Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State

Benjamin Hopkins develops a new theory of colonial administration: frontier governmentality. This system placed indigenous peoples at the borders of imperial territory, where they could be both exploited and kept away. Today’s “failed states” are a result. Condemned to the periphery of the global order, they function as colonial design intended.

Table of Contents:
Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction: The Edges of Authority 1. Frontier Governmentality 2. Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier 3. The Imperial Life of the Frontier Crimes Regulation& 4. The Colonial Specter of “Savagery" 5. Ruling the Chiricahua Apache in America’s Desert Southwest 6. Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert and the Limits of Frontier Governmentality Conclusion: A Long History of Violence Notes Archives Consulted Acknowledgments Index

Review :
By asserting that the frontier did not close and vanish--as his precursor Frederick Jackson Turner so famously did in 1893--Hopkins challenges one of our hoariest understandings of frontier zones. What he reveals is that the frontier, and its violence, can be found wherever imperial soldiers are sent--wherever they imagine the local people over the horizon as inhabiting 'Indian country'...Hopkins [succeeds] in leaving readers with an enduring sense of the palimpsest of empires that continues to structure our contemporary world. -- Karl Jacoby Public Books His most expansive project yet, tracing the global diffusion of frontier governing practices from northwest India, to South Africa, to the American west, and finally Argentina....An eminently readable book that balances its theoretical and conceptual contributions with truly ground-breaking insight into the globalization of frontier governmentality. -- Martin J. Bayly Critical Asian Studies An outstanding book, with an original and clearly articulated argument well supported by evidence from an impressive array of archives around the world. Informed by the logic of empire and capitalism, frontier governmentality locked those at the margins of empire into a relationship of dependency with no prospect for economic betterment. Hopkins tells a gripping story well. His provocative contention that violence created colonial empires but sustains postcolonial states ought to stir up debate. -- Ayesha Jalal, author of The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics This is an ambitious and important book. The concept of 'frontier governmentality' is a very engaging and largely persuasive idea with broad applicability. Hopkins provides us with new ways to think about the relationship between the center and periphery, and the ambitious comparative dimension--along with the refusal to flatten differences--makes this a work that will command a wide readership in the fields of British Empire, Central and South Asia, and world history, but will also speak directly to those who study indigenous peoples, colonialism and post-colonialism, and global borderlands. -- Andrew Graybill, author of Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier