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6 - Permanent Security in History

Empire and Settler Colonialism

from Part II - Permanent Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2021

A. Dirk Moses
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

Imperial formations of one kind or another have been the political form in which most humans have lived for thousands of years. Permanent security practices enabled imperial expansion and consolidation through the ages. To tease out its function since the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas in sixteenth century, it is necessary to distinguish between empires of exploitation and settler colonies. The language of transgression developed to simultaneously conceal and expose permanent security in the process of state formation and originary accumulation: first by justifying settler colonial warfare against indigenous resistance, and second by condemning the illiberal permanent security practices of imperial rivals, whether the Iberian powers in the early modern period or the fascist and communist ones in the twentieth century. Liberal permanent security in the form of settler colonialism normalized its modality of settlement, state-formation, and originary accumulation as a theodicy, a story of civilizational progress that benefitted humanity.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Problems of Genocide
Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression
, pp. 243 - 276
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Permanent Security in History
  • A. Dirk Moses, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: The Problems of Genocide
  • Online publication: 07 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316217306.010
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  • Permanent Security in History
  • A. Dirk Moses, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: The Problems of Genocide
  • Online publication: 07 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316217306.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Permanent Security in History
  • A. Dirk Moses, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: The Problems of Genocide
  • Online publication: 07 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316217306.010
Available formats
×