Gar Lipow wrote:
OK so "construction of whiteness" was symptom rather than a cause of
settler colonialism. But where does economic history suggest that this
prosperity came from? Would the following be A) a true statement B) a
false statement C) such a gross oversimplification that it can't
really be assigned a truth value?
"The prosperity that fueled settler colonialism after the British were
kicked out of half of North America was large based on land and
natural resources taken from indigenous nations."
Largely true? Largely false? Too oversimplified to be a useful basis
for discussion?
largely true, but it's a little backwards. I'd say that
"The prosperity after the British were kicked out of half of North America was large based on land and natural resources taken from indigenous nations."
This was both a result of settler colonialism (the taking of land in N. America and its use by settlers for agriculture, etc.) and a cause of it (continued immigration in search of a good life & continued geographical expansion by the US). In the "Turner Thesis," the availability of the "frontier" was what allowed both prosperity and continued muting of societal antagonisms.
The key fact of 19th century economic growth was land abundance (and manifest destiny policies kept this "fact" going). In the North, it attracted the "land hungry" peasants of Europe; once urbanized, it was hard for people to move to the country, so few urban workers became farmers. The fact that immigrants by and large went to the land (stopping only temporarily in the city) kept labor in the cities relatively scarce and kept wages relatively high. Labor was also relatively scarce in the countryside, so that mechanization was encouraged in both places (as was abuse of the land). Once protected by tariffs and spurred by Civil War demand, the Northern US could have an industrial revolution.
In the South, the labor scarcity "problem" was solved in another, much bloodier, way. Free workers wouldn't work on plantations but would instead flee to the frontier trying to fulfill the dreams of owning their own land. So, for prosperity (of the whites, especially of the slave-owners) to occur, the institution of slavery was needed.
The "indigenous nations" did not own the land in some moral sense (cf. raghu) or in a modern bourgeois way (individual private property). But they possessed (controlled) it.
The white folks took that control from them and then turned land and natural resources into (bourgeois) individual private property.
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Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.