While claiming that colonialism influenced the postcolonial work may seem obvious, Hopkins goes further by digging into the specifics, directly tying old laws, decisions, and traditions to the modern world. He also provides engaging, illuminating comments in the footnotes that add to the text in a way that would not fit in the prose itself.Īll this goes to say that Hopkins strongly supports his thesis. The well-organized end notes reflect everything from historical case law, a few first-person accounts, and dozens of previous historians’ work. His arguments have additional weight because they tie together broader trends rather than rely on a simplistic outline focused on one colonial power at one point in time.įurthermore, it is evident that Hopkins spent much effort in gathering research for his publication. Hopkins’ efforts to go beyond the locations colonial histories frequent and reflect a concerted effort to show connections between colonial powers and the current world order. The wide-ranging locations are easily the most compelling part of Ruling the Savage Periphery. Instead, he digs into parts of history oft overlooked. He does not rely on old tropes and commonly reviewed case studies. The breadth of regions analyzed strengthens Hopkins’s argument.
All-in-all, Hopkins takes readers across a century of history and four separate continents while tying in original legal documentation, personal accounts, and a synthesis of previous researchers’ work. He also discusses the questionable history of the US government’s treatment of Native American tribes-a part of American history often glossed over in public discourse. To support his thesis, Hopkins highlights examples ranging from the oft-considered British Empire to the semi-ignored case of Argentinian exploits in its western deserts. These ideas combine into Hopkin’s “frontier governmentality,” which he uses to help describe managing frontiers as a “practice.” These ideas unite into his primary thesis that understanding frontiers as a practice unlocks new ways to study the history of colonialism and (more importantly) the way historical decisions affected the postcolonial world. Instead, it can take multiple forms ranging from the aforementioned hard border to something more zone-like-a nebulous “borderlands.” Also, he states that frontiers have a temporal aspect, changing both in physical location (boundaries) and how governing entities managed those areas. In his description, a frontier is not simply a hard border between states. Hopkins begins by laying out a nuanced definition of frontier. Hopkins analyzes the governmental mechanisms that made nineteenth-century colonialism and how those systems continue to negatively impact the world today. In his book, Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State, George Washington University Associate Professor Benjamin D.
Ruling the Savage Periphery: Former Governance and the Making of the Modern State by Benjamin D.
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