Negotiating racial subjection: analysing Black and Indigenous resistance from within colonial orders
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2025
Keywords
IR theory, political theory, resistance, colonial order, race and ethnicity, indigenous politics, Black political thought
Abstract
This article addresses recent work on empire and colonisation which calls for a reappraisal of how agency and resistance manifests among groups responding to structural marginalisation. We argue that approaching these questions from within the colonial order reveals important idiosyncrasies regarding how groups understood resistance, agency, and popular organising as possible responses that emerged from within imperial landscapes. Using the example of race as a central regulatory category and practice of colonial power, we analyse two cases which we suggest benefit from an account of agency and resistance within colonial order: the Black Loyalists in English America and the Indigenous royalists of New Granada, two groups which pursued emancipation by choosing to remain under colonial rule. The resulting analysis produces a more dynamic account of resistance and emancipation which responds to the far-reaching influence of colonial order for resistance movements at local, national, and international levels. This account contributes to recent debates which call for theoretical analysis of "middle actors" and popular thinking as it relates to international politics, postcolonial movements, and studies of empire.
Citation
Brown OR, Chang A. Negotiating racial subjection: analysing Black and Indigenous resistance from within colonial orders. International Theory. 2025;17(2):151-174. doi:10.1017/S1752971925000016
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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