Colonies are essential structural extensions of the modern state

Evidence

The colonies, I am in effect arguing, in line with Foucault’s work on Europe, are the structural extension of the modern state’s structure, rather than a mere attachment to it, an appendage that is accidental or contingent to it, but indeed one that is of its essence. When Great Britain dropped India in 1947, it was not doing anything different than when Russia relinquished its southern and western republics and oblasts upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor would the secession of Quebec from Canada after the referendum in 1995 have violated this logic (had it occurred), however unilateral it might have been. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 413

Categorization

• XREF: Builds directly on Hallaq’s argument that colonialism is not incidental to but constitutive of the modern state — resonates with the author’s broader thesis in Restating Orientalism. — connects to: Entire commonwealths remain in the state of nature relative to outsiders — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 182