 It is obviously true that the history of colonialism is replete with an almost unparalleled violence (Fanon 1961; Walter 2017). Yet, it seems equally clear that a colonial relationship that was essentially free of this sort of violence—or where the level of violence was considerably lower than the pre-colonial political situation—would still be morally unacceptable. The question of what precisely grounds the wrongness of colonialism is an attempt to grapple with difficult questions of procedural justice, sovereignty, and legitimacy—and how these ideas affect our current understanding of global distributive justice.  Lea Ypi, for example, argues that colonialism is wrong because it represents a wrongfully unequal political relationship between the ruler and the ruled (Ypi 2013; see also Lu 2017). Thus, the defining feature of colonialism is set of unequal and non-reciprocal terms of political association. This feature of colonialism makes it uniquely wrong even if the colonizers refrain from atrocities, the colonized have no strongly claims—property or otherwise—to the land being taken, or the colonized lack significant rights to self-determination. This view, however, does give rise to a serious concern about how we should understand coercive associative political projects where the terms of association being offered are comparatively equitable. That is, imagine some more powerful state that comes to a weaker group of people and offers them an offer of political association that is both hard to refuse and, yet, based upon equitable terms. Ypi suggests that equitable terms of association are decisively undermined if the weaker party does not consent, so it must be true that the “colonized” group consents. And yet, it is at least possible to imagine cases where the weaker party sees the benefit of association and therefore consents to the association in ways that give rises to concerns of colonialism. In other words, Ypi’s account may miss a feature of colonialism that gives rise to its distinctiveness as a wrong (Valentini 2015). In most cases, the criticism of Ypi’s account lies in nature of the entity to which reciprocal association is owed: the colonized understood as individuals, as corporate bodies, or as a plurality. This is especially important because Ypi’s account—in order to be distinct—must not rely upon nationalism or some sort of corporate ownership of specific territory, and it remains an open whether her account can effectively avoid so relying. At any rate, discussions of how to precisely to characterize the wrong of self-determination are ongoing.