“HOW TREACHEROUS THE GIFT”: THE ORIGINS OF REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS IN SETTLER-COLONIES

Settler-colonies are places of tremendous inequality and violence. Yet, at the same time, settler-colonies are also places where elected institutions flourish. What explains the origin of institutions seemingly founded on ideals of equality and liberty amidst systemic violence and hierarchy? This dissertation examines the process of elected representative institutional formation in settler-colonies through comparative-historical analysis drawing on original archival research of three case studies—the South African Cape Colony and Natal and French Algeria—and application of the findings from these studies to a fourth case, Zionist settlement in early twentieth-century Palestine. It identifies two necessary conditions for institutional formation: a shared ideological background of Enlightenment thought and a pre-existing racial hierarchy. Given these necessary conditions, high values on two causal factors—the relative unity of the settler population and relative support from imperial authority—explain the timing of these institutions’ creation and their design. Linking the necessary conditions and causal factors are settlers’ economic motivations for the protection and accumulation of wealth, which catalyze the process of institutional formation and influence these institutions’ exclusionary character. In elected representative institutions, the purported bastions of equality and freedom, settlers built the bulwarks of their own domination.