Internal colonialism

Internal colonialism is a notion of structural political and economic inequalities between regions within a nation state. The term is used to describe the uneven effects of economic development on a regional basis, otherwise known as "uneven development", and to describe the exploitation of minority groups within a wider society. This is held to be similar to the relationship between metropole and colony, in colonialism proper. The term used to describe the distinct separation of the dominant core, from the periphery in an empire (Howe, 2002). It was created to describe the "blurred" lines between geographically close locations that are clearly different in terms of culture (Howe, 2002, p. 18). Some other factors that separate the core from the periphery are: language, religion, physical appearance, types and levels of technology, and sexual behaviour (Howe, 2002, p. 19).

According to Nicholas Thomas, who draws on the work of Michel Foucault, modernity can be understood as a colonialist project, wherein “societies internal to Western nations, and those they possessed, administered and reformed elsewhere”; and were framed as objects to be surveyed and regulated (Thomas, 1994: 4). The cultural and integrative nature of ‘internal colonialism’ is understood as a project of modernity, and has been explored by Robert Peckham, in relation to the formation of a ‘national’ modern Greek culture during the nineteenth century, when Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire (Peckham, 2004).

The first known use of the concept 'internal colonialism' was in 1957, in a book by Leo Marquard, regarding South Africa. However, widespread use followed the publication of an article on Mexico by Pablo González Casanova in 1965. Gonzalez Casanova was both critiqued by, and influenced Andre Gunder Frank, who further theorised internal colonialism as a form of "uneven development". Sergio Salvi, a poet, essayist, and historian of minority languages, used the term "internal colonies" in the cultural sense in Le nazioni proibite: Guida a dieci colonie interne dell'Europa occidentale ("The forbidden nations: Guide to ten internal colonies of western Europe") (1973), among which he included Catalonia, Scotland, Brittany and Occitania. Other pivotal works on the subject were published during the mid-1970s by Harold Wolpe and Michael Hechter. Adolf Hitler mentions the concept of Internal colonization in his book Mein Kampf of 1925, chapter 4, as a wrong way of tackling the problems that come with the increase of population of a nation. He states that "The limitation to a definite small area of soil, inherent in internal colonization,... leads to an exceedingly unfavorable politicomilitary situation in the nation in question."

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