A Deep Dive into Political Modernity
The modern colonial state is a political form established by the European timeline of
colonization. World powers took over different regions, exploited their resources and forced
certain religious and economic systems upon them. Some of the traits of these systems are still
obvious in the political, economic, and cultural identities of former colonies today. This essay
will explain how the modern colonial state emerged and then explore how it impacts the current
state of world affairs where I argue that it promotes inequality.
Beginning with the historical origins, we start with the Age of Exploration. European
powers namely, the Dutch, the French, the British and the Spanish ventured out to different lands
in South Asia and Africa. They intended to take over the trade routes and this involved
establishing themselves in these new lands. Here they exploited the workforce and the natural
resources. They also imposed their own political systems to favor their trade policies and were
also very keen on expanding their religious ideologies. The formation of colonial states truly
began once there were administrative systems and government bodies in place and indigenous
populations were suppressed. This suppression and the violence it entailed were very prominent
the Raul Pecks exterminate all the brutes, precious minerals were stolen, agricultural lands were
seized to utilized for cash crops and the natives were forced into labor as the price to live.
The historical process of states is complex. We started with empires after which there
was always anarchy and authority would end up divided. This was followed by the formation of
what we call absolutist states which were smaller with centralized authority as explained by
David Held. The problem with absolutist states was that they were known to not cater to diverse
interests. “In particular, the impersonal and public character of legally regulated state power,
apparently quite distinct from the self-interested or communal forms of action in civil society,
generated controversy as to its neutrality or partiality for different social interests.” (King, 1986).
This is what led to the need for states to be more representative. Corroborating these statements
of Held, it was said in his journal that, “He was investigating the changing nature and form of the
modern state and the locus of the political good. Held examined the question of whether the
nation-state alone, as typically assumed by political theory, can be the sole home of democracy,
accountability, and the rule of law.” It is obvious that the belief in the state standing up for those
it governs is not particularly strong.
Elaborating using the work of Mike Davis, he discusses Victorian era famines that
severely impacted India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, and many other colonies. In China for example,
he talked about the textile imports that were being dumped into the Chines market all while
hunger and starvation was already affecting the locals. (Davis, 2001). This is unmistakable
evidence that imperialism forced people into political and economic structures against their will.
I agree with his point that millions of victims did not benefit from the so-called modern world
system but died within it. Briefly referencing Mamdani’s views as well, we see that he claims
that the colonial state and nation state have always faced a combined form of progress.
According to him, it was the United States that was heavy on colonization but despite that, he
says that majority-minority dynamics ought to be removed from political understanding so that
we can craft better state systems which is in line with my concluding remarks for this essay.
In the realm of contemporary significance, there are elements of colonialism like the
commodification of land, cultural landscapes and class differences that still exist in former
colonies today. Colonialism left people divided like Kashmir issue that India and Pakistan are
still in conflict over today. Then of course, there is the aspect of the core and periphery. What
this means is that the economic systems imposed by the colonizers resulted in what we know to
be the first and third world country structures. There are still economically and politically
binding agreements between the north and the south that allow the colonizers to still influence
the structures of the now seemingly independent “colonies.” Countries like Pakistan remain
underdeveloped while England for example is far more developed. The stolen wealth that the
global north is built upon continues to reinforce inequality in the global socio-economic system.
From a political standpoint, the third world nations are dealing with debt crises and largescale corruption which once again are not emerging from these countries alone. The global aid
structure with organizations like the world bank and the United Nations are responsible for the
excessively conditional aid they provide or hold back from struggling countries. They have the
right to shape more equal economic laws, but these organizations are not democratic in the sense
that they do not have enough representative power from the global south. The imperialist system
was inherently autocratic and remains so today. Colonialism may have ended on a large scale,
but we still see the political stains that were left in our constitutions. The religiously and racially
divided communities that exist today and militarism is still very much present as is visible in the
genocide being committed by Israel in Palestine now. No matter how independent a nation
appears to be, there remains a central authority present always.
There is this sense of freedom being out of our grasp with the way huge corporations
have expanded across the world and are replicating the imperial behaviours of the past. They are
powerful enough to influence government contracts, they are taking advantage of cheap local
labour, destroying the environment without consequence and accumulating wealth to take back
to their home countries. These aggressive tactics have created the capacity for a lot of resistance.
We have witnessed major political movements like the Indian Revolt of 1857 that stemmed from
the fight to take back the national and cultural identity of India or the French revolution in
medieval Europe.
The purpose of understanding the development process of the modern state is that we can
challenge the inequality perpetuated by this process. It is extremely important to familiarize
ourselves with how colonialism has crept into and distorted our right to govern ourselves in a
way that is locally appropriate. In fact, one of the major problems with the world view on the
origins of the modern nation state is that they have been accounted for from the European eye
view. This means entire narratives of how the rest of the world played a role in the development
of the state have been completely ignored. These are the narratives that would have been more
helpful in identifying what changes we need to make as the development of the state is an everevolving phenomenon. We need to learn how to govern ourselves better within our own
communities. Like Mamdani explained, the violence of the past is upsetting but we can gather
from it, tools to repair our present and our future if we remove the discriminatory lens with
which we show how much we despise the idea of a state itself.
References:
Davis, M. (2001). Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the third world.
Verso.
Held, D. (1989). Political Theory and the Modern State: Essays on State, Power, and
Democracy. John Wiley & Sons.
King, R. (1986). Interpretations of the Development of the Modern State. In: The State in
Modern Society. Palgrave, London.
Mamdani, M. (2020). Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent
Minorities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Newton, K., & Van Deth, J. W. (2005). The development of the modern state. In Foundations of
Comparative Politics (pp. 3–21). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peck, R. (Director). (2021). Exterminate All the Brutes [Television miniseries]. Velvet Film.
HBO.