Ruling the savage periphery : frontier governance and the making of the modern state

Hopkins, B. D. 1978- (author.).

Summary: "From the Afghan frontier with British India to the pampas of Argentina to the deserts of Arizona, nineteenth-century empires drew borders with an eye toward placing indigenous people just on the edge of the interior. They were too nomadic and communal to incorporate in the state, yet their labor was too valuable to displace entirely. Benjamin Hopkins argues that empires sought to keep the "savage" just close enough to take advantage of, with lasting ramifications for the global nation-state order. Hopkins theorizes and explores frontier governmentality, a distinctive kind of administrative rule that spread from empire to empire. Colonial powers did not just create ad hoc methods or alight independently on similar techniques of domination: they learned from each other. Although the indigenous peoples inhabiting newly conquered and demarcated spaces were subjugated in a variety of ways, Ruling the Savage Periphery isolates continuities across regimes and locates the patterns of transmission that made frontier governmentality a world-spanning phenomenon. Today, the supposedly failed states along the margins of the international system--states riven by terrorism and violence--are not dysfunctional anomalies. Rather, they work as imperial statecraft intended, harboring the outsiders whom stable states simultaneously encapsulate and exploit. "Civilization" continues to deny responsibility for border dwellers while keeping them close enough to work, buy goods across state lines, and justify national-security agendas. The present global order is thus the tragic legacy of a colonial design, sustaining frontier governmentality and its objectives for a new age"--

Record details

ISBN: 0674980700
ISBN: 9780674980709
ISBN: 0674246152
ISBN: 9780674246157
ISBN: 0674246144
ISBN: 9780674246140
ISBN: 0674246160
ISBN: 9780674246164
Physical Description: 1 online resource (279 pages) : illustrations, maps, portraits
remote
Publisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2020.
Copyright: ©2020

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction: The edges of authority -- Frontier governmentality -- Governing British India's unruly frontier -- The imperial life of the Frontier Crimes Regulation -- The colonial specter of "savagery" -- Ruling the Chiricahua Apache in America's Desert Southwest -- Argentina's conquest of the desert and the limits of frontier governmentality -- Conclusion: A long history of violence
Biographical or Historical Data:	Benjamin D. Hopkins is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. He has received research awards from the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Leverhulme Trust, and the National University of Singapore.
Source of Description Note:	Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 13, 2022).