Title Pending 5743

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Colonial institutions unfairly treat the colonized as if they are moral inferiors. I argue that colonial institutions consequently diminish colonized peoples’ social bases of self-respect. Because colonizers politically subjugate colonized peoples, colonial institutions permeate colonized peoples’ basic structures of society. Colonial institutions therefore pervasively influence colonized individuals’ lives. Since colonial institutions unfairly treat the colonized as if they are moral inferiors, they unjustly diminish their social bases of self-respect. After replying to several objections, I argue that my self-respect approach is superior to Stilz’s (2019), Ypi’s (2013), and Ferguson and Veneziani’s (2021) accounts of colonialism’s necessary wrong. Finally, I outline potential implications for future work on just war theory, self-determination, and social oppression.