INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN DEVELOPED FRAGMENT SOCIETIES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERNAL COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA AND NORTHERN IRELAND.

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation was to compare British policy towards Ireland/Northern Ireland and United States and Canadian Indian policies. Despite apparent differences, it was hypothesized that closer examination would reveal significant similarities. A conceptual framework was provided by the utilization of Hartzian fragment theory and the theory of internal colonialism. Eighteen research questions and a series of questions concerned with the applicability of the theoretical constructs were tested using largely historical data and statistical indices of social and economic development. The research demonstrated that Gaelic-Irish and North American Indian societies came under pressure from, and were ultimately subjugated by colonizing fragments marked by their high level of ideological cohesiveness. In the Irish case the decisive moment was the Ulster fragmentation of the seventeenth century which set in juxtaposition a defiant, uncompromising, zealously Protestant, "Planter" community and an equally defiant, recalcitrant, native Gaelic-Catholic population. In the United States traditional Indian society was confronted by a largely British-derived, single-fragment regime which was characterized by a profound sense of mission and an Indian policy rooted in its liberal ideology. In Canada the clash between two competing settler fragments led to the victory of the British over the French, and the pursuit of Indian policies based on many of the same premises that underlay United States policies. The indigenous populations in each of the cases under consideration suffered enormous loss of land, physical and cultural destruction, racial discrimination, economic exploitation and were stripped of their political independence. They responded through collective violence, by the formation of cultural revitalization movements, and by intense domestic and international lobbying. They continue to exist today as internal colonies of the developed fragment states within which they are subsumed.