ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical foundations of violence in colonial Peru and the Congo. Though the two spaces are separated by nearly three centuries of colonial history, this background analysis examines the discourses/practices that turned Peru and the Congo into prototypical spaces of colonial violence that sought to re-organise colonised societies to suit metropolitan power interests. This historical background is discussed within the general picture of colonial epistemologies of alterity and modernity that provided the structure for violent colonial domination that, in various degrees, continues to render postcolonial societies precarious and prone to violent conflicts.
