The historical phenomenon of colonisation Colonization, , occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect," originally related to humans. However, 19th century biogeographers dominated the term to describe the activities of birds, bacteria, or plant is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including such disparate peoples as the Hittites The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia (on the Central Anatolian plateau) ca. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height ca. the 14th century BC, encompassing a large part, the Incas The Inca civilization began as a tribe in the Cuzco area, where the legendary first Sapa Inca, Manco Capac founded the Kingdom of Cuzco around 1200. Under the leadership of the descendants of Manco Capac, the Inca state grew to absorb other Andean communities. In 1442, the Incas began a far-reaching expansion under the command of Patchacuti. He and the British The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a. European colonialism, or imperialism Imperialism, as defined by The Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." Imperialism has been described as a primarily western concept that employs ", began in the 15th century with the "Age of Discovery The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was a period in history starting in the 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which Europeans and their descendants intensively explored and mapped the world. Historians often refer to the 'Age of Discovery' as the period of Portuguese and Spanish pioneer oceanic", led by Spanish Territories of the Portuguese empire during the Iberian Union . Territories lost before or due to the Treaties of Utrecht-Baden (1713–1714). Territories lost before or during the Spanish American wars of independence (1811–1828). Territories lost following the Spanish-American War (1898–1899). Territories granted independence during the and Portuguese It was also the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires, spanning almost six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the handover of Macau in 1999 exploration of the Americas The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total, and the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about 12,000,000 km2 (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England, France and Holland established their own overseas empires, in direct competition with each other. The end of the eighteenth and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the establishment of governance or authority through the creation of settlements by another country or jurisdiction. The term generally refers to the achievement of independence by the various Western colonies and protectorates in Asia and Africa following World War II. This conforms with an when most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metropoles The metropole, from the Greek Metropolis 'mother city' was the name given to the British metropolitan centre of the British Empire, i.e. the United Kingdom itself. This was even extended, such that London became the metropole of the British Empire, insofar as its politicians and businessmen determined the economic, diplomatic, and military. Spain and Portugal were irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New World The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas. When the term originated in the late 15th century, the Americas were new to the Europeans[note], who previously thought of the world as consisting only of Europe, Asia, and Africa . The term "New World" should not be confused with "modern colonies, but the Kingdom of Great Britain (after the union of England and Wales, and Scotland), France and Holland turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic and volcanic activity, where coastal enclaves had already been established. The industrialization of the nineteenth century led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism New Imperialism refers to the colonial expansion adopted by Europe's powers and, later, Japan and the United States, during the 19th and early 20th centuries; expansion approximately took place from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I . The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa, resulted in occupation and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the First World War in 1914, in which Belgium was a major and Germany a lesser participant. During the twentieth century, the overseas colonies of the losers of World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates A League of Nations mandate refers to a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League. These were of the nature of a treaty or convention and contained minority rights, but it was not until the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest. In 1999 Portugal returned the last of Europe's colonies in Asia, Macau Macau , also known as Macao (pronounced /məˈkaʊ/) is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, the other being Hong Kong. Macau lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, bordering Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea in the east and south, to China, ending an era that had lasted five hundred years.
Iberian exploration and colonization
The Portuguese Empire The Spanish Empre Main articles: Portuguese Empire It was also the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires, spanning almost six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the handover of Macau in 1999, Portugal in the Age of Discovery Portuguese long shoreline, with many harbours and rivers flowing westward to the Atlantic ocean was the ideal environment to raise generations of adventurous seamen. As a seafaring people in the south-westernmost region of Europe, the Portuguese became natural leaders of exploration during the Middle Ages. Faced with the options of either, and Spanish colonization of the Americas Beginning with the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus, over nearly four centuries the Spanish Empire would expand across: most of present day Central America, the Caribbean islands, and Mexico; much of the rest of North America including the Southwestern, Southern coastal, and California Pacific Coast regions of the United States; and thoughEuropean colonisation of both Eastern The Eastern Hemisphere, also Eastern hemisphere or eastern hemisphere, is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that is east of the Prime Meridian and west of 180° longitude. It is also used to refer to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, vis-à-vis the Western Hemisphere, which includes the Americas. In addition, it may be used in a and Western Hemispheres The Western Hemisphere, also Western hemisphere or western hemisphere, is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian , the other half being the eastern hemisphere. It is also used to specifically refer to the Americas (or the New World) and adjacent waters, while excluding other territories that lie has its roots in Portuguese exploration. There were financial and religious motives behind this exploration. By finding the source of the lucrative spice trade The spice trade is a commercial activity of ancient origin which involves the merchandising of spices, incense, herbs, drugs and opium. Civilizations of Asia were involved in spice trade from the ancient times, and the Greco-Roman world soon followed by trading along the Incense route and the Roman-India routes. The Roman-Indian routes were, the Portuguese could reap its profits for themselves. They would also be able to probe the existence of the fabled Christian kingdom of Prester John The legends of Prester John , popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy. Reportedly a descendant of one of the Three, with a view to encircling the Islamic Islam (Arabic: الإسلام al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] [note 1]) is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of their one, incomparable God (Arabic: الله, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's teachings and normative example (in Arabic called Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire was a regime that lasted from 1299 to 1923. The first foothold outside of Europe was gained with the conquest of Ceuta Ceuta is an autonomous city of Spain located on the North African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, on the Mediterranean, which separates it from the Iberian peninsula. The area of Ceuta is approximately 19 square kilometres (7.3 sq mi) in 1415. During the 15th century Portuguese sailors discovered the Atlantic islands of Madeira Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between 32°22.3′N 16°16.5′W / 32.3717°N 16.275°W and 33°7.8′N 17°16.65′W / 33.13°N 17.2775°W in the north Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the Autonomous regions of Portugal, with Madeira Island and Porto Santo Island being the only inhabited islands. Madeira is part of the EU, Azores The Azores is a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,500 km (930 mi) west from Lisbon and about 3,900 km (2,400 mi) east from the east coast of North America. The Monchique Islet on Flores Island, located at 31° 16' 24" W is regarded as the westernmost point in Europe, even though from a geological standpoint the two, and Cape Verde The Republic of Cape Verde (pronounced /ˌkeɪp ˈvɜrd/ ; Portuguese: Cabo Verde, pronounced [ˈkabu ˈveɾdɨ]; Kabuverdianu: Kabu Verdi) is an island country, spanning an archipelago located in the Macaronesia ecoregion of the central Atlantic Ocean, off the western coast of Africa, close to Mauritania and Senegal, which were duly populated, and pressed progressively further along the west African coast until Bartolomeu Dias Bartolomeu Dias , a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer who sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first European known to have done so demonstrated it was possible to sail around Africa by rounding the Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope (Afrikaans: Kaap die Goeie Hoop, Dutch: Kaap de Goede Hoop , Portuguese: Cabo da Boa Esperança) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of South Africa in 1488, paving the way for Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (Sines or Vidigueira, Alentejo, Portugal, around 1460 or 1469 – 24 December 1524 in Kochi, India) was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the European Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India. For a short time in 1524 he was Governor of to reach India in 1498.
Portuguese successes led to Spanish financing of a mission by Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus was an Italian navigator, colonizer, and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. With his four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all funded by Isabella I of in 1492 to explore an alternative route to Asia, by sailing west. When Columbus eventually made landfall in what are now called the Bahamas The Bahamas (pronounced /ðə bəˈhɑːməz/ ), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an English-speaking country consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets (rocks). It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the Caribbean Sea, northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and he believed he had reached the coast of Japan, but had in fact "discovered" the peripheral islands of a new continent, the Americas.
After Columbus' return to Europe, competing Spanish and Portuguese claims to undiscovered lands were settled in 1494 with the Treaty of Tordesillas The Treaty of Tordesillas , signed at Tordesillas (now in Valladolid province, Spain), 7 June 1494, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (off the west coast of Africa). This line of demarcation was about halfway between the Cape Verde Islands (, which divided the world outside of Europe in an exclusive duopoly between the Iberian kingdoms along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of Cape Verde The Republic of Cape Verde (pronounced /ˌkeɪp ˈvɜrd/ ; Portuguese: Cabo Verde, pronounced [ˈkabu ˈveɾdɨ]; Kabuverdianu: Kabu Verdi) is an island country, spanning an archipelago located in the Macaronesia ecoregion of the central Atlantic Ocean, off the western coast of Africa, close to Mauritania and Senegal. Technically this meant that all of the Americas were open to Spanish colonization, but when Pedro Álvares Cabral Pedro Álvares Cabral (ca. 1468 – ca. 1520; Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾʊ ˈaɫvɐɾɨʃ kɐˈβɾaɫ] or [ˈpedɾu ˈawvaɾiʃ kaˈbɾaw] (Brazilian)) was a Portuguese navigator and explorer. Cabral is generally regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil's voyage to India was blown off course and landfall made on the Brazilian coast, this accident of navigation and an inability at the time to accurately measure longitude Longitude , identified by the Greek letter lambda (λ), is the geographic coordinate most commonly used in cartography and global navigation for east-west measurement. Constant longitude is represented by lines running from north to south. The line of longitude (meridian) that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in England, meant that Brazil ended up within the Portuguese half.
The boundaries specified by the Treaty of Tordesillas were put to the test a second time when Ferdinand Magellan Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. He was born at Sabrosa, in northern Portugal, but later obtained Spanish nationality in order to serve king Charles I of Spain in search of a westward route to the "Spice Islands" (modern Maluku Islands in Indonesia), a Portuguese explorer sailing under the Spanish flag reached the Philippines in 1521. The two by now global empires, which had set out from opposing directions, had finally met on the other side of the world.
During the 16th century the Portuguese continued to press both eastwards and westwards into the Oceans. Towards Asia they made the first direct contact between Europeans and the peoples inhabiting present day countries such as Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest, Madagascar Madagascar, or Republic of Madagascar , is an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa. The main island, also called Madagascar, is the fourth-largest island in the world, Sri Lanka Sri Lanka , officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and known as Ceylon (/sɪˈlɒn/) before 1972, is an island country in South Asia, located about 31 kilometres (19.3 mi) off the southern coast of India, Malaysia ^ b. The current terminology as per government policy is Bahasa Malaysia but legislation continues to refer to the official language as Bahasa Melayu (literally Malay language). English may continue to be used for some official purposes under the National Language Act 1967, Indonesia Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia comprises 17,508 islands. With a population of around 230 million people, it is the world's fourth most populous country, and has the world's largest population of Muslims. Indonesia is a republic, with an, East Timor East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor. The small country of 15,410 km² (5,400 sq mi) is located about 640 km (400 mi) northwest of (1512), China, and finally Japan). In the opposite direction, the Portuguese colonized the huge territory that eventually became Brasil, and the Spanish conquistadores Conquistador (meaning "Conqueror" in the Spanish and Portuguese languages) is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th through the 19th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492 established the vast Viceroyalties of New Spain The Viceroyalty of New Spain was the first of four viceroyalties created to govern Spain's territories in North and Central America. It was ruled by a viceroy from Mexico City who governed many territories on behalf of the King of Spain. The Viceroyalty of New Spain lasted from 1535 to 1821, and was one of two early viceroyalties established in and Peru Created in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru was a Spanish colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima. The Viceroyalty of Peru was one of the two Spanish Viceroyalties in America from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and later of Río de la Plata (Argentina) and New Granada (Columbia). In Asia, the Portuguese encountered ancient and well populated societies, and established a seaborne empire consisting of armed coastal trading posts along their trade routes (such as Goa, Malacca and Macau), so they had relatively little cultural impact on the societies they forced their way into trading with. In the Western Hemisphere, the European colonization involved the emigration of large numbers of settlers, soldiers and administrators intent on owning land and exploiting the apparently primitive (as perceived by Old World standards) indigenous peoples of the Americas. The result was that the colonization of the New World was catastrophic: native peoples were no match for European technology, ruthlessness, or their diseases which decimated the indigenous population.
Spanish treatment of the indigenous populations provoked a fierce debate, the Valladolid Controversy, over whether Indians possessed souls and if so, whether they were entitled to the basic rights of mankind. Bartolomé de Las Casas, author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, championed the cause of the native peoples, and was opposed by Sepúlveda, who claimed Amerindians were "natural slaves".
The Roman Catholic Church played a large role in Spanish and Portuguese overseas activities. The Dominicans, Jesuits, and Franciscans, notably Francis Xavier in Asia and Junípero Serra in North America, were particularly active in this endeavour. Many buildings erected by the Jesuits still stand, such as the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Macau and the Santisima Trinidad de Paraná in Paraguay, the latter an example of the Jesuit Reductions. The Dominican and Franciscan buildings of California's missions and New Mexico's missions stand restored, such as San Francisco de Asis in Taos and Mission Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara.
As characteristically happens in any colonialism, European or whomever, previous or subsequent, both Spain and Portugal profited handsomely from their new found overseas colonies: the Spanish from gold and silver from mines such as Potosí and Zacateca in New Spain, the Portuguese from the huge markups they enjoyed as trade intermediaries, particarlarly during the Namban Japan trade period. The influx of precious metals to the Spanish monarchy's coffers allowed it to finance costly religious wars in Europe which ultimately proved its undoing: the supply of metals was not infinite and the large inflow caused inflation and debt.
Northern European challenges to the Iberian hegemony
It was not long before the exclusivity of Iberian claims to the Americas was challenged by other up and coming European powers, primarily the Netherlands, France and England: the view taken by the rulers of these nations is epitomized by the quotation attributed to Francis I of France demanding to be shown the clause in Adam's will excluding his authority from the New World.
This challenge initially took the form of piratical attacks (such as those by Francis Drake) on Spanish treasure fleets or coastal settlements, but later the Northern European countries began establishing settlements of their own, primarily in areas that were outside of Spanish interests, such as what is now the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada, or islands in the Caribbean, such as Aruba, Martinique and Barbados, that had been abandoned by the Spanish in favour of the mainland and larger islands.
Whereas Spanish colonialism was based on the religious conversion and exploitation of local populations via encomiendas (many Spaniards emigrated to the Americas to elevate their social status, and were not interested in manual labour), Northern European colonialism was bolstered by those emigrating for religious reasons (for example, the Mayflower voyage). The motive for emigration was not to become an aristocrat or to spread one's faith but to start a new society afresh, structured according to the colonists wishes. The most populous emigration of the seventeenth century was that of the English, who after a series of wars with the Dutch and French came to dominate the eastern coast of the present day U.S. and Canada.
However, the English, French and Dutch were no more averse to making a profit than the Spanish and Portuguese, and whilst their areas of settlement in the Americas proved to be devoid of the precious metals found by the Spanish, trade in other commodities and products that could be sold at massive profit in Europe provided another reason for crossing the Atlantic, in particular furs from Canada, tobacco and cotton grown in Virginia and sugar in the islands of the Caribbean and Brazil. Due to the massive depletion of indigenous labour, plantation owners had to look elsewhere for manpower for these labour-intensive crops. They turned to the centuries old slave trade of west Africa and began transporting Africans across the Atlantic on a massive scale – historians estimate that the Atlantic slave trade brought between 10 and 12 million African (mostly black skinned) slaves to the New World. The islands of the Caribbean soon came to be populated by slaves of African descent, ruled over by a white minority of plantation owners interested in making a fortune and then returning to their home country to spend it.
Role of companies in early colonialism
From its very outset, Western colonialism was operated as a joint public-private venture. Columbus' voyages to the Americas were partially funded by Italian investors, but whereas the Spanish state maintained a tight reign on trade with its colonies (by law, the colonies could only trade with one designated port in the mother country and treasure was brought back in special convoys), the English, French and Dutch granted what were effectively trade monopolies to joint-stock companies such as the East India Companies and the Hudson's Bay Company. Imperial Russia had no State sponsored expeditions or colonization in the Americas, but did charter the first Russian joint-stock commercial enterprise, the Russian America Company, which did sponsor those activities in its territories.
European colonies in India
Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, painted by Francis Hayman Main article: European colonies in IndiaIn May 1498, the Portuguese set foot in Kozhikode in Kerala. Rivalry among reigning European powers saw the entry of the Dutch, British, French, Danish among others. The kingdoms of India were gradually taken over by the Europeans and indirectly controlled by puppet rulers. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I accorded a charter, forming the East India Company to trade with India and eastern Asia. The British landed in India in Surat in 1612. By the nineteenth century, they had assumed direct and indirect control over most of India.
Independence in the Americas (1770–1820)
During the five decades following 1770, Britain, France, Spain and Portugal lost many their possessions in the Americas.
Britain and The Thirteen Colonies
Main articles: Thirteen Colonies, American Revolutionary War, and United States Declaration of IndependenceAfter the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, Britain had emerged as the world's dominant power, but found itself mired in debt and struggling to finance the Navy and Army necessary to maintain a global empire. The British Parliament's attempt to raise taxes on the North American colonists raised fears among the Americans that their rights as "Englishmen," particularly their rights of self-government, were in danger. A series of disputes with Parliament over taxation led first to informal committees of correspondence among the colonies, then to coordinated protest and resistance. A standing army was formed by the United Colonies, and independence declared on 4 July 1776, by the Second Continental Congress. The American War of Independence continued until 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed. Britain recognised the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded by Canada to the North, Florida to the South, and the Mississippi River to the west.
France and the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804)
The Haïtian Revolution, a slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, established Haïti as a free, black republic, the first of its kind. Haiti became the second independent nation that was a former European colony in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. Africans and people of African ancestry freed themselves from slavery and colonization by taking advantage of the conflict among whites over how to implement the reforms of the French Revolution in this slave society. Although independence was declared in 1804, it was not until 1825 that it was formally recognized by King Charles X of France.
Spain and the Wars of Independence in Latin America
Independent republics in the Americas, c. 1830. Main articles: Spanish American wars of independence and Latin American revolutionsThe gradual decline of Spain as an imperial power throughout the 17th century was hastened by the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), as a result of which it lost its European imperial possessions. The death knell for the Spanish Empire in the Americas was Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 1808. With the installation of his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, the main tie between the metropole and its American colonies, the Spanish monarchy, had been cut, leading the colonists to question their continued subordination to a declining and distant country.
With an eye on the events of the American Revolution forty years earlier, revolutionary leaders began bloody wars of independence against Spain, whose armies were ultimately unable to maintain control. By 1821, Spain had been ejected from the mainland of the American continent, leaving a collection of independent republics that stretched from Chile and Argentina in the south to Mexico in the north. Spain's colonial possessions were reduced to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and a number of small islands in the Pacific, all of which she was to lose to the United States in the 1898 Spanish-American War or sell to Germany shortly thereafter.
Portugal and Brazil
Brazil was the only country in Latin America to gain its independence without bloodshed. The invasion of Portugal by Napoleon in 1808 had forced King João VI to escape to Brazil and establish his court in Rio de Janeiro. For thirteen years, Portugal was ruled from Brazil (the only instance of such a reversal of roles between colony and metropole) until his return to Portugal in 1821. His son, Dom Pedro, was left in charge of Brazil and in 1822 he declared independence from Portugal and himself the Emperor of Brazil. Unlike Spain's former colonies which had abandoned the monarchy in favour of republicanism, Brazil therefore retained its links with its monarchy, the House of Braganza.
India
Main article: Colonial IndiaVasco da Gama's maritime success to discover for Europeans a new sea route to India in 1498 paved the way for direct Indo-European commerce.[1] The Portuguese soon set up trading-posts in Goa, Daman, Diu and Bombay. The next to arrive were the Dutch, the British—who set up a trading-post in the west-coast port of Surat[2] in 1619—and the French. The internal conflicts among Indian Kingdoms gave opportunities to the European traders to gradually establish political influence and appropriate lands. Although these continental European powers were to control various regions of southern and eastern India during the ensuing century, they would eventually lose all their territories in India to the British islanders, with the exception of the French outposts of Pondicherry and Chandernagore, the Dutch port of Travancore, and the Portuguese colonies of Goa, Daman, and Diu.
The British Raj
Main article: British Raj The British Raj in 1860The British East India Company had been given permission by the Mughal emperor Jahangir in 1617 to trade in India.[3] Gradually their increasing influence led the de-jure Mughal emperor Farrukh Siyar to grant them dastaks or permits for duty free trade in Bengal in 1717.[4] The Nawab of Bengal Siraj Ud Daulah, the de facto ruler of the Bengal province, opposed British attempts to use these permits. This led to the Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the 'army' of East India Company, led by Robert Clive, defeated the Nawab's forces. This was the first political foothold with territorial implications that the British acquired in India. Clive was appointed by the Company as its first 'Governor of Bengal' in 1757.[5] This was combined with British victories over the French at Madras, Wandiwash and Pondicherry that, along with wider British successes during the Seven Years War, reduced French influence in India. After the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the Company acquired the civil rights of administration in Bengal from the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II; it marked the beginning of its formal rule, which was to engulf eventually most of India and extinguish the Moghul rule and dynasty itself in a century.[6] The East India Company monopolized the trade of Bengal. They introduced a land taxation system called the Permanent Settlement which introduced a feudal-like structure (See Zamindar) in Bengal. By the 1850s, the East India Company controlled most of the Indian sub-continent, which included present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. Their policy was sometimes summed up as Divide and Rule, taking advantage of the enmity festering between various princely states and social and religious groups.
The first major movement against the British Company's high handed rule resulted in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the "Indian Mutiny" or "Sepoy Mutiny" or the "First War of Independence". After a year of turmoil, and reinforcement of the East India Company's troops with British soldiers, the Company overcame the rebellion. The nominal leader of the uprising, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, was exiled to Burma, his children were beheaded and the Moghul line abolished. In the aftermath all power was transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown, which began to administer most of India as a colony; the Company's lands were controlled directly and the rest through the rulers of what it called the Princely states. There were 565 princely states when the Indian subcontinent gained independence from Britain in August 1947.[7]
During the British Raj, famines in India, often attributed to failed government policies, were some of the worst ever recorded, including the Great Famine of 1876–78, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died[8] and the Indian famine of 1899–1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people died.[8] The Third Plague Pandemic started in China in the middle of the 19th century, spreading plague to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone.[9] Despite persistent diseases and famines, however, the population of the Indian subcontinent, which stood at about 125 million in 1750, had reached 389 million by 1941.[10]
New Imperialism (1870–1914)
Main article: The Second European colonization wave (19th-20th century) Empires of the world in 1910The policy and ideology of European colonial expansion between the 1870s and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 are often characterised as the "New Imperialism". The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's sake", aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in colonising countries of doctrines of racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government.
During this period, Europe's powers added nearly 8,880,000 square miles (23,000,000 km²) to their overseas colonial possessions. As it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s, Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion (known as The Scramble for Africa), although conquest took place also in other areas — notably south-east Asia and the East Asian seaboard, where Japan joined the European powers' scramble for territory.
The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) mediated the imperial competition among Britain, France and Germany, defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of colonial claims and codifying the imposition of direct rule, accomplished usually through armed force.
A decade later, rival imperialisms would collide in the 1898 Fashoda Incident, during which war between France and Britain was barely avoided. This fear led to new alliances, and in 1904 the Entente Cordiale was signed between both powers. Imperialistic rivalry between the European powers was a main cause of the triggering of World War I in 1914.
In Germany, rising pan-germanism was coupled to imperialism in the Alldeutsche Verband ("Pangermanic League"), which argued that Britain's world power position gave the British unfair advantages on international markets, thus limiting Germany's economic growth and threatening its security.
The scramble for Africa
European territories in Africa, 1914, following the Scramble for Africa. Main article: Scramble for AfricaMany European statesmen and industrialists wanted to accelerate the Scramble for Africa, securing colonies before they strictly needed them. The champion of Realpolitik, Bismarck thus pushed a Weltpolitik vision ("World Politic"), which considered the colonization as a necessity for the emerging German power. German colonies in Togoland, Samoa, South-West Africa and New Guinea had corporate commercial roots, while the equivalent German-dominated areas in East Africa and China owed more to political motives. The British also took an interest in Africa, using the East Africa company to take over Kenya and Uganda. The British crown formally took over in 1895 and renamed the area the East Africa Protectorate.
Leopold II of Belgium personally owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, while the Dutch had the Dutch East Indies.
In the same manner, Italy tried to conquer its "place in the sun", acquiring Somaliland in 1899-90, Eritrea and 1899, and, taking advantage of the "Sick man of Europe", the Ottoman Empire, also conquered Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Libya) with the 1911 Treaty of Lausanne. The conquest of Ethiopia, which had remained the last African independent territory, had to wait till the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1935–36 (the First Italo–Ethiopian War in 1895–96 had been a disaster for Italian troops).
The Portuguese and Spanish colonial empire were smaller, mostly legacies of past colonization. Most of their colonies had acquired independence during the Latin American revolutions at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Imperialism in Asia
Main article: Imperialism in AsiaIn Asia, the Great Game, which lasted from 1813 to 1907, opposed the British Empire against Imperial Russia for supremacy in central Asia. China was opened to Western influence starting with the First and Second Opium Wars (1839–1842; 1856–1860). After the visits of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1852–1854, Japan opened itself to the Western world during the Meiji Era (1868–1912).
The above basically concerns India and China.
But other or the same forms of Imperialism, that should not be overlooked, were in action in Burma, Indonesia (Netherlands East Indies), Malaya and the Philippines.
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Inter-War Period (1918–1939)
Further information: Aftermath of World War I and League of Nations MandateThe colonial map was redrawn following the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire after the first World War (1914–18). Colonies from the defeated empires were transferred to the newly founded League of Nations, which itself redistributed it to the victorious powers as "mandates".
The secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement partitioned the Middle East between Britain and France, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration promised to the international Zionist movement their support in creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, later to become the state of Israel. French mandates included Syria and Lebanon, whilst the British were handed Iraq and Palestine. The bulk of the Arabian peninsula became the independent Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1922. The discovery of the world's largest easily accessible crude oil deposits led to an influx of Western oil companies that dominated the region's economies until the 1970s, and making the emirs of the oil states immensely rich, enabling them to consolidate their hold on power and giving them a stake in preserving Western hegemony over the region.
During the 1920 and 1930s Iraq, Syria and Egypt moved towards independence, although the British and French did not formally depart the region until they were forced to do so after World War II.
Japanese imperialism
Main articles: Japanese imperialism and Imperialism in AsiaAfter being closed for centuries to Western influence, Japan opened itself to the West during the Meiji Era (1868–1912), characterized by swift modernization and borrowings from European culture (in law, science, etc.) This, in turn, helped make Japan the modern power that it is now, which was symbolized as soon as the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War: this war marked the first victory of an Asian people against a European imperial power, and led to widespread fears among European populations (first appearance of the "Yellow Peril"). During the first part of the twentieth century, while China was still victim of various European imperialisms, Japan became an imperialist power, conquering what it called a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".
Japan's encroachment on Korea began with the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa with the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, increased with the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong and the 1905 Eulsa Treaty, and was completed with the illicit 1910 Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty. In 1910, Korea was formally annexed to the Japanese Empire. The Japanese colonization of Korea was particularly brutal, even by twentieth century standards. This brutal colonization included the use of Korean "comfort women" who were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese Army brothels.
In 1931 Japanese army units based in Manchuria seized control of the region; full-scale war with China followed in 1937, drawing Japan toward an overambitious bid for Asian hegemony (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere), which ultimately led to defeat and the loss of all its overseas territories after World War II (see Japanese expansionism and Japanese nationalism). As in Korea, the Japanese treatment of the Chinese people was particularly brutal as exemplified by the Nanjing Massacre.
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Decolonization (1945–97)
Dates of independence of African countries. Main article: DecolonizationAnticolonialist movements had begun to gain momentum after the close of World War I, which had seen colonial troops fight alongside those of the metropole, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's speech on the Fourteen Points. However, it was not until the end of World War II that they fully mobilised. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 Atlantic Charter declared that the signatories would "respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live". Though Churchill subsequently claimed this applied only to those countries under Nazi occupation, rather than the British Empire, the words were not so easily retracted: for example, the legislative assembly of Britain's most important colony, India, passed a resolution stating that the Charter should apply to it too.
To nationalist movements, it was hypocritical and morally indefensible for colonial governments to expect their colonies to fight side by side with them in a struggle against the racist ideologies of Nazism and fascism, yet at the same time expect to return to the white supremacy of the status ante bellum, once hostilities had ceased. Moreover, Roosevelt and the American public were firmly of the mind that they were not, as Life magazine put it in 1942, "fighting ... to hold the British Empire together".
In 1945, the United Nations (UN) was founded when 50 nations signed the UN Charter, which included a statement of its basis in the respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. In 1952, demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term "Third World" in reference to the French Third Estate. The expression distinguished nations that aligned themselves with neither the West nor with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. In the following decades, decolonization would strengthen this group which began to be represented at the United Nations. The Third World's first international move was the 1955 Bandung Conference, led by Nehru for India, Nasser for Egypt and Tito for Yugoslavia. The Conference, which gathered 29 countries representing over half the world's population, led to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.
Although the U.S. had first opposed itself to colonial powers, in particular during the 1956 Suez crisis between Egypt, France, the UK and Israel, the Cold War concerns about Soviet influence in the Third World caused it to downplay its advocacy of popular sovereignty and decolonization. France thus had a free hand in the First Indochina War (1946–54) and in the Algerian war of independence (1954–62), where torture techniques were heavily employed (the Algerian war would become a military model of counter-insurgency tactics, and has been studied ever since in military schools through-out the world). Furthermore, attempts such as Mossadegh's nationalisation of the petroil in Iran were blocked by the U.S., who supported a coup in 1953 order to impose the Shah (the covert operation was named Operation Ajax). The next year, when Guatemala's president Arbenz tried to nationalise the United Fruit, the CIA overthrew him and replaced him by a military junta in Operation PBSuccess.
In spite of these interferences in other states, decolonization itself was a seemingly unstoppable process. In 1960, after several wars of national liberation, the UN had reached 99 members states: the decolonization of Africa was almost complete. In 1980, the UN had 154 member states, and in 1990, after Namibia's independence, 159 states[11] But what could be seen retrospectively as a gigantic and quiet wave representing the Zeitgeist ("Spirit of Times") overthrowing the domination of European colonialist powers was in fact the product of the struggle of the colonized people, whom many paid it with their lives.
In effect, although the anticolonialist struggle didn't lead in all cases to wars such as the Algerian War (1954–62), it was nevertheless bloody. Many anticolonialist leaders were assassinated in more or less obscure circumstances in the 1960s, whether by foreign powers or internal enemies, sometimes supported by foreign powers who more or less openly supported dictatorships (for example, France and its ties with the Françafrique). The most famous names shouldn't dissimulate others less-known leaders, but a quick enumeration of slain anti-imperialist leaders would include Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo assassinated in 1961; Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of Togo, assassinated in 1963 (quickly replaced by Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who would rule Togo until his death in 2005); Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Moroccan opposition, whom was preparing the Tricontinental Conference which was supposed to gather in La Habana in 1966 national liberation movements (not states) from all continents in order to organize the anti-imperialist struggle (kidnapped in Paris); Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of the Mozambiquan FRELIMO, allegedly assassinated by Aginter Press, the Portuguese branch of Gladio[12] — NATO's anti-communist paramilitary organization during the Cold War — Amilcar Cabral, Oscar Romero, the prelate archbishop of San Salvador and a proponent of Liberation Theology, or Dulcie September, African National Congress (ANC) activist murdered in Paris in 1988.[13]
Role of the USSR and China
The Soviet Union was a main supporter of decolonization movements. While the Non-Aligned Movement, created in 1961 following the Bandung 1955 Conference, was supposedly neutral, the "Third World" being opposed to both the "First" and the "Second" Worlds, geopolitical concerns, as well as the refusal of the U.S. to support decolonization movements against its NATO European allies, led the national liberation movements to look increasingly toward the East. However, China's appearance on the world scene, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, created a rupture between the Soviet Union and independentists movements. Globally, the non-aligned movement, led by Nehru (India), Tito (Yugoslavia) and Nasser (Egypt) tried to create a block of nations powerful enough to be dependent on neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union, but finally tilted towards the U.S.S.R, while smaller liberation movements, both by strategic necessity and ideological choice, were supported either by Moscow or by Peking. The Cuban government, led by Fidel Castro after the Cuban revolution of 1959, was at first neutral before turning itself towards Moscow. Cuba also sponsored liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique. Few liberation movements were totally independent from foreign aid.
Soviet imperialism
Main article: Soviet Empire Administrative regions of the Soviet UnionThe USSR, which had grafted onto the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic several countries that had had short-lived independence (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the lands of Central Asia), never reconciled itself to having lost West Ukraine, West Belarus, Bessarabia, and the three Baltic states (territories which formerly belonged to the Russian Empire) in the course of 1919–21. Thus they aimed to annex these territories as well as to obtain a buffer zone from Finland in 1939–40 (see Winter War). After the Soviet invasion of Poland following the corresponding German invasion that marked the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviet Union annexed eastern parts (so-called "Kresy") of the Second Polish Republic (see Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). In 1940 the Soviet Union annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (see Occupation of Baltic states), Bessarabia and Bukovina.[14]
The Soviet Union emerged from World War II as one of the two major world powers, a position maintained for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe. Claiming to be Leninist, the USSR proclaimed itself foremost enemy of imperialism, supporting armed, national independence or anti-Western movements in the Third World[15][16][17] while simultaneously dominating Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Marxists and Maoists to the left of Trotsky, such as Tony Cliff, claim the Soviet Union was imperialist. Maoists claim it occurred after Khrushchev's ascension in 1956; Cliff says it occurred under Stalin in the 1940s.[18] During the Cold War, the term Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc) was used to refer to the Soviet Union and countries it controlled in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania).[19][20][21]
References
- ^ "Vasco da Gama: Round Africa to India, 1497–1498 CE". Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Paul Halsall. June 1998. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1497degama.html. Retrieved 7 May 2007. From: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. V: 9th to 16th Centuries, pp. 26–40.
- ^ "Indian History – Important events: History of India. An overview". History of India. Indianchild.com. http://www.indianchild.com/history_of_india.htm. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
- ^ "The Great Moghul Jahangir: Letter to James I, King of England, 1617 A.D.". Indian History Sourcebook: England, India, and The East Indies, 1617 CE. Internet Indian History Sourcebook, Paul Halsall. June 1998. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/india/1617englandindies.html. Retrieved 7 May 2007. From: James Harvey Robinson, ed., Readings in European History, 2 Vols. (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1904–1906), Vol. II: From the opening of the Protestant Revolt to the Present Day, pp. 333–335.
- ^ "KOLKATA (CALCUTTA) : HISTORY". Calcuttaweb.com. http://www.calcuttaweb.com/history.shtml. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
- ^ Rickard, J. (1 November 2000). "Robert Clive, Baron Clive, 'Clive of India', 1725–1774". Military History Encyclopedia on the Web. historyofwar.org. http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/people_cliveofindia.html. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
- ^ Prakash, Om. "The Transformation from a Pre-Colonial to a Colonial Order: The Case of India" (PDF). Global Economic History Network. Economic History Department, London School of Economics. pp. 3–40. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHN%20PDF/Transformation%20from%20a%20Pre-Colonial%20-%20Om%20Prakash.pdf. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
- ^ Kashmir: The origins of the dispute, BBC News, 16 January 2002
- ^ a b Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts. 1. Verso, 2000. ISBN 1859847390 pg 7
- ^ Plague. World Health Organization.
- ^ Reintegrating India with the World Economy. Peterson Institute for International Economics.
- ^ "Growth in United Nations Membership, 1945–2005". United Nations. 2000. http://www.un.org/Overview/growth.htm. Retrieved 2006.
- ^ See ISN Zurich Institute hosted by ETH Zurich University
- ^ See Assassinated anticolonialist leaders subsection in the Decolonization article for a more complete list
- ^ Memories of Soviet Repression Still Vivid in Baltics, Washington Post, 7 May 2005
- ^ Soviet Union – Central and South America
- ^ Profile: Mengistu Haile Mariam, BBC
- ^ Afghanistan War, Columbia Encyclopedia
- ^ Soviet imperialism
- ^ The 1956 Hungarian Revolution
- ^ The Historical Setting: The Polish People's Republic
- ^ The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia and the crushing of the Prague Spring
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Categories: History of colonialism | Colonialism
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Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:20:27 GMT+00:00
Presseurop (blog) According to De Standaard, the commonly accepted analysis is that colonialism destroyed the country's indigenous political structures. ... Belgium revisits the scene of its colonial shame Independent Brutal colonial past colours Belgian king's DRC visit RFI
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to Great Britain for the cutting of logwood Originally printed for William Faden Geographer to the King South America 1786 Catalogue reference CO 700 britishhonduras12 1
dawn
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:21:14 GM
If Canada has no . history of colonialism. , then what else would explain that Canada along with other settler states such as Australia have yet to sign the Declaration? Other than the glaring and painful reality of colonization, ...
Q. It is my history homework please help
Asked by Anjel - Sun Oct 19 02:23:37 2008 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. i dont know if this will help but can we get a little more background
Answered by I love my baby boy!! - Sun Oct 19 02:44:17 2008
