Internal colonialism

Significance: An ethnic or racial group that is a victim of internal colonialism lacks the ability to guide its own destiny economically, politically, and socially because it has been singled out for exclusion from the mainstream by the dominant ethnic group.

Some observers believe that certain subordinate ethnic and racial groups are colonies within their own countries, controlled by the dominant ethnic group. The applicability of this concept is disputed by other observers, who point out difficulties in the analogy between external and internal colonialism.

External Colonialism

A nation can establish an external colony by imposing control over a territory located beyond its existing borders. To maintain control, the colonial power must send civilian and military personnel to live in the country. Military personnel are sent to keep order, that is, to suppress any opposition to the colonial power, which displaces the former indigenous power structure. Civilian personnel are sent to maintain control through economic, political, and social means.

Economic control is maintained by such methods as restricting licenses to operate local businesses, imposing heavy taxes, buying out local businesses and property, importing workers from other countries, paying lower wages to the subordinate group for the same work performed by members of the dominant ethnic group, setting up absentee landlords, turning areas into ghettos, and banning local businesses. The colonial power’s objective is to dominate the market so that the colonized people will lack economic autonomy, become economically marginalized, and can be exploited in order to enrich the colonizers. Money can then flow from the dominated peoples to the rulers.

Political control is maintained by arresting independent leaders, banning opposition groups, locating pliable local leaders who will carry out the colonial agenda, and restricting civil liberties. The aim of the colonial power is to dominate the political system so that the colonized people lack any ability to influence public policy. Compliance can then result from a belief that resistance is useless.

Social control is maintained by banning the local language, controlling the educational system and the media, geographically displacing the subordinate ethnic group, moving in settlers from the home country of the colonial power, and ridiculing the supposed backwardness of the subordinate ethnic group. The aim of the colonial power is to dominate society to the extent that the colonized people believe in their own inferiority. The ruling group can then break the spirit of the subordinate population.

One example of external colonialism occurred a century ago, when the United States attempted to seize control of the Philippine Islands by suppressing an armed independence struggle in 1901. US military personnel arrived first, followed by bureaucrats, educators, media, traders, and others, who established themselves as colonists. This classical form of external colonialism ended in 1946, when the Philippines became an independent country and US bureaucrats withdrew. US armed forces, however, remained in the Philippines for more than four decades after 1946 on bases that were transferred to Philippine sovereignty.

American Indians as Colonized People

In external colonialism, a dominant and powerful country goes overseas to take over a country that is weak and can be dominated. However, the same methods can be used inside a country: A dominant ethnic group can act as a colonial power in subordinating a weaker ethnic group inside the same country.

For many centuries, the natives of North and South America lived in isolation from the rest of the world. When Europeans set foot in the Western Hemisphere with the intent of occupying the land, conflict between the two groups was inevitable. The history of the European conquest of the Americas began as a form of external colonialism. When the countries of North and South America became independent, internal colonialism existed because the population that was of European origin continued to hold a dominant position over the indigenous population and imposed economic, political, and social control.

Today, American Indians in the United States can live on reservations, that is, plots of land in which they alone are permitted to reside. Although tribal authorities are allowed to make some decisions on behalf of the reservation population, ultimate political authority is held by the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). American Indians can develop their own sources of income, but the BIA runs reservation schools in a manner quite similar to the educational systems that operate in colonies.

Many examples of internal colonialism abound outside the United States. In the seventeenth century, after suppressing an Irish rebellion, Henry VIII of England encouraged British settlers to move to Ulster, in the northern part of Ireland; the result was a colonization of Ireland. Later in the same century, Dutch settlers arrived to establish colonial enclaves amid the indigenous peoples of South Africa; however, when apartheid was adopted in 1948, it was the Africans who were forcibly relocated into enclaves. After the United States gained control of the Philippines from Spain in 1901, the indigenous peoples of Mindanao Island and the Sulu archipelago refused to recognize the authority of the new colonial power, so the US authorities encouraged Filipinos to move to Mindanao in the role of internal colonists.

African Americans as Colonized People

Some observers claim that a form of internal colonialism involving African Americans exists in the United States. They believe that African Americans who live primarily in segregated housing and territorial enclaves have been treated as colonial subjects. For example, businesses in these enclaves tend not to be run by African Americans. As further evidence, they cite how African Americans, for more than three centuries, were denied positions of political authority, rendering them politically dependent. The dominant white population made sure that the Africans lost their own culture and, during the era of slavery, would not have an opportunity to acquire American culture.

Robert Blauner’s Racial Oppression in America (1972) is one of the most famous statements of the thesis that African Americans have been internally colonized. Economically, African Americans have worked for white Americans in low-paying jobs. Until the 1960s, blacks rarely held executive positions in government. Indeed, the practice among whites was to deal with captive leaders in the African American community, that is, blacks who represented the interests of whites more than the needs of blacks. Moreover, blacks lost African culture and have been excluded from the mainstream of American culture. Advocates of the concept of internal colonialism argue that these facts establish the existence of a separate caste status for African Americans, who are forced to confront a split labor market in which they are the lowest-paid workers, are harassed by police, ignored by politicians, and subjected to inferior schooling so that they will not acquire the skills needed for upward mobility.

Critics of the concept of internal colonialism point out several reasons why they believe that the concept of internal colonialism does not fit the situation of African Americans. Whites and blacks can be found in all classes: Some African Americans are economically much better off than the average white American. Also, African Americans are not confined to a specific bounded territory but live in many neighborhoods. Similarly, African Americans have been elected mayors of most larger American cities, so they are hardly politically impotent. Finally, African Americans have developed their own distinctive culture within the United States, and most Americans are well acquainted with the African American entertainers and other cultural leaders. Marxists argue that the real divisions in society are not between racial groups but rather between social classes.

Impact on Public Policy

When members of an ethnic or racial group believe that they are being colonized, at least four courses of action are open to them. One is to assimilate into the dominant culture, thereby ending discriminatory treatment. European ethnic groups in the United States, many of which initially formed enclaves such as Little Italies, have generally been successful in becoming part of the mainstream.

A second course is to leave the country to escape persecution. In the early part of the twentieth century, Turkey instituted massacres of Armenians, many of whom chose to emigrate to the United States. Chinese left Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1960s for similar reasons.

A third course is to protest unequal treatment with the aim of reversing an ethnic group’s colonial status. The American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s agitated successfully for the passage of legislation to outlaw discrimination on the basis of race and sex, though enforcement of the legislation has not eliminated discrimination.

The fourth alternative is nationalism and the establishment of a separate country. However, the weaker ethnic group can expect to lose if it engages in a war of independence unless it can find an ally abroad. In 1971, for example, the peoples of East Pakistan believed that they were being exploited and badly governed by authorities in West Pakistan. After a war successfully waged with the help of India, East Pakistan was recognized as the new nation of Bangladesh. Similarly, some of the Moros of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago have continued to agitate for an independent state consisting of the territories of the former Sultanate of Sulu. Within the United States, some members of the African American liberation movement of the 1960s, inspired by the agenda in Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton’s Black Power (1967), have urged the United Nations to hold plebiscites in the “black colonies of America.”

Bibliography

Allen, Robert L. "Reassessing the Internal (Neo)Colonialism Theory." Black Scholar 35.1 (2005): 2–11. Print.

Bailey, Ronald, and Guillermo Flores. “Internal Colonialism and Racial Minorities in the US: An Overview.” Structures of Dependency. Ed. Frank Bonilla and Robert Girling. East Palo Alto: Nairobi Bookstore, 1973. Print.

Barrera, Mario, et al. “The Barrio as Internal Colony.” People and Politics in Urban Society. Ed. Harlan Hahn. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972. Print.

Burawoy, Michael. “Race, Class, and Colonialism.” Social and Economic Studies 23.4 (1974): 521–50. Print.

Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Random, 1967. Print.

Chávez, John R. "Aliens in Their Native Lands: The Persistence of Internal Colonial Theory." Journal of World History 22.4 (2011): 785–809. Print.

Gonzales-Casanova, Pablo. “Internal Colonialism and National Development.” Latin American Radicalism. Ed. Irving Louis Horowitz. New York: Random, 1969. Print.

Hechter, Michael. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development. Berkeley: U of California P, 1975. Print.

Wolpe, Harold. “The Theory of Internal Colonialism.” Beyond the Sociology of Development: Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa. Ed. Ivar Oxaal, Tony Barnett, and David Booth. London: Routledge, 1975. Print.