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Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development

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As someone interested in American Indian policy, I found Hechter's analysis of the Celtic fringe highly relevant to the situation of many American Indian peoples. The non-Indian policy makers who advocated the policies that imposed conditions of forced economic dependency are characteristic of three related components of modern national "development" theory: the internal colonial model, core-periphery relations, and a cultural division of labor.

"One of the defining characteristics of the colonial situation is that it must involve the interaction of at least two cultures - that of the conquering metropolitan elite, and of the native culture" (Hechter:73). This accurately describes the relationship between the federal government and the various American Indian tribes in the United States from 1870 to 1900. Another attribute of internal colonialism is when the metropolitan core dominates an undeveloped periphery politically and exploits it economically. The result is an unequal distribution of wealth and power, and a form of social stratification based upon a cultural division of labor. The periphery exists within an unequal and dependent economic and political relationship with the metropolitan core. There is also a basic cultural conflict, usually over language and religion, between the core and the periphery. The spokesmen for the metropolitan core, such as federal Indian policy makers, portrayed the American Indian periphery's desire for independence from the Anglo-American core as an "obstacle" to national development. This ideology created a social or cultural boundary "which define[d] the peripheral group" in negative terms (Hechter:207). All of these factors describe a colonial situation that was antithetical to non-Indian policy maker's self-proclaimed goal of assimilation.

"The advent of sustained economic and social development serves to undercut the traditional bases of solidarity among extant groups [i.e., Indians]. New coercive policies [e.g., allotment and assimilation] attempt to "increase the individual's dependence upon and loyalty to the government" (Hechter:16). The non-Indian "reformers" did not build their ideas of coercive assimilation solely upon complaints about Indian dependency. Assimilation was envisioned as a means of asserting control over American Indian peoples because most Americans abhorred the idea of American Indian autonomy. The core group of reformers and allotment policymakers asserted their prerogative to impose their supposedly superior culture on the Indians. This is NOT assimilation. It is a form of colonialism where Indian peoples on Indian lands are regarded as being an internal colony. There is scant historical evidence to support the thesis that the benevolent reformers and their political allies like Senator Dawes ever intended to assimilate American Indians into the Anglo-American mainstream as equals. Allotment policy, and its corollary goal of assimilation, was not interested in the cultural, economic, or political integration of American Indian peoples. Instead, they were to be marginalized in an ever-shrinking periphery. Their relative low social status was to remain unchanged. This situation calls into question "the simple assertion that acculturation NECESSARILY leads to cultural integration" (Hechter:24, emphasis original). Hechter is on the mark when he states that "colonial development produces a cultural division of labor: a system of stratification where cultural distinctions are super-imposed upon class lines" (Hechter:30). I think this type of analysis is seriously lacking in American Indian history and policy scholarship.

It is about time that this book has been re-issued by Transaction Publishers in paperback. I hope the real price is not $29.95, because this updated version with a new introduction and appendix belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the history and methods of colonialism in the British Isles and beyond.