Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part provides the various contestations that have accompanied the imposition/importation of state rule within imperial constellations and colonial contexts. It investigates struggles over the state that are far less intuitively or straightforwardly 'postcolonial'. The part provides a salient conceptual discussion of the modern state as constitutively colonial. It explores postcolonial critique that must be challenged – and broadened – to account for the many 'a-typical' contexts wherein the postcolonial state is being forged and struggled over. The part also explores how struggles over the postcolonial state are complexly layered at local, national and global levels. It provides an overview of South America, a region that holds some of the oldest postcolonial states, having gained independence from European rule mostly in the first part of the nineteenth century.