First-contact resource wars begin unrecognized as violence with no dramatic announcement

Evidence

The oasis scenes in Cities of Salt mark the first skirmishes in an imperial resource war that would bring, not far behind it, the first premonitions of the resource curse. Like many scenes of first contact, this is a war that isn’t a war, or at least one that doesn’t announce itself as such; initially, it simply appears to involve the arrival of bewildering strangers whose advent gives no inkling of the extensive violence to follow. But we can read the encounter between the oasis community and these newcomers—three American oil prospectors and their two marsh Arab guides—as an epochal, if as yet inchoate, contest between a desert culture historically shaped around water wealth and interlopers following a different wealth script, in which “resource rich” means oil. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 216

Categorization

• XREF: Directly exemplifies Nixon’s core thesis — a violence that doesn’t announce itself — applied to first oil contact; extends earlier ch4 ‘resource rebellions’ and the reader’s slow-violence thematic spine. — connects to: Group violence can erupt without any prior history of animosity — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 655; Armed conflict can erupt without prior group animosity; White violence against free people of color triggered the first armed skirmishes (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Presses the definition of slow violence: a ‘war that isn’t a war’ because its onset gives no inkling of harm.

Broader Connections

• Armed conflict can erupt without prior group animosity #corroborates (0.90)
• Group violence can erupt without any prior history of animosity #corroborates (0.85) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 655
• Unacknowledged wars against Indigenous peoples preceded global US total war #expands (0.85) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 37
• White violence against free people of color triggered the first armed skirmishes #exemplifies (0.75)