To Americans who live in a state that began back in 1776 when 13 former British coloniesdeclared their independency , the termcolonialismmight conjure up nostalgic genial pictures of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock and have their first Thanksgiving feast with some favorable Native Americans . Americans may think of colonists as intrepid souls who guess across the ocean and made a raw life for themselves in an unfamiliar land .
But to people in much of the rest period of the world — particularly countries in Asia , Africa and Latin America that once were dominate by European powers — that same Book may convey to beware the humiliation and cruelty that their ancestors suffer at the hands of invading soldiers and colonial superintendent , the loss of ancestral homeland and lives spend grind to amass wealthiness for some master in a faraway country . As Nathan J. Robinson , editor of the journal Current Affairs , explained in a 2017 essay , " Perhaps the easiest way to understand why colonialism was so horrendous is to imagine it happening in your own country now . "
We have these diverging opinion because colonialism is a complicated , provocative , often painful field of study . At the most basic horizontal surface of import , colonialism is the praxis of taking control over another country , occupying its farming with settlers and/or tap its resources for economic increase [ origin : Oxford ] .
The idea of colonialism dates back to ancient time , but the real eld of colonialism began sometime around 1500 , when European mariners first get at removed lands in Asia and the Americas . It reached its height in the mid-1900s , when a third of the world ’s universe inhabit in place ruled by compound top executive . After World War II altered the global balance of power , the European colonial empire began to crumble , as countries they had see defend to gain independency . In 1960 , the United Nations officially declared an end to colonialism , and today , only a fistful of places around the globe are govern by other state .
Even so , the legacy of colonialism remains — from prosperous former colonies that still feel a connexion to the empire to which they once belonged , to struggling nations where years of exploitation has provide long-lasting cicatrix . In this article , we ’ll seem at the different types of colonialism , the history of colonial empire , the forces that lead to decolonization and colonialism ’s dawdle impingement .
Types of Colonialism and Colonies
Throughout history , there have been two main approaches to establishing a compound imperium .
Insettler colonialism , people from one nation go off to go in another country , where they not only build small town , till the soil , and harvest natural resource , but also strive to replace the indigenous hoi polloi already live there . The settler still remain subjects of the authorities in their aboriginal commonwealth .
The Britishcolonistswho made new home in North America in the 1600s and Australia in the late 1700s were examples of colonist colonialism . For those willing to take the risk of proceed to a new country , it offer a prospect for a invigorated start and possibly a better animation . The downside was that base a colony required a wad of people , and the Din Land ’s original denizen either had to be belt down off or drive away to less worthy area to make room [ sources : LeFevre , Mick ] .
Exploitation colonialism , in direct contrast , did n’t require as many colonist to emigrate , and the native hoi polloi could be allow to stay where they were — especially if they could be pressed into service as workers . The goal was to exploit the weaker commonwealth ’s natural resourcefulness and pull up as much wealth as potential [ seed : Mick ] .
A prime example of development colonialism was Belgian King Leopold II ’s ictus of the Congo in the late 1800s . While he made a immense fortune in gumshoe and tusk , meg of the Congo ’s inhabitants starved to decease or buy the farm of disease — or were killed by Leopold ’s compound overseer for not come across employment quotas [ source : Riding , Diab ] .
Some political scientists have identified two other types of colonialism as well . Insurrogate colonialism , a colonial power advance one heathen mathematical group or groups from the colonized country itself to take over land antecedently controlled by another group . This term was first used by anthropologist Scott Atran to key out the British appropriate Zionist settlement in Palestine . Ininternal colonialism , the strong part of a country might exploit other , less sinewy region or peoples . For instance in Sri Lanka , the Tamil population felt the Sinhalese majority crush them — hence the decennary - long war between the Sri Lankan governance and terrorist group the Tamil Tigers [ source : Mick , Atran , Sathananthan ] .
Colonialism in Ancient History
Colonialism ’s history date back to theancient Egyptians , who may have been the first people to establish colonies when they create settlement in southerly Palestine 6,000 year ago . Though those were in all likelihood were more like trading posts than what we think today of as colony .
The colonist peddled Egyptian manufactured products such as clayware to the autochthonous population , and acquired raw material such as copper , oil and mineral pitch that they send back to Egypt . Archaeologists have found artifacts such as Egyptian seals for documents , heraldist symbols of the Egyptian monarchy and other item used by Egyptian elites , which indicate that the Colony were rule by an Egyptian governing and were deal part of Egypt [ source : Aubet ] .
Other ancient civilization established similar outposts . Around 1200 B.C.E. the seafaringPhoenician civilization , which was based in what is now Syria , Lebanon and northern Israel , began building a electronic web of trading posts along the shores of the Mediterranean , as far away as Spain . Many of those trading posts eventually evolved into cities . One of them , Carthage , on the northerly glide of Africa , finally develop into an imperial power in its own right , until it was conquered and ruin by the Romans — who after reconstruct it and sprain it into one of their colony [ source : Cartwright , Mark ] .
Between 1000 and 500 B.C.E. , the Greek metropolis - Department of State also set out setting up settlement in southern Italy , Sicily , Turkey , North Africa , Spain and along the coasts of the Adriatic and Black sea — essentially , wherever they could incur a good haven , fecund land and a local universe that render a market for Greek ware such as pottery , metalwork and textiles . finally , the Greeks overpowered the locals and became their rulers , and release the frontier settlement into cities such as Syracuse in Sicily . More settler moved in to extract rude resource such as forest and minerals , so that by 500 B.C.E. , the colony had 60,000 Grecian citizen living in 500 colonies — about 40 percent of all the Greeks in the ancient world [ source : Edmund Cartwright ] .
Unlike later European colonial empires , the Greeks did n’t endeavor to wipe out the cultures of the local people they dominate , or treat them as inferiors . But they did partake their philosophic ideas , computer architecture and technology , so that Grecian refinement fan out throughout the ancient man .
The Romans had colonies too , but they utilise them more to protect their imperium ’s borders and solidify their controller of conquered territory . The settlement often were satisfy with oldtimer soldier , who were give country in reward for their service . The Romance word for these settlements wascolonia , from which the modern word colony is derived [ source : Smith ] .
The First Wave of European Colonialism
The great age of European colonialism begin around 1500 C.E. , after mariners reached the Americas . After the Spanish poked around in the Caribbean and failed to find wealth there , they invaded and seized Mexico from the dominant Aztec people in a flaming war in the other 1500s , sack the Aztec empire ’s gold and silver . A duet of ten later , they overthrew the Incas in Peru and assume even more rich .
Those lands eventually would become part of a far - toss out Spanish colonial region that would span the globe , from Cuba to the Philippines in Southeast Asia . They ship colonists across the water to see fresh settlement that get into urban center such as Veracruz and Lima .
As big as it was , though , theSpanish Empirewas never as inviolable or profitable as it should have been . One problem was that Spain did n’t give rise enough manufactured good to make money from trade . And their attempt to use the conquered people as a source of labor did n’t work out too well . The Spanish created a system calledencomienda , in which natives were entrusted to Spanish defender , for whom they worked and provide tribute . But the Spanish were cruel taskmasters and spread disease that wiped out the natives . In the Caribbean , the endemic universe decreased from 50 million in the 1500s to about 4 million a century later [ source : Nowell , et al . ] .
Portugal , another navigation big businessman , grabbed Brazil , and dress up outpost in India and the East Indies as well . By the 1600s , those countries had plenty of rivals . France , Great Britain and the Netherlands also began extend their reach across the globe , and eventually battled one another for supremacy .
By the mid-1700s , the economics of colonialism had begun to shift . primitively , the Europeans come across settlement as sources of thing they want , such as gold , silver and naked materials . With the Industrial Revolution and the rise of machine - bring forth goods , the compound powerfulness still ask things like cotton and foodstuff from their settlement . But they became even more interested in what they could deal to the colonists . ruler saw colonies as market for the products that their machine churn out , which could be sell to them ( often using raw materials from these same dependency ) at a profitable markup [ rootage : Nowell , et al . ] . In many ways , it was the beginning of the world thriftiness that we have today [ author : Aubet ] .
Not everybody in the colonies went along with being exploit in this path . In the 1770s , American colonist rebel and override British rule to establish their own nation , so they could trade with whomever they wanted , make their own trade good and lucre from their own innate resource . The U.S. grew so knock-down and positive that in 1823 , President James Monroe come out a word of advice to European nations that the Western Hemisphere was closed to further colonisation [ source : Gilder Lehrman ] .
Around that fourth dimension , South American countries also free themselves from Spanish and Portuguese pattern , thanks to leaders likeSimon Bolivar[source : Biography.com , Britannica ] .
The Second Wave of European Colonialism
In the 1800s and early 1900s , colonial empires grow even more , and European countries made Brobdingnagian fortunes from them .
In British - controlledIndia , for model , where about 20,000 military personnel and compound officials rule over a aboriginal population of 300 million , that country became a captive market for 20 per centum of British industrial exports . India also put up a bum supplying of cotton and the teatime that the British habitually drink . Even with the money that the British invest on affair like irrigation , railroads and protrude a coal mining industry , Great Britain still ended up taking about 1 percent of India ’s riches each yr , and most ordinary Indians rest broken [ source : UK National Archives ] .
So how were a relatively small-scale chemical group of Brits able-bodied to control such a gravid population of Indians ? In the 1700s , India was not one united country , and the British made treaties with prince in many of these individual state . As theUK National Archives puts it , " The British were very efficient at infiltrate these states and gradually acquire control condition . They often left the local prince in charge of the various parts of India . These local princes were effective at asseverate British rule and make headway much from being fast to the British . "
France established a similarly exploitive control overVietnamand other nation in southeast Asia , which it called French Indochina . In Vietnam , the French clutch Brobdingnagian tracts of land from small sodbuster and made them into monumental rice and rubber grove , which sometimes were tame by workers recruited at point . The French also profited from Vietnam ’s coal , tin and zinc , most of which they sold for exportation . The population had to pay up heavy tax to the colonial swayer , and could only buy certain Cartesian product such as vino and salt from the French at inflated prices [ source : Llewellyn et al . ] .
In Africa , European colonial powers were eager to seize control , in an era that became fuck as the " scramble for Africa . " At the 1884 - 85 Berlin Conference , which apparently was convened to stamp out African thralldom , 13 European body politic basically carved up Africa among themselves . ( There was a certain bitter irony to this excuse , since the Europeans once had eagerly buy African slave to Labour in their colonial conglomerate . ) In drawing edge , they did n’t bother to pay any attending to the existing African cultures or ethnic groups , so that hoi polloi from the same tribe ended up in dissimilar colonies . By 1900 , the Europeans ruled 90 percentage of the African continent — up from just 10 pct in 1870 [ source : David ] .
Decolonization and the End of Empires
But colonialism also face a lot of opposition , which proved to be its undoing . In India , for example , dislike of British rule united Hindu businesspeople and workers , and they form the Indian National Congress , a political organization that began to push for independency . Confronted with increasingly strong resistance , the British tried a Modern system in which they collapse some of their office to Amerind ministers [ source : Nowell , et al . ] .
But nationalist leaderMahatma Gandhipushed even hard , weather prison to lead non - crimson resistance against the colonial regime . In 1930 , he even chair followers on a march to the sea where they take in piddle in jar and evaporated it to obtain salinity without pay tax , in rebelliousness of colonial law [ source : New York Times ] .
At the end of World War II , 750 million people — almost a third of the world ’s population — still survive in territory rule by compound powers [ source : U.N. ] . But after that , European country , weakened both financially and politically by the war , learn their compound empires rapidly disintegrate . Shortly after the warfare ’s conclusion , Indonesia declared its independence from Dutch pattern . A wild fight result but in 1949 , the Dutch officially recognized Indonesia ’s independence .
In 1947 , India achieve independence and split into two nations , Hindu - reign India and predominately Moslem Pakistan [ source : History.com ] . After the price associated withWorld War IIand the red ink of India , Britain grew less concerned in and less able-bodied to keep its global empire . The 1950s and 1960s saw many of its former colonies gain independency with little resistance from England [ author : National Archives UK ] .
In 1954 , the French were defeated militarily in Vietnam , and give after a treaty that split the land into communist and capitalistic halves . Over the next decade , France , Belgium and Portugal lost hold of their remaining colony in Africa .
In 1960 , the United Nations General Assembly adopt a resolution that called for the end of colonialism " in all its manifestations . " It proclaim that hoi polloi of every land had the right hand to prevail themselves , and learn nations that still had colonies to take " immediate steps " toward transplant power to their subjects and allow them independency [ beginning : U.N. ] .
But not every res publica wants independency .
The Legacy of Colonialism
Colonialism always has been a tricky concept for nations to justify virtuously , since fundamentally , it involves seize control of someone else ’s land and resourcefulness . That difference became impregnable in the 1800s in Europe , when European societies began embracing openhanded estimation about freedom and ego - autonomy , even as they occupy over and tap weak , less - advanced res publica in Africa and elsewhere . One way that state rationalized that hostility was to argue that the inhabitants of those blank space were n’t yet capable of ego - government , and that compound dominion would help them to progress in that direction [ source : Kohn and Reddy ] .
There were other rationalizations as well . One was what that these colonists were bringing " nirvana " to coloured place — render developing civilizations better methods of agriculture , instruction and technology , for instance . Or they were bring Christianity to the indigen .
Of course , the motives were mixed . Many missionaries did establish needed school and infirmary . Sometimes , the colonists stopped harmful recitation . The Spanish , for illustration , criminalise human ritual killing among the Aztecs . And some writers point out — as if this is an excuse — that these colonized countries often already had their own forms of bondage or imperialism . Or that the skirmish of civilizations was in the end good for world [ author : Duke ] .
But was it ? While some former colony have become halcyon , popular Nation , others still fight . Political scientists say that because colony lived under dictatorial rule and had governments that were mostly concerned about draw out lifelike resources and as much wealth as possible , they produce a template that was too easy for post - compound dictatorships to follow [ source : Acemoglu , et al . ] . In Africa , the borders imbibe by compound powers , which do n’t reflect Africans ' pagan and ethnic inheritance , have led to disunity and political strife [ source : Fisher ] .
According to the U.N. , there are still 17 " non - ego - regulate territories " — essentially , colony — left in the world , comprising less than 2 million multitude . They range from the Cayman Islands and Bermuda in the Caribbean , which remain under British principle , to Gallic Polynesia .
Most of these remaining colonies may not necessarily want independency . In a 1995 referendum inBermuda , 73 percent of the population voted against independence ; in 2017 , a former chancellor felt the thing should be revisited [ source : Lagan ] . In 2011 , a year before Jamaica ’s 50th day of remembrance of independence from Britain , a public opinion poll showed 60 percentage ofJamaicansfelt that the country would be good off if it was still under British rule [ reservoir : Daily Gleaner ] . The poor thriftiness and eminent crime made many believe ( justly or wrongly ) that these ill would not have happened with Britain in charge — perhaps when they deal how Bermuda remain a colony and is in much good shape financially . But in 2022 , a trip by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to three former colonies that still retained the British milkweed butterfly as head of DoS , was met with tepid reception or unlimited dissent , perhaps signaling these countries were ready to become republics .
A 2020 YouGov view of eight area that used to have empires find that 32 percent of the British public saw their nation ’s former imperium as something to be proud of , down from 59 per centum in 2014 . This put them in 2d place to the 50 percent of Dutch respondents who thought their former empire was something to be gallant of . However , just a quarter of respondent in both countries wanted their nations to still have imperial status [ source : Smith ] . That ’s another mark that the era of colonialism has amount to an remainder .
Lots More Information
As a child in the 1960s , when the Vietnam War had just begin to intensify , I remember going to the local library and finding an outdated geographics book that still exhibit a post called French Indochina . I guess it was then that I first start to realize how colonialism had helped form the world in which we live , and the extent to which it had left behind unspeakable problems that had yet to be purpose . Unfortunately , a half - C later , we ’re still dealing with many of those same problems .
