ABSTRACT
Any historian in the field of modern European or American history sooner or later must confront one of the fundamental paradoxes of the last century: the acquisition and rule by force of colonies by the most advanced democracies, the United States, France, and Great Britain. Whatever the official claims, Western colonization during this period was in large part an act of state-sanctioned violence. On the crudest level, liberal regimes forcibly “pacified” native peoples who resisted colonization. On a more subtle level, their rule rested on a set of coercive practices that violated their own democratic values. Colonized persons were designated as subjects, not citizens. They had duties but few rights. In neither case, however, did the conquerors in question seem aware of any contradiction between their democratic institutions and the violent acquisition of overseas colonies. As even those among us who are only tangentially interested in the study of imperialism can attest, the faith of yesterday’s empire builders in the moral legitimacy of their enterprise was all but absolute.
