A colonial order is an instrument of power deployed by imperial powers to maintain their economic, social and political control over land that is, or has been, colonized. It is an apparatus formed out of the material, economic, political and ideological formations that manifest, inform, and condition the lives of colonized people – involving both visible and invisible forces of exploitation, objectification, and control. This order is sustained through the enunciation of doctrines of hegemony, racial and gender stratification, and through policies of displacement, control, and erasure. Its legacy continues to haunt us today in the forms of militarization, law, fear and neoliberal capitalist imaginaries.

See also: slave trade, white supremacy, nation state, middle passage