States without Nations

Abstract

By the turn of the nineteenth century local elites within the colonies of settlement had achieved ascendancy in statist terms. Politically, the process of colonisation had dispossessed indigenous peoples, leaving them, at best, as minority players in the state arena. Mass settlement of British migrants had cemented in place the governmental, judicial, militarist and educative institutions that produced and reproduced political rule, surveillance and, ultimately, at least for many settlers and their descendants, legitimate violence. But what were the borders of legitimacy, and how effectively could they be patrolled?