A growing body of literature seeks to understand the deep historical roots of modern day political institutions. This literature initially focused on the long run impact of colonising states' institutions on those of their colonies. In recent years, however, more attention has been paid to the enduring impact of Indigenous institutions on modern day politics in former European colonies in Africa and India. Less attention has been paid to the impact of Indigenous institutions on the variety of colonial warfare in the `neo-European' settler colonies of the Americas and Australasia. In this article, I argue that the form of colonization in the neo-Europes was strongly influenced by pre-colonial Indigenous political institutions. The more centralized these institutions, the more resistance to colonization took the form of large scale conventional military conflict, which both reduced the extent of violence against civilians and allowed Indigenous people to claim greater rights post-colonization. Conversely, the less centralized, the more resistance took on the form of low level insurgency, which both encouraged greater violence against civilians and resulted in fewer rights for Indigenous people post colonization.

Dr. Charles Miller is a senior lecturer in political science and international relations at the Australian National University. He received his PhD at Duke University in 2013 and has been working at the ANU since. His work has been published in World Politics, the Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Journal of Peace Research.