Booktopia has been placed into Voluntary Administration. Orders have been temporarily suspended, whilst the process for the recapitalisation of Booktopia and/or sale of its business is completed, following which services may be re-established. All enquiries from creditors, including customers with outstanding gift cards and orders and placed prior to 3 July 2024, please visit https://www.mcgrathnicol.com/creditors/booktopia-group/
Add free shipping to your order with these great books
Empire of the People : Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought - Adam Dahl

Empire of the People

Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought

By: Adam Dahl

Paperback | 1 April 2018

Sorry, we are not able to source the book you are looking for right now.

We did a search for other books with a similar title, however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

American democracy owes its origins to the colonial settlement of North America by Europeans. Since the birth of the republic, observers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and J. Hector St. John de Crevec ur have emphasized how American democratic identity arose out of the distinct pattern by which English settlers colonized the New World. Empire of the People explores a new way of understanding this process-and in doing so, offers a fundamental reinterpretation of modern democratic thought in the Americas.

In Empire of the People, Adam Dahl examines the ideological development of American democratic thought in the context of settler colonialism, a distinct form of colonialism aimed at the appropriation of Native land rather than the exploitation of Native labor. By placing the development of American political thought and culture in the context of nineteenth-century settler expansion, his work reveals how practices and ideologies of Indigenous dispossession have laid the cultural and social foundations of American democracy, and in doing so profoundly shaped key concepts in modern democratic theory such as consent, social equality, popular sovereignty, and federalism.

To uphold its legitimacy, Dahl also argues, settler political thought must disavow the origins of democracy in colonial dispossession-and in turn erase the political and historical presence of native peoples. Empire of the People traces this thread through the conceptual and theoretical architecture of American democratic politics-in the works of thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Alexis de Tocqueville, John O'Sullivan, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and William Apess. In its focus on the disavowal of Native dispossession in democratic thought, the book provides a new perspective on the problematic relationship between race and democracy-and a different and more nuanced interpretation of the role of settler colonialism in the foundations of democratic culture and society.
Industry Reviews
Empire of the People is a capacious tour de force. In a sweeping historical account, Dahl illuminates the violent structure of settler colonialism in the United States. The chapters explore, and powerfully unsettle, prevailing assumptions in American political thought, vividly taking stock of the narratives of native absence that underpin the democratic thought in the west. The book is an impressive contribution to the florescence of counter-narratives that are preparing new ground for an urgent and emergent political theory of decolonization."" - Alexander Keller Hirsch, associate professor of political science, University of Alaska

""What if the foundation of democracy is not 'the people' but the dispossession of land from its rightful inhabitants? Adam Dahl transforms our understandings of American political thought, showing how it deliberately ignores Native American presence and practices. Dahl deftly illuminates how democratic theory-from Jefferson to Tocqueville to Emerson-cannot be separated from its settler-colonial roots. By turning to the Pequot theorist William Apess, Dahl identifies a solution-to take indigenous thinking and nations seriously as alternative, equal nations."" - Kennan Ferguson, director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

""What is the relation between democracy and colonial dispossession? Adam Dahl critically examines this question through a close study of democratic theory in nineteenth-century Anglo-America. Bringing together familiar figures such as Emerson, Whitman, and Tocqueville with a complex array of lesser known texts and authors, Dahl expertly demonstrates how the US tradition of democratic thought was forged in and through the systematic expropriation of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. Most important and innovative, however, is his serious engagement with indigenous political thinkers, including William Apess, Black Hawk, and Elias Boudinot, who laid bare the paradoxes of this 'democracy dispossession.' As such, Empire of the People functions as both contribution to, and indictment of, American political thought."" - Robert Nichols, McKnight Land-Grant Professor in Political Theory and assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota

More in Political Science & Theory

The Republic : Penguin Classics - Plato

RRP $17.99

$17.25

On Western Terrorism : From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare - Noam Chomsky
A Sense of Balance - John Howard

RRP $32.99

$30.25

Left Is Not Woke - Susan Neiman

RRP $41.95

$39.75

Mao's Last Dancer : Young Readers Edition - Li Cunxin
Politics : 5th edition - Andrew Heywood

RRP $90.95

$77.25

15%
OFF
Arise : Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence - Jane Holgate

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $43.99

$31.25

29%
OFF
Values, Voice and Virtue : The New British Politics - Matthew Goodwin
Foreign Policy Analysis : Classic and Contemporary Theory - Valerie M. Hudson
Lost in Ideology : Interpreting Modern Political Life - Jason Blakely
What is this thing called Global Justice? : 2nd edition - Kok-Chor Tan
An Introduction to Political Philosophy - Jonathan Wolff
Walter Benjamin and Political Theology : Walter Benjamin Studies - Brendan Moran
Political Science : A Global Perspective - Leonardo A. Morlino

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $83.75

$75.50

10%
OFF
Bruno Latour : Reassembling the Political - Graham Harman

FREE SHIPPING

Reflections : The Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew - Yang Razali Kassim & Mushahid Ali

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $52.99

$44.90

15%
OFF
Diderot : Political Writings - Denis Diderot

RRP $49.95

$42.95

14%
OFF
Walter Benjamin : Overpowering Conformism - Esther Leslie

FREE SHIPPING