Sunday 12 January 2014

Colonialism and Colonies


I INTRODUCTION
Colonialism and Colonies, one country’s domination of another country or people—usually achieved through aggressive, often military, actions—and the territory acquired in this manner. The terms colonialism and imperialism are sometimes used interchangeably, but scholars usually distinguish between the two, reserving colonialism for instances where one country assumes political control over another and using imperialism more broadly to refer to political or economic control exercised either formally or informally. This article will discuss both concepts and how they have been practiced in different parts of the world. It will summarize colonial practices before the 15th century and then focus in more detail on colonialism and imperialism during the last 500 years.
II TYPES OF COLONIES
In the past 500 years, there have been several types of colonies. The main ones were colonies of settlement, colonies of exploitation, and what might be called contested settlement colonies. Most European powers established more than one type of colony. The British Empire, for instance, included colonies of settlement (Virginia, Massachusetts, New Zealand, New South Wales), colonies of exploitation (Nigeria, Jamaica, Malaya), a preexisting empire (India), contested settlement colonies (Kenya), and spheres of influence (Argentina). The French Empire also included settlement colonies (Algeria, Québec), exploitation colonies (Martinique, the French Congo), and a preexisting empire (Indochina).
A Colonies of Settlement
Colonies of settlement resulted when citizens of a foreign country, the colonizing country, migrated to and eventually took complete control of a new area. These areas came to be dominated not only by foreign people but also by foreign crops and animals. The foreign colonizers ordinarily substituted their culture for the existing one. Settlers often excluded native inhabitants from their society or killed many of them in violent confrontations or by exposure to disease. In the Americas, many Native Americans died from diseases introduced by Europeans, diseases to which they had no immunity. Colonies of settlement were located in temperate zones, with climates similar to Europe’s. They are sometimes called neo-Europes or, until recently, White Man’s Countries. Examples of settlement colonies include English colonies in parts of the United States, Canada, and Australia.
B Colonies of Exploitation
Colonies of exploitation, also known as tropical dependencies, did not attract large numbers of permanent European settlers. Europeans went to these colonies primarily as planters, administrators, merchants, or military officers. In exploitation colonies, foreign powers established political control, if necessary using force against colonial resistance, but they did not displace or kill native societies. They also did not, for the most part, intentionally destroy indigenous (native) cultures. Thus, the geographical circumstances and historical dynamics of exploitation colonies are profoundly different from those of colonies of settlement.
A colony of exploitation had an economy based on products of the labor of local inhabitants, working either on their own land or on plantations. These colonies usually produced cash crops such as spices, cotton, palm oil, or rubber. Colonies of exploitation included Indonesia and Malaya in Southeast Asia, and Nigeria and Ghana in West Africa.
C Contested Settlement Colonies
In a contested settlement colony, a significant number of European settlers took up permanent residence. They tended to develop their own government, independent of, or even in defiance of, the parent country. A contested settlement colony also formed its own cultural and political identity. Politically, white citizens dominated native peoples.
However, the native population not only survived, but increased. Native peoples managed to maintain some control over their lives, although their political control was usually slight. Furthermore, their labor remained the backbone of the economy. Eventually, native people were able to successfully contest white control of the colony, both the control by the colonizing country and control by the settlers. Examples of contested settlement colonies include Algeria and Southern Rhodesia, both in Africa.
D Other Types of Colonies
There are several other types of colonialism and imperialism, including preexisting empires, internal colonialism, and spheres of influence or informal empires. Preexisting empires were or had been powerful states that possessed a large population, strong political structures, and a sophisticated economy. India under English rule is an example.
In internal colonialism, one geographic area or ethnic group dominated another within the same country. Examples of this kind of internal control include the economic domination of the American South by the North after the American Civil War (1861-1865), or the influence of England over other areas of the British Isles.
In spheres of influence or informal empires, Europeans interfered in the internal affairs of a state but stopped short of formal political annexation. During the 19th century, individual Western nations declared so-called spheres of influence over parts of China. They even required that disputes involving Europeans in these areas of China had to be judged according to Western law in Western courts. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, in areas ruled under the Ottoman Empire, some Western nations invested heavily in canals and railroads and intervened politically when they felt they needed to protect those investments. The concept of an informal empire is used to describe British or American relations with the former Spanish colonies in South and Central America after Latin American independence in the early 19th century.
III MOTIVES FOR COLONIZATION
In general, strong countries dominated weaker ones to promote their own national self-interest, out of economic, religious, cultural, or other reasons. It has been said that the three primary motives for establishing colonies were gold, God, and glory, but the main incentives were usually economic.
A Economic Motives
The colonizing country could control important markets for its exports (such as cotton products) and deny these markets to its competitors. Colonies were also important as sources of raw materials (such as raw cotton) and as opportunities for investment. A country often also increased its wealth by conquering another civilization and taking its riches or by exploiting the mineral wealth of another land. In the 16th century, for example, Spain became a rich and powerful country largely by plundering the riches of existing civilizations in the Americas and by seizing the area’s mineral wealth through mining.
These practices were promoted by the policy of mercantilism that many European colonial powers adopted. Those who advocated mercantilism believed that exports to foreign countries were preferable both to trade within a country and to imports because exports brought more money into the country. They also believed that the wealth of a nation depended primarily on the possession of gold and silver. Mercantilists assumed that the volume of world wealth and trade was relatively static, so one country’s gain required another’s loss. According to this view, a colonial possession should provide wealth to the country that controlled it. Colonies were not supposed to compete with the mother country’s home industries. Empires were closed systems, designed to keep competitors out.
To implement mercantilist policy, England passed legislation called the Navigation Acts that restricted its colonies to trading solely with the mother country. The acts also stipulated that goods imported or exported by English colonies in Africa, Asia, or America had to be shipped on vessels constructed by English shipbuilders and that at least three-quarters of the ships’ crews had to be English.
Sometimes such regulations backfired. During the French and Indian War (1754-1763) in North America, the British Parliament sought to increase revenues to pay the costs of defending the American colonies. It used the Navigation Acts to levy heavier duties on the American colonies. American colonists felt oppressed by these taxes, which are considered to be one of the causes of the American Revolution (1775-1783).
In the 18th century a reaction to mercantilism began, and the philosophy of free trade started to take root. Economists, particularly Scottish economist Adam Smith, argued against government regulation of the economy. Smith asserted that trade with a colony was no more profitable than with an independent country. He argued that political strategy might justify colonialism, but economics could not. By the 19th century, free-trade policies were prompting European nations to pursue informal empires or spheres of influence.
B Religious and Strategic Motives
European countries also wanted to spread their religious beliefs and eliminate other religions. Roman Catholic countries, particularly Spain, set out to convert non-Christian native peoples. Protestant countries also used religion as a motive for expansion. Beginning in the 19th century, Britain’s missionary movements served as a significant reason for that country’s colonial efforts. The impact of the colonizer’s religion on native societies varied. In parts of West Africa and southern Africa, very large proportions of the population converted to Christianity. In most places, the indigenous people combined the new religion with their existing beliefs and culture, as in Central America, where the Maya people merged their native practices with Christianity.
Sometimes colonies were important for strategic reasons—for example, the Cape of Good Hope, on the southern tip of Africa, guarded European sailors’ southern route to Asia. Also, some countries occupied colonies in order to protect previous investments. In Egypt, a nationalist uprising in 1882 threatened the ruling Egyptian powers with whom Britain had an informal agreement regarding the Suez Canal, of which the British government had purchased part ownership. When Britain saw its investments in and its control of the canal in jeopardy, it occupied Egypt to control the situation.
Some European colonizing powers justified their colonial activities on what they called humanitarian motives. In the 19th century, Britain cited the African slave trade as a reason to increase its control over areas in Africa. Of course, the British had been leaders in the slave trade at its height in the previous century.
IV COLONIAL ECONOMIES
The two broad types of colonies—settlement and exploitation—had very different types of economies.
A Colonies of Settlement
Colonies of settlement began by specializing in what are called primary products. These products included commodities such as wool, in New Zealand, and gold, in South Africa. Over time, however, economies of settlement colonies came to resemble those of European nations: their agriculture diversified, and they developed manufacturing industries.
Because most settlement colonies gained political self-rule early, they could use protective tariffs (taxes on imports) to shelter their young industries. These industries could grow without competition from more advanced industries in other countries. The result was high-wage labor and a high standard of living, both for white settlers. Examples of settlement colonies that followed this model include British colonies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
B Colonies of Exploitation
The colonies of exploitation had very different experiences: they remained politically dependent on the mother country and economically underdeveloped. Even after they achieved independence, many colonies of exploitation found developing their economies difficult. The economies of these colonies could typically be divided into two very distinct sectors, the export sector and the subsistence sector.
B1 Export Sector
The export sector was based on the production or extraction of the colony’s principal primary products. These included cash crops such as sugar, tea, or rubber, or minerals such as gold, tin, or copper. Virtually all capital invested in a colony of exploitation went into the export sector.
This sector employed unskilled or semiskilled members of the relatively small native middle class, who earned more than their fellow citizens, although they were low-paid by European standards. The colony’s railway system operated like a funnel, moving goods efficiently outward to the ports, but not from point to point within the interior. Profits moved in the same direction as the goods on trains—out of the colony and into the colonizing country.
B2 Subsistence Sector
The subsistence sector was the traditional part of the economy. It employed (or underemployed) the bulk of the population and produced most of the food that fed them. The subsistence sector was inefficient, had little investment, paid poor wages, and supported a low and often declining standard of living. Its food production failed to keep pace with the country’s rising population. Because the export sector provided few health benefits or other kinds of social security (such as assistance for the unemployed, the elderly, or people with disabilities), the subsistence sector absorbed much of the cost of raising children and caring for sick or old people. The subsistence sector thereby subsidized the relatively prosperous and advanced export sector, much as the colonial economy as a whole supported the growth of the mother country.
As a whole, the problems of an exploitation colony economy have tended to persist after the colony gained political independence, for several reasons. The former mother country sometimes continued to exercise some control over the economy, maintaining close relationships with the former colony’s new rulers and policy-makers. These colonies have also had difficulty attracting loans into the subsistence sector because returns on such loans are low. Investment has tended to go into the export sector where it will produce better results because exports, such as tin, coffee, or palm oil, are in demand and have established markets. For the same reasons, foreign aid has tended to flow into the export sector.
V HISTORY OF COLONIALISM
The Greeks and the Romans both had colonies, which they dominated by establishing military posts in conquered territory. The Greeks controlled most of the islands in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and later the Romans controlled the whole area from Constantinople (now İstanbul) in Turkey, to Palestine and North Africa, to Gaul (France) and Britain. The Romans developed a theory of colonization. They believed that a garrison (military post) must include women who could work in fields and bear children. The post could then become a settlement capable of supporting and reproducing itself. Centuries later, English settlers put this theory into practice in their colonies in Ireland and Virginia.
The Vikings, people from what is now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, established colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland, but the settlements failed because the Vikings were unable to supply them. The Vikings were more successful in establishing colonies in parts of Europe, including northern France, Sicily, England, and Ireland. Eventually the people who settled in these areas were called Normans.
From the 11th century to the 13th century, Christian Europeans launched military expeditions, called Crusades, against the Muslims in Palestine. The Europeans wanted to recapture Jerusalem and other places to which Christians made religious pilgrimages. The Crusades were the first military expeditions that Western Christians undertook far from home. They also marked the first time that significant numbers of European Christians carried their culture and religion beyond Europe.
In the steppe (grassy plains) regions of Central Asia, the Mongols created a vast empire during the 13th and early 14th centuries. The Mongol Empire controlled the expanse of territory from the Ural Mountains in Russia across Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Every adult male was a mounted warrior, and the Mongols were a nation of cavalry. The Ottoman Turks were also originally a steppe people. They took over most of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkan Peninsula. The Ottoman Empire, founded in the late 13th century, was a significant world power until the early 20th century.
There were also militarily aggressive peoples in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Americas. The Fulani in the western Sudan established a series of kingdoms in the 19th century, and the Zulu dominated much of southern Africa during the early part of that century. In the Americas, the Inca and Aztec peoples dominated large geographic areas when Europeans arrived.
A Age of Exploration (1450-1700)
In the 15th century, Europe was divided into a number of emerging nation states that competed intensely with one another. This competition was one factor that drove these states to expand. In contrast, during the same time period, China was a strong, unified power that possessed both the technology and the economic base for expansion, but did not do so. China had conducted overseas voyages but decided to end them after a bitter debate at the imperial court in the early 15th century. In contrast, Europe was not a single entity, and its various states competed fiercely for advantage over their neighbors.
Each of the European states ventured beyond its borders at different times: first Portugal, then Spain, then the Netherlands, England, and France. Their attempts to expand overseas were linked very closely with their struggles for political and economic power. Trade was considered a form of war, and trading stations were called forts. The search for a variety of products to trade drove the Europeans’ explorations.
The Portuguese began a race to build a commercial empire in the early 15th century by exploring the coast of West Africa. There they established a trade in gold and slaves; by the 16th century African slaves were commonplace throughout southern and western Europe. Other trade items encouraged exploration of other areas. In the North Atlantic Ocean, an enormously valuable trade in fish encouraged boats of all European nations to search for fishing grounds farther from Europe. Spices drew explorers around the tip of Africa to Southeast Asia. Europeans, lacking refrigeration, needed spices to preserve the meat they ate. By trading directly with the East, Europeans could avoid costly customs duties, or taxes, charged by the rulers of every country between Egypt and Europe for letting spice shipments pass through.
Religion also played an important role in the increase of exploration. Early modern Europeans, especially Catholics, gave high priority to converting people with other beliefs. The Spaniards in particular incorporated religion as a vital part of their colonial movements, and they sent many missionaries to the Americas, as did the Portuguese. In early English and Dutch settlements, chaplains primarily ministered to the settlers instead of converting the indigenous peoples. The British missionary movement did not develop significantly until about 1800, although some early settlers left England for the Americas so that they could be free to practice their particular religious beliefs. For example, Plymouth Colony, in what is now Massachusetts, was founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, a group of Puritans who had been persecuted in England for their religious beliefs.
A pivotal point in European expansion occurred at the end of the 15th century. In 1492 Italian navigator Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic in an effort to reach Asia by a new route. Basing his voyage on his calculation of the earth’s size (an estimate that turned out to be wrong), Columbus reached the Caribbean islands off what would later be called North and South America. On that journey as well as others that followed, Columbus claimed the areas and established outposts for Spain, which financed his voyages. Although at first he insisted the area was part of Asia, Columbus eventually realized that he was exploring what he called a “New World,” as yet unknown to Europeans.
In late 1497 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa and in the spring of 1498 became the first European to reach India by a sea route. Columbus’s and da Gama’s explorations helped spur a vast movement towards exploration and European colonialism during the 16th century.
A1 Spanish Colonies
Within a few years, Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) overwhelmed the powerful Aztec and Inca Empires in what are now Mexico and Peru. These conquistadors claimed the land for Spain, and settlements were soon established. This was the beginning of the Spanish Empire, which became the most powerful empire of its day.
Individual Spanish settlers received large areas of land called encomiendas, as well as the right to control the labor of the people who lived on the land. On these encomiendas, the Spaniards raised cattle and sheep, but the most important product of New Spain, as the Spaniards called their claims in the Americas, was silver. The indigenous people, overseen by the Spaniards, mined silver in the mountains of Peru and in Mexico, often at great risks that resulted in death. The silver that reached Spain helped finance that country’s trade with other European nations, and it fueled massive inflation in the price of goods that lasted until well after 1600 throughout Europe.
Much of the silver from the New World ended up in India and China. Europeans could not sell their goods in Asia, because Asian manufactured goods, particularly textiles, were more advanced than those of the Europeans. For this reason, Europeans used the gold and silver acquired from their colonies to pay for Asian spices, silk, and cotton cloth.
A2 Portuguese Colonies
Meanwhile, the Portuguese were starting settlements in Brazil. Like the Spaniards in other parts of the Americas, they took over land and forced the native population to work it. Also, Portuguese explorers were establishing a very different sort of commercial empire in the Indian Ocean. This system was based on trade and war, rather than on taking large amounts of land and dominating its people. At first the Portuguese had no competition: the Chinese had called their fleets home; Indian and Arab ships did not carry guns; and other European nations had not yet entered the field.
By the early 16th century the Portuguese had established a string of strategic bases, including Hormuz at the tip of the Persian Gulf, Goa on the western coast of India, and the Straits of Molucca, the gateway between the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. From these bases, the Portuguese could control and monitor the sea-going trade of the entire region. Portuguese power, however, was entirely naval, and they were unable to threaten the internal strength of land-based empires. Moreover, when larger European nations arrived in the area, Portuguese naval supremacy vanished.
A3 Dutch Colonies
By the early 17th century, the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese as the primary European colonial power in Asia. They took control of the Moluccas (now part of the Republic of Indonesia) and instituted a new system that would have great significance for areas in other parts of the world: the plantation system. The Dutch plantations in Indonesia were like Spanish encomiendas in that they employed native labor. There were, however, important differences. Plantations were usually more compact and were dedicated to the production of a single cash crop, a crop produced primarily for market. The plantation was much like a modern factory; it was an early and highly profitable form of industrial capitalism. On a plantation, labor was a commodity, a cost of producing a crop; consequently, slave labor, the most mobile system of labor, quickly became associated with the plantation system.
The Dutch also colonized parts of North America. They based their claims on the explorations of Henry Hudson, an English mariner employed by the Dutch East India Company. In 1609 Hudson entered present-day New York Bay and explored the river that now bears his name. During the next few years the Dutch dispatched several trading vessels to the region, which they named New Netherland. A few permanent colonists began to arrive in 1624, when a trade outpost was built. The town was named New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1626, and the first large wave of settlement there occurred the same year.
A4 English Colonies
England began exploration during the same period as the Dutch. In 1600 England granted a charter to the East India Company to establish overseas commercial and trade interests. The English government granted the company a monopoly of English trade with the “East Indies,” which the company eventually stretched to include the lucrative opium trade in China. Similar companies were established for the trade with Africa, Virginia, and elsewhere in the Americas.
English colonization in the Americas, however, remained almost unknown in the 16th century because England was at war with Spain. The first English colony in North America was established on Roanoke Island, off the North American coast. This colony failed and the English did not attempt further exploration and colonization in the Americas until 1604, after they made peace with Spain. During the 17th century, the English established colonies in the Caribbean and North America that became the foundations of the British Empire. In the West Indies, the English established sugar plantations, and in 1655 they conquered the Spanish colony of Jamaica, the first English colony taken by force. The English established a string of colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America.
A5 French Colonies
The English faced competition in upper North America as the French colonized parts of what is now Canada. In 1608 French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Québec as a fur-trading center, strengthening French control of the St. Lawrence River. The French were also interested in converting the native peoples to Christianity, and they used the fur trade to fund their missionary activities.
Later in the century, the French became interested in expansion. In 1673 explorer Louis Joliet and Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette reached the Mississippi River and traveled down it as far as the Arkansas River. In 1682 explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle led an expedition down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming all the land drained by the river for Louis XIV, king of France, and naming the region Louisiana. As the French gained more control in North America, they developed a rivalry with England that would come to a head during the 18th century.
B European Merchant Empires (1700-1815)
The foundations of European sea-based empires were laid during the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 18th century, these empires had become powerful. To understand these empires, it is helpful to break them up into regional networks or world systems. A world system is an area where different cultures are related through commercial and other interactions. The boundaries of a world system are not restricted to territory controlled by any one country. The Atlantic Ocean is an example of a world system, as is the Indian Ocean.
For the Atlantic Ocean, it is helpful to think of two fairly distinct, but connected, world systems. The North Atlantic system included Western Europe, Russia, the Baltic, Scandinavia, the abundant fishing areas near Newfoundland and New England, and what became Canada and the northern states of the United States. Its main products were timber, fish, and fur. The South Atlantic system included the Spanish colonies in South and Central America, the Portuguese colony of Brazil, the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean, West Africa, and the southern colonies in North America. Its most prominent products were silver, sugar, tobacco, African slaves, and, after 1800, cotton.
The North Atlantic world system relied heavily on the French, Dutch, and English colonies in North America. By the beginning of the 18th century, conflicts between competing European powers had intensified in that area. Territories along North America’s eastern seaboard changed hands as the British gained control of Dutch areas, and the French and British entered a series of wars. Following the French and Indian War, Great Britain gained control of Canada and all French territories east of the Mississippi River. The British also gained Florida from Spain, which had been an ally of France. The war determined that British, rather than French ideas and institutions would dominate North America.
In the South Atlantic world system, slavery was crucial as a source of labor. Millions of Native American people had died because they lacked immunity to diseases introduced to the area. Death rates reached as high as 80 to 90 percent of the native population during the first century of contact with Europeans. Also, relatively few Europeans migrated to the New World until the late 18th century, providing few workers for new industries.
The shortage of labor became particularly acute after the Europeans introduced the plantation system, which became the main form of agricultural production in the South Atlantic system. The plantation system was particularly prominent in the sugar-producing areas of the Caribbean islands and Brazil and in the southeastern colonies of mainland North America, where cotton and tobacco were important.
Around the world, in the Indian Ocean world system, British power was growing. By the beginning of the 18th century, the powerful Mughal Empire, centered in north India, began to decline. The English East India Company, which had established a presence in India during the 1600s, had a fort in Calcutta (now Kolkata). The company used this fort as a base to gradually take over the entire Indian subcontinent. The company accomplished this by hiring an Indian army, overseen by British officers, which was paid for with taxes collected from Indians. This army formed the main British military weapon in Asia, until India achieved independence from Britain in 1947.
In the Indian Ocean world system, trade was primarily in spices, silk, and other luxury goods. This trade had existed for thousands of years, providing Asian countries with economies featuring large, sophisticated markets, credit systems, and manufacturing techniques. Before the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century, Europeans produced little that Asians wanted, so they were able to participate in the Indian Ocean world system only because they possessed a great deal of silver from America. The Industrial Revolution (the shift from hand manufacturing to large-scale factory production) allowed Europeans to increase productivity of labor by about ten times. Consequently they were able to cut costs substantially while maintaining or even improving product quality. Europeans had another huge advantage: military power. More than any other people, Europeans had made fighting a profession, one that helped them expand their commercial activities.
C Imperialism of Free Trade (1815-1870)
During the mid-19th century, Britain was the dominant economic and political power in the world. Britain faced little competition from other European powers. The French were recovering from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). The Dutch, although still in control of Indonesia, had declined in power and were not a serious threat. Left unchallenged on the seas, the British were often able to extend their power through informal influence without necessarily asserting formal political control, which would add administrative and defensive costs and responsibilities.
This push for informal influence became known as the imperialism of free trade. The British did not establish many formal colonies, but they controlled other nations in order to increase their economic power. In China, for example, British commercial expansion resulted in the Opium Wars (1839-1842, 1856-1860) when the Chinese government attempted to stop British merchants from illegally importing opium. Britain also gained a great deal of informal power in Latin America after Spain’s colonies became independent between 1807 and 1824. Because Britain’s power and influence were so vast, a popular saying was, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”
D New Imperialism (1870-1914)
That lack of competition changed in the late 19th century, as European powers again became interested in expanding. This was particularly true of Germany, which had become a united nation in 1871 (see German Unification). Almost all the European powers vied with one another for colonies. This surging political rivalry drove New Imperialism.
Although European colonial expansion at the end of the 19th century was called New Imperialism, the motives of colonizers remained the same as in earlier periods. They usually sought economic advantages, but these were hard to disentangle from political and strategic motives. The main differences in this era were the number of competing colonial powers and the parts of the world they chose to colonize. Almost all European powers participated, and they sought colonies in Africa and in the Pacific.
In what is called the Scramble for Africa, European nations partitioned Africa at the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885). The Germans got southwestern Africa, along with Tanganyika in East Africa. The Portuguese got Mozambique and Angola, in southern Africa. Belgium took the Congo, and France got Senegal, the Cameroons, and several other colonies in the western Sudan and Central Africa. The British got the rest, including Kenya and Uganda in East Africa, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the territory that became Nigeria in West Africa. The British already controlled Egypt, which they had occupied in 1882, as well as English-speaking Cape Colony and Natal on the southern tip of Africa. The British also dominated Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) through the British South Africa Company under the leadership of Cecil Rhodes. The result was that almost every part of the African continent was a European colony.
In the Pacific, the British, the French, and the Germans faced competition both from the Americans, who took over Hawaii and the Philippines from the Spaniards, and from the Japanese, who colonized Korea. The French took Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), and the Germans colonized eastern New Guinea, in the South Pacific. In Asia, the British strengthened their hold on Burma (now known as Myanmar) and Malaya. Although China was never formally colonized, European powers established individual “spheres of influence.” When the Chinese rioted in Shanghai and elsewhere in 1900, in the Boxer Uprising, Western powers put down the revolt and imposed a huge indemnity (a fine to cover the cost of losses and damages) on the Chinese.
Both Africa and the Pacific were areas where trade, investment, and profits had all been comparatively low before the late 19th century. These were also areas where Western nations, with their advanced military technology, could easily conquer indigenous states. Imperial nations adopted the attitude that they should control these areas in order to protect what they viewed as weak peoples. In general, the citizens of the more powerful nations supported this view, especially because, with the exception of Japan’s control of Korea, the power holders were white and their subjects were people of color.
E Mandates and Trusts
The victors in World War I (1914-1918), particularly France and Britain, took over the colonial possessions of the losers—Germany and the Ottoman Empire—in Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. They managed these areas, called mandates, as trustees under direction of the League of Nations, an international alliance formed in response to World War I. Mandated territories were supposed to be managed in the interests of the indigenous peoples, as well as in the interests of the world at large. The indigenous peoples were thought to be “unable to stand by themselves,” to quote the League of Nations Charter. The nation that served as the mandatory power had to submit annual reports to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. After the war, neither the Germans nor the Ottomans were considered to be fit trustees. In general, a mandate was a colony under another name.
Colonialism was not solely a European phenomenon in the 20th century. During this time, Japan was growing as a major imperial power. In the early 1940s Japan founded the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, claiming to unite Asian nations against Western domination. In effect, this act brought much of Asia under Japanese control as part of Japan’s political and economic empire. Japanese conquests of the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, Malaya, and Indochina ended Western colonial administration in these areas, but Japan’s administration during World War II (1939-1945) was more severe than that of the Europeans or Americans that it replaced. In Korea, for example, Japan imposed several measures designed to assimilate the Korean population, including outlawing Korean language and even Korean family names.
Following World War II, the United Nations (UN), successor to the League of Nations, replaced the Mandates Commission with the Trusteeship Council, and the areas that had been known as mandates became labeled as trusts. Under the old Mandate Commission, the European powers had assumed that a mandate would remain dependent on the administering nation, without ever becoming an independent nation. The charter for the Trusteeship Council, however, required the administering nation to set a target date for the trust’s independence. Several colonies, such as India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Burma (now known as Myanmar), began their struggle against remaining colonial control. After achieving independence and becoming members of the UN General Assembly, several former colonies led a campaign against colonialism, pointing to the provisions of the Trusteeship Council charter. In this way, trusteeship accelerated the movement toward decolonization throughout the world.
VI RESISTANCE TO COLONIALISM
The patterns of resistance varied enormously according to the type of colony.
A Colonies of Settlement
As a colony of settlement grew in population—and especially as more people of European descent were born in the colony and considered it their home—the colony formed an identity distinct from the mother country. As this happened, the mother country faced increasing resistance from the people in the colony.
The English colonies in North America were the first to win independence. The main causes of the American Revolution were economic. Colonists opposed British attempts to keep the colonies in a dependent relationship based on mercantilism. They also opposed British taxes to pay for the colonial British army in North America. The colonists faced a formidable enemy. The British government, including King George III and Parliament, was willing to pay large military and naval costs to suppress the rebellion. American colonists were able to defeat the British because they enjoyed the advantages of fighting on their home ground and because they had support from the French navy. The American Revolution left a powerful legacy of ideas—particularly the Declaration of Independence and its principle of the equality of all people. These ideas influenced other colonial resistance movements, particularly in Latin America.
In many ways the revolt of the Spanish American colonies in the 1810s and 1820s was based on the principles of the American Revolution. The Spanish American situation, however, was very different. Spanish colonists faced a much weaker colonial ruler. The power of the Spanish government had declined greatly since its height in the 17th century, and it had been further weakened by losses to Napoleon I, emperor of France. Also, the Spanish army had to contend with greater territorial distances than those along the east coast of North America. The Spanish-American colonies did not form a unified nation but instead established several smaller nations, including Venezuela, Chile, and Argentina.
Other British settlement colonies, including Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, achieved autonomy gradually, by working to obtain a constitution. British colonies in South Africa, however, followed a different path. The Boer War (1899-1902) involved two groups of European colonialists: the British government, and Dutch-speaking Afrikaners, or Boers, descendants of 17th-century Dutch settlers to the Cape of Good Hope. The British had seized the Cape of Good Hope in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars. They had expanded their territories throughout the rest of the century and became embroiled in a battle with the Afrikaners for control of parts of southern Africa.
The British won the Boer War, and afterward they encouraged the formation of the Union of South Africa, ruled by a coalition of English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites and led by former generals of the defeated Afrikaners. Afrikaners remained in power until the early 1990s when they were replaced by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela.
B Colonies of Exploitation
In colonies of exploitation, resistance to colonial rule was very different because these colonies had a small number of European settlers and a large native population. At the heart of the problem of colonial resistance was a profound paradox. Although Europeans possessed a huge advantage in military power, they were often outnumbered by the colony’s native peoples. For example, the Indian Civil Service, the elite British group that administered British India, consisted of only about 1200 men, while the Indian population had reached 250 million by 1900. Although Britain intended a third of the Indian army to be European, that quota was never reached. Instead, the vast majority of those who administered and policed the country on Britain’s behalf were Indian.
In India, as throughout the European empires, colonial powers relied on alliances with powerful native classes. Without the cooperation of these elites, Europeans would have lacked the power and the money to maintain control in the colony. As long as powerful native groups had a stake in the system, colonial rule could remain viable. But once the colonizing power’s native allies thought they had more to lose than gain from collaborating and then removed their support, Europeans often faced a dilemma. They could withdraw, or they could invest enough people and money to maintain their power. Sometimes, as in the French occupation of Vietnam, they tried to stay and were ultimately expelled by revolutionary force. In most cases, the colonial rulers eventually recognized their disadvantage and departed.
B1 Early Resistance
A distinct type of resistance in exploitation colonies was the slave revolt. The most dramatically successful was the Haitian Slave Revolt, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, led by François Dominique Toussaint Louverture. The revolt, which was triggered by the French Revolution, lasted from the early 1790s until 1804, when Haiti received its independence. There were many other slave revolts throughout the Caribbean and Brazil. Most of them failed, and at least the ringleaders—and often many others—were brutally tortured and executed. In Brazil and the large island of Jamaica, however, escaped slaves sometimes evaded capture, forming so-called maroon communities.
Exploitation colonies also saw three more or less distinct, although overlapping, types of resistance—primary, secondary, and nationalism. In primary resistance, indigenous states and peoples fought Europeans’ first attempts to control them. Most European powers had to use force to defeat existing states in colonies, although some native peoples were unable to organize resistance. Sometimes the native peoples perceived how powerful the Europeans were and made treaties with them. Others fought long and hard, against huge odds.
Secondary resistance occurred after the colonizing nation had established its power. It often took the form of relatively spontaneous uprisings by peasants or industrial workers who reacted to many things: taxes, land shortage, labor conditions, livestock regulations, and the interference of missionaries in local customs. In Nigeria in 1929, for example, police fired shots on a group of women protesting taxation, killing about two dozen protesters.
These early types of resisters faced major obstacles because indigenous people were often fragmented by language, kinship, or tribal lines. Successful resistance to the colonial powers required an organization capable of crossing these dividing lines. This kind of organization resulted with the third type of resistance, nationalism, which continues to be an important force in the 20th century.
B2 Nationalism
Nationalism is not easy to define. Nations are ideas, imagined communities. They may derive in part from characteristics that members of a group have in common, such as language, religion, race, political state, or historical experience. Even in Europe, virtually no nation is completely homogeneous. Typically a country contains several ethnic, religious, and perhaps other kinds of divisions, which could claim to be nations in their own right. The same is true of colonies and former colonies, only more so. Some colonies contained a hundred or more different tribal groups with histories of long and bitter conflict and weak to nonexistent economic links. Often they had nothing in common except their incorporation into highly artificial colonial units made up by Europeans.
Colonial nationalism often developed in response to the need for a more encompassing network of resistance. The Indian National Congress filled this role in India’s struggle against British colonialism, as the African National Congress did on behalf of black African rights in South Africa. Nationalist movements against colonialism have typically been led by doctors, lawyers, journalists, or other professionals, often educated in Western nations. Nationalist leaders who have helped their countries overcome colonial empires include Nigeria’s first president (1963-1966), Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the first prime minister (1964-1966) and president (1966-1994) of Malawi, in southeastern Africa.
C Contested Settlement Colonies
In general, the longest and most violent revolutions were in contested settlement colonies, where local whites had become powerful, and the European government no longer had complete control of the colony. Examples of this kind of resistance against colonial rule include Algeria’s struggle for independence from France and the resistance of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to British rule.
In Algeria, the colons (French colonists) held most of the authority. When an Algerian revolutionary group known as the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, or FLN) launched a bid for Algerian independence in 1954, a violent three-way struggle resulted among the Algerian nationalists, the colons, and the French government. Although the French government had upheld a repressive set of laws to govern Algeria and restrict the rights of native Algerians, it had begun moving toward providing equality for some native people. The colons refused to give up power or political rights to native Algerians and began counterterrorist measures. As the violence escalated, the government sent in troops to subdue both Algerian revolutionaries and the colons. In 1958 the colons and a group of army officers caused a change in government in France, which brought to power General Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle, however, recognized that France was in an unwinnable situation in Algeria and negotiated Algerian independence. In 1962 Algeria voted through referendum for independence from France.
In Southern Rhodesia, as in Algeria, white settlers wanted to limit the power of the black majority. In 1923 the British government granted self-government to the white settlers in Southern Rhodesia. During the following years, black African unrest grew into a widespread nationalist movement opposed to the rule of the British settlers. African nationalists conducted strikes, protests, and guerrilla warfare. The British settlers, who by the late 1950s numbered more than 200,000, wanted to restrict the political power of the African majority, including strictly limiting the voting rights of black Africans. In 1965 white Rhodesians declared their independence and formed a minority government that faced severe criticism from nations around the world, including Britain. International sanctions were invoked against the minority government of Rhodesia to encourage its leaders to negotiate with the black majority. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s guerrilla groups—including the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo, and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe—fought the white regime. In 1980, after more than a half-century of struggle, Zimbabwe achieved its independence.
D Informal Empires
Much anti-Western sentiment in places that were never formal European colonies, such as China, can be regarded as anticolonial. China’s two Opium Wars against Britain during the mid-19th century can be viewed as primary resistance to colonialism. Although the British did not attempt to occupy the entire country, their victory over China did result in possession of Hong Kong. For more than 150 years Hong Kong was a British dependency, returning to Chinese rule in mid-1997. The Boxer Uprising in 1900, led by Chinese nationalists known to Westerners as the Boxers, was a rebellion against foreigners, representatives of foreign powers, and Chinese Christians. The uprising resulted in part from resentment over economic and political exploitation of China by various Western powers and Japan.
VII CONCLUSION
Were colonies worth the costs to the colonizing country? The answer to that question varies. A visit to London or other centers of British trade reveals the docks, shipping and trading firms, merchant banks, and even street names that were closely related to commercial ventures with India, Malaya, the West Indies, and Africa. But profitability was by no means constant, and the mother country was responsible for administrative and police costs.
Especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, colonial relationships undoubtedly helped the Netherlands, Britain, and other European countries accumulate capital for industrialization. Even then, however, the bulk of the capital was raised internally from the profits of agriculture. In the 18th century, before the abolition of slavery, Great Britain’s colonial relationship with the West Indies was much more lucrative than afterwards, when those slave-based colonies became a liability. Some experts believe that the long-term decline of the British economy that set in about the 1870s was cushioned by its colonial empire. Without colonies, the long slide might have been more like a sudden crash. A crash, however, might have encouraged the British to create a more modern, efficient industrial plant, as Germany and Japan did after their disasters in World War II (1939-1945).
On the other hand, colonialism caused many problems for former colonies. The economics of old colonial systems linger, especially in former exploitation colonies, where these nations struggle to overcome depressed economies and archaic class systems. Also, one of the most controversial legacies of colonialism is cultural intolerance. White settlers who conquered nonwhite peoples often held the attitude that ethnic and cultural differences define some people as superior and others as inferior. Some colonizing countries began education programs that maintained white superiority by distancing native students from their own culture and history.
Although imperialism in one form or another remains an issue, by the late 20th century colonialism had become obsolete. In 1970 the United Nations General Assembly, which by then was dominated by a huge majority of former colonies, declared colonialism a crime. After that, even though Western societies continued to intervene in other countries' affairs—for example, the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989—the idea of establishing formal colonial control had become unthinkable. The remnants of colonialism were confined to a few small islands, such as Bermuda, a self-governing dependency of the United Kingdom.
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