Description
International Relations has had an extensive engagement with the study of colonialism. Colonial and imperial rule has variously been viewed as part of the natural order of the international system; as a relic of a pre-modern past that has been progressively dismantled; and as a systemic feature of global capitalism that perpetuates the subordination of the South by the North. In all these analyses, the primary focus of IR has been on ‘external’ colonialism, where the empire is separate from the national homeland, and there has been limited engagement with the theory of internal colonialism that weas particularly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. This article argues that internal colonialism creatively challenges IR’s ontological assumption of a binary division between nation and colony and state and empire. The paper first provides an overview of the evolution and development of the theory. It then applies the theory to demonstrate its implications for IR. These include understanding the critical role of internal colonization in state-building and the conditions that lead to internal colonialism; revealing the practical significance of internal colonialism for contemporary international politics; and showing how the theory of internal colonialism challenges the conventional historiography of IR.
