GEOGRAPHY

Colonialism, Internal

Definition
Internal colonialism refers to a complex set of sociospatial relationships of
exploitation and domination that characterize certain culturally distinct
populations residing in sovereign, mainly ThirdWorld, societies. The two
defining relationships of internal colonialism are that subjected populations
are (1) exploited principally by mechanisms which may not be 'capitalist
proper' and (2) institutionally dominated, both politically and culturally. In the
first instance, internal colonies overwhelmingly produce primary goods for
metropolitan markets, constitute a source of cheap labor for capital controlled
from outside the colony, and/or constitute a market for the products and
services from metropolitan areas. Subordinated populations part with their
surplus labor through coercive social relationships, such as slavery, serfdom,
debt peonage, and/or a general unequal exchange of commodities. Thus,
surplus labor is extracted from the colonized population by mechanisms that
largely differ from those found in advanced capitalist societies (where
exploitation occurs through the employment of 'free' waged labor). The second
trait of internal colonialism is that these 'noncapitalist' forms of surplus labor
appropriation necessitate forms of political and cultural domination of a
qualitatively different nature from that exercised by ruling classes
in metropolitan capitalist society. The population of an internal colony as such
faces severe discrimination in civil society, violence (as broadly defined), and
restricted access to the state resources.

Conceptual Origins
The concept of internal colonialism has been applied to a variety of
geopolitical contexts. In some instances, populations are said to be colonized
by the entire state of which they are a constituent part and at times by
dominant regions of the national state. Case studies have often been drawn
from rural Third World locales, though arguments have been made for its
applicability to spaces within the metropolitan heartlands of global
capitalism. The theoretical geographical scope of the concept has thus been
substantial. What is generally accepted is that the explication of internal
colonization as a coherent concept – incorporating both the 'economic'
dimensions of regional exploitation, and the 'political' aspects of social group
domination – has its origin in radical Latin American scholarship. The concept
was pioneered notably by Pablo Gonza?lez Casanova, Rodolfo
Stavenhagen, and others as a part of a renewal of Marxism in Latin America
during the 1960s, to explain the social problems of postcolonial societies at
least partly in terms of their colonial heritage. Persistent poverty in the Third
World societies could not, however, be wholly blamed on external mechanisms
of colonialism, particularly after formal independence. Possibly the reason for
internal colonialism cohering as a theory in Latin America, decolonized much
earlier than other parts of the Third World, is that internal domination and
exploitation of indigenous groups by other national groups was strikingly
evident in the postcolonial period. Drawing upon histories then emerging of
Latin America's role in the development of capitalism in the West, particularly
upon what became known as the dependency school, many writers began to
draw parallels between the present and the colonial past. Theorists of internal
colonialism rejected both the then influential dualist model of development
(positing parallel 'modern' and 'traditional' economies within a national space),
and bourgeois structural convergence models (convinced of the inevitability of
the emergence of integrated national economic spaces). The internal
domination and exploitation of 'natives by natives' (as Gonza?lez Casanova
termed it) was highlighted instead, in particular the instrumental internal class
relations that had emerged between different social groups and regions. It was
also argued that internal colonialism was a specificity of postcolonial societies
with large indigenous populations.

In this alternative scenario, the 'internally colonized' regions were envisaged

as integral and necessary to the functioning of the national economy, and
reference was specifically made as to how colonialism had wrought
a sociospatial division of labor, imposing cultural distinctions and
stratifications along class lines. In the specific case of Latin America, this
division came between the Iberians, including Mestizos (populations of mixed
European and indigenous descent) and indigenous peoples. However, in other
contexts, such as in South Asia, the division was seen not so much as between
indigenous and mixed descent populations, but between tribal and low caste
populations and those who were upper caste, relatively Westernized, and
English educated. Such divides, which had persisted since the days of
colonialism, had earlier concerned a general category of writers, who were to
have an antagonistic influence upon the development of internal colonialism
theories. In the lead up to independence from the colonial powers, and in the
postcolonial aftermath, various educational and philanthropic movements
attempted to create 'authentic' national cultures in opposition to what was
seen as the alien culture of the conquerors. In Latin America this was typified
by the Indigenismo movement, composed largely of urban Mestizo
intellectuals, who were fixated on recapturing the indigenous 'glories' of a pre-
Columbian era. The critique that emerged of this phenomenon, and which
informed theses of internal colonialism, was of the perspective that the
question of the fate of dominated populations could not be resolved by
humanitarianism since the persisting exploitation was not a question of
morals, culture, or ethics, but was a problem rooted in the materiality of the
exploitative socioeconomic system itself.

Mechanisms of Internal Colonialism

Many scholars define the condition of internal colonialism as a situation
whereby one distinct cultural/ethnic/racial group economically exploits and
politically dominates another such group. In this view, cultural/ethnic/racial
oppression is seen as irreducible to other social processes, such as class. The
mutual relationship between 'economic' class exploitation and, for example,
'political' racial oppression is often, however, not clarified, and the
term 'internal colonialism' is itself used loosely. Scholars broadly influenced by
the Marxist thought (e.g., Wolpe, as well as Drakakis Smith, a geographer, and
Hartwig, who are influenced by him) have attempted to directly
theorize situations of internal colonialism to class relations, and in particular
to the articulation between capitalist and noncapitalist class relations. The
argument is as follows: in certain conditions, within a country, capitalism may
develop predominantly in relation to noncapitalist modes of production.
Capital in such circumstances has a double tendency – to conserve as well as to
dissolve noncapitalist social relations. This relationship with noncapitalist
modes of production varies geographically. In terms of relations of dissolution,
in some areas, capital may destroy precapitalist modes of production through
primitive accumulation – that is, it may dispossess peasants of their means
of production in order to create a property less class of wagelaborers. In terms
of relations of conservation, there are two possibilities: the extraction of the
products of human labor or the extraction of human labor itself from
noncapitalist areas. In one area, capital might extract goods produced under
noncapitalist modes of production, for example, through sheer plunder, or the
exchange of nonequivalents, or in a similarly forcible manner. The ethnically
dominant groups, such as the Mestizos (mixed European and indigenous
population) in Latin America or upper caste merchants from the plains in
India, extract surplus from the internal colony by purchasing commodities
cheap and selling dear and by charging usurious interest rates.

In other areas, capital may extract not the product of human labor but the
capacity of humans to work, 'labor power' itself. This happens when laborers
from non-capitalist locales work in capitalist areas (e.g., as seasonal migrants).
Since part of the cost of reproducing and sustaining this workforce is borne by
noncapitalist modes of production (and not by capital), wages are lower than
what they would otherwise be. Capital, simply, does not need to pay a wage
sufficient to cover the reproduction of its living workforce. This is the
case when, for example, land in the internal colony is owned and cultivated
communally and/or where the produce is shared through ties of kinship or
mutual obligation. This process thus contributes toward the reproduction
of labor periodically working outside the spaces of the internal colony and
keeps wages down for capitalist employers. It must be noted that whether the
internal colony contributes goods directly, or the labor necessary to produce
commodities, apart from economic mechanisms, the element of extra
economic coercion is regularly used by owners of means of
production. Additionally, in the realm of commodity and money circulation,
various forms of unequal exchange between the internal colony and the
advanced regions contribute to the stunting of the forces of production
possessed by populations of the internal colony, and a general recapitalization
of the region. With a mixture of different methods of production in the colony,
the forces of production in the internal colony remain largely undeveloped.
Since local or autonomous capitalist development is absent, the surplus
extracted from the colonized population is rarely reinvested back into
the territory, and investments of significance are generally unsustainable in
terms of their long term economic, social, or ecological viability.

Spaces of internal colonialism thus come to be characterized by dependence on

a restricted range of economic activities, mostly in the primary sector, and
the region consequently suffers from a lack of diversification and, when
technology does happen to be advanced, extreme degradation of the physical
environment. Historically, with few livelihood alternatives, and as
traditional occupations come under pressure, there is out migration and long
term population declines occur (though interspersed with short term, localized
boom periods, for example, as associated with prospecting for finite
natural resources). With a lack of economies of scale, and due to political
considerations, such as the weak enforceability of private property rights and
sociospatial discrimination, the provision of various (private and state)
services and investment is limited. This increases the pressure on smaller
communities and creates uneven development as populations attempt to
consolidate resources within the confines of the colony.

The human and physical geography of internal colonialism can thus be

understood partly as the expression of underlying and contradictory social
relations. However, insofar as the existence of an internal colony
involves economic exploitation and social oppression, this requires political
legitimization in the context of broader society – or else eventually becoming
untenable over time. Exploitation, though, is legitimized not through state and
ideological mechanisms based on private property, as characteristic of liberal
capitalist democracies, but through political and ideological domination based
firmly upon purported racial, ethnic, or national traits, that is, through a
relationship that is primarily colonial in nature. This is the case, whether it is
in the Third World, or in the First World settler colonial societies with
substantial aboriginal populations. It is the essence of internal colonialism: a
set of sociospatial practices of domination that 'justify' the ways in
which capital benefits from and develops at the eventual expense of
'noncapitalist' modes of production. The fact that internal colony areas are less
developed than the country as a whole requires justification, and here non-
class social relations are incessantly invoked. In other words, it is made to
appear that the region is less developed because of, for example, racial or
ethnic traits. Once these differences are used to justify the relations
of exploitation, unequal exchange, and unequal geographical development
between internal colony spaces and those pertaining to other areas, then
discrimination reinforces these conditions. Purported differences, such as of
race and ethnicity, thus obtain a material foundation for their sustenance.

To the extent that internal colonial relations are simultaneously about class
and colonialism/ethnic oppression, dominated populations come to possess a
contradictory identity, one that can be argued to have adverse implications for
developing the collective agency necessary to counter internal colonization. On
the one hand, populations see themselves as colonized, different from wider
society, and, on the other hand, as members of an exploited class, in the sense
that they are located in a typical exploited class situation. Since the 1960s,
there has been a debate as to the influence of internal colonialism on the
development of class consciousness versus other forms of consciousness.
Stavenhagen proposed that the colonial relationships between indigenous
communities and the larger society strengthened such marginalized
communities and fomented their ethnic identity, while the development of
capitalist relations in the internal colony tended to contribute to their
disintegration as a community and integration into national society. In other
words, ethnic consciousness makes the lines of social struggle more complex,
as dominated populations may at times fight as antagonistic classes, and at
times as oppressed cultures. Additionally, given that those classes and political
groups ruling in the internal colony may not be dominant at the national scale
(e.g., Mestizos in Latin American countries being subordinate to Iberians and
landed interests in India being subordinate to the bourgeoisie) the population
of the internal colony may struggle to integrate immediate tactical struggles
with visions of temporally longer and spatially wider social change. Internal
colonialism thus gives a distinctive character to class relations, techniques of
production, and the class struggle in those countries where this phenomenon
exists. Indeed, the phenomenon cannot be properly understood without
reference to these dimensions.
In this respect, relations of internal colonialism differ from, for example,
conventional urban–rural relations because they have a different historical
origin and are based on active discrimination. They also differ from class
relations as the sociospatial demarcation of the internal colony cuts across
class lines. In this way, internal colonialism can be distinguished from general
regional inequality under capitalism. The major difference between
marginalized regions and the defined internal colony is found in the
application of the different institutionalized practices of domination and
methods of social control. The population of internal colonies is thus subject to
discriminatory practices over and above those characteristic of relations
between dominant classes and typical regional working classes. Furthermore,
individuals from working class backgrounds in peripheral regions have
opportunities for social mobility depending upon opportunity structures to the
limited degree that they can shake off their class origins and become socialized
into the skills, values, and attitudes of the mainstream society. By contrast, the
individual from the internal colony is highly socially constrained, regardless of
personal merit.

Whither Internal Colonialism?

Over time, relations and processes of internal colonialism can change and
weaken. One fairly common line of argument is that dominant social–cultural
groups always have a vested interest in maintaining relations of
internal colonialism. However, this may not always be the case. Historically, as
capitalist relations have developed and penetrated into remoter regions, class
relations predicated on the accumulation of capital have entered into conflicts
with colonial style relations based on mercantile relations or on exploitation
through noneconomic forms of domination. To the extent that internal
colonialism is based on the appropriation of unfree labor of a population, and
to the extent that free wage labor may be more appropriate (i.e., more
profitable) than unfree labor, then those specific conditions defining a
situation of internal colonialism may weaken. In any case, even if unfree labor
is used, it is not necessary that colonial political relations must prevail. In such
scenarios, it is mainly those enterprises of the ethnically dominant whose
technology has lagged behind and who continue to use cheap forced labor that
may be interested in maintaining internal colonial relations, and, as such,
there is ideological struggle within the dominant community over this matter.

Further, the weakening of internal colonialism may occur through class

differentiation within the colonized community, consequent to the
development of petty commodity production in rural areas. In particular,
the rural petty bourgeoisie may forge an alliance with urban workers, socially
marginalized groups in urban areas, and colonized groups in an attempt to
break the patron–client relations in use by the dominant classes. Political
struggles for land, for better working conditions, and for full political
participation also can help contribute to the demise of internal colonialism,
and need not always be at odds with the fuller development of capitalism (e.g.,
as historically associated with land reforms or with the establishment of
parliamentary representation). Populations from the internal colony may, too,
adopt those lifestyles associated with the ethnically dominant as a means of
breaking out from their communities in a search for employment elsewhere.
This process involves a combination of forced circumstances and choice,
proletarianization, and rural–urban migration that contributes to the
breakdown of internal colonialism. State led agrarian reforms, including
public investment in internal colonies, can also lead to the closure of the
inequality gulf between colonized populations and the national society.

Hence, on the one hand, the dynamics of internal colonial relations may
become transmuted into those typifying other situations, such as of a
capital/labor class relationship and a more conventional form of
regional marginalization. Such developments may, though, mitigate against the
demise of internal colonialism. For example, the national state by seeking to
either redistribute land, manipulate guaranteed crop prices, divulge increased
political autonomy, and/or invest in internal colony areas with public funds
might rouse political opposition by nature of an alliance between rural
land magnates in the colony and urban working classes (who might fear
disinvestment in their neighborhoods and services or else in the rising
price/insecurity of food supplies). The further penetration of capitalist–
social relations might perhaps lead to lower sections of the ethnically
dominant working class mobilizing to ensure social exclusion of colony
populations from privileged openings in the social structure, such as in
traditional commercial employment opportunities (consider the problem of
racism in various trade union contexts) or positions in the bureaucracy
(witness contemporary struggles over government quotas for scheduled
castes and tribes in India).

Other developments can emerge to change the relations of internal colonialism

in sometimes unanticipated ways. Attempts to impose forms of social control –
such as the religion of the dominant community – upon the internal colony
may, for example, act as a spur to cultural resistance. Similarly, extreme
measures of social control in the internal colony, sanctioned by the prejudices
of the national population, may result in a backlash and the radicalization of
movements. In this case, colonized populations may challenge the hegemonic
order in the name of a disadvantaged class, on the one hand, and in the name
of a cultural minority, on the other. Social and cultural institutions that
develop organically within the internal colony, and in competition with state
supported institutions, may hereby become nodes for the crystallization of
political opposition. This may either create a dual basis for a challenge against
the hegemonic order in society or become a feature for co optation – the
state making certain cultural and some (limited) political concessions, but
without altering the fundamental basis for surplus labor transfers from the
internal colony.

Critical Assessment
The theory of internal colonialism is not without deficiencies, and there are
four main criticisms. First is the general understanding of the development of
capitalism presented by the concept of internal colonialism. An implicit
assumption of the internal colonialism theory is that peripheral regions in a
given country will always be necessary to fuel the capitalist system, the
absence of which would engender national economic crisis. What
is disregarded is the possibility of the important role played by technological
change in creating relative surplus value (in the advanced capitalist center of
the economy), particularly after the historical phase of the dispossession
of populations of their means of production has ended. There is therefore an
undue amount of stress on absolute surplus value as it is produced by the
native population and on its appropriation by those culturally and politically
dominant groups. Additionally, to the extent that internal colonies in the Third
World might be judged as historically and geographically unique, in
comparison to the assumed origins of capitalism in the First World,
it downplays the importance of the comparable overseas imperial relations
that the emergence of Western industrial capitalism depended upon. In certain
narratives of internal colonialism, there is, thus, a potential tendency toward
economic determinism.

A second criticism is how class exploitation is understood in relation to ethnic

oppression and the autonomy of these issues from one another. For example,
the Marxist scholar HaroldWolpe alleges that much of the thinking on the topic
of internal colonialism tends to treat ethnic relations as autonomous of class
relations. This is problematic, since while workers belonging to the
ethnically dominant group may benefit from surplus from other groups, they
do not own/control the means of production or extra economic power critical
to the successful exploitation and subjugation of other communities.
Class distinctions are thus at risk of neglect in theories of internal colonialism
as the tendency is to conceptualize an entire population ruling at the expense
of another. The major division is hence not seen as between owners
and nonowners of the means of producing everyday material life, but instead
between groups whose differences are ultimately socially mutable. As another
scholar, Cristo?bal Kay, observes, ''the key to the concept of internal
colonialism deserves to be the 'relation' of domination and exploitation
between two social groups.'' The actual racial, ethnic, cultural and even
geographical elements are 'not' central to the mechanisms of internal
colonialism – rather they 'merely' facilitate the exploitation of the
internally colonized.

To the extent that internal colonial relation is an aspect of class relations, how
then can the two be distinguished? Insofar as capitalism is the dominant mode
of production in the country, and insofar as the forms of exploitation that are
said to persist within internal colonies are common and apply to dominant
social groups as well, then it is more appropriate to talk about class relations
than colonial relations. When these forms of exploitation are accompanied by
extra economic coercion and would not otherwise exist – and that it applies
to particular groups only, or mainly – then it is valid to talk about colonial
relations. The dimension of noneconomic political coercion is the key element
in defining internal colonialism. Indeed, some scholars question whether
internal colonialism has applicability to conditions where noncapitalist modes
of production, if they still exist, are marginal. For, arguably, where they are
marginal, dull economic compulsion will be sufficient to compel labor and
products from noncapitalist areas to enter into fully capitalist production
relations and circulation. Nevertheless, other writers continue to insist that the
concept is analytically useful 'wherever' the relation of exploitation between
capitalist areas and noncapitalist areas is expressed racially and/or in the garb
of cultural/ethnic group identity, even in predominantly capitalist
societies where there exists persistent and severe discrimination against
aboriginal populations. Arguably, specific capitalists in certain places and at
certain times do make use of extra economic coercion in the sphere of
production (they do this, for example, when they deprive laborers of their
right to freely bargain over their wages) and utilize mechanisms of racial–
cultural–political oppression in order to obtain labor and commodities at
below market wages and prices, respectively. Therefore, the
general mechanism of internal colonialism – economic exploitation and racial
oppression–political domination overlapping in a place – may not totally
disappear with the coming of 'pure' capitalist relations.
A third criticism is the assumed homogeneity of internally colonized
populations. On the one hand, there often – in the seeming rush to identify
'colonialism' – is an overlooking of 'emergent' class divisions within
internal colony populations. On the other hand, there is often considerable
local cultural and linguistic differences within oppressed populations and
hierarchies of social power that operate within the wider population.
These cultural distinctions may have divisive salience in domains of social life
other than the workplace, and less traditionally theorized as being part of the
class struggle – neighborhood politics, educational institutions,
voluntary associations, and so on.

Finally, the concept of internal colonialism can be critiqued politically.

According to some interpretations, to use the concept of internal colony
automatically implies a strategy of 'national' liberation. To critics, this is the
central weakness of the theory because it contains a hope for liberation from
oppression and exploitation through an ethnic, cultural, and national
autonomy. It, suggests Cristo?bal Kay, can be used to raise
political consciousness but cannot fulfill that stated goal. Structural conditions
for establishing separate states do not exist in most situations, as most internal
colonies are highly dependent on the workings of the integrated national
capitalist system. There is, further, a pessimism to internal colonialism studies
that, while often darkly illuminating, can at times hinder the recognition of
substantial political gains (such as constitutional rights) as anything other than
the attempt to co opt liberatory movements and aspirations within the colony.
There is thus a deficient theorization of the capitalist state, as a political
economic institution that emerges from, and has tensions reflective of, civil
society at large.

Summary
The concept of internal colonialism emerged as, and remains, a historic
attempt to understand the social and economic structures and inequities that
persist in different spaces in the context of national capitalist development. In
the effort to analyze often highly complex sociospatial formations, internal
colonialism as a theory has both its strengths and weaknesses. Though a
somewhat nebulous concept, due to its wide empirical application and popular
theoretical appropriation, studies of 'internal colonialism' challenge many of
the assumptions inherent in various international development
theories, especially those emphasizing the inevitably
revolutionary consequences of industrialization within territories, and those
assuming 'pure' modes of production existing in isolation of capitalism. The
key to the 'theory' of internal colonialism is to be found in an understanding of
the particular sociospatial relations of domination and exploitation that
characterize the relations between different ethnocultural social groups within
a national space. The ethnic, social, cultural, and geographical elements in the
conceptualization of internal colonialism are not central but do certainly
facilitate the identification, establishment, and intensification of the
phenomenon described as internal colonialism. Thus, the criticisms should
focus on the theory's analysis of the relations of domination and exploitation.
If these relations cannot be clearly defined, do not exist in reality, or are
already part of a theory which has greater explanatory and predictive powers,
then the concept of internal colonialism must necessarily be abandoned.
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