Colonialism and capitalism form two sides of one continuous dispossession process.

Evidence

Instead of looking at them as discrete and separate moments in history, it is more productive to look at colonialism as an “uncivilized” mode of production allowed to operate at the margins of a more “civilized” capitalism. Let us then conceive of colonialism and capitalism as two sides of the same coin: one side enacting dispossession in a brutal and rampant manner and the other normalizing this process by relegating it to the outside (outside the present, outside the civilized, outside the measurable, and so on). All the while, however, the process of dispossession itself is presented as a necessary and beneficial step in human progress. Various critics of neoliberalism and datafication9 have already recognized in our times a renewed race to amass wealth through new kinds of dispossession. But to understand why this form of accumulation is a continuation and not a break with the historical arc of the past five centuries, we need to look more closely at the history of colonialism and its role within capitalism. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 280

Categorization

• QUESTION: The two-sides-of-the-same-coin reconfiguration directly challenges the paradigmatic assumption that colonialism and capitalism are antagonistic historical modes — worth chasing how this reframe holds up.
• XREF: Echoes, in a historiographic frame, the structural critique of totalizing capitalism found in Zamyatin’s We and in Marxist analyses of primitive accumulation. — connects to: Colonialism created the conditions for modern capitalism’s emergence — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 251; Colonialism operates through people and is not identical with global capitalism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3432; Colonial economic relations are structurally one-sided and uneven — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 822 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy #exemplifies (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 246
• Colonialism operates through people and is not identical with global capitalism #qualifies (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3432
• Capitalism conserving non-capitalist modes produces racial and colonial ideologies. #expands (0.80)
• If modernity depends on colonialism, the two are inseparable #contradicts (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104
• Colonial capitalism arises from conquest and unfree labor, not free markets. #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 589
• Colonialism operates through the twin mechanisms of appropriation and extraction of value. #expands (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 283
• Colonial economic relations are structurally one-sided and uneven #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 822
• The doctrine of progress makes colonialism appear natural rather than impositive #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 217
• Colonialism and modernity are one and the same phenomenon. #qualifies (0.72)