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What Is Colonialism? Definition and Examples

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Colonialism is the practice of one country taking full or partial political control of another country and occupying it with settlers to profit from its resources and economy. Colonialism can be hard to distinguish from imperialism since both practices involve political and economic control of a dominant country over a vulnerable territory.

From ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century, powerful countries openly scrambled to expand their influence through colonialism . By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, European powers had colonized countries on virtually every continent. While colonialism is no longer so aggressively practiced, there is evidence that it remains a force.

Key Takeaways: Colonialism

Colonialism is the process of a country taking full or partial political control of a dependent country, territory, or people.
Colonialism occurs when people from one country settle in another country to exploit its people and natural resources.
Colonial powers typically attempt to impose their languages and cultures on the indigenous people of the countries they colonize.
Colonialism is similar to imperialism, the process of using force and influence to control another country or people.
By 1914, a majority of the world’s countries had been colonized by Europeans.

Colonialism Definition

In essence, colonialism is an act of political and economic domination involving the control of a country and its people by settlers from a foreign power . In most cases, the goal of the colonizing countries is to profit by exploiting the human and economic resources of the countries they colonized. In the process, the colonizers—sometimes forcibly—attempt to impose their religion , language , cultural , and political practices on the indigenous population .

While colonization is typically viewed negatively due to its often disastrous history and similarity to imperialism, some countries have benefited from having been colonized. For example, leaders of modern Singapore—a British colony from 1826 to 1965—credit the “valuable aspects of colonial heritage” with the independent city-state’s impressive economic development . In many cases, colonization gave underdeveloped or emerging countries immediate access to the burdening European trade market . As the major European nations’ need for natural resources grew ever greater during the Industrial Revolution , their colonized countries could sell those materials for substantial profits.

Especially for many of the European, African , and Asian countries affected by British colonialism, the advantages were numerous. Besides lucrative trade contracts, English institutions, such as common law, private property rights , and formal banking and lending practices provided the colonies with a positive basis for economic growth that would propel them to future independence.

In many cases, however, the negative effects of colonialism far outweighed the positive.

The governments of the occupying countries often imposed harsh new laws and taxes on the indigenous people. Confiscation and destruction of native lands and culture were common. Due to the combined effects of colonialism and imperialism, scores of indigenous people were enslaved, murdered, or died of disease and starvation . Countless others were driven from their homes and scattered across the globe.

For example, many members of the African diaspora in the United States trace their roots to the so-called “ Scramble for Africa ,” an unprecedented period of imperialism and colonialism from 1880 to 1900 that left most of the African continent colonized by European powers. It is believed that only two African countries, Ethiopia and Liberia , escaped European colonialism .

Imperialism vs. Colonialism

While the two terms are often used interchangeably, colonialism and imperialism have slightly different meanings. While colonialism is the physical act of dominating another country, imperialism is the political ideology that drives that act. In other words, colonialism can be thought of as a tool of imperialism.

Imperialism and colonialism both imply the suppression of one country by another. Similarly, through colonialism and imperialism, the aggressor countries look to profit economically and create a strategic military advantage in the region. However, unlike colonialism, which always involves the direct establishment of physical settlements in another country, imperialism refers to the direct or indirect political and monetary dominance of another country, either with or without the need for a physical presence.

Countries that undertake colonialism do so mainly to benefit economically from the exploitation of the valuable natural and human resources of the colonized country. In contrast, countries pursue imperialism in hopes of creating sprawling empires by extending their political, economic, and military dominance over entire regions if not entire continents.

A few examples of countries generally considered to have been affected by colonialism during their histories include America , Australia , New Zealand , Algeria , and Brazil —countries that came to be controlled by a large number of settlers from European powers. Typical examples of imperialism, cases in which foreign control is established without any significant settlement, include the European dominance of most African countries in the late 1800s and the domination of the Philippines and Puerto Rico by the United States.

History of Colonialism

The practice of colonialism dates to around 1550 BCE when Ancient Greece , Ancient Rome , Ancient Egypt , and Phoenicia began extending their control into adjacent and non-contiguous territories. Using their superior military power, these ancient civilizations established colonies that used the skills and resources of the people they conquered, expanding their empires.

The first phase of modern colonialism began in the 15th century during the Age of Exploration . Looking for new trading routes and civilizations beyond Europe, Portuguese explorers conquered the North African territory of Ceuta in 1419, creating an empire that would endure until 1999 as the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires .

After Portugal grew its empire by colonizing the populated central Atlantic islands of Madeira and Cape Verde, its arch-rival Spain decided to try its hand at exploration. In 1492, Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus sailed searching for a western sea route to China and India . Instead, he landed in the Bahamas , marking the beginning of Spanish colonialism. Now battling each other for new territories to exploit, Spain and Portugal went on to colonize and control indigenous lands in the Americas, India, Africa , and Asia.

Colonialism flourished during the 17th century with the establishment of the French and Dutch empires and the English overseas possessions—including the colonial United States —which would later become the sprawling British Empire. Spanning the globe to cover nearly 25% of the Earth’s surface at the peak of its power in the early 1900s, the British Empire was justifiably known as “the empire on which the sun never sets.”

The end of the American Revolution in 1783 marked the beginning of the first era of decolonization during which most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence. Spain and Portugal were permanently weakened by losing their New World colonies. Great Britain, France , the Netherlands , and Germany made the Old World countries of South Africa , India, and Southeast Asia the targets of their colonial efforts.

Between the opening of the Suez Canal and the Second Industrial Revolution in the late 1870s and the start of World War I in 1914, European colonialism became known as “New Imperialism.” In the name of what was termed “empire for empire’s sake,” the Western European powers, the United States, Russia, and Japan competed to acquire vast areas of overseas territory. In many cases, this new hyper-aggressive brand of imperialism resulted in the colonization of countries in which the subjugated majority indigenous populations were denied basic human rights through the enforcement of doctrines of racial superiority such as the White minority-ruled system of apartheid in British-controlled South Africa .

A final period of decolonization began after World War I, when the League of Nations divided the German colonial empire among the victorious allied powers of Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania , Japan, and the United States. Influenced by the famous 1918 Fourteen Points speech by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson , the League mandated that the former German possessions be made independent as soon as possible. During this period, the Russian and Austrian colonial empires also collapsed.

Decolonization sped ahead after the end of World War II in 1945. The defeat of Japan spelled the end of the Japanese colonial empire in the Western Pacific and East Asian countries. It also showed still subjugated indigenous people around the world that colonial powers were not invincible. As a result, all remaining colonial empires were greatly weakened.

During the Cold War , global independence movements such as the United Nations ’ 1961 Non-Aligned Movement led to successful wars for independence from colonial rule in Vietnam , Indonesia , Algeria, and Kenya . Pressured by the United States and the then-Soviet Union, the European powers accepted the inevitability of decolonization.

Types of Colonialism

Colonialism is generally classified into one of five overlapping types according to the practice’s particular goals and consequences on the subjugated territory and its indigenous peoples. These are settler colonialism; exploitation colonialism; plantation colonialism; surrogate colonialism; and internal colonialism.

The most common form of colonial conquest, settler colonialism describes the migration of large groups of people from one country to another country to build permanent, self-supporting settlements. Remaining legal subjects of their native country, the colonists harvested natural resources and attempted to either drive the indigenous peoples away or force them to assimilate peacefully into colonial life. Typically supported by wealthy imperialistic governments, settlements created by settler colonialism tended to last indefinitely, except in rare cases of total depopulation caused by famine or disease.

The mass migration of Dutch, German, and French settlers— the Afrikaners —to South Africa and the British colonialism of America are classic examples of settler colonialism.

In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established an outpost in South Africa near the Cape of Good Hope. These early Dutch settlers were soon joined by French Protestants, German mercenaries, and other Europeans. Despite having been associated with the oppressive atrocities of White apartheid rule, millions of Afrikaners remain a vital presence in a multiethnic South Africa after four centuries.

The systematic European colonization of the Americas began in 1492, when Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing for the Far East inadvertently landed in the Bahamas, declaring he had discovered the “New World.” During the subsequent Spanish explorations, repeated efforts were made to either exterminate or enslave the indigenous population. The first permanent British colony in what is now the United States, Jamestown , Virginia, was established in 1607. By the 1680s, the promise of religious freedom and cheap farmland had brought scores of British, German, and Swiss colonists to New England.

The early European settlers shunned the indigenous people, viewing them as threatening savages incapable of being assimilated into colonial society. As more European colonial powers arrived, avoidance turned to outright subjugation and enslavement of the indigenous population. The Native Americans were also vulnerable to new diseases, like smallpox , brought by the Europeans. By some estimates, as much as 90% of the Native American population was killed by disease during the early colonial period.

Exploitation

Exploitation colonialism describes the use of force to control another country to exploit its population as labor and its natural resources as raw material. In undertaking exploitation colonialism, the colonial power sought only to increase its wealth by using the indigenous people as low-cost labor. In contrast to settler colonialism, exploitation colonialism required fewer colonists to emigrate, since the indigenous people could be allowed to remain in place—especially if they were to be enslaved as laborers in service to the motherland.

Historically, countries settled through settler colonialism, such as the United States, experienced far better post-colonial outcomes than those who experienced exploitation colonialism, such as the Congo .

Potentially one of the richest countries in the world, years of exploitation and colonialism have turned the Congo into one of the poorest and least stable. In the 1870s, Belgium’s infamous King Leopold II ordered the colonization of the Congo. The effects were and continue to be devastating. While Belgium, and Leopold personally, realized a vast fortune from exploiting the country’s ivory and rubber, millions of the Congo's indigenous people starved to death, died of disease, or were executed for failing to meet work quotas. Despite gaining its independence from Belgium in 1960, the Congo remains largely impoverished and consumed by bloody internal ethnic wars .

Plantation colonialism was an early method of colonization in which settlers undertook the mass production of a single crop, such as cotton, tobacco , coffee, or sugar. In many cases, an underlying purpose of the plantation colonies was to impose Western culture and religion on nearby indigenous peoples, as in the early East Coast American colonies like the lost colony of Roanoke . Established in 1620, the Plymouth Colony plantation in what is today Massachusetts served as a sanctuary for English religious dissenters known as the Puritans . Later North American plantation colonies, such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Dutch Connecticut Colony , were more openly entrepreneurial, as their European backers demanded better returns on their investments.

An example of a successful plantation colony, Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British colony in North America, was shipping over 20 thousand tons of tobacco per year back to England by the end of the 17th century. The South Carolina and Georgia colonies enjoyed similar financial success from the production of cotton.

In surrogate colonialism, a foreign power encourages and supports, either openly or covertly, the settlement of a non-native group on territory occupied by an indigenous population. Support for surrogate colonialism projects might come in the form of any combination of diplomacy, financial aid, humanitarian materials, or arms.

Many anthropologists consider the Zionist Jewish settlement inside the Islamic Middle Eastern state of Palestine to be an example of surrogate colonialism because it was established with the urging and assistance of the ruling British Empire. Colonization was a key factor in negotiations that resulted in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which facilitated and legitimized the still-controversial Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Internal colonialism describes the oppression or exploitation of one racial or ethnic group by another within the same country. In contrast to traditional types of colonialism, the source of the exploitation in internal colonialism comes from within the country rather than from a foreign power.

The term internal colonialism is often used to explain the discriminatory treatment of Mexicans in the United States after the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. As a result of the war, many Mexicans who had been living in what is now the southwestern United States became subjects of the U.S. government, but without the rights and freedoms associated with U.S. citizenship. Viewing these people as having been effectively “colonized” by the United States, many scholars and historians use the term internal colonialism to describe the ongoing unequal economic and social treatment of Chicanx peoples in the United States through a de-facto system of subordination.

Does Colonialism Exist Today?

Though the traditional practice of colonialism has ended, over 2 million people in 17 “ non-self-governing territories ,” scattered around the globe continue to live under virtual colonial rule, according to the United Nations . Rather than being self-governed, the indigenous populations of these 17 areas remain under the protection and authority of former colonial powers, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.

For example, the Turks and Caicos Islands is a British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean midway between the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic . In 2009, the British government suspended the Islands’ 1976 constitution in response to reports of widespread corruption in the territory. Parliament imposed direct rule over the democratically elected local governments and removed the constitutional right to trial by jury. The territorial government was disbanded and its elected premier was replaced by a British-appointed governor.

While British authorities defended the action as essential to restoring honest government in the territory, the deposed former premier called it a coup d’etat that put Britain “on the wrong side of history.”

The years following World War II saw the rise of “neocolonialism,” a term describing the post-colonial practice of using globalization , economics, and the promise of financial aid to gain political influence in less-developed countries instead of the traditional methods of colonialism. Also referred to as “nation building,” neocolonialism resulted in colonial-like exploitation in regions like Latin America, where direct foreign colonial rule had ended. For example, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was criticized for practicing neocolonialism in the 1986 Iran-Contra affair involving the illegal sale of U.S. arms to Iran to secretly fund the Contras, a group of rebels fighting to overthrow the Marxist government of Nicaragua .

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that the true eradication of colonialism remains an “unfinished process,” that has been with the global community for too long.

Sources and Reference

Veracini, Lorenzo. “Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-28490-6.
Hoffman, Philip T. “Why Did Europe Conquer the World?” Princeton University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4008-6584-0.
Tignor, Roger. “Preface to Colonialism: a theoretical overview.” Markus Weiner Publishers, 2005, ISBN 978-1-55876-340-1.
Rodney, Walter. “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” East African Publishers, 1972, ISBN 978-9966-25-113-8.
Vasagar, Jeevan. “Can colonialism have benefits? Look at Singapore.” The Guardian , January 4, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/colonialism-work-singapore-postcolonial-british-empire.
Libecap, Gary D. “The Bright Side of British Colonialism.” Hoover Institution , January 19, 2012, https://www.hoover.org/research/bright-side-british-colonialism.
Atran, Scott. “The Surrogate Colonization of Palestine 1917–1939.” American Ethnologist , 1989, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5090131_the_surrogate_colonization_of_Palestine_1917-1939.
Fincher, Christina. “Britain suspends Turks and Caicos government.” Reuters, August 14, 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-turkscaicos/britain-suspends-turks-and-caicos-government-idUSTRE57D3TE20090814.
“International Decades for the Eradication of Colonialism.” The United Nations , https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/history/international-decades
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Essay on Colonialism: Samples for Students in English

Updated on
November 26, 2024

Essay on Colonialism: Colonialism stands as a pivotal chapter in human history, where powerful nations ventured into distant lands, subjugating native populations and establishing dominion over vast territories. It’s a complex phenomenon that shaped societies, economies, and cultures around the world.

Colonialism involved the conquest, control, and exploitation of foreign lands and their inhabitants by dominant imperial powers. This period witnessed the imposition of foreign rule, cultural assimilation, economic exploitation, and the displacement of indigenous populations. The consequences of colonialism reverberate to this day, impacting politics, economies, and identities.

Table of Contents

1 Colonialism Definition
2 Different Types of Colonialism
3 Essay on Colonialism in 100 Words
4 Essay on Colonialism in 250 Words
5.1 What is Colonialism?
5.2 Impact of Colonialism
5.3 Resistance to Colonialism
5.4 Legacy of Colonialism
5.5 Conclusion
5.6 Colonialism in India

Colonialism Definition

The term “Colonialism” is derived from the Latin word “ colōnia” which means “a place for agriculture”. The policy of extending control over the weak areas as well as the people is known as colonialism. multiple civilisations have used the policy of colonialism since ancient times, hence, it is used to refer to the European economic and political domination currently in different continents. The ones that began in the late 16th century and lasted till the early 1970s.

Different Types of Colonialism

There are basically four different types of colonialism. They are mentioned below:-

1- Settler Colonialism: In this type of colonialism there is grand-scale immigration along with religious as well as political factors being the prime motivators. As a result of this, there is a large portion of the existing local population that gets replaced. Example:- the erstwhile colonies of Australia, Canada, etc are examples of such colonialism.

2- Surrogate Colonialism:- This type of colonialism involves the settlement project that is supported by the colonial power. In this, the majority of the settlers are not from the same ethnic group as a ruling power. Examples: Rhodesia, South Africa.

3- Exploitation Colonialism:- The focus of this colonialism is on exploiting the resources as well as the local population as cheap labour, hence benefiting the economy of the country. Example: us of local labour in India and in South East Asia.

4- Internal Colonialism:- In this, there is an uneven or even structure of discriminative power between different areas of a state. This showed that exploitation and control, in a way, may pass from the whites of a colonising country to the white immigrant population within a newly independent country.

Essay on Colonialism in 100 Words

Colonialism, a historical phenomenon, involved dominant nations exerting control over foreign territories and their inhabitants. It often led to economic exploitation, cultural assimilation, and political dominance. European powers embarked on colonial ventures to extract resources and establish trade networks, reshaping indigenous societies.

Native cultures were frequently suppressed, resulting in lasting identity crises. The consequences of colonialism, such as uneven development, territorial conflicts, and cultural loss, continue to reverberate in modern times. Understanding this complex legacy is crucial for addressing its impact and striving for a more equitable global society.

Also Read: Colonialism and the City Class 8 Notes

Essay on Colonialism in 250 Words

Colonialism, driven by the pursuit of resources, power, and ideological dominance, unfolded in various forms. European powers colonized parts of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, reshaping indigenous societies through forceful integration or eradication of local traditions. Economic exploitation was rampant, with colonizers extracting valuable resources and establishing trade networks that benefited their home countries. This wealth accumulation, however, came at the expense of the colonized nations.

Colonialism’s economic impact was profound, as colonizers exploited resources and labour from their colonies to fuel their own growth and industrialization. The transatlantic slave trade stands as a grim testament to the inhumanity of this period, with millions of Africans forcibly transported to the Americas under deplorable conditions.

Politically, colonialism often redrew maps without regard for existing divisions, leaving behind states with unresolved ethnic and cultural tensions. Post-colonial nations still grapple with governance challenges and economic disparities, shaped by their colonial past.

Socially, colonialism often led to cultural homogenization, as Indigenous languages and traditions were suppressed in favour of the colonizer’s culture. This cultural imposition bred lasting consequences, including identity crises and generational trauma. Moreover, colonial powers often reshaped political structures, redrawing borders and installing puppet leaders, which later contributed to conflicts and instability in these regions.

In conclusion, colonialism’s legacy is complex and enduring. It brought about advancements and knowledge exchange, but also inflicted deep wounds on colonized societies. Understanding its historical context is crucial for addressing its ongoing impact and working towards a world marked by equality and understanding.

Also Read: Forest Society and Colonialism Class 9 – Study Notes

Essay on Colonialism in 500 Words

Colonialism is a key period in world history in which one country dominated another. It involves acquiring political, economic, and cultural authority over a region or country, which frequently has far-reaching and long-term consequences. While colonialism was primarily justified as a way of spreading civilisation, its consequences were frequently exploitative, oppressive, and damaging to the colonised nations.

What is Colonialism?

Colonialism originated in the 15th century, when European nations, driven by the pursuit of riches, resources, and strategic advantage, began to explore and conquer foreign territories. Countries such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands founded colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century encouraged colonial ambitions as European nations sought raw materials and customers for their products.

Colonialism was defined by economic exploitation, cultural imposition, and political domination. Colonisers extracted resources, established plantations, and built infrastructure primarily for their own benefit. They frequently suppressed native traditions, languages, and government systems, and replaced them with their own.

Impact of Colonialism

Below we have mentioned the impacts of colonialism.

Economic Exploitation : Colonisers exploited natural resources and inexpensive labour in colonised areas, resulting in economic dependency and underdevelopment. For example, the British colonisation of India turned its self-sufficient economy into one geared towards British businesses.
Cultural Erosion : Colonial powers imposed their culture, religion, and language, often erasing native customs and identities. This resulted in the loss of indigenous heritage and cultural uniformity, which continues to affect former colonies.
Political Control : Colonial administrations removed traditional governing institutions and replaced them with systems that benefited imperial interests. This often resulted in political instability after independence, as colonies tried to establish self-government.
Social Division : Many colonial powers used a “divide and rule” tactic, dividing populations along ethnic, religious, or geographical lines. These differences have caused lasting conflicts in a number of regions, including Africa and South Asia.
Infrastructure and Education : On the positive side, colonialism resulted in the construction of infrastructure such as trains, roads, and ports in various colonies. Education systems were also established, but they mostly serviced the demands of colonial powers.

Resistance to Colonialism

Despite its harsh nature, colonialism met opposition from the colonised people. Global independence movements evolved, led by visionaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Ho Chi Minh. These movements frequently included protests, revolutions, and negotiations, resulting in the fall of colonial empires after World War II.

The decolonisation of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean began in the mid-20th century. Newly independent countries had the difficulty of reconstructing their economy, establishing governance systems, and bridging the social divides caused by colonialism.

Legacy of Colonialism

The legacy of colonialism is deeply rooted in the modern world. Many former colonies continue to experience economic inequalities, political instability, and cultural issues originating from their colonial heritage. However, many countries have restored their identities, enjoying their traditions while working towards progress and global integration.

Colonialism profoundly influenced the contemporary world, leaving a complex record of exploitation, division, and growth. While it provided infrastructure and worldwide connections, the human and cultural consequences were huge. Understanding colonialism is essential for appreciating former colonies’ challenges and recognising the value of equality, respect, and collaboration in today’s interconnected globe.

Also Read: What is the Difference Between Governor-General and Viceroy?

Colonialism in India

Colonialism in India was a transformative period marked by the subjugation of the Indian subcontinent by European powers, primarily the British Empire. This era, spanning nearly two centuries, had profound impacts on India’s society, economy, culture, and politics.

The British East India Company, initially involved in trade, gradually extended its control over territories through military conquest and political manipulation. The exploitation of India’s resources, labor, and wealth became central to British economic interests. This economic colonization led to famines, economic disparities, and the impoverishment of many Indians.

The struggle for independence culminated in 1947 when India finally gained its freedom from British rule. However, the legacy of colonialism lingered, as partition led to violence and displacement along religious lines.

Colonialism in India left a lasting impact on every aspect of Indian society. It shaped the country’s trajectory, leaving behind scars of economic exploitation, cultural assimilation, and political manipulation. India’s journey towards independence and post-colonial development is a testament to the resilience and determination of its people to overcome the hardships of colonial rule.

In conclusion, colonialism’s complex legacy continues to influence our world today. Acknowledging its impact is essential for addressing its ongoing consequences and fostering a more equitable global society. It is a reminder of the need to promote understanding, justice, and cooperation among nations.

Aditi Gupta

A bachelors in Journalism and Mass Communication graduate, I am an enthusiastic writer. I love to write about impactful content which can help others. I love to binge watch and listen to music during my free time.

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Colonialism

Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is difficult to distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. Turning to the etymology of the two terms, however, provides some suggestion about how they differ. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus , meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the new arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium , meaning to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control.

The legitimacy of colonialism has been a longstanding concern for political and moral philosophers in the Western tradition. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas, political theorists have struggled with the difficulty of reconciling ideas about justice and natural law with the practice of European sovereignty over non-Western peoples. In the nineteenth century, the tension between liberal thought and colonial practice became particularly acute, as dominion of Europe over the rest of the world reached its zenith. Ironically, in the same period when most political philosophers began to defend the principles of universalism and equality, the same individuals still defended the legitimacy of colonialism and imperialism. One way of reconciling those apparently opposed principles was the argument known as the “civilizing mission,” which suggested that a temporary period of political dependence or tutelage was necessary in order for “uncivilized” societies to advance to the point where they were capable of sustaining liberal institutions and self-government.

The goal of this entry is to analyze the relationship between Western political theory and the project of colonialism. After providing a more thorough discussion of the concept of colonialism, the third and forth sections of the entry will address the question of how European thinkers justified, legitimize, and challenged political domination. The fifth section briefly discusses the Marxist tradition, including Marx's own defense of British colonialism in India and Lenin's anti-imperialist writings. The final section provides an introduction to contemporary “post-colonial theory.” This approach has been particularly influential in literary studies because it draws attention to the diverse ways that postcolonial subjectivities are constituted and resisted through discursive practices. The goal of the entry is to provide an overview of the vast and complex literature that explores the theoretical issues emerging out of the experience of European colonization.

1. Definition and Outline

2. Natural Law and the Age of Discovery

3. liberalism and empire, 4. marxism and leninism, 5. post-colonial theory, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. definition.

Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon. World history is full of examples of one society gradually expanding by incorporating adjacent territory and settling its people on newly conquered territory. The ancient Greeks set up colonies as did the Romans, the Moors, and the Ottomans, to name just a few of the most notorious examples. Colonialism, then, is not restricted to a specific time or place. Nevertheless, in the sixteenth century, colonialism changed decisively because of technological developments in navigation that began to connect more remote parts of the world. Fast sailing ships made it possible to reach distant ports while sustaining closer ties between the center and colonies. Thus, the modern European colonial project emerged when it became possible to move large numbers of people across the ocean and to maintain political sovereignty in spite of geographical dispersion. This entry uses the term colonialism to describe the process of European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia.

The difficulty of defining colonialism stems from the fact that the term is often used as a synonym for imperialism. Both colonialism and imperialism were forms of conquest that were expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically. The term colonialism is frequently used to describe the settlement of places such as North America, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, and Brazil that were controlled by a large population of permanent European residents. The term imperialism often describes cases in which a foreign government administers a territory without significant settlement; typical examples include the scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century and the American domination of the Philippines and Puerto Rico. The distinction between the two, however, is not entirely consistent in the literature. Some scholars distinguish between colonies for settlement and colonies for economic exploitation. Others use the term colonialism to describe dependencies that are directly governed by a foreign nation and contrast this with imperialism, which involves indirect forms of domination.

The confusion about the meaning of the term imperialism reflects the way that the concept has changed over time. Although the English word imperialism was not commonly used before the nineteenth century, Elizabethans already described the United Kingdom as “the British Empire.” As Britain began to acquire overseas dependencies, the concept of empire was employed more frequently. Thus, the traditional understanding of imperialism was a system of military domination and sovereignty over territories. The day to day work of government might be exercised indirectly through local assemblies or indigenous rulers who paid tribute but sovereignty rested with the British. The shift away from this traditional understanding of empire was influenced by the Leninist analysis of imperialism as a system oriented towards economic exploitation. According to Lenin, imperialism was the necessary and inevitable result of the logic of accumulation in late capitalism. Thus, for Lenin and subsequent Marxists, imperialism described a historical stage of capitalism rather than a trans-historical practice of political and military domination. The lasting impact of the Marxist approach is apparent in contemporary debates about American imperialism, a term which usually means American economic hegemony, regardless of whether such power is exercised directly or indirectly (Young 2001).

Given the difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use colonialism as a broad concept that refers to the project of European political domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that ended with the national liberation movements of the 1960s. Post-colonialism will be used to describe the political and theoretical struggles of societies that experienced the transition from political dependence to sovereignty. This entry will use imperialism as a broad term that refers to economic, military, political domination that is achieved without significant permanent European settlement.

The Spanish conquest of the Americas sparked a theological, political, and ethical debate about the legitimacy of using military force in order to acquire control over foreign lands. This debate took place within the framework of a religious discourse that legitimized military conquest as a way to facilitate the conversion and salvation of indigenous peoples. The idea of a “civilizing mission” was by no means the invention of the British in the nineteenth century. The Spanish conquistadores and colonists explicitly justified their activities in the Americas in terms of a religious mission to bring Christianity to the native peoples. The Crusades provided the initial impetus for developing a legal doctrine that rationalized the conquest and possession of infidel lands. Whereas the Crusades were initially framed as defensive wars to reclaim Christian lands that had been conquered by non-Christians, the resulting theoretical innovations played an important role in subsequent attempts to justify the conquest of the Americas. The core claim was that the “Petrine mandate” to care for the souls of Christ's human flock required Papal jurisdiction over temporal as well as spiritual matters, and this control extended to non-believers as well as believers.

Even the spread of Christianity, however, did not provide an unproblematic justification for the project of overseas conquest. The Spanish conquest of the Americas was taking place during a period of reform when humanist scholars within the Church were increasingly influenced by the natural law theories of theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas. According to Pope Innocent IV, war could not be waged against infidels and they could not be deprived of their property simply because of their non-belief. Under the influence of Thomism, Innocent IV concluded that force was legitimate only in cases where infidels violated natural law. Thus nonbelievers had legitimate dominion over themselves and their property, but this dominion was abrogated if they proved incapable of governing themselves according to principles that every reasonable being would recognize. The Spanish quickly concluded that the habits of the native Americans, from nakedness to unwillingness to labor to alleged cannibalism, clearly demonstrated their inability to recognize natural law. From this, they legitimized the widespread enslavement of the Indians as the only way of teaching them civilization and introducing them to Christianity.

Many of the Spanish missionaries sent to the New World, however, immediately noticed that the brutal exploitation of slave labor was widespread while any serious commitment to religious instruction was absent. Members of the Dominican order in particular noted the hypocrisy of enslaving the Indians because of their alleged barbarity while practicing a form of conquest, warfare, and slavery that reduced the indigenous population of Hispaniola from 250,000 to 15,000 in two decades of Spanish rule. Given the genocidal result of Spanish “civilization,” they began to question vocally the idea of a civilizing mission. Bartolomé de Las Casas and Franciscus de Victoria were two of the most influential critics of Spanish colonial practice. Victoria gave a series of lectures on Indian rights that applied Thomistic humanism to the practice of Spanish rule. He argued that all human beings share the capacity for rationality and have natural rights that stem from this capacity. From this premise, he deduced that the Papal decision to grant Spain title to the Americas was illegitimate. Unlike the position of Pope Innocent IV, Victoria argued that neither the Pope nor the Spaniards could subjugate the Indians in order to punish violations of natural law, such as fornication or adultery. He noted that the Pope has no right to make war on Christians and take their property simply because they are “fornicators or thieves.” If this were the case, then no European king's dominion would ever be safe. Furthermore, according to Victoria, the pope and Christian rulers acting on his mandate have even less right to enforce laws against unbelievers, because they are outside of the Christian community, which is the domain of Papal authority (Williams 1990).

Despite this strongly worded critique of the dominant modes of justifying Spanish conquest, Victoria concluded that the use of force in the New World was legitimate in cases when Indian communities violated the Law of Nations, a set of principles derivable from reason and therefore universally binding. At first it might sound contradictory that Victoria concluded that the Indians' supposed violation of the law of nature did not justify conquest but their violation of the Law of Nations, itself derived from natural law, did. Victoria emphasized that the Law of Nations is binding because “there exists clearly enough a consensus of the greater part of the whole world” (391) and because the principles benefit “the common good of all.” This distinction seems to rely on the assumption that other principles usually associated with natural law (such as the prohibitions on adultery and idolatry) only affect those who consent to the practices, whereas violations of the Law of Nations (e.g. prohibitions on peaceful travel and trade) have consequences for those who do not consent. Ultimately, Victoria's understanding of the Law of Nations led him to defend the practice of Spanish colonialism, even as he emphasized that the Spanish remedy of warfare should be limited to minimal measures required to attain the legitimate objectives of peaceful trade and missionary work. Within Victoria's critique of the legality and morality of Spanish colonialism was a rationalization for conquest, albeit a restrictive one.

The legitimacy of colonialism was also a topic of debate among French, German, and British philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, Smith and Diderot were critical of the barbarity of colonialism and challenged the idea that Europeans had the obligation to “civilize” the rest of the world. At first it might seem relatively obvious that Enlightenment thinkers would develop a critique of colonialism. The system of colonial domination, which involved some combination of slavery, quasi-feudal forced labor, or expropriation of property, is antithetical to the basic Enlightenment principle that each individual is capable of reason and self-government. The rise of anti-colonial political theory, however, required more than a universalistic ethic that recognized the shared humanity of all people. As suggested above, the universalism and humanism of Thomism proved to be a relatively weak basis for criticizing colonialism. Given the tension between the abstract universalism of natural law and the actual cultural practices of indigenous peoples, it was easy to interpret native difference as evidence for the violation of natural law. This in turn became a justification for exploitation.

Diderot was one of the most forceful critics of European colonization. In his Histoire des deux Indes , he challenged the view that indigenous people benefit from European civilization and argued that the European colonists are the uncivilized ones. He claimed that culture (“national character”) helps to inculcate morality and reinforces norms of respect, but these norms tend to dissipate when the individual is far from his country of origin. Colonial empires, he believed, frequently become the sites of extreme brutality because when the colonists were far away from legal institutions and informal sanctions, the habits of restraint fell away, exposing natural man's full instinct for violence (Muthu 2003).

In Book VIII of Histoire des deux Indes , Diderot also refutes the dominant justifications for European colonialism. Although he grants that it is legitimate to colonize an area that is not actually inhabited, he insists that foreign traders and explorers have no right of access to fully inhabited lands. This is important because the right to commerce (understood to encompass not only trade but also missionary work and exploration) was used as a justification for colonization by Spanish thinkers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Emblematic of this approach was Victoria's conclusion that an indigenous people could not exclude peaceful traders and missionaries without violating the Law of Nations. If the native peoples resisted these incursions, the Spanish could legitimately wage war and conquer their territory. Diderot specifically challenged this view, noting that the European traders have proven themselves “dangerous as guests.” (Muthu 2003: 75)

Before enlightenment thinkers could articulate a compelling critique of colonialism, they had to recognize the importance of culture and the possibility of cultural pluralism. The claim that all individuals are equally worthy of dignity and respect was a necessary but not sufficient basis for anti-imperialist thought. They also had to recognize that the tendency to develop diverse institutions, narratives, and aesthetic practices was an essential human capacity. The French term moeurs or what today would be called culture captures the idea that the humanity of human beings is expressed in the distinctive practices that they adopt as solutions to the challenges of existence.

The work of enlightenment anti-imperialists such as Diderot and Kant reflects their struggle with the tension between universalistic concepts such as human rights and the realities of cultural pluralism. The paradox of enlightenment anti-imperialism is that human dignity is understood to be rooted in the universal human capacity for reason. Yet when people engage in cultural practices that are unfamiliar or disturbing to the European observer, they appear irrational and thus undeserving of recognition and respect. Diderot's solution was to identify particularity as the universal human trait. In other words, he emphasized that human beings all share similar desires to create workable rules of conduct that allow particular ways of life to flourish without themselves creating harsh injustices and cruelties. (Muthu 2003: 77) There are infinite varieties of solutions to the challenges posed by human existence. Societies all need to find a way to balance individual egoism and sociability and to overcome the adversities that stem from the physical environment. From this perspective, culture itself, rather than rationality, is the universal human capacity.

Unlike many other eighteenth and nineteenth century political philosophers, Diderot did not assume that non-Western societies were necessarily primitive (e.g. lacking political and social organization) nor did he assume that more complex forms of social organization were necessarily superior. One of the key issues that distinguished critics from proponents of colonialism and imperialism was their view of the relationship between culture, history and progress. Most of the influential philosophers writing in France and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had assimilated some version of the developmental approach to history that was associated with the Scottish Enlightenment. While the Scots quite consciously took their lead from Montesquieu, they went on to develop a unique and profoundly influential eighteenth-century historical narrative known as the four-stages thesis. In that story, all societies were imagined as naturally moving from hunting, to herding, to farming, to commerce, a developmental process that simultaneously tracked a cultural arc from “savagery,” through “barbarism,” to “civilization.” This meant that for the Scots, “civilization” was not just a marker of material improvement, but also a normative judgment about the moral progress of society. The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers were central to the creation of an historical imaginary that described a civilizing process, one marked most significantly by increasing refinement in modes of social interaction, which they saw as tied to the advent of commercial society. This, in turn, produced a historical narrative, which celebrated the emergence of a shared Western civilization based on the emergence of wealth and commerce (Kohn and O'Neill 2006)

The language of civilization, savagery, and barbarism is pervasive in writers as diverse of Edmund Burke, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill. It would therefore be incorrect to conclude that a developmental theory of history is somehow particular to the liberal tradition; nevertheless, given that figures of the Scottish Enlightenment such as Ferguson and Smith were among its leading expositors, it is strongly associated with liberalism. Smith himself opposed imperialism for economic reasons. He felt that relations of dependence between metropole and periphery distorted self-regulating market mechanisms and worried that the cost of military domination would be burdensome for taxpayers (Pitts 2005). The idea that civilization is the culmination of a process of historical development, however, proved useful in justifying imperialism. According to Uday Mehta, liberal imperialism was the product of the interaction between universalism and developmental history (1999). A core doctrine of liberalism holds that all individuals share a capacity for reason and self-government. The theory of development history, however, modifies this universalism with the notion that these capacities only emerge at a certain stage of civilization. For example, according to John Stuart Mill (hereafter Mill), savages do not have the capacity for self-government because of their excessive love of freedom. Serfs, slaves, and peasants in barbarous societies, on the other hand, may be so schooled in obedience that their capacity for rationality is stifled. Only in commercial society are the material and cultural conditions ideal for individuals to realize and exercise their potential. The consequence of this logic is that civilized societies like Great Britain are acting in the interest of less-developed peoples by governing them. Imperialism, from this perspective, is not primarily a form of political domination and economic exploitation but rather a paternalistic practice of government that exports “civilization” (e.g. modernization) in order to foster the improvement and native peoples. Despotic government (and Mill doesn't hesitate to use this term) is a means to the end of improvement and ultimately self-government.

Of course, Mill, a life-long employee of the British East India Company, recognized that despotic government by a foreign people could lead to injustice and economic exploitation. These abuses, in turn, if unchecked, could undermine the legitimacy and efficacy of the imperial project. In Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Mill identified four reasons why foreign peoples were not suited to governing dependencies. First, metropolitan politicians were unlikely to have the knowledge of local conditions that was necessary for effectively solving problems of public policy. Second, given cultural, linguistic, and often religious difference, European colonists were unlikely to sympathize with the native peoples and more likely to act tyrannically. Third, even if the Englishmen abroad really tried to act fairly to native peoples, their natural tendency to sympathize with those similar to themselves (other foreign colonists or merchants) would likely lead to distorted judgment in cases of disputes. Finally, British colonists and merchants went abroad primarily to acquire wealth with no long term investment and little effort, which meant that their economic activity was likely to exploit rather than develop the country. These arguments also echoed points made in Edmund Burke's voluminous writings assailing the misgovernment in India, most notably Burke's famous Speech on Fox's East India Bill (1783).

For Mill, parliamentary oversight was no solution. First of all, it would politicize decisions, making imperial policy a result of the factional struggles of party politics rather than technocratic expertise. Furthermore, given that members of the House of Commons were accountable to their domestic electors, it would guarantee that imperial policy would be aimed exclusively at maximizing British self-interest rather than promoting good government and economic development in the dependencies. Mill's solution to the problem of imperial misgovernment was to eschew parliamentary oversight in favor of a specialized administrative corps. Members of this specialized body would have the training to acquire relevant knowledge of local conditions. Paid by the government, they would not personally benefit from economic exploitation and could fairly arbitrate conflicts between colonists and indigenous people. Mill, however, was not able to explain how to ensure good government in a situation in which those wielding political power were not accountable to the population. In this sense, Mill's writing is emblematic of the failure of liberal imperial thought.

Nineteenth century liberal thinkers held a range of views on the legitimacy of foreign domination and differed about what tactics should be used to achieve that goal. Alexis de Tocqueville, for example, made a case for colonialism that did not rely on the idea of a “civilizing mission.” Tocqueville recognized that colonialism probably did not bring good government to the native peoples, but this was irrelevant since his justification rested entirely on the benefit to France. Tocqueville insisted that French colonies in Algeria would increase France's stature vis-à-vis rivals like England; they would provide an outlet for excess population that was a cause of disorder in France; and imperial endeavors would incite a feeling of patriotism that would counterbalance the modern centrifugal forces of materialism and class conflict.

Tocqueville was actively engaged in advancing the project of French colonization of Algeria. Tocqueville's first analysis of French colonialism was published during his 1837 electoral campaign for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. As a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Tocqueville argued in favor of expanding the French presence in Algeria. He traveled to Algeria in 1841 composing an “Essay on Algeria” that served as the basis for two parliamentary reports on the topic (Tocqueville 2001). Unlike the more naïve proponents of the “civilizing mission,” Tocqueville recognized that the brutal military occupation did little to introduce good government or advance civilization. In an apparent reversal of the four-stages theory of the Scottish Enlightenment, he acknowledged that “we are now fighting far more barbarously than the Arabs themselves” and “it is on their side that one meets with civilization.” (Tocqueville 2001: 70) This realization, however, was not the basis of a critique of French brutality. Instead, Tocqueville defended controversial tactics such as destroying crops, confiscating land, and seizing unarmed civilians. His texts, however, provide little in the way of philosophical justification and dismiss the entire just war tradition with a curt statement that “I believe that the right of war authorizes us to ravage the country.” (Tocqueville 2001: 70). Tocqueville's writing on Algeria, the French national interest is paramount and moral considerations are explicitly subordinate to political goals.

Tocqueville's analysis of Algeria reflects little anxiety about its legitimacy and much concern about the pragmatics of effective colonial governance. The stability of the regime, he felt, depended on the ability of the colonial administration to provide good government to the French settlers. Tocqueville emphasized that the excessive centralization of decision-making in Paris combined with the arbitrary practices of the local military leadership meant that French colonists had no security of property, let alone the political and civil rights that they were accustomed to France. Tocqueville was untroubled by the use of martial law against indigenous peoples, but felt that it was counterproductive when applied to the French. For Tocqueville, the success of the French endeavor in Algeria depended entirely on attracting large numbers of permanent French settlers. Given that it was proving impossible to win the allegiance of the indigenous people, France could not hold Algeria without creating a stable community of colonists. The natives were to be ruled through military domination and the French were to be enticed to settle through the promise of economic gain in an environment that reproduced, as much as possible, the cultural and political life of France. After a brief period of optimism about “amalgamation” of the races in his Second Letter on Algeria” (Tocqueville 2001: 25), Tocqueville understood the colonial world in terms of the permanent opposition of settler and native, an opposition structured to ensure the economic benefit of the former.

In recent years, scholars have devoted less attention to the debates on colonialism within the Marxist tradition. This reflects the waning influence of Marxism in the academy and in political circles more generally. Marxism, however, has been extremely influential on both post-colonial theory and anti-colonial independence movements around the world. Marxists have drawn attention to the material basis of European political expansion and developed concepts that help explain the persistence of economic exploitation after the end of direct political rule.

Although Marx never developed a theory of colonialism, his analysis of capitalism emphasized its inherent tendency to expand in search of new markets. In his classics works such as The Communist Manifesto , Grundrisse , and Capital , Marx predicted that the bourgeoisie would continue to create a global market and undermine any local or national barriers to its own expansion. Expansion is a necessary product of the core dynamic of capitalism: overproduction. Competition among producers drives them to cut wages, which in turn leads to a crisis of under-consumption. The only way to prevent economic collapse is to find new markets to absorb excess consumer goods. For a Marxist perspective, some form of imperialism is inevitable. By exporting population to resource rich foreign territories, a nation creates a market for industrial goods and a reliable source of natural resources. Alternately, weaker countries can face the choice of either voluntarily admitting foreign products that will undermine domestic industry or submitting to political domination, which will accomplish the same end.

In a series of newspaper articles published in the 1850s in the New York Daily Tribune , Marx specifically discussed the impact of British colonialism in India. His analysis was consistent with his general theory of political and economic change. He described India as an essentially feudal society experiencing the painful process of modernization. According to Marx, however, Indian “feudalism” was a distinctive form because, he believed (incorrectly) that agricultural land in India was owned communally. Marx used the concept of “Oriental despotism” to describe a specific type of class domination that used the mechanism of the state and taxation in order to extract resources from the peasantry. Oriental despotism emerged in India because agricultural productivity depended on large-scale public works that could only be financed by the state, particularly irrigation. This meant that the state could not be easily replaced by a more decentralized system of authority. In Western Europe, feudal property could be transformed gradually into privately owned, alienable property in land. In India, communal land ownership made this impossible, thereby blocking the development of commercial agriculture and free markets. Since “oriental despotism” inhibited the indigenous development of economic modernization, British domination became the agent of economic modernization.

Marx's analysis of colonialism as a progressive force bringing modernization to a backward feudal society sounds like a transparent rationalization for foreign domination. His endorsement of British domination, however, reflects the same ambivalence that he shows towards capitalism in Europe. In both cases, Marx recognized the immense suffering brought about during the transition from feudal to bourgeois society while insisting that the transition is both necessary and ultimately progressive. He argued that the penetration of foreign commerce is causing a social revolution in India. For Marx, this upheaval has both positive and negative ramifications. When peasants loose their traditional livelihoods, there is a great deal of human suffering, but he also pointed out that the traditional village communities were hardly idyllic; they were sites of caste oppression, slavery, misery, and cruelty. The first stage of this process is entirely negative, because it involves heavy burdens of taxation to support British rule and economic upheaval due to the glut of cheaply produced English cotton. Eventually, however, British merchants begin to realize that Indians cannot pay for imported cloth or administrators if they don't efficiently produce goods to trade, which provides an incentive for British investment in production and infrastructure. Even though Marx believed that British rule was motivated by greed and exercised through cruelty, he felt it was still unwittingly the agent of progress. Thus, Marx's discussion of British rule in India has three dimensions: an account of the progressive character of foreign rule, a critique of the human suffering involved, and a concluding argument that British rule must be temporary if the progressive potential it unleashed is to be realized.

Lenin developed his analysis of Western economic and political domination in his pamphlet Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) (see Other Internet Resources). Unlike Marx, Lenin took a more explicitly critical view of imperialism. He noted that imperialism was a technique which allowed European countries to put off the inevitable domestic revolutionary crisis by exporting their own economic burdens onto weaker states. Lenin argued that late-nineteenth century imperialism was driven by the economic logic of late-capitalism. The falling rate of profit caused an economic crisis which could only be resolved through territorial expansion. Capitalist conglomerates were compelled to expand beyond their national borders in pursuit of new markets and resources. In a sense, this analysis is fully consistent with Marx, who saw European colonialism as continuous with the process of internal expansion within states and across Europe. From this perspective, colonialism and imperialism resulted from the same logic that drove the economic development and modernization of peripheral areas in Europe. But there was one difference. Since late capitalism was organized around national monopolies, the competition for markets took the form of military competition between states over territories that could be dominated for their exclusive economic benefit.

Marxist theorists including Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, and Nikolai Bukharin also explored the issue of imperialism. Kautsky's position is especially important because his analysis introduced concepts that continue to play a prominent role in contemporary world systems theory and post-colonial studies. Kautsky challenged the assumption that imperialism would lead to the development of the areas subjected to economic exploitation. He suggested that imperialism was a relatively permanent relationship structuring the interactions between two types of countries. (Young 2001) Although imperialism initially took the form of military competition between capitalist countries, it would result in collusion between capitalist interests to maintain a stable system of exploitation of the non-developed world. The most influential contemporary proponent of this view is Immanuel Wallerstein, who is known for world-system theory. According to this theory, the world-system involves a relatively stable set of relations between core and peripheral states as a functional in internal division of labor that is structured to benefit the core states (Wallerstein 1974-1989).

From the perspective of world-system theory, the economic exploitation of the periphery does not necessarily require direct political or military domination. In a similar vein, contemporary literary theorists have drawn attention to practices of representation that reproduce a logic of subordination that endures even after former colonies gain independence. The field of postcolonial studies was established by Edward Said in his path-breaking book Orientalism . In Orientalism Said applied Michel Foucault's technique of discourse analysis to the production of knowledge about the Middle East. The term orientalism described a structured set of concepts, assumptions, and discursive practices that were used to produce, interpret, and evaluate knowledge about non-European peoples. Said's analysis made it possible for scholars to deconstruct literary and historical texts in order to understand how they reflected and reinforced the imperialist project. Unlike previous studies that focused on the economic or political logics of colonialism, Said drew attention to the relationship between knowledge and power. By foregrounding the cultural and epistemological work of imperialism, Said was able to undermine the ideological assumption of value-free knowledge and show that “knowing the Orient” was part of the project of dominating it. Thus, Orientalism can be seen as an attempt to extend the geographical and historical terrain of the poststructuralist critique of Western epistemology.

Said uses the term Orientalism in several different ways. First, Orientalism is a specific field of academic study about the Middle East and Asia, albeit one that Said conceives quite expansively as including history, sociology, literature, anthropology and especially philology. He also identifies it as a practice that helps define Europe by creating a stable depiction of its other, its constitutive outside. Orientalism is a way of characterizing Europe by drawing a contrasting image or idea, based on a series of binary oppositions (rational/irrational, mind/body, order/chaos) that manage and displace European anxieties. Finally, Said emphasizes that it is also a mode of exercising authority by organizing and classifying knowledge about the Orient. This discursive approach is distinct both from a vulgar materialist assumption that knowledge is simply a reflection of economic or political interests and from an idealist conviction that scholarship is disinterested and neutral. Following Foucault, Said's concept of discourse identifies a way in which knowledge is not used instrumentally in service of power but rather is itself a form of power.

The second quasi-canonical contribution to the field of post-colonial theory is Gayatri Spivak's “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak works within Said's problematic of representation but extends it to the contemporary academy. By posing the question “Can the subaltern speak?” she asks whether the scholarly interest in non-Western cultures may unwittingly reproduce a new kind of orientalism, whereby academic theorists mine non-Western sources in order to speak authoritatively in their place. Even though the goal is to challenge the existing Eurocentrism of the academy, post-colonial studies is particularly vulnerable to the risks associated with any claim to speak authoritatively on behalf of the subaltern. Thus the field of post-colonial studies is haunted by its own impossibility. It was born out of the recognition that representation is inevitably implicated in power and domination yet struggles to reconfigure representation as an act of resistance. In order to do so, it introduces new strategies of reading and interpretation while recognizing the limitations of this endeavor.

The core problematic of post-colonial theory is an examination of the relationship between power and knowledge in the non-Western world. Some scholars have approached this topic through historical research rather than literary or discursive analysis. The most influential movement is the Subaltern Studies group, which was originally made up of South Asian historians who explored the contribution of non-elites to Indian politics and culture. The term subaltern suggests an interest in social class but more generally it is also a methodological orientation that opens up the study of logics of subordination. Whereas Said raised the broad issue of Orientalism, the Subaltern Studies group dismantled particular hegemonic narratives of Indian colonial history. According to Spivak, the Subaltern Studies group developed two important challenges to the narrative of Indian colonial history as a change from semi-feudalism to capitalist domination. First, they showed that the moment of change must be pluralized as a story of multiple confrontations involving domination and resistance rather than a simple great modes-of-production narrative. Second, these epochal shifts are marked by a multidimensional change in sign-system from the religious to the militant, crime to insurgency, bondsman to worker (Guha and Spivak 1988: 3)

The work of the Subaltern Studies group is emblematic of the way that post-colonial theory often inhabits the terrain between post-structuralism and Marxism, two traditions that have many differences as well as some commonalities. Despite the fact that many practitioners of the field are sympathetic to both traditions, other scholars highlight the incompatibility of the two. For example, Aijaz Ahmad has criticized post-colonialist theory from a Marxist perspective, arguing that its infatuation with issues of representation and discourse makes it blind to the material basis and systematic structure of power relations. The use of concepts such as hybridity easily degenerates into a kind of eclecticism that gestures at radical resistance while denying the theoretical basis of any theory of revolutionary change. Ahmad also argued that the influence of Said's Orientalism was due not to its originality but, on the contrary, to its conventionality. According to Ahmad, Orientalism benefited from its affinity with two problematic intellectual fashions: the reaction against Marxism that lead to the vogue for post-structuralism and the “Third-worldism” that provided academics with a veneer of radicalism. Said, for his part, also developed a sustained critique of Marxism. In Orientalism , Said argued that Marx's explicit defense of British colonialism was emblematic of his own implication in Orientalist discourse. Furthermore, for Said, Marx's position was not merely a personal failure but instead reflected a more general problem with totalizing theory that he felt tended to marginalize any signs of difference that undermined Marx's narrative of progress.

To conclude, it is worth noting that some scholars have begun to question the usefulness of the concept post-colonial theory. Like the idea of the Scottish four stages theory, a theory with which it would appear to have little in common, the very concept of post-colonialism seems to rely on a progressive understanding of history (McClintock 1992)). It suggests, perhaps unwittingly, that the core concepts of hybridity, alterity, particularly, and multiplicity may lead to a kind of methodological dogmatism or developmental logic. Moreover, the term “colonial” as a marker of this domain of inquiry is also problematic in so far as it suggests historically implausible commonalities across territories that experienced very different techniques of domination. Thus, the critical impulse behind post-colonial theory has turned on itself, drawing attention to the way that it may itself be marked by the utopian desire to transcend the trauma of colonialism (Gandhi 1998).

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Colonialism: Notes for IAS Exam

Colonialism is a policy where one country seeks to extend political or economic authority over the people and physical territory of another country. Generally, economic dominance and exploitation of resources is the primary aim of a country indulging in colonialism.

This article will further explain the concept of colonialism. The information gained through this article will be of immense use for candidates attempting the IAS Exam .

Definition of Colonialism

The origin of the word ‘colonialism’ can be traced back to the Latin word “ colōnia” meaning “a place for agriculture”. The standard definition of colonialism is “ a policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker peoples or areas”. Even though the policy has been used by multiple civilizations in different continents since ancient times, it is broadly used today to refer to European economic and political domination in different continents that began roughly in the late 16th century and lasted until the early 1970s.

Although colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably between each other, there are certain fundamental differences between the two terms. Visit the Difference Between Colonialism and Imperialism article to know what these differences are.

Types of Colonialism

Historians have classified four different types of colonialism that have been practised throughout the ages. They are as follows:

Settler Colonialism: This involves immigration on a grand scale, with political, religious and economic factors being prime motivators. The outcome is that any local existing population will be largely replaced. The colony in question will be exploited for mainly agricultural purposes. The erstwhile colonies of Australia, United States of America and Canada are examples of settler colonialism.
Exploitation Colonialism: Exploitation colonialism focuses on the exploitation of natural resources and the local population as cheap labour that benefits the mother country economically. An example of this is the use of local labour in India and South East Asia where the indigenous population was used as slave labour to cultivate cash crops such as tea and rubber.
Surrogate Colonialism: Surrogate colonialism involves a settlement project supported by a colonial power, in which most of the settlers do not come from the same ethnic group as the ruling power. South Africa and Rhodesia (Modern-Day Zimbabwe and Zambia) were examples of Surrogate Colonialism, where large numbers of British settlers became the dominant group despite being in minority as compared to the local indigenous population
Internal Colonialism: It is a notion of uneven or even discriminative power structure between different areas of a state. This is demonstrated in the way control and exploitation may pass from whites from the colonising country to a white immigrant population within a newly independent country.

To know about the general pattern of the History optional in the UPSC Mains Exam, the UPSC History Syllabus page will be of immense use.

History of Colonialism

The early Assyrian empires and the Roman Empires of early antiquity period (484 BC – 250 AD) can be considered the precursors to the practice of colonialism when both the empires expanded their border with the view to assert cultural domination and exploitation of resources.

Modern colonialism began with the age of exploration during the early 15th century when explorers like Christopher Columbus and Francisco Pizzaro made voyages to the American continent. Soon many European explorers from Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands would have their own colonies in the Americas with the British dominating North America and the Spanish and the Portuguese holding the Southern half of the Americas.

Aspirants can find History Questions for UPSC Mains by visiting the linked article.

By the late 19th century, the Industrial revolution would see Britain and France take over many countries in the Middle-East, South and Southeast Asia, whose resources would be exploited by the colonial powers well into the 20th century. It was after the end of World War II in 1945 that the erstwhile colonies gained independence due to multiple factors, chief among them being local independence movements (The Indian Freedom struggle and Independence Movements in Vietnam and Indonesia are notable examples) and the colonial powers themselves being economically weakened due to the devastation caused by the Second World War.

Global political solidarity projects such as the Non-Aligned Movement were instrumental in the decolonisation efforts of former colonies along with the United Nations setting up a Special Committee on Decolonisation in 1962, to encourage this process. The last colony to gain independence was the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, which became the new nation of Zimbabwe on 18th April 1980.

Colonialism – UPSC Notes:- Download PDF Here

The table below contains a set of links which will be useful for candidates in their Civil Services-Examination Preparation. Also, be sure to visit the UPSC syllabus page for a thorough understanding of the exam.

Frequently Asked Questions about Colonialism

What are the two types of colonialism, what is the aim of colonialism.

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As of January 1st 2021, The Correspondent has discontinued publishing its journalism.

You can read more about it here .

Talking about everyday things may seem banal, but great injustices happen when people grow accustomed to them. As the Everyday Colonialism correspondent, I intend to lead better nuanced, more accessible conversations.

The past is still present: why colonialism deserves better coverage

How do you report on a story that began hundreds of years ago, or cover a global phenomenon that spans continents and centuries? How does understanding the past help us make sense of the present?

Despite several hundred years of imperialism and colonialism, the mid-20th Century marked a period when many countries in Asia and Africa freed themselves from formal colonial rule. As a result, it is often thought – in both former colonising and colonised nations – that colonialism is a thing of the past.

In reality, it remains a powerful force in today’s world. From Kashmir to Palestine, Western Sahara to Crimea and South Ossetia, many parts of the world remain under direct military occupation.

Countries such as Britain and the USA also retain control over colonial territories. And let’s not forget the settler colonial countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, where the colonisation of indigenous lands has been entrenched and institutionalised in the long-term.

Colonial domination not only shapes our ideas about race, but also strongly influences how people think about class, culture, gender, and sexuality

Growing up in Malawi in the 1990s, I witnessed the enduring impact of colonialism for myself. I saw how the southern African country struggled to free itself from an oppressive one-party regime, Wikipedia’s entry on Hastings Banda, president of Malawi from 1964 - 1994, gives more details on the post-independence period. one that had weaponised many of the structures inherited from the British colonial system.

Even through the layers of privilege that swaddled me as a wee white Scottish boy, I could see that life in Malawi during those years was a kind of informal apartheid. Entrenched hierarchies of race, class and gender were unmistakable and entirely normalised. If the colonial roots of this social order lay below the surface, it took only the merest brush to expose them.

Ever since then, I’ve been preoccupied with understanding how colonialism continues to blight people’s lives, helping create a shared understanding of what the word continues to mean.

Colonialism, as I understand it now, is the structure or structures through which one group of people (typically a nation) subordinates and exploits another, then justifies this subordination and exploitation by claiming to be the intrinsically superior group. Colonial domination not only shapes our ideas about race, but also strongly influences how people think about class, culture, gender, and sexuality.

Think of the so-called “anti-sodomy” laws from the colonial era that criminalised homosexuality in dozens of countries around the world – from Bhutan to the Maldives, Gambia to Zimbabwe. In many cases these laws have never been repealed. Human Rights Watch reported in 2015 that over half of the 80 countries worldwide where homosexuality is illegal were once British colonies. The LGBTQ activists who have been fighting hard overturn the law in Kenya against gay sex This BBC article covers the Kenyan court’s decision to uphold colonial-era laws against gay sex. are literally struggling against a colonial rule.

Over the next three months, working as the Everyday Colonialism correspondent, I want to rewrite histories of colonialism in a clear, nuanced and accessible way that equips us all to understand the complex forms it takes as it lives on in our everyday realities.

The concept of the everyday is not meant to trivialise my approach. “Everyday” can mean banal or ordinary; but great injustices can also seem banal when people have grown used to them as permanent features of day-to-day life.

The enduring presence of colonialism

Colonialism blights the cultures of the colonisers as well as the colonised. The Martiniquais poet Aimé Césaire wrote that a basic feature of colonialism is the way it “decivilises” those responsible. In Césaire’s view, colonialism operates through extreme violence against colonised peoples. When this violence was justified and normalised by European beneficiaries of colonial rule, Césaire thought, “a poison [was] distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceed[ed] towards savagery.”

Yet the poison continues to be felt most acutely in the more insidious forms of violence that once-colonised peoples still experience today. The laws, economic structures and cultural basis for European colonialism didn’t disappear when nations gained independence in the mid-20th century.

The legacies of these empires continue to infest many aspects of our world, from borders, migration, and unequal citizenship, to prisons, labour conditions, supply lines, healthcare, trade agreements, international development aid, education, diplomacy, tourism, art, and sport.

The roots of autocracy and corrupt government run deep

In some cases, such as the Windrush scandal, Read The Guardian’s series of reports on the Windrush scandal here. the legacy of the past is all too clear. Since 2017, The Guardian has been reporting on how the British government erroneously deported at least 83 people of Caribbean origin who had settled in the country between 1948 and 1973, and has harassed and detained hundreds more as part of the official policy of creating a “hostile environment” This article in The Conversation explains the UK’s draconian immigration policy. for so-called “illegal immigrants.”

Many of these people had arrived in Britain as small children, part of the “Windrush generation” Read this BBC explainer about the Windrush generation. , named after the ship that brought over 1,000 people from Jamaica in 1948. They helped to rebuild a country and society devastated by the second world war, made lives for themselves, raised British children and grandchildren, and were rewarded with a litany of threats and humiliations.

Reports showed that the UK government pursued people who had been born as British subjects in countries under colonial rule, and who therefore had full British citizenship rights under a law passed in 1948. Others persecuted had come to live in the UK perfectly legally under the terms of the shifting legal framework around British citizenship and immigration during the period of decolonisation up to 1973.

In this case the relevant history was reported in some depth, since the UK government’s ignorance of its own history of colonial citizenship was fundamental to the story. It was even shown that the UK Home Office had destroyed the landing cards that would have provided crucial evidence in favour of those threatened with deportation; the extent of official malfeasance This Guardian article investigates evidence that the UK Home Office destroyed landing cards. was profound.

An invisible past

Examples such as the Windrush scandal aside, when connections between colonial history and present crises are explicitly made in daily news reporting, these links are often mentioned only in passing. Reports typically include few concrete details of the context, because what counts as “relevant” is often limited to events of, at most, the last few years.

The roots of autocracy and corrupt government run deep. Purely cultural, ahistorical explanations not only risk reproducing racist tropes, they mask the role of powerful international corporate interests in sustaining systems of resource extraction, profiteering, exploitation and rent-seeking that sustain the underlying economic transactions that has always made colonialism financially profitable for colonisers.

Everyday Colonialism is also about probing my own status as a beneficiary of these long histories

I want my work to be meaningful to readers whose lived experience has been at the sharp end of colonialism; those readers for whom colonialism represents a violation and dispossession that can never fully be redressed. But I’m in Edinburgh, working from within Europe as a white man. The world I describe above is not one in which I am positioned myself.

As such, this beat is also about probing how to negotiate my own status as a beneficiary of these long histories. Like many readers of The Correspondent, I didn’t choose to inherit my colonial complicity, this sense I have of my life being inescapably folded into lives and events that are decades, even centuries old.

Those of us who come from coloniser societies have been failed not only by our education systems – which have tended to celebrate or simply ignore colonial histories – but also by dominant cultural narratives that claim to explain our colonial entanglements and connections without ever really taking them seriously.

Every time we learn about some new facet of colonialism, these lessons possess an especially strong clarifying power. Without such knowledge, many complex realities in a place like Edinburgh today (or in many other parts of the global north) are simply inexplicable.

Where we’re ignorant, it’s easier to lean on complacent ideas that naturalise the existing social and economic order – who gets marginalised, who gets privileged – as not only the way things have always been, but the way things ought to be .

We’re not responsible for what happened in the past. That doesn’t mean we have no responsibility now.

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HISTORY & CULTURE

What is colonialism?

The subjugation of indigenous people—and the exploitation of their land and resources—has a long and brutal history.

Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a dependent area or people.” It occurs when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people. By 1914, a large majority of the world's nations had been colonized by Europeans at some point.

Japan, Korea, and Thailand are the only other nations never to have been colonized by Europeans.

The concept of colonialism is closely linked to that of imperialism, which is the policy or ethos of using power and influence to control another nation or people, that underlies colonialism.

History of colonialism

In antiquity, colonialism was practiced by empires such as Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, and Phoenicia. These civilizations all extended their borders into surrounding and non-contiguous areas from about 1550 B.C. onward, and established colonies that used the physical and population resources of the people they conquered to increase their own power .

In Ancient Greece, for example, city-states often established colonies in search of both extra living space and economic gain. After consulting an oracle, members of the city-state would send a select group of its inhabitants to establish a new colony. To seal the association between colony and city, its founding members would light a fire with a flame taken from the original city’s central hearth and engage in other rituals laying claim to the new location.

During what is now known as the Age of Discovery, founding a new colony depended on another ritual: gaining the sponsorship of a wealthy patron, usually a monarch, and embarking on large ships to search for unceded land. Beginning in the 15th century, Portugal began looking for new trade routes and searching for civilizations outside of Europe. In 1415, Portuguese explorers conquered Ceuta, a coastal town in North Africa, kicking off an empire that would last until 1999.

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Soon the Portuguese had conquered and populated islands like Madeira and Cape Verde, and their rival nation, Spain, decided to try exploration, too. In 1492, Christopher Columbus began looking for a western route to India and China . Instead, he landed in the Bahamas, kicking off the Spanish Empire. Spain and Portugal soon became locked in competition for new territories and took over Indigenous lands in the Americas, India, Africa, and Asia.

The rest of Western Europe swiftly followed: England, the Netherlands, France, and Germany quickly began their own empire building overseas, fighting Spain and Portugal for the right to lands they had already colonized.

Often, the colonies were wrested from the hands of their Indigenous inhabitants by relatively small parties of European men who lay claim after short skirmishes or by intimidating locals with their vessels, weapons, and trade items. For example, Columbus’ crew for his famous 1492 voyage consisted of just 90 men, 39 of whom he left behind to build a settlement in what is now Haiti.

Subjugation and revolutions

Among the allures of colonialism was the chance to recruit—and often enslave—Indigenous people to benefit a colonial power. In Brazil, for example, explorers called bandeirantes embarked on expeditions in search of Native people to capture and enslave for Portuguese-established plantations and mines. And slavers from throughout Europe participated in the Atlantic slave trade, dealing in kidnapped Central and West Africans and forcing them to perform labor that enriched their empires overseas.

Even former colonies eventually became colonizers themselves: The U.S., which was formerly held by Great Britain, extended its territory shortly after winning the War of Independence and later expanded its claims to the Pacific and Latin America.

He was a Founding Father. His son sided with the British.

Who were the women conquistadors in the Americas?

What does the future look like in Indigenous hands?

Starting in the 1880s, European nations also began taking over African nations, racing to coveted natural resources and establishing colonies they would hold until an international period of decolonization that lasted from around 1914 to 1975 and challenged European rule

By far, the most successful colonizer was the British Empire, which at its height soon after World War I could boast territories in every time zone in the world. The sun “never set” on England’s political and economic ambitions, which it carried out with the help of British colonial governments.

Despite the growth of European colonies in the Western Hemisphere, most colonized countries gained independence during the 18th and 19th century, beginning with the American Revolution in 1776 and the Haitian Revolution in 1781. However, the Eastern Hemisphere continued to tempt European colonial powers.

Colonial rationale and resistance

Colonial powers justified their conquests by claiming they had a legal and religious obligation to control the land and culture of Indigenous peoples. Conquering nations cast their role as civilizing “barbaric” or “savage” nations , and argued that they were acting in the best interests of those whose lands and peoples they exploited.

Historically, church leaders both encouraged and participated in the takeover and exploitation of foreign lands and labor, most often in the name of Christian conversion. In the 15 th century, Catholic popes laid out a religious justification for colonization, issuing a series of papal bulls now known as the Doctrine of Discovery that asserted colonization was necessary to save souls and seize lands for the growth of the Church. Often, Christian missionaries were among the first to make inroads into new lands. Inspired by the belief that they must convert as many Indigenous people to Christianity as possible, they imported both religious and cultural customs and a paternalistic attitude toward the colonies’ Native inhabitants.

Yet resistance to this control is an integral part of the story of colonialism. Even before decolonization, Indigenous people on all continents staged violent and nonviolent resistance to their conquerors. These included the Pueblo Rebellion overthrowing Spanish rule of what is now New Mexico in 1680, the slave revolt turned revolution in Haiti in 1791, a series of rebellions against English rule in India, and many other instances of collective and personal resistance.

Ethiopia was able to remain one of just two African nations to sidestep European colonial rule due to a series of savvy alliances forged by its emperor, and in 1896 the nation managed to stave off an Italian invasion at the Battle of Adwa.

Colonialism’s legacy

Colonial governments invested in infrastructure and trade and disseminated medical and technological knowledge. In some cases, they encouraged literacy, the adoption of Western human rights standards , and sowed the seeds for democratic institutions and systems of government. Some former colonies, like Ghana, experienced a rise in nutrition and health with colonial rule, and colonial European settlement has been linked to some development gains .

However, coercion and forced assimilation often accompanied those gains, and scholars still debate colonialism’s many legacies . Colonialism’s impacts include environmental degradation , the spread of disease , economic instability , ethnic rivalries , and human rights violations —issues that can long outlast one group’s colonial rule.

As South Asia historian John McQuade writes , “It takes a highly selective misreading of the evidence to claim that colonialism was anything other than a humanitarian disaster for most of the colonized.”

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COMMENTS

What Is Colonialism? Definition and Examples - ThoughtCo
Colonialism occurs when people from one country settle in another country to exploit its people and natural resources. Colonial powers typically attempt to impose their languages and cultures on the indigenous people of the countries they colonize.
What Is Colonialism and How Did It Arise? | CFR Education
Colonialism is the practice of controlling another country or area and exploiting its people and resources. Between the late fifteenth century and the years after...
Essay on Colonialism: Samples for Students in English
Colonialism is a key period in world history in which one country dominated another. It involves acquiring political, economic, and cultural authority over a region or country, which frequently has far-reaching and long-term consequences.
Colonialism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas, political theorists have used theories of justice, contract, and natural law to both criticize and justify European domination.
What is Colonialism in History? - An Overview - BYJU'S
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one nation over the people living in different areas or countries, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. Who started colonialism? In modern history, colonialism began with the age of discovery led by the Portuguese.
Colonialism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is difficult to distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms.
Colonialism: Definition, Types and History for UPSC Exam - BYJU'S
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their religion, language, economics, and other cultural practices.
The past is still present: why colonialism deserves better ...
Colonialism blights the cultures of the colonisers as well as the colonised. The Martiniquais poet Aimé Césaire wrote that a basic feature of colonialism is the way it “decivilises” those responsible. In Césaire’s view, colonialism operates through extreme violence against colonised peoples.
Colonialism facts and information - National Geographic
Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a dependent area or people.” It occurs when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it,...
Western colonialism | Definition, History, Examples ...
Western colonialism, a political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. The age of modern colonialism began about 1500, and it was primarily driven by Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic, France, and England.

What Is Colonialism? Definition and Examples

Key Takeaways: Colonialism

Colonialism Definition

Imperialism vs. Colonialism

History of Colonialism

Types of Colonialism

Exploitation

Does Colonialism Exist Today?

Sources and Reference

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Essay on Colonialism: Samples for Students in English

Colonialism Definition

Different Types of Colonialism

Essay on Colonialism in 100 Words

Essay on Colonialism in 250 Words

Essay on Colonialism in 500 Words

What is Colonialism?

Impact of Colonialism

Resistance to Colonialism

Legacy of Colonialism

Colonialism in India

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Colonialism

2. Natural Law and the Age of Discovery

Colonialism: Notes for IAS Exam

Definition of Colonialism

Types of Colonialism

History of Colonialism

Frequently Asked Questions about Colonialism

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IAS 2024 - Your dream can come true!

The past is still present: why colonialism deserves better coverage

The enduring presence of colonialism

An invisible past

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What is colonialism?

History of colonialism

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Subjugation and revolutions

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He was a Founding Father. His son sided with the British.

Who were the women conquistadors in the Americas?

What does the future look like in Indigenous hands?

Colonial rationale and resistance

Colonialism’s legacy

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