Imperial discovery’s power rested on ritual appropriation, not imposed force

Evidence

For Tahiti to be brought into the ambit of the Occident, for it to be quite overwhelmed by this “contact” with the French, it is enough for Bougainville to have touched the island and to have enacted there a ritual of appropriation - the erection of a plaque asserting “this land is ours,” described by Diderot’s everperspicacious Tahitian sage as the title “of our future slavery.” The encompassing, transforming effect of imperial discovery was then reassuringly confirmed by the ease with which savage cultures were supposedly subverted by it. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 219

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates how the doctrine of discovery operated: mere contact plus a symbolic ritual of appropriation, not conquest, was held to transform and subordinate a land and its people.
• XREF: Connects to vault content on settler colonialism and the ‘doctrine of discovery’ used to justify land seizure in US Indian policy.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 219