Bringing Nastiness Back Into Population and Development: Demographic Modes of Exploitation of Indigenous People

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Abstract

In development sociology, population and development is too often stereotyped as a bland nice specialization. In fact demographic processes can be linked to some of the most brutal forms of exploitation historically experienced by vulnerable people. This paper analyzes variations in violence against indigenous people experienced in five separate ecological frontiers. Simplistic accounts of world systems and settler colonialism assign a one-size-fits-all model to violence against indigenous people. This one-size-fits-all account is typically that experienced in the United States and Australia. More careful attention to demographic factors shows a wider range outcomes are possible, both better than the American-Australian experience and far worse. This paper uses considerations of the relative balance of migration between settlers and indigenes, and the relative scarcity of land versus labor, to explain a broadly diverse range of frontier experiences. These include the savage regime of mutilations in the Belgian Congo, the non-violent experience of the Ainu in Hokkaido, and the Western Roman Empire, where indigenous people were able to permanently expel a powerful set of settler colonialists.

Author

• Samuel Cohn