The Mechanics of Colonialism: Newtonian Metaphors in History

In the late 17th century, Isaac Newton published his “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” laying out three laws of motion that forever changed the way we understand the physical world. In classical physics — the physics of machines — these laws are universal: they describe everything from falling apples to the orbits of satellites. But in the centuries that followed, the language and logic of these laws seeped into political thought. Whether consciously invoked or unconsciously mirrored, Newton’s principles provided a seductive framework for the expansion of empires — and the suppression of resistance — as natural, even inevitable.

Newton’s laws landed in a country at relative peace. In England, the relative absence of large natural predators meant communities faced fewer immediate threats to survival. By contrast, in many African regions, the constant presence of predators like lions, hyenas and wild dogs created strong incentives for cooperation and mutual support. Daily survival often depended on coordination, shared knowledge and collective defense, fostering cultures in which collaboration was essential. These societies were by no means uniform; diverse political and military traditions existed across the continent, and warfare was not absent. Yet patterns of social organization often emphasized collective strategies, in contrast with the highly competitive and technologically focused orientation developing in England.

Thus, social structures in England, often oriented around internal rivalry (for there was no enemy other than man himself), could turn new technological knowledge outward. When Europeans encountered African societies, the very advances grounded in Newtonian mechanics — principles of motion, force and acceleration — enabled the projection of military and industrial power over populations whose social and cultural strategies had emphasized collaboration. While African tribes were not devoid of warfare, their long-term practices of cooperation now faced a new challenge: resisting foreign powers equipped with machines and organized around a different social logic.

Newton’s First Law — the law of inertia — tells us that an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an external force. In politics, this principle found a powerful analogue in the momentum of empire, perhaps subconsciously fostering aggression. Once Britain’s colonial expansion began, it acquired its own inertia. The voyages of exploration in the Elizabethan era and the first settlements in the Americas created momentum that justified further expansion as manifest destiny. This was more than metaphor — imperial policymakers saw expansion as self-sustaining, even self-justifying. The infrastructure of empire (navies, trading companies, colonial administrations) became the machinery that kept it moving forward. Without strong opposition — rival powers or massive uprisings — empires could grow, much as a moving object continues along its path. The logic of inertia made the idea of halting expansion not only undesirable but almost unthinkable.

Newton’s Second Law — F=ma — states that the force applied to an object is proportional to its mass and acceleration. In human terms, this law resonated with 18th- and 19th-century geopolitics. A nation with greater “mass” — in the form of population, industrial capacity and resources — could exert far greater force on smaller, less industrialized societies. In technical terms, this classical law became a foundation for war technology in a country with no pressing need to ensure cooperation among its populace. The Industrial Revolution supercharged Britain’s “mass,” giving it steam power, mechanized manufacturing and modernized navies. This allowed the empire to “accelerate” its reach at an unprecedented pace. Against such force, indigenous resistance often struggled to gain traction. In this way, the Second Law became a quiet ideological ally to colonialism. The larger and more developed the empire became, the more irresistible its force seemed — a neat scientific validation for the notion that “might makes right.”

Newton’s Third Law — for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction — has perhaps the most obvious metaphorical application to human conflict. In physics, the symmetry is elegant: forces come in pairs, perfectly balanced. In history, the symmetry was far more brutal. Reactions to imperial “actions” often escalated violence rather than balancing it. Later, the Cold War extended this dynamic globally: each move by one superpower provoked a counter-move from the other. The nuclear arms race became the ultimate and most dangerous example, with each side matching the other warhead for warhead, locked in a potentially annihilating symmetry.

Interestingly, the same dynamics of action and reaction that shaped empires also appear in human conflicts on a smaller, more personal scale. The careful maneuvers, countermoves, and escalating tensions that unfold like pieces advanced and withdrawn across a board, each move forcing the next, each sacrifice weighed against a longer strategy, echo Newton’s principle that every action provokes an equal and opposite response. In this way, the interplay of strategy, loyalty, and reaction mirrors not only historical forces but also the drama of human decision-making.

While there is little evidence that British leaders explicitly quoted Newton to justify colonialism, the cultural prestige of science in the Enlightenment era meant that his laws were seen as universal truths — not just for nature, but for society. If objects in motion stayed in motion, why not empires? If greater mass meant greater force, then industrialized nations “naturally” dominated less developed ones. If every action had an equal and opposite reaction, then suppressing rebellion with overwhelming force was merely playing out a law of nature.

The danger of this thinking lies in its false inevitability. Newton’s laws are descriptive, not prescriptive — they explain how physical systems work, not how human beings should behave. Unlike in physics, human action is not bound to fixed relationships of force and reaction. We can choose to break the cycle, to decelerate, to redirect motion rather than maintain it. In engineering, Newton’s laws allow us to build rockets, bridges and machines that harness balance and force for constructive purposes. In politics, the uncritical borrowing of these laws as metaphors for human behavior has too often justified domination, repression, and cycles of violence.

If the empire-builders of the 18th and 19th centuries saw themselves as obeying the same principles that governed the heavens, they missed the key difference: planets cannot choose their orbits, but people can. The true lesson of Newton’s laws, when applied to human history, is not that empire was inevitable — but that the forces that built it could have been redirected toward something far less destructive.

And so, as an apple drops from its branch, following gravity’s silent command, we are reminded that, unlike the apple, we alone choose not just our path, but the purpose of our motion. The forces that built empires could have been harnessed for cooperation instead of domination, for shared progress rather than conquest. The brilliance of Newton’s insights into the natural world lies in their universality; the tragedy lies in how readily they were reinterpreted as arguments for the inevitability of empire.

We hold the power to decelerate, redirect and transform momentum — whether in nations or in our own lives. The principles that once justified expansion can now illuminate restraint, empathy and collective growth. Like engineers mastering force and motion, we can channel human energy toward creation rather than destruction, toward wisdom rather than mere inevitability. Newton’s apple reminds us that the universe obeys laws, but humans obey conscience — and it is in that choice that true progress lies.