Independence: The Ruse of Settler-Colonialism

In scholarly debates, the origin of the concept of “the independence of a state” in whitesupremacist colonial settlers, beginning with the American Revolution of 1776, has been ignored. In white European settler-colonies, the concept of independence also became the goal of the natives and indigenous people in these colonies, but with far di erent results from the concept in the context of Protestant British European colonial settlers.

is lecture presents juridical, political, and philosophical history of the concept of independence, which has become the primary principle of the state system. Whereas most accounts depict “independence” as an outcome of the European Enlightenment and Revolutionary thought, and therefore committed to “universal” human equality and freedom, in fact the genealogy of “independence” is inseparable from the 18th century ideology of white supremacy and settler-colonialism. It is this deep co-foundationalism is what liberal Euro- American historians and theorists and their disciples aim to forget, repress, and deny. As the concepts of both “independence” and “self-determination” aimed to legitimate settler-colonialism, and de-legitimate the rights of the natives of the settler-colonies, a revision of the application and uses of these terms since the 18th century will clarify the strategies and deception that deployed them, as well as the resistance and subversion they encountered.