Anti-Climacus

A NON-RHETORICAL QUESTION ABOUT COLONIALISM:

I've had two conversations on the topic in the last few days, so it's at the front of my mind. The first conversation arose from my explanation of a talk I heard last week, where the speaker, by way of castigating Hobbes'(!) support for colonialism, criticized Grotius for offering a doctrine of approximately this form: native peoples are capable of making contracts, and may be punished when they fail to live up to the terms of those contracts. Setting aside the question of whether this is an accurate reading of Grotius, the speaker appeared to set up his distinctions in such a way that, no matter what position one takes on this question, one can reasonably be assumed to support colonialism. If you accept the 'Grotian' argument, then you permit the use of force to ensure the performance of contracts even if the people who signed the contract did not understand its terms, or would not, on reflection, agree to the terms of the contract. To deny the argument appears to require believing that, because of vast differences in power, and limited cross-legal comprehension, native peoples were not capable of entering into any valid contracts at all--but this, I think, is to deny them autonomy, and treat them as children, or something less than full adult humans. Am I missing a third option here?