From “Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice” by L. Daniel Hawk
The colonization of what became the United States did not follow the typical script of European colonialism. Beginning in the fifteenth century, European powers sought to expand their domains and enrich their coffers by discovering and dominating non-Christian lands and populations for the purpose of exploiting their labor and extracting their lands’ resources. To facilitate these objectives, colonial powers constructed structures configured by unequal relationships that were designed to maintain colonial power and control. When the Indigenous population of a colony broke free and regained their polities, the colonizers left, and the systems were dismantled in whole or in part. This was largely the case in formerly colonized nations as diverse as India, Indonesia, and Zaire.
In a small number of instances, however, the object of colonial desire was the land itself. In these cases, colonists traveled to a newly discovered land with the intention of taking it, settling it, and transforming it into a source of productivity and profit. The settler-colonial mode of domination thus developed along a different trajectory. Settler colonists were – and are- less interested in exploiting Indigenous labor than in erasing Indigenous presence, which impeded and complicated their ownership and development of the land. Settler modes of domination persist over time because settler colonists end up taking over, and they never leave. As exemplified by settler nations such as the United States, Australia, and Canada, “invasion is a structure, not an event.”