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colonialism
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See colony and colonization for examples of colonialism which do not refer to Western colonialism. Also see Colonization (disambiguation)  The Pith helmet (in this case, of the Second French Empire) is an iconic representation of colonialism. Colonialism normally refers to a period of history from the 15th to the 20th century when people from Europe built colonies on other continents. The reasons for the practice of colonialism at this time include:
Some colonists also felt they were helping the indigenous population by bringing them Christianity and civilization. However, the reality was often subjugation, displacement or death.. BBC - History. A colony is part of an empire and so colonialism is closely related to imperialism. Types of colonialismHistorians often distinguish between two forms of colonialism, chiefly based on the number of people from the colonising country who settle in the colony:
There is a certain amount of overlap between these models of colonialism. In both cases people moved to the colony and goods were exported to the metropole. A plantation colony is normally considered to fit the model of exploitation colonialism. However, in this case there may be other immigrants to the colony - slaves to grow the cash crop for export. In some cases, settler colonialism took place in substantially pre-populated areas and the result was either an ethnically mixed population (such as the mestizos of the Americas), or a racially divided population, such as in French Algeria or Southern Rhodesia. A League of Nations mandate was legally very different from a colony. However, there was some similarity with exploitation colonialism in the mandate system. History of colonialism World map of colonialism in 1800. Land-based empires are conventionally described by the term imperialism, such as Age of Imperialism which includes Colonialism as a sub-topic, but in the main refers to conquest and domination of nearby lesser geographic powers. Examples of land-based empires include the Mongol Empire, Chinese Empire, the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire was created across Mediterranean, North Africa and into South-Eastern Europe and existed during the time of European colonization of the other parts of the world.  This map of the world in 1900 shows the large colonial empires that powerful nations established across the globe  World map of colonialism at the end of the Second World War in 1945. On June 7, 1494, Pope Alexander VI divided "newly discovered" lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (off the west coast of Africa). This division was never accepted by the rulers of England or France. (See also the Treaty of Tordesillas that followed the papal decree.) The latter half of the sixteenth century witnessed the expansion of the English colonial state throughout Ireland. Despite some earlier attempts, it was not until the 17th century that Britain, France and the Netherlands successfully established overseas empires outside Europe, in direct competition with Spain and Portugal and with each other. In the 19th century the British Empire grew to become the largest empire yet seen (see list of largest empires). The end of the 18th and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization when most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metropoles. Spain and Portugal were irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New World colonies, but Britain (after the union of England and Scotland), France and the Netherlands turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia, where coastal enclaves had already been established. The German Empire (now Republic), created by most of Germany being united under Prussia (omitting Austria, and other ethnic-German areas) also sought colonies in German East Africa. Territories in other parts of the world were also added to the trans-oceanic, or extra-European, German colonial empire. Italy occupied Eritrea, Somalia and Libya. During the First and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Italy invaded Abyssinia, and in 1936 the Italian Empire was created.  World Colonization 1492–2008 In 1823, the United States, while expanding westward for the Pacific, had published the Monroe Doctrine in which it gave fair warning to western European expansionists to stay out of American affairs. Originally, the document targeted the spread of colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, deeming it oppressive and intolerable. By the end of the 19th century, interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine by individuals such as Theodore Roosevelt, viewed it as an American responsibility to ensure Central American, Caribbean, and South American economic stability that would allow those nations to repay their debts to their colonizers. In fact, under Roosevelt’s presidency in 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was added to the original document in order to justify colonial expansionist policies and actions by the U.S. under Roosevelt (Marks, 1979)Marks III, Frederick W., Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt, University of Nebraska Press, 1979.. Roosevelt defended the amendment to congress in 1904 when he expressed: All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power (Roosevelt, 1904).In this case imperialism would now, for the first time in American history, begin to manifest itself across the bordering waters and incorporating the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii as American territories. America was successful in “liberating” the territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. U.S. government replaced the existing government in Hawaii in 1893; it was annexed into the American union as an offshore territory in 1898. Between 1898 and 1902, Cuba was a territory of the United States along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, which were all colonies gained by the United States from Spain. In 1946, the Philippines was granted independence from the United States and Puerto Rico still to this day remains a territory of the United States along with America Samoa, Guam, and The U.S. Virgin Islands. In Cuba, the Platt Amendment was replaced in 1934 by the Treaty of Relations which granted Cuba less intervention by U.S. government on matters of economy and international relations. 1934 would also be the year that, under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the Good Neighbor Policy was adopted in order to limit American intervention in South and Central America. During the 20th century, the overseas colonies of the losers of World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest. NeocolonialismThe term neocolonialism has been used to refer to a variety of things since the decolonisation efforts after World War II. Generally it does not refer to a type of colonialism but rather colonialism by other means. Specifically, the accusation that the relationship between stronger and weaker countries is similar to exploitation colonialism, without the stronger country having to build or maintain colonies. Such accusations typically focus on economic relationships and interference in the politics of weaker countries by stronger countries.Post-colonialismPost-colonialism (aka post-colonial theory) refers to a set of theories in philosophy and literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. In this sense, postcolonial literature may be considered a branch of Postmodern literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires. Many practitioners take Edward Said's book Orientalism (1978) to be the theory's founding work (although French theorists such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon made similar claims decades before Said).Edward Said analyzed the works of Balzac, Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were both influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Post-colonial fictional writers interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak? (1998) gave its name to the Subaltern Studies. In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), Spivak explored how major works of European metaphysics (e.g., Kant, Hegel) not only tend to exclude the subaltern from their discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as fully human subjects. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) is famous for its explicit ethnocentrism, in considering the Western civilization as the most accomplished of all, while Kant also allowed some traces of racialism to enter his work.  "Robert Clive and his family with an Indian maid", painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1765. Impact of colonialism and colonisationDebate about the perceived negative and positive aspects (spread of virulent diseases, unequal social relations, exploitation, enslavement, infrastructures, medical advances, new institutions,technological advancements etc.) of colonialism has occurred for centuries, amongst both colonizer and colonized, and continues to the present day. The questions of miscegenation; the alleged ties between colonial enterprises, genocides — see the Herero Genocide and the Armenian Genocide — and the Holocaust; and the questions of the nature of imperialism, dependency theory and neocolonialism (in particular the Third World debt) continue to retain their actuality.Impact on healthEncounters between European explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. Disease killed the entire native (Guanches) population of the Canary Islands in the 16th century. Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors. Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 1600s. In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. Some believe that the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. Over the centuries, the Europeans had developed high degrees of immunity to these diseases, while the indigenous peoples had no such immunity.Smallpox decimated the native population of Australia, killing around 50% of Indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation. It also killed many New Zealand Māori. As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza. Introduced diseases, notably smallpox, nearly wiped out the native population of Easter Island. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population. Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part to infectious diseases brought by Japanese settlers pouring into Hokkaido. Researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus's voyages. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions of Europe. The disease was more frequently fatal than it is today. Syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance. The first cholera pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. 10,000 British troops and countless Indians died during this pandemic. Between 1736 and 1834 only some 10% of East India Company's officers survived to take the final voyage home. Waldemar Haffkine, who mainly worked in India, was the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. As early as 1803, the Spanish Crown organized a mission (the Balmis expedition) to transport the smallpox vaccine to the Spanish colonies, and establish mass vaccination programs there. By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans. Under the direction of Mountstuart Elphinstone a program was launched to propagate smallpox vaccination in India. From the beginning of the 20th century onwards, the elimination or control of disease in tropical countries became a driving force for all colonial powers. The sleeping sickness epidemic in Africa was arrested due to mobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk. In the 20th century, the world saw the biggest increase in its population in human history due to lessening of the mortality rate in many countries due to medical advances. World population has grown from 1.6 billion in 1900 to an estimated 6.7 billion today. A discussion on the nature of how diseases were spread has often been scuttled by descendants of colonialists in order to conceal the actual origins of the how certain indigenous populations were inoculated with these new diseases. The argument here is that once European colonists discovered that indigenous populations were not immune to certain diseases, they attempted to further the spread of diseases in order to gain military advantages and subjugate local peoples. The most famous is that of Jeffery Amherst. Many scholars have argued that the body of evidence which sees this practice as having been executed on a larger scale across north America is weak. Yet growing evidence is showing that other indigenous communities were purposefully inoculated citing oral history from the descendants of said peoples. It has been regarded as one of the first instances of bio-terrorism or use of biological weapons in the history of warfare. For further information see and Food securityAfter 1492, a global exchange of previously local crops and livestock breeds occurred. Key crops involved in this exchange included the tomato, maize, potato and manioc going from the New World to the Old. At the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368, China's population was reported to be close to 60 million, and toward the end of the dynasty in 1644 it might have approached 150 million. New crops that had come to Asia from the Americas via the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, including maize and sweet potatoes, contributed to the population growth. Although it was initially considered to be unfit for human consumption, the potato became an important staple crop in northern Europe. Maize (corn) was introduced to Europe in the 15th century. Due to its high yields, it quickly spread through Europe, and later to Africa and India. Maize was probably introduced into India by the Portuguese in the 16th century.Since being introduced by Portuguese traders in the 16th century, maize and manioc have replaced traditional African crops as the continent’s most important staple food crops. Manioc (cassava) is sometimes described as the ‘bread of the tropics'. Alfred W. Crosby speculated that increased production of maize, manioc, and other American crops "enabled the slave traders drew many, perhaps most, of their cargoes from the rain forest areas, precisely those areas where American crops enabled heavier settlement than before." Slave tradeSlavery has existed to varying extents, forms and periods in almost all cultures and continents. Between the 7th and 20th centuries, Arab slave trade (also known as slavery in the East) took approximately 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took up to 12 million slaves to the New World.From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of the present United States. According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal., The Civil War Home Page. Of all 1,515,605 families in the 15 slave states, 393,967 held slaves (roughly one in four), amounting to 8% of all American families. In 1807, the United Kingdom became one of the first nations to end its own participation in the slave trade. Furthermore, between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. This was done to "to sweep the African and American Seas of the atrocious Commerce with which they are now infested''". Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. In 1827, Britain declared the slave trade piracy, punishable by death. Non-canonical colonialism 1900 Campaign poster for the Republican Party. "The American flag has not been planted in foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake.", president William McKinley, July 12, 1900. On the left hand, the situation as portrayed in 1896, before Mc Kinley's victory during the elections: "Gone Democratic: A run on the bank, Spanish rule in Cuba". On the right hand, the situation as portrayed in 1900, after four years of McKinley's rule: "Gone Republican: a run to the bank, American rule in Cuba" (the Spanish-American War took place in 1898).  The Roman Empire under Trajan in 117 AD.  The expansion of the Arab Empire under the Umayyads.  The Mongol Empire and its successor Khanates.  Conquests of the Ottoman Empire. Before the expansion of the Bantu languages and their speakers, the southern half of Africa is believed to have been populated by Pygmies and Khoisan speaking people, today occupying the arid regions around the Kalahari and the forest of Central Africa. By about 1000 AD Bantu migration had reached modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Banu Hilal and Banu Ma'qil were a collection of Arab Bedouin tribes from the Arabian peninsula who migrated westwards via Egypt between the 11th and 13th centuries. Their migration strongly contributed to the arabization and islamization of the western Maghreb, which was until then dominated by Berber tribes. Ostsiedlung was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans. The 13th century was the time of the great Mongol and Turkic migrations across Eurasia. Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese expanded southward in a process known as nam tiến (southward expansion). More recent examples of internal colonialism are the movement of ethnic Chinese into Tibet and Eastern Turkestan, ethnic Javanese into Western New Guinea and Kalimantan (see Transmigration program), Brazilians into Amazonia, Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza, ethnic Arabs into Iraqi Kurdistan, and ethnic Russians into Siberia and Central Asia. The local populations or tribes, such as the aboriginal people in Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Siberia and the United States, were usually far overwhelmed numerically by the settlers. In some cases, for example the Vandals, Huguenots, Boers, Matabeles and Sioux, the colonizers were fleeing more powerful enemies, as part of a chain reaction of colonization. The Empire of Japan was in some ways modelled on Western colonial Empires. See also |
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