, or is it different from other definitions of colonization that are sort of circulating in the literature today? Because a lot of people are writing about colonization today, or decolonization, I should say

Lachlan McNamee  2:42
Colonization in the popular discourse is often mixed up with imperialism. So, when we talk about European colonization, say in the 1700s, the 1800s, it’s a process by which European empires can conquer new territories across much of the world. People often refer to colonization in that way. But I’m trying to distinguish and keep these two things separate because really that’s imperialism. States, expanding their territory is a form of imperialism, but colonization is the practice by which states kind of exert control over a territory. So, not all imperialism involves colonization. States can annex territory but not displace a pre-existing population and insert a new population of settlers, or sometimes they occur in tandem. So, that’s really what I’m trying to do is keep those two things separate because different theories apply for why states might want to annex territories with why they might want to displace the population and kind of import a new population.

Will Brehm  3:39
So, what would be an example of imperialism without colonization?

Lachlan McNamee  3:43
British India is kind of the canonical example. And indeed, when Britain first annexed the British East India Company and other companies first started to exert control over India, kind of the viceroy of this company in the late 1700s wrote to Britain and was saying how they wanted to restrict people from being able to colonize India from Britain. So, even at that time, people were distinguishing between British imperialism and trying to exploit the labor and trade in a new territory with colonization with kind of colonists coming in from Europe and displacing the existing population. The viceroy, at the time, didn’t want that because he felt like that would -and this is Charles Cornwallis- he felt that that would inflame conflict and kind of imperil British control over India,

Will Brehm  4:30
The British Empire engaged in imperialism in the British Raj in India, but then did they also engage in colonization in other locations?

Lachlan McNamee  4:40
Yes. So, the canonical example would be in Australia, where colonization displacing kind of indigenous population importing new settlers was kind of integral to British rule in Australia. So, that’s the main distinction I’m trying to draw.

Will Brehm  4:57
It’s really quite fascinating because when you do that, then you can start zooming in on sort of why colonization, right? Why would a state decide to choose that approach to further its interests? Whatever it is. So, I guess, you know, why do states choose to colonize?

Lachlan McNamee  5:13
Yeah, so that’s it. It opens up questions. Why did Britain say colonize Australia with settlers but not India. And in the book, I distinguish between two logics. One is settler-led colonization. So, in some settings, especially prior to the 1900s, settlers would often move into frontier territories, and then states are kind of forced with the decision whether they want to extend their protection to these settlers moving into frontier areas, or do they want to try and restrict settlement and I kind of describe how in the book this settler-led colonization -kind of homesteading as it is often called in the US- was kind of key to how the British state colonized Australia, the US state colonized the West. It was really settlers moving into frontier areas, and the state kind of followed. And that in some ways, it’s often said in New Zealand the colonial tail wagged the dog; the colonial state followed the settlers. So, that’s settler-led colonization. But state-led colonization is where the state is actively trying to recruit people to move into a frontier area where they’ve cleared off the indigenous population. And you could see that in Britain, in Ireland in the early 1600s, as well as right up to the current day in places like of course, Israel and the West Bank but also China in Xinjiang. In these settings, the state is really the one trying to recruit settlers, bureaucrats are designating sites of settlement. So, that’s quite a different logic to kind of settler-led colonization. And the reason why states to this -this state-led colonization- is not because settlers are moving into frontier areas of their own volition. It’s because they have faced some kind of crisis on the frontier, a crisis of control. They might be facing a rebellion or potential threat invasion from a foreign claimant. And so, they want to quickly move stereotypically loyal people from the core into the frontier.

Will Brehm  5:20
And by having people that are ethnically like the metropole in these frontier locations, which supposedly end the crisis, whatever that crisis is?

Lachlan McNamee  6:16
Yes. So, for instance, in Ireland, which I mentioned before, the crisis at the time, was that the Spanish Armada had almost just invaded, and the Catholic Irish was seen as supporting Catholic Spain. And so, Britain wanted to import kind of Protestant co-religionists to Northern Ireland to provide a kind of first line of defense against the future invasion and prevent future collusion on the ground between Catholics and co-religionists in Spain. And that’s the same reason I described states, often to the current day, engage in in colonization is when they’re facing crisis and they don’t trust the local indigenous population, so they want to quickly import co-ethnics into that kind of contested frontier. A key example would be, for instance, Turkey and Cyprus in the 70s, after Turkey annexed the northern half of Cyprus. It quickly wanted to import kind of hundreds of thousands of Turks from the Turkish mainland to Cyprus to basically establish its control over that area that had been formally populated by ethnic Greeks who the Turk state did not kind of trust, as they were seen as allegiant to Greece.

Will Brehm  6:16
That sort of state-led colonization, it would have to be expensive, wouldn’t it? To sort of send all of these co-ethnics from the metropole to these far-off lands. I would imagine that is a costly endeavor for a state.

Lachlan McNamee  8:32
Yeah, it is very costly. And so that’s why when states are considering whether to colonize a frontier, the colonization is never their kind of first best alternative because what states in general want to do is kind of economically exploit a pre-existing population. But colonization has many costs. You have to recruit settlers, you have to displace a pre-existing population, which usually inflames a conflict in the short run. And it also has international costs in terms of reputation, and a neighboring state may object to that process, which is something that happened in Turkey and Cyprus. And so, in all the cases that I describe in the book, colonization only happens after a state sees a kind of pressing rebellion or need to kind of colonize a frontier. For instance, Portugal had long exploited the indigenous population of Angola for hundreds of years, from right from the 1600s to the 1900s. But it is only in 1961 at the start of the Angolan War of Independence, that Angola started to really try and recruit Portuguese settlers to come to Angola, because it faced this great insurgency in the rural areas, and so particularly wanted to recruit soldiers to move there. So, it spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get settlers to move there but managed to only recruit a relatively small number. And so, in this way, colonization is kind of like a response to war, it’s a response to conflict, and it’s a very costly thing for states. It’s something they do when they think that they’re going to lose control over the frontier, if they don’t quickly important a population.

Will Brehm  10:05
And it’s quite fascinating. It’s almost like the failed colonization, as you were saying in Portugal and Angola where the state really wants to move in and sort of displace the local population and settle the conflict, as it sees it, but then settlers don’t go. And that’s quite fascinating. So, the state, do they provide sort of incentives for settlers to actually move to these far-off lands?

Lachlan McNamee  10:31
Yes. So, this is one of the key dynamics I describe in my book. It’s this struggle of states to get settlers to move to these frontier areas, because we can’t presume it’s always successful. Historically, it was actually relatively easy for states to engage in colonization. Machiavelli when he talks about it in The Prince, he doesn’t even think it’s an issue because starkly agricultural land was such a valuable asset, that really if you open up in scare quotes land on the frontier to settlers from the core, then landless people in the core, who might be quite impoverished quickly want to move there to kind of take up that land. And so, Britain and Ireland, for instance, in Northern Ireland didn’t really have that great a struggle to recruit settlers, especially from Scotland who were relatively close. And because land was such a valuable asset, people wanted to quickly take up land that was being offered to them. We see that again in less developed states today, like Indonesia. Indonesia in the 20th century resettled about 5 million people from its core islands to its outer island simply by opening up land. And these resettlement policies were actually oversubscribed because people wanted to take up land in the frontier. And so, there was in fact a kind of, you could say, a waitlist to become a trans migrant. So, historically, this wasn’t actually a very difficult thing to do to colonize. But it becomes much more difficult as states become more developed.

Will Brehm  11:48
And why is that?

Lachlan McNamee  11:49
So, as states develop, people lose their interest in becoming farmers. So, urbanization happens, industrialization happens and the relative returns to farming versus say, moving to a city start to go down and down. So, the link between economic development and urbanization is one of the kinds of few laws that exist in social science. As countries develop, they become more urbanized. People move from the countryside to urban centers. And so essentially, as states develop, they increasingly have a kind of mismatch in the alignment between themselves and the settlers. They might want to settle a contested frontier, like Portugal and Angola but they might struggle to actually get people to move there because people no longer want to take up land in the frontier. They want to move to industrial centers, urban centers. And so, most of Portugal’s migration that happened in 1960s and 70s was to other parts of Western Europe, to North America to United States or to Portuguese cities, where they could take up jobs as the returns to doing something much higher than, say, becoming a farmer in rural Angola.

Will Brehm  12:54
It’s a really interesting insight. And I think, in your book, you talk about how it’s sort of a form of modernization theory, which sometimes gets a bad rap today. But you’re sort of saying that these sort of stages of development, change the calculus for using colonization as a state building process because the settlers that are needed to be involved in colonization, they have different interests as a state gets wealthier. And it’s a really interesting sort of insight that sort of brings back in a way modernization theory.

Lachlan McNamee  13:23
Yes, you’re right. Modernization theory is not very fashionable in social science right now. But you know, in some ways, the demographic foundations of modernization theory are still there. So, in demography, the demographic transition, and other forms of transition, are still kind of seen as these iron laws of demography. As states develop, they become more urban. And so, I’m extending that insight basically to understand settler colonialism and to colonization because as states develop, they can no longer get people to move to frontier areas with the promise of free land. And that was the case of Portugal and Angola. I also spent a lot of time talking about Australia, this kind of canonical settler state that tried to settle Papa New Guinea throughout the 20th century but failed to do so because European settlers wanted to move to Sydney and Melbourne and to other urban centers. So, I contrast Indonesia and Australia because Indonesia successfully settled West Papua the western half of New Guinea by opening up land. Australia tried to do the same thing but couldn’t get white people to move there because it was too developed which ultimately forced Australia to confront basically this crisis, it can’t whiten Melanesia. So, what is it going to do? Is it going to extend citizenships to Melanesians to indigenous Papuans? Or is it going to try and separate Papa New Guinea from the rest of the state? And Papa New Guinea eventually became an independent state whereas West Papa has not. It’s still part of Indonesia because it’s been flooded with settlers, and indigenous peoples are basically a minority in many parts of the country, especially the lowlands and urban centers of West Papua today. So, in this way, modernization ended the power of Australia to colonize but Indonesia persisted as a colonizer because of its low level of [inaudible].

Will Brehm  15:07
You dig into the Australian case quite a bit, and you contrast its experience in what’s today called Papua New Guinea with the Northern Territory. So, what happened with the northern territories with the Australian state building and colonization?

Lachlan McNamee  15:22
Yeah. So, the Northern Territory is kind of the northern part of Australia, it’s quite close to Papua New Guinea. And both Northern Territory and Papa New Guinea are often called the Achilles heel of Australia. It was the area most proximate to kind of Asia and was seen as the likely site of the future invasion. And indeed, in World War Two, Japan did actually attempt to invade Northern Australia and bombed the capital of Northern Territory down. So, it’s long been seen as this kind of area that Australia is vulnerable to invasion. But it’s also an area that has had very few whites settled there. And so, I’ve described in a chapter of the book how Australia had really tried to settle the Northern Territory and Papua New Guinea with whites in response to this kind of fear of a northern invasion, first by Japan, and then during the Cold War by other communist powers. But it couldn’t get white settlers to move there. In some ways, this goes back to that kind of state-led colonization practice. Australia faced this kind of pressing threat, but it couldn’t get whites to move there, which actually did make it very vulnerable to an invasion during WW2.

Will Brehm  16:27
And so why then, would the Australian state sort of incorporate the northern territories into its nation, whereas with Papua New Guinea they pushed for it to become independent? Like, why not make the northern territories independent as well?

Lachlan McNamee  16:45
It’s a great question. When states were deciding what territories to kind of hold on to and what territories to decolonize, a common thing you see whether it’s United States deciding to have the Philippines become independent but wanted to hold on to Guam or other parts of the Pacific. Australia wanting to hold on to its islands, as well as the Northern Territory, despite these areas, being predominantly non-white, but wanting to get rid of Papua New Guinea, it’s largely to do with the kind of population. Philippines and Papua New Guinea had quite high populations relative to these other small islands and to the Northern Territory. So, extending citizenship and the rights of Papua New Guineans or Filipinos to emigrate to the mainland was seen as a no go. That was seen as something that would lead to massive change in the demography of kind of mainland cities and also lead to a huge amount of necessary redistribution to these areas. Of course, that wasn’t the case of kind of these smaller territories that had relatively few indigenous peoples that these areas were kind of held on to by colonial powers.

Will Brehm  17:50
It’s really fascinating, you know, when you dive into these specific details as to why a state did what it did in these different sorts of geographical contexts and giving that history and whatever the crisis was in the demography and the economic development at that moment and trying to piece together and explain why the states acted the way they did vis-a-vis these sorts of colonial areas or these potential areas for colonization. And I guess what’s interesting is that you’re talking about in the Australian case, white settlers coming in. And often when we read about colonization, we do sort of see that racial logic, sometimes being privileged as if it was the reason that colonization happened. It was about trying to spread westward through manifest destiny -in the USA, for instance- to sort of spread the white people across the whole country and displace indigenous Americans. How does the racial logic fit in with the way you’re understanding colonization?

Lachlan McNamee  18:48
Racial logics, in some ways are justifications, right? They’re rationalizations for colonization. So, settlers rationalized their actions through racial logics by claiming that that wasteland was not being utilized or that they’re bringing civilization to these areas. Racial logics justify colonization, but they don’t explain it because the basic motivations for people to take land and for states to annex territory remain fundamentally economic. And so, the racial logics in some ways operate at a justification level. But to understand why states colonized and why they ultimately stopped colonizing, we have to attend to the kind of material interests -that’s the argument I make in the book. Because if we want to understand why Australia, the United States, these white supremacist states ultimately stopped colonizing frontier areas, then we have to move beyond just looking at their racial logics and their racial ideologies and think about why couldn’t the United States get whites to move to the Philippines even though it tried at one point in time? Why couldn’t Australia get whites to move to Papua New Guinea even though they tried? Why has Indonesia been able to get Javanese and Balinese people to move to West Papua despite having quite a different racial ideology, one founded on racial equality. We have to look at the kind of the logic of settlers and colonization and the material interests and the role they play in state building. I think it’s more illuminating to look from that perspective, and the racial logics act as justifications for colonization schemes that are happening at the time, or that justification for colonization that has already happened. So, Manifest Destiny, famously, was coined long after the Western colonization has already started. If you look at the debates in Congress in the United States in the 1780s, it wasn’t about the decision whether to try and open up the Ohio Valley for European colonization, it wasn’t founded on some kind of desire to want to spread white men across, it was the fear that if they didn’t annex these territories, that settlers would begin moving into these territories anyway, and found independent republics. And so, we can’t just read back into colonization schemes or racial logic that at the time, maybe perhaps isn’t always the primary consideration of what’s going on.

Will Brehm  21:15
Interesting, what is driving it becomes a question that, as you said, needs to be explained, rather than simply being justified. In the Indonesian case, because it is quite fascinating about West Papua and the state of Indonesia, sort of moving in different ethnic groups into West Papua. And it sounds like it was sort of taken up wholeheartedly by the settlers, and they continue to live there, despite, you said, this sort of logic of racial equality and Indonesia was sort of leading some of the decolonization movements starting in the 50s, really. Was there a racial justification of Indonesia to sort of colonize West Papua?

Lachlan McNamee  21:53
The racial justification that Indonesia made for colonization was that all Indonesian ethnic groups are equal. That there is no racism with Indonesian society. So, perversely, this kind of discourse of racial equality was used to deny the claims of West Papuans to basically prevent other Indonesians from immigrating there. Because if all ethnic groups are equal, then no particular ethnic group has any more right to any part of Indonesia than any other ethnic group. And so, moving people in particularly if they’re bringing agricultural development in, that was another justification used, that these settlers would help develop the frontier, then moving people in was a move towards racial equality, it’s a move towards a common nation. And this is somewhat perverse, right, because what we see is these current racial ideologies are malleable. It’s kind of how white people today in the US don’t necessarily try and attack affirmative action based on white supremacy saying, there’s still some kind of notion of racial inferiority, they do it on the basis that we should all be equal. That it’s kind of reverse racism. And a racial logic that responds to material interests, not wanting there to be some kind of affirmative action anyway. And so, Indonesia kind of had a similar perverse use of racial equality to deny kind of indigenous groups or nations claim to self-determination. Because it fundamentally wanted that land and its resources. So, this is again, why, I think that attending to racial ideologies, maybe misses the point, because they’re so malleable. You can justify colonization based on racial equality or racial supremacy. And racial supremacy, in some ways, it’s incomplete as an explanation for colonization because states that are racially say white supremacist stopped colonizing states that are committed ostensibly to racial equality may colonize. So, other things need to explain what’s going on.

Will Brehm  23:54
Really, really fascinating sort of insight there. And the complexity, right? As social scientists, what the job is of trying to explain what’s going on. Given this focus on colonization, and the sort of the explanation that’s resting often on an economic analysis, but also sort of a political, geopolitical issue and issues of crisis and states trying to manage those crises, trying to protect its own interests, trying to exploit resources for its own gain, and using colonization process in that endeavor, which then connects to some of these racial logics. Given that, how then do we think about decolonization? Which is today a very popular concept in the academic space I’ll say, because it sort of cuts across so many fields.

Lachlan McNamee  24:44
Yeah. So, decolonization was coined to describe the process by which Indigenous peoples have achieved independence and self-determination from European empires, right. But then since the 1980s, it’s become kind of inflated as a concept to describe a lot of other things, say decolonizing curricula or decolonizing universities. We’re not talking here about establishing nation states, right? We’re talking about kind of increasing diverse voices and voices from the Global South, or from marginalized communities. But in the book, I do use the term decolonization in the former sense referring to indigenous self-determination because I still think that process is something that is quite distinct. And we need theories to explain why Australia decolonize Papua New Guinea, but Indonesia did not decolonize West Papua. Or why America decolonized the Philippines but did not decolonize Guam. If we inflate the concept decolonization to mean other things, we might lose the ability to ask these questions.

Will Brehm  25:57
How would you begin to explain those differences between West Papua and Papua New Guinea and the Philippines and Guam?

Lachlan McNamee  26:03
Well, Australia basically faced a crisis in the 60s and 70s. It could not colonize Papua New Guinea with whites, but there was almost 5 million Papua New Guineans there at the time, and a delegation from Papua New Guinea actually asked for citizenship and to become a state. And the Australian government basically feared that if they extended statehood to Papua New Guinea, Papua New Guineans would emigrate to Australia, and they’d have to expend a lot of money on welfare. So, they decided it was much cheaper and more expedient for Papua New Guineans to become they’re own independent nation state. Indonesia, on the other hand, did manage to kind of just settle West Papua with people from the core, and has managed to extract a lot of resources from West Papua because it’s been able to basically maintain control over West Papua through that kind of first strategy of colonization. So, decolonization was a response to the failure of colonization. The failure of white colonization in Papua New Guinea. And their absence of decolonization in West Papua is kind of the outcome of the success of colonization, right? These two things are interrelated. Indigenous peoples only get self-determination or independence when settlers don’t displace them. And that’s fundamentally a story about economic development, Australia failed to colonize Papua New Guinea because it was too developed, and it couldn’t get white settlers to move there whereas Indonesia managed to and has not had to kind of decolonize West Papua or kind of grand indigenous peoples their independence which they want.

Will Brehm  27:30
And so, you have this line in the book that basically reworks a famous line from Lenin, and you say that “decolonization is the highest stage of capitalism”, and I think Lenin says, “imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism”. So, you know, walk me through that. That’s quite a, in a sense, provocative line that you have,

Lachlan McNamee  27:49
I’m using decolonization to refer to the kind of indigenous people or indigenous nation gaining independence. And Lenin, writing in the early 1900s, thought that as states became more developed, that eventually the world would become divided between two or three states, which is kind of grand imperial powers, and that the rest of the world would be completely carved up, because as states kind of became more developed they would eventually exert their power and conquer the whole rest of the world. But that didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite happened. In the late 20th century, all the major empires fragmented and became all these new independent nation states. Why is that? Well, I kind of delve into some of the cases in the book. Why did Portugal decolonize Angola? Well, it was right after it failed to colonize it and get Portuguese people to settle there. Why did Australia colonized Papua New Guinea? It was right after it failed to get white people to move there. It’s America in the Southern Philippines, likewise, France and Algeria. So, essentially, following the failure of colonization, states basically are forced with the fact that they have this territory in the frontier that is populated by indigenous groups, and there’s no prospect that indigenous group is going anywhere. They’re not going to be displaced by a state. So, states then have to decide what are they going to do with this indigenous population. And this is where the racial logic is actually quite interesting because states that are more committed to say racism might be more likely to decolonize because they don’t want that indigenous group to actually become citizens. And that’s certainly the case in Australia with Papua New Guinea. This was at the time, the White Australia Policy did not want to extend citizenship to large numbers of Papua New Guineans. And so, decolonizing them, granting them independence, was a way of kind of removing their claims to citizenship. So, perversely, in a way, as states develop, they lose the power to simply displace unwanted populations. So, they have to grapple with the claims to equality and citizenship made by indigenous peoples in the frontier. And that’s the process of decolonization. They have to bargain with indigenous peoples and decide whether they’re going to grant them citizenship or grant them independence.

Will Brehm  30:01
It’s such a fascinating insight into what colonization and decolonization are and how they operate. And how colonization is not simply a process of large empires, the British Empire. You’re sort of looking at these cases that are much more recent from countries across the world. It’s not a European phenomenon only. And I think that’s really valuable to recognize. I guess, in that sense, then, by way of conclusion is, where should we be looking at today in the present tense of colonization and decolonization? Because obviously these things are still ongoing and still happening as different states are at different levels of economic development.

Lachlan McNamee  30:42
Yeah. So, of course, there’s Israel in the West Bank. And Israel has been able to so effectively colonize East Jerusalem and the West Bank because it’s so geographically proximate to Jerusalem. So, it’s managed to create suburbs for Israeli urbanites across the West Bank. And in the book, I talk about how it failed to colonize Gaza because it was too distant from urban centers. And so ultimately, kind of like Australia and Papua New Guinea cleaved off Gaza from the rest of the state. So, of course, there’s Israel in the West Bank but there are so many other cases that are just like Israel, that don’t receive nearly the same amount of attention. So, Indonesia, in West Papua, it’s one case I talk a lot in about the book. Indonesia has had almost no international condemnation for its policies of settling hundreds of thousands of people there and displacing indigenous population, and there’s still quite a lot of ongoing violence against indigenous peoples there. Or if we look at India in Kashmir, India recently and kind of Narendra Modi abrogated a certain article of the Indian constitution that prevented non-Kashmiris from immigrating to Kashmir. And many people think that that is the prelude to a kind of policy of moving Hindus into Muslim majority Kashmir and consolidating control over that area at last. Or if we look at Morocco in Western Sahara, or if we look at China in Xinjiang. In many cases, the sites where we think colonization is most likely are kind of low-income countries with high population densities that are engaged in territorial conflict. Much of that is in Asia. So, another key example would be Myanmar following the kind of cleansing of the Rohingya, the Myanmar’s government has talked about creating a demographic border fence with Bangladesh. So, settling people from the core to the border with Bangladesh in formerly Muslim areas. And this, again, would be kind of a key case where we’d expect state-led colonization because you have territorial conflict, and a state that’s relatively less developed that’s easily able to open up land and have people move there quickly.

Will Brehm  32:53
Well, Lachlan McNamee, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. Really a pleasure to talk to today. Just such great research and I recommend the book highly to everyone who’s listening.

Lachlan McNamee  33:02
Thanks so much, Will. It’s been a pleasure.

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