By KiddieDaily Editors · Jun 29, 2026 · 2 min read · Ages 10–12 · 1 source

Colonialism was more than brutal force — it was an intellectual project

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A new book by UC Berkeley Professor Diego Pirillo argues that settler colonialism was shaped by Euro-American scholars, who worked hand in hand with land speculators and military leaders to drive the violent formation of the United States.

History textbooks often frame the founding of America as a series of battles and physical conquests. But early American colonialism wasn’t just built with brutal force — it was engineered in libraries, museums and scientific societies, too. In his new book, The Atlantic Republic of Letters: Knowledge and Colonialism in the Age of Franklin, UC Berkeley Professor Diego Pirillo argues that settler colonialism — a form of colonialism built on Indigenous dispossession and replacement — was shaped by Euro-American scholars who worked hand in hand with land speculators and military leaders to drive the country’s violent formation.

To understand how this happened, Pirillo looks to the theories of 20th-century Italian Marxist philosopher and communist political leader Antonio Gramsci. Imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci argued in his Prison Notebooks that a ruling class maintains control not just through physical force, but through consent — a concept he termed “cultural hegemony.” In this framework, everyday beliefs and cultural institutions like schools and churches help make dominance feel natural, and intellectuals act as the ruling class’ “deputies” who create and defend social hierarchy. “The sources I’ve studied show that 18th-century American intellectuals envisioned and coordinated the colonial project,” says Pirillo, Terill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies and an affiliated faculty member in the history department.

This fall, Pirillo is bringing together Berkeley scholars to form a Gramsci Working Group, where they will study the philosopher’s extensive literary corpus and explore how his ideas can help us understand debates around some of today’s most pressing issues, including economic inequality, authoritarianism, race and climate change. Adds Pirillo: “As Gramsci wrote: Even when all is or seems lost, one must quietly go back to work, and start afresh from the beginning.”  Below, Pirillo explains how early American intellectual culture served as the bedrock for settler colonialism, dismantling enduring historical narratives in the process. Diego Pirillo: Colonialism was not just brutal violence; it was also an ideology, and colonial intellectuals strove to convince everyone that conquest was unstoppable.

Reducing early America to the history of the settlers is one of the most enduring legacies of Euro-American colonialism.

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