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rfmcdonaldIn his most recent posting, Jonathan Edelstein examines the phenomenon of sponsored settlement programs in disputed territories.
In the modern post-imperial world, this pattern of sponsored settlement has gone into abeyance, given the general taboo against permanent conquests. The Baltic States, incorporated forcibly into the Soviet Union, are only marginal exceptions to this rule. After the Second World War--as the Baltic States demonstrate, here much more closely--settlement programs have occured mainly within individual states, as governments try to secure vulnerable and potentially secessionist regions through demographic engineering.
If Jonathan's survey demonstrates anything, it's that once intra-state sponsored settlement programs are started up, their effects are very hard if not impossible to reverse absent the collapse of the state. It's telling that in all of the situations noted, the Israeli program of sponsored settlement looks like the easiest one to reverse. Tibetans, West Papuans, Sahrawi, and Cypriots (among others) are going to have to wait a very long time indeed for any change.
Populating conquered territory with settlers is a tactic that may be as old as warfare. All the ancient empires practiced it; one Assyrian attempt at demographic engineering led to the legend of the lost tribes, and Roman coloniae played a crucial part in the Latinizing of the Mediterranean world. Modern empires continued the practice, on a grand scale in the New World and Australasia and a lesser scale in their other colonial domains. For millennia, the logic of settlement was irrefutable: once a territory was full of your people, it was yours.
In the modern post-imperial world, this pattern of sponsored settlement has gone into abeyance, given the general taboo against permanent conquests. The Baltic States, incorporated forcibly into the Soviet Union, are only marginal exceptions to this rule. After the Second World War--as the Baltic States demonstrate, here much more closely--settlement programs have occured mainly within individual states, as governments try to secure vulnerable and potentially secessionist regions through demographic engineering.
If Jonathan's survey demonstrates anything, it's that once intra-state sponsored settlement programs are started up, their effects are very hard if not impossible to reverse absent the collapse of the state. It's telling that in all of the situations noted, the Israeli program of sponsored settlement looks like the easiest one to reverse. Tibetans, West Papuans, Sahrawi, and Cypriots (among others) are going to have to wait a very long time indeed for any change.
