Settler Imperialism in North America and Australia: Modes of Governance, Micro-Events and -Practices at the Frontier during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Principal Investigators: Prof. Dr. Ursula Lehmkuhl, Prof. Dr. Norbert Finzsch

Associated Researchers: PD Dr. Eva Bischoff, Dr. Hanno Scheerer, Björn Beyen

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 202228375
Laufzeit: 2010 - 2015

In cooperation with the Department of Anglo-American History at the University of Cologne (Prof. Dr. Norbert Finzsch and Björn Beyen), the project dealt with the relationship between governance and violence in the context of American and Australian settlement history (settler imperialism). Empirically, the project focused on the slow processes of land grabbing, displacement, and extinction of indigenous peoples in the United States (Northwest Territory, 1787 to 1858) and Australia (New South Wales and Victoria, 1788 to 1851). We were interested in the conditions of governance and micro-events on the frontier under which peaceful cohabitation between white settlers and indigenous people turned into a situation of low intensity warfare.  We examined the settlers' relationship with the indigenous population by using three systemic and three political-governance factor bundles. The project aimed to explain the painful "success" of the "settler imperialism" system. 

Publikationen

Bischoff, Eva/Norbert Finzsch/Ursula Lehmkuhl (eds.) (2014): Provincializing the United States: Colonialism, Decolonization, and (Post)Colonial Governance in Transnational Perspective, Heidelberg: Winter Verlag (co-edited with Eva Bischoff and Norbert Finzsch).

Lehmkuhl, Ursula (2016): Good Land – Bad Land: Ecological Knowledge and the Settling of the Old Northwest, 1755-1805, in: Experiences, Actors, Spaces: Dimensions of Settler Colonialism in Transnational Perspective, Ed. Eva Bischoff (Special Issue: Settler Colonial Studies, Bd. 1, 2016).

Scheerer, Hanno (2016): Civilization Fund Act (1819) : oder: race & sex und die „Zivilisierung des Indianers“, in: eine Geschichte der Neuzeit : 49 Schlüsseltexte aus vier Jahrhunderten neu gelesen. Hg. Olaf Stieglitz/ Jürgen Martschukat, Berlin: Neofelis, 345-352.

Scheerer, Hanno (2014): Settlers, Surveyors, Speculators, and the State: Struggles for Control over Land in Ohio's Virginia Military District, 1776-1810, Dissertation Universität Trier (Mikrofilm).

Scheerer, Hanno (2014): „For ten years past I have constantly wished to turn my western lands into money“: Speculator Frustration and Settlers’ Bargaining Power in Ohio's Virginia Military District, 1795-1810, in: Ohio Valley History 14:1, 3-27.