- See colony and colonization for examples of colonialism which
do not refer to Western colonialism. Also see Colonization
Colonialism is the building and maintaining of
colonies in one territory by people from
another territory.
Sovereignty over the
colony is claimed by the
metropole.
Social structure,
government and
economics
within the territory of the colony are changed by the
colonists.
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:
- The profits to be made.
- To expand the power of the
metropole.
- To escape persecution in the
metropole.
- To convert the indigenous
population to the colonists' religion.
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.
There are four common characteristics of colonialism: 1) political
and legal domination over an alien society, 2) relations of
economics and political dependence, 3) exploitation between
imperial powers and the colony and 4) racial and cultural
inequality.
Types of colonialism
Historians often distinguish between two forms of colonialism,
chiefly based on the number of people from the colonising country
who settle in the colony:
- Settler colonialism involved
a large number of colonists, typically seeking fertile land to
farm.
- Exploitation
colonialism involved fewer colonists, typically interested in
extracting resources to export to the metropole. This category includes trading posts but it also includes much larger
colonies where the colonists would provide much of the
administration and own much of the land and other capital but rely on indigenous people
for labour.
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.

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.
Activity which could be called colonialism has a long history.
Colonies in antiquity were built by
the Egyptians, Phoenicians
, Greeks and Romans. The word metropole comes from
the Greek
metropolis - mother city. The word colony comes
from the Latin
colonia – a place for agriculture.
Modern colonialism started with the
Age
of Discovery.
Portugal
and Spain
discovered
new lands across the oceans and built trading posts. For
some people, it is this building of colonies across oceans that
differentiates colonialism from other types of
expansionism. These new lands were divided
between the
Portuguese Empire and
Spanish Empire, first by the papal
bull
Inter caetera and then by the
Treaty of Tordesillas and the
Treaty of Zaragoza .
The seventeenth century saw the creation of the
British Empire, the
French colonial empire and the
Dutch Empire. It also saw the
establishment of some
Swedish
overseas colonies and a
Danish colonial empire.
The spread of colonial empires was reduced in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries by the
American Revolutionary War and
the
Hispanic
American wars of independence. However, many new colonies were
established after this time, including for the
German colonial empire and
Belgian colonial empire. In the late
nineteenth century, many European powers were involved in the
Scramble for Africa.
The
Russian
Empire
and Ottoman Empire
existed at the same time as the above empires, but these are often
not considered colonial because they did not expand over
oceans. Rather, these Empires expanded through the more
traditional route of conquest of neighbouring territories.
The
Empire of
Japan
modelled itself on European colonial
Empires. The United States of America
gained overseas territories after the Spanish-American War and the term
American Empire was
coined.
After the
first world war, the
German colonial empire and much of the Ottoman Empire were divided
between the victorious
allies
as
League of Nations
mandates. These territories were divided into three classes
according to how quickly it was deemed that they would be ready for
independence. However,
decolonisation
did not really get going until after the
second world war.
Neocolonialism
The 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. The United Nations'
Special Committee on
Decolonization, often called the Committee of 24, has been
actively involved in the elimination of colonialism in the world
since its creation in 1962.
Colonialism and the history of thought
Colonialism and geography
Settlers acted as the link between the natives and the imperial
hegemony, bridging the geographical gap between the colonizers and
colonized. Painter, J. and Jeffrey, A. affirm that certain advances
aided the expansion of European states. With tools such as
cartography, shipbuilding, navigation, mining and agricultural
productivity colonizers had an upper hand. Their awareness of the
earth's surface and abundance of practical skills provided
colonizers with a knowledge which in turn created power.
Painter and Jeffrey argue that geography was not and is not an
objective science, rather it is based on assumptions of the
physical world. It may have given “The West” an advantage when it
came to exploration, however it also created zones of racial
inferiority. Geographical believes such as environmental
determinism, the view that some parts of the world are
underdeveloped because of the climate, legitimized colonialism and
created notions of skewed evolution. These are now seen as
elementary concepts. Political geographers maintain that colonial
behavior was reinforced by the physical mapping of the world,
visually separating “them” and “us”. Geographers are primarily
focused on the spaces of colonialism and imperialism, more
specifically, the material and symbolic appropriation of space
enabling colonialism.
Colonialism and imperialism
A colony is part of an empire and so colonialism is closely related
to
imperialism. The initial assumption
is that colonialism and imperialism are interchangeable however,
Robert Young, suggests that imperialism is the concept while
colonialism is the practice. Colonialism is based on an imperial
outlook, thereby creating a consequential relationship between the
two. Through an empire, colonialism is established and capitalism
is expanded, on the other hand a capitalist economy naturally
enforces an empire. The next section Marxists make a case for this
mutually reinforcing relationship.
Marxist view of colonialism
Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism, enforcing
exploitation and social change. Working within the global
capitalist system, colonialism is closely associated with uneven
development. It is an “instrument of wholesale destruction,
dependency and systematic exploitation producing distorted
economies, socio-psychological disorientation, massive poverty and
neocolonial dependency.” Colonies are constructed into modes of
production. The search for raw materials and the current search for
new investment opportunities is a result of inter-capitalist
rivalry for
capital
accumulation. Lenin regarded colonialism as the root cause of
imperialism, as imperialism was distinguished by monopoly
capitalism via colonialism.
Post-colonialism
Post-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.
Impact of colonialism and colonisation
Debate 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 health
Encounters 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 security
After 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 otherAmerican 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 thanbefore."
Slave trade
Slavery 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. 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
Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon. A variety of ancient and
more recent examples whereby ethnically distinct groups settle in
areas other than their original settlement that are either adjacent
or across land or sea. From about 750 BC the
Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling
colonies in all directions.
Phoenician
civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across
the Mediterranean during the period 1550 BC to 300 BC.
Other
examples range from large empire like the Roman Empire, the Arab
Empire, the Mongol Empire, the
Ottoman Empire or small movements
like ancient Scots moving from
Hibernia
to Caledonia
and Magyars into Pannonia
(modern-day Hungary
). Turkic
peoples spread across most of
Central
Asia into
Europe and the
Middle East between the 6th and 11th centuries.
Recent
research suggests that Madagascar
was uninhabited until Malay seafarers from Indonesia
arrived during the 5th and 6th centuries
A.D. Subsequent migrations from both the Pacific and Africa
further consolidated this original mixture, and
Malagasy people emerged.
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
Han Chinese into Tibet and Xinjiang, 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
Notes
References
- Guy Ankerl,
Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati,
Chinese, and Western, (2000) ISBN 2881550045
- Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of
Totalitarianism (1951) (second chapter on Imperialism examines ties between colonialism
and totalitarianism)
- Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 1899
- Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth,
Pref. by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Translated by Constance Farrington. London : Penguin Book,
2001
- Gobineau, Arthur de,
An
Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, 1853-55
- Gutiérrez, Gustavo, A
Theology of Liberation:
History, Politics, Salvation, 1971
- Kipling, Rudyard, The White Man's Burden,
1899
- Las Casas, Bartolomé
de, A Short Account
of the Destruction of the Indies (1542, published in
1552)
- LeCour Grandmaison,
Olivier, Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat
colonial, Fayard, 2005, ISBN 2213623163
- Lindqvist, Sven, Exterminate
All The Brutes, 1992, New Press; Reprint edition (June 1997),
ISBN 978-1-56584-359-2
- Maria Petringa, Brazza, A Life for Africa (2006), ISBN
978-1-4259-1198-0
- Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical
Overview, Princeton, NJ: M. Wiener, 1997.
- Said, Edward, Orientalism, 1978; 25th-anniversary
edition 2003 ISBN 978-0-394-74067-6
- Whaites, Alan, "States in
Development," DFID, London 2007[776]
External links