Statebuilding in the Periphery: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop

How do states secure and maintain political authority over territory? In Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop, Lachlan McNamee explores one common mechanism for building authority, namely settler colonialism, that should be of interest to scholars beyond those interested in colonialism per se. Building a novel theory, he explains when settler colonialism is employed by states and, importantly, why it typically becomes obsolete with economic development. Using new data, he surveys paired cases of Indonesian settlement in New Guinea and Australia's failed attempt in Papua New Guinea, as well as two periods of Chinese settlement in Xinjiang. One underdeveloped dimension of this otherwise outstanding book is the strategic choices of the indigenes. A second dimension is the alternatives to settler colonialism, including direct and indirect rule through indigenous proxies. While McNamee pushes the research frontier outwards, exerting and consolidating state authority over peripheries remain a challenge. To the extent settler colonialism “works,” that is, migrants from a majority group move into and dominate the periphery so as to attach the region more firmly to the national-state, the indigenous community is not only displaced and exploited in the moment but it is economically and politically undermined for the future. The indigenes are not credibly protected against future exploitation but, at the extreme, are eliminated in genocidal wars.