before the necessary groundwork has been completed. There
is no a p p a r e n t c o n s e n s u s on d e f i n i t i o n s of terms,
prioritization of issues, or necessary research strategies.
Researchers are now in danger of "over-concluding1' from
insufficient evidence in order to illustrate a theoretical
position. This is understandable when we consider the
general failure within the discipline to define clearly the
problems of "doing" comparative studies in the archaeology
of colonialism (Dyson,1985:1-3).
As it is commonly used now, "colonialism" seems to mean
anything that the Europeans were doing anywhere in the
world besides Europe in the Early-Modern period. Observed
events are referred to as the result of "colonial policy"
whether any intentional or enforceable policy has been
documented or not. Sweeping generalizations have been made
about a m o n o l i t h i c "political e c o n o m y of E u r o p e a n
colonization"— or worse yet, an inevitable but elusive
"incipient market capitalism". Researchers attempting to
appear theoretically (read "politically") au courant have
begun to use colonial situations as examples of grand
theory-in-action without reference to the historically and
archaeologically particular data which constitute evidence
in our field.
Varieties of Colonialism
As a first step towards a rigorous defintion of the
r e c o g n i z e that there are several different kinds of
c o l o n i a l i s m , d r i v e n by very d i f f e r e n t intentions.
Colonialism is not necessarily a blind natural process,
particularly in the early-modern period. Colonialism was
most often the result of conscious, intentionally planned
actions. This is not to say that these intentions precisely
match what actually occurred on the ground— indeed it is
this disjunction between what the colonizing power intended
and what actually happened which must be one of our primary
foci of study.
I propose subdividing colonial enterprises into four
different types, according to the intentions of those doing
the c o l o n i z i n g . The first kind of c o l o n i a l i s m is
Demographic, a simple migration of a population into
f o r m e r l y u n i n h a b i t e d t e r r i t o r y as a r e s p o n s e to
historically particular push or pull factors, such as
overpopulation or a migration of game animals. This kind of
c o l o n i z a t i o n is not necessarily centrally planned or
administered, but may instead be the result of cumulative
ad hoc decisions by the settlers themselves.
All other kinds of c o l o n i a l i s m a s s u m e a native
population which is to some degree inconvenienced by
intrusive colonials. Such a colony requires organization.
In this situation, the term "colonial" is essentially a
label for hierarchically arranged relations of power
12
A given historical moment was the result of the interaction
of a hierarchy of people with potentially conflicting
motives. For example, the motives of the Crown may be
distinct from those of the on-site administrators, those of
the settlers (if any), and those of the indigenous peoples.
Each situation had its own unique balance of conflicting
motives mediated by the relative possibility of enforcement
from above. The historical records created within these
hierarchical relations may often be prescriptive, recording
a colonial experience that never was rather than describing
the real-world problems of policy implementation and
enforcement. Archaeology serves as a control for this bias
in the surviving administrative documentation.
The usual d e f i n i t i o n of colonialism is strictly
economic. In a situation of Economic Colonialism, one
people reorganize the economy of another for their own
benefit. Relatively few actual settlers are required beyond
those n e c e s s a r y to a d m i n i s t e r and e n f orce economic
sanctions. For this kind of colonialism the intention of
the colonizers is primarily profit, and any other concerns
such as uniformity of religion are important only insofar
as they contribute to the security of the colonial economy.
Most of the discussions I have heard seem to assume that
this is the only kind of colonialism, and that reified
early modern states were madly competing tooth and nail to
13
Economic exploitation is not always the primary motive
of a colonizing Crown. Political Colonization is the
intentional planting of a new population in order to
enforce control over a strategically desireable territory,
or to neutralize the threat of an uncontrolled but not
necessarily desireable territory. In this case, sheer
numbers of settlers who can be counted on to participate in
and support the cultural hegemony of the colonizing power
are of greater importance to the Crown than potential
economic profit.
A case can be made for a fourth kind of colonialism
which does not involve large scale changes in demography,
economy or political boundaries. Ideological Colonialism
would be any act of enculturation enforced on an indigenous
people by an intrusive group, and may include religious
conversion, education, mass media, etc. To the extent that
the c r eated e n v i r o n m e n t reflects ideology, physical
displacement of populations (into government housing, for
example) represents a form of ideological colonialism.
I d e o l o g i c a l c o l o n i a l i s m always seems to a c c o m p a n y
successful (long-term, stable) attempts at economic or
p o l i t i c a l c o l o n i a l i s m , a l t h o u g h it can also w o r k
independently of these other forms.
Ideological colonialism can be a campaign of conversion
aimed at an indigenous population, such as 18th century
14
m i s s i o n s of the M i s s i s s i p p i V a l l e y . I d e o l o g i c a l
c o l o n i z a t i o n may also be a social experiment by the
colonists themselves, such as Puritan New England. These
are distinct phenomena with very different patterns of
development.
Personnel occupying different positions within the
colonial hierarchy may have very different intentions; the
Crown may want a territory pacified or at least kept from
e n e m y h a n d s , w h i l e an on-site a d m i n i s t r a t o r will
undoubtedly be looking for commercial opportunities, while
individual settlers seek merely secure land rights. They
may all justify their activities in the name of religious
conversion of the natives— all forms of colonialism may be
present simultaneously.
Stages of Involvement in the Colonial Enterprise
Just as different groups may enter into a colonizing
effort for very different reasons, they may also invest
relatively fewer or greater resources into a colony, with
profound effects for how the colony develops. D.W.Meinig
has defined six stages of colonial commitment; exploration,
gathering, barter/plunder, commercial outposts, Imperial
imposition, and plantation (See Figures 2 & 3, Meinig,
1986:67). Although it is possible for these stages to be
historically sequential, it is just as possible for a group
to enter at an advanced stage, or to discontinue the
M e i n i g ' s stages of commitment are useful to both
archaeologists and ethnohistorians. I have outlined below a
series of my own predictions for what a researcher may
expect to find in each stage.
Both the exploration and gathering stages will be
transient occupations leaving little or no archaeological
evidence. These stages of initial contact often provide
critical ethnohistorical information on native population
densities and settlement pattern. In the case of European
contact with the peoples of the New World, these earliest
t r a v e l l e r s a c c o u n t s come b e f o r e the devastation of
indigenous populations by Old World diseases. The language
with which the natives are described is a clue to the
Figures 2 & 3 16
z
o < X LU a. O aD
UJ o H Z 5 «: II 2 in n.o u in a: o iu a.S t
< O a LU 5 < Ul a D _ l Ui cc a Ul a o a D UJ S = ° s s S a -c ’z u-s s s f i
si i .S .5 S If?n.
Hi
3 S « 6 •? ? * 1? S rli i . . .
lilU
3 Jl yz
3 i- < < o E a •£ ”5Meinigs's Stages of Colonial Enterprise (D.W, Meinig,1986:67,68).
The Barter/Plunder stage is accompanied by a reciprocal
introduction to the material culture of the strangers. New
goods will travel extremely far within the foreign trade
network, simply for their curiosity value.
A Commercial Outpost increases the amount of contact
b e t w e e n n a t i v e and newcomer, and will often produce
participant/observer ethnohistorical accounts as colonizers
gain self-identity as frontiersmen. There will be a loose
ne t w o r k of shipping entrepots. On-site there will be
concessions to new environmental conditions, possibly
military and/or ecclesiastical architecture, and possibly a
smattering of luxury goods. If there is a change in native
e c o n o m i c p r a c t i c e s to a c c o m m o d a t e the new trade
opportunities, there may be an erosion of the native
polity. This is u s u a l l y temporarily counteracted by
rejecting intrusive religious elements as a method of
boundary maintenance, or by getting into a war with the
intrusive traders.
Imperial Imposition is by definition the defeat of the
native polity, usually a direct result of the second option
described above. To enforce such an imposition requires the
permanent occupation of strategic territory, usually by
installing military architecture. Civil administration
usually means there will be monumental architecture, and an
u r b a n area in w h i c h to m a i n t a i n an imported elite.
18
e s t a b l i s h i n g the hegemony of the intrusive (and now
permanent) culture of occupation. The material culture of
the colonials will become the "high style", although it
will be more conservative, and change more slowly, than the
material culture of the mother country.
Plantation is the wholesale demographic influx of
settlers into a colony. This requires the retreat of the
native population, and results in a shift in settlement
pattern and landscape use. Local craftsmen will now imitate
the material culture of the mother country to meet the
consumer demand of the recently arrived settlers. These
craftsmen and settlers will gradually assume a position of
dependence within an economic and social hierarchy which
favors the mother country at the expense of the colony. The
usual mechanisms for maintaining this dependence are trade
restrictions and debt.
Taken together, the four kinds of colonialism based on
intent and Meinig's six stages of commitment to the
colonizing enterprise can account for observed differences
between particular colonial enterprises in the early modern
period.
For example, 17th and ear l y 18th century French
colonies in the New World, although doubtless supported by
the French crown, were primarily commercial outposts and
Jesuit missions, undertaken with economic and ideological
settlers, and only the minimal amount of military and
political support necessary to maintain trade. When French
North America became a theater within the larger Anglo-
French struggles of the mid 18th century, the French
colonies had neither the administrative expertise or the
s h e e r w e i g h t of n u m b e r s a v a i l a b l e to the E n g l i s h
plantation-form of the colonies to the south. When French
intention changed with increased political competition, the
stage of colonial commitment was found inadequate.
As another example, the 16th and 17th century English
colonies of North and South America, Africa, India, Russia
and Ireland can be clearly distinguished by analyzing the
intentions of the English and their relative stage of
commitment to particular colonies. England was not the
first European power to contact any of the locations named
above; English exploration, gathering, and barter/ plunder
activities were minimal. The activities of the English
privateers of the Caribbean may serve as an example of
barter/plunder. The "discovery" of a Northeast Passage to
Archangel, R u s s i a (1553) is an example of E n g l i s h
exploration.
Commercial outposts account for nearly all of the
English colonial ventures of the 16th and 17th centuries,
including Madras 1639, Bombay 1665, Guinea 1664, and
A r c h a n g e l 1555. Quite often commercial interests met
20
and commercial intentions would then overlap; short term
examples would include Guiana 1604,1609, and the Acadian
coast of Maine. Longer term imperial commitments based on
commercial interests include the West Indies (Bermuda 16'2,
St. Kitts 1624, Barbados 1627), New York (nee New Amsterdam
1664), and Pennsylvania (nee New Sweden 1641,1674). Full
scale plantation followed commercial success in only a few
outposts, notably in the West Indies and along the eastern
s e a b o a r d o f N o r t h A m e r i c a ( D a t e s f r o m
W o l f , 1 9 8 2 : 1 2 2 , 1 5 1 , 2 3 3 ; a n d
Meinig,1987:40,74,129,130,163,164).
There are at least two examples of a plantation level
of c o m m i t m e n t undertaken for ideological intentions;
Puritan New England and Catholic Maryland, although both
had modest commercial incentives as well.
Throughout the period of expanding English foreign
in t e r e s t s o u t l i n e d above, the Crown of England was
committed to a policy of what I have called Political
colonization in Ireland. The Crown intended to neutralize
the threat of a hostile population and the potential for
the occupation of Ireland by hostile powers by displacing
the Irish with planted English colonists.
The creation and plantation of County Londonderry was
part of the larger ongoing effort to establish an English
population in Ulster. The usual method was for the crown
who would then undertake the colonization of his lands with
English settlers. The undertaker enjoyed a broad range of
judicial privilages within his estate, while collecting
rents and encouraging the mills, markets and industries
necessary for the survival of a new community.
Privately administered Ulster plantation estates often
fell short of the goals for which they were intended. For a
variety of reasons the private undertakers were often
under-financed, and therefore unable to fulfill their
obligations to the crown. Private plantations often failed
to remove the native Irish from the land; or when they were
s u c c e s s f u l in d i s p l a c i n g the n a t i v e Irish, the new
colonists were Scots Presbyterians rather than Anglican
English farmers.
In 17th century County Londonderry, the crown was
d r i v e n by e x p l i c i t i n t e n t i o n s both to p a c i f y the
countryside and to neutralize a presumed (and justified)
threat of enemy occupation by either Catholic France or
Spain. Royal policy was to displace the natives with a full
scale plantation of English settlers loyal to the Crown and
conformist in religion. The degree of Crown intervention
and s u p e r v i s i o n in the L o n d o n d e r r y p l a n t a t i o n was
extraordinary, and possibly unique for the period. This
included the coercion of the largest commercial body in
England (the City of London) to take full financial and
22
official surveys answerable to the Crown. However, the
i n t e n t i o n s of the Crown did not match those of the
p e r s o n n e l at any other stage in the h i e r a r c h i c a l
adminstration of the English colonies in Londonderry.
Seen from the top down, seventeenth century County
L o n d o n d e r r y is an extreme example of an intentional
p o l i t i c a l c o l o n i z a t i o n , b a c k e d up by bo t h imperial