Colonialism Research Paper

The history of the United States is one of colonialism, settler colonialism, and the abstract idea of difference and perceived inferiority of savage, less civilized peoples. Since the discovery of the North American continent and the eventual founding of the United States of America, whiteness and white supremacy has shaped America to its present-day form. The idea of race, which has furthered the concept of difference, has been used as a tool to categorize and marginalize peoples of different color, culture, and creed in the hopes of creating a structure where the white man reigns supreme. Race is not biologically real, it is simply a social and political construct that those in power use to assert dominance; just as Paul Spickard in his Race

As mentioned before, colonialism is the act of acquiring foreign lands to grow economic and political power through the subjugation and exploitation of the indigenous people and the natural resources of their land. Colonialism goes hand in hand when discussing the history of mankind. Whether it be the ancient pre-colonial African empires of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans or the age of discovery empires of the Spanish, British, and French; colonialism can be described as the history of domination. One of the starkest differences between colonialism and settler colonialism is the fact that colonialism seeks to subjugate and exploit the indigenous peoples while settler colonialism only seeks mainly to destroy and replace the indigenous population through genocide and other violent means. A great example of this glaring difference of philosophy can be illustrated by looking at the contrasting ways in which the United States expanded westward into Native American land in the 18th as well as 19th centuries and the strategies used in colonizing Hawaii in the early 20th century. It is widely agreed that the expansion westward was fostered by the idea of manifest destiny and the “Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or

Race and the idea of difference plays a massive role in how settler colonialism works. During the expansion westward, race was used as a tool to separate the white civilized peoples and the underserving uncivilized Native Americans as well as to create a moral, social, and political justification for the extermination of the Native American people. When comparing settler colonialism to colonialism, a few of the most obvious distinctions between the two are the facts that settler colonizers “come to stay” and settler colonization inherently seeks its own demise. While ordinary colonizers come as governors, armies, or merchants, settler colonizers seek to permanently take up residence in and assert complete political control over foreign lands. The only way to gain this kind of sovereignty in indigenous lands is to exterminate the native population, to which the United States did just that. The justification for this robbery and genocide described by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz focused on the desired racial and “cultural change and conflict between cultures” (Dunbar-Ortiz 5). Unlike regular colonization which attempts to constantly assert control or dominance over and