The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political Idea

Many would rather change worlds than change the world. The settlement of communities in ＂empty lands＂ somewhere else has often been proposed as a solution to growing contradictions. The lands were never empty. Sometimes the settlement communities failed miserably and sometimes they prospered and grew until they became entire countries. Building on a growing body of transnational and interdisciplinary research on the political imaginaries of settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination, this book uncovers and subjects to critique an autonomous, influential, and coherent political tradition - a tradition still relevant today. It follows the ideas and the projects (and failures) of those who left or planned to leave growing and chaotic cities and challenging and confusing economic circumstances, those who wanted to protect endangered nationalities, and those who intended to pre-empt forthcoming revolutions of all sorts, including civil and social wars. This book outlines the global history of a resilient political idea: to seek change somewhere else as an alternative to embracing (or resisting) transformation where one is. --

Lorenzo Veracini teaches history and politics at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. His research focuses on the comparative history of colonial systems and on settler colonialism. He has authored Israel and Settler Society (2006), Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (2010), and The Settler Colonial Present (2015), co-edited The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism (2016), and is Founding Editor of Settler Colonial Studies.