Tracing Colonial Continuities: Internal Colonialism and Energy Transition in Sardinia

Abstract

Internal colonialism provides historical and structural conditions making current forms of energy extractivism possible. Processes through which earlier internal colonisation operated—territorial dispossession, racialised hierarchies, forced modernisation and the construction of internal ‘Others’—are reactivated today under the global imperatives of decarbonisation. We examine the continuities between internal colonialism and energy colonialism through the empirical case of Sardinia, where, over the past 150 years, successive waves of internal colonisation produced systemic poverty, constrained self-determination and entrenched the island's position as a sacrifice zone within the Italian State. The energy transition, presented as serving the collective good, works in continuity with internal colonialism by targeting the island as a low-cost, politically marginal and exploitable territory. Drawing on our engagement within a wide ecology of dissent, we identify three interwoven analytical axes—Land, Labour and Politics—through which internal and energy colonialism work in continuity.