History of Colonisation
Domestic colonisation
The creation of rural colonies for specific groups. Outsiders or backwards people, disabled people, vagabonds. A kind of isolation or segregation. Society wants to reeducate these people by segregating them. By forcing them to do agrarian labour in these rural colonies. In this way, infertile land, wasteland or generally uncultivated land can also be more lucrative. There are many examples of colonies like this. Has happened more or less everywhere. In the north of Belgium, 2 colonies were founded. These were called colonies, but clearly has nothing to do with the colonisation we are talking about. But it is important to understand that this also existed. Arnell famously writes of this. She thinks colonisation went much further than just overseas exploitation, where race was not really an issue.
There is also internal colonisation. Internal colonisation resembles border colonisation or overseas colonisation. The borders of Brazil were established in the 18th century, but this did not mean that it controlled all the territory at the time. Over the coming decades it occured that unknown populations were discovered in the Amazons. This is internal colonisation. Taking over land that is already in a sense claimed but where there is not yet any actual control. In a sense we can speak of the scramble for the amazon.
There is also subcolonial relations, or colonisation. This is when a colony colonises another colony. A good example is south africa, a dominion of the british empire, colonised namibia.
There are a wide range of colonies. Like Viceroyalties, audiencias, protectorates, crown colonies, free states, overseases porvinces, league of nation mandates, UN trusteeship territories.
Pure settlement colonies, plantation colonies, exploitation colonies, trading settlements, maritime enclaves.
Ie. we’re talking about fairly diverse phenomena. A lot of these are not colonies in the classical sense, but end up with more or less the same situation. It’s difficult to put all colonies under the same umbrella.
The same is true of empires themselves. A formal empire is some metropole with several peripheries that are subordinated to the center. The big 5 are Portugal, Spain, Dutch Republic, France and Britain.
Then there are semi-empires, ie. colonial powers without empires. Like Belgium.
And lastly informal empires, which pursues interests beyond the acquisition of territory. This has more to do with economic dominance. For example Britain which had economical domination for a long time in parts of Latin America but which had little to no territory in the area.
Imperialism: comprises all forces and activities contributing to the consturction and maintenance of empires, imperialism is somehow more comprehensive than colonialism, and colonialism is just a special manifestation of colonialism. Imperialism is about general domination, notwithstanding the reasons for that empire. Ie. imperialism can be economic, land-based, etc.
The normal empires of the old world follow mainly a kind of border colonialisation, whilst the overseas colonies are slightly different.
In the roman empire, there was no problem to include people from the colonies in governance. Roman emperors rarely came from Rome itself. You will never find Congolese ruling Belgium. There was strict segregation between the colonised subject and the imperialist center in the overseas colonies. Much the same is true of the mongol empire, which rather took on the customs of the areas it conquered. There is assimilation in this case. There is greater merging between the metropoles and the periphery. In the Ottoman empire there were different systems in which the people of the periphery were included in the government of the metropole, like the Janissaries who are entirely recruited from the peripheries.
What about examples of colonisation we won’t discuss. The viking colonisation is one such example, and also the crusader states, or the german colonisation of central europe and the baltic area. In the middle ages, many cities in Romania, Poland and Hungary were established by Germans have been German for centuries.
What is the fundamental difference here?
Those germans were not subordinate to any metropole, and the same is true of the vikings or the crusader states. Much the same is true of the Greek colonies of the antique period. And this is also the ancient past. Want to focus on a specific form of colonisation. Ie. the vast scale of European overseas colonisation.
Ibn Battuta, Ma Huan/Zheng He. Zheng He was an admiral who sailed with the Chinese Treasure fleet. These are voyages of discovery, but led to no permanent transformation. The chinese emperor decided to stay home.
Periodisation.
David Landes wrote The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. ”For the last thousand years, Europe has been the prime mover of development and modernity.”
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System. 16Th century rise of one single capitalist world-economy. North-western Europe: core, Rest of Europe: semi-periphery, Rest of world: periphery.
Kenneth Pomeranz. The Great Divergence. Core areas in the 18th c. Old world. NW Europe & Chinese and Japanese cores (East asian core). Many parallels of life expectancy, consumption, markets.
Asian GNP:
1750: 130% of Europe. 1800: 100%. 1870: 50%.
Divergence in early 19th century, European shortage of energy leading to the industrial revolution. Used timber, got coal, needed to pump to get coal, leading to steam engines.
East Asia lacked this trigger, it did not need to innovate these resources because it didn’t have a lack of energy.
Pomeranz was followed by Prasannan Parthasarathi, who agrees with much of Pomeranz’ arguments. But he has a slightly different explanation. He especially emphasises the role of the state of Britain in crushing Indian production. It is not only because of a shortage of energy, it is also because Britain wanted to compete with Indian textile production. This competition also triggered the industrial revolution. It was not purely the invisible hand of the economy, but there was a direct act to destroy Indian production.
John Darwin argued ”before 1800 what really stood out what not th esharp economic contrast between Europe and Asia, but, on the contrary, a eurasian world of resemblances.”
David Abernathy The dynamics of global dominance: european overseas empires. Wanted to make a compromise between Wallerstein and Pommeranz. He makes a distinction between several stages of colonisation. 5 different. Expansion (1415, the first Portugese colony in Ceuta, until 1773, the regulating act of London), First decolonisation (Burma), second colonisation (more expansion, ending with the treaty of Fez), consolidation (world war and interwar period), second decolonisation (1940-80). Thinks that you cant deny the role of the early modern age. Is not entirely correct. It is unclear how the ’decolonisation of Burma’ led to any kind of freedom, as this is when Britain does most of its colonisation of India.
Anthony Hopkins. Globalisation in World History. Distinguishes 4 periods which are really vague.
Different well-established historians have different opinions.
Why did Europe colonise? What are the causes?
Geography: the primary explanation. It’s because of Europe’s location. It is a peninsula surrounded by water. Europeans had many maritime skills. Had a century long experience of sailing. And this of course allows for further exploration from the 15th century onward. It is not a coincidence that it started with Portugal. Nor was it a coincidence that Portugal competed with Spain. Spain was closer to Italy and Italy had the hub of knowledge and trade. Several explorers in these decades came from Italy, and applied their skills and knowledge to the Spanish kings.
The republic took over in the Netherlands. Fought Spain and did so also in the colonies. The netherlands also had their maritime skills. And the same for Britain which is also an island. The sequence of countries that colonised were protected from other threats that kept countries like Germany busy and relatively outside of colonisation. Eastern Europe was time and again invaded by people from the East. The Tatars, the Ottomans, and the Russians. But also beyond Europe. India was regularly invaded from the Khimer pass by Afghans, Persians and Turkic people. China built a wall to protect itself from the steppe-people. Many of these other countries constantly had to think about other invading nations. North-Western Europe did not have these concerns and could focus on overseas expansion. The Atlantic and the pacific ocean are also about share 2:1 size-ratio. Also because of the very particular reason that the Portugese wanted to find different trade roads with India when the trade roads were dominated by muslim traders. Geography explains a big reason why Europe came first.
Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel. Distinguishes between Eurasia and the other continents. Is one big zone which allows for a lot of diversification. There is a great diversification of food supply in Eurasia. Eurasia has lots of different stuff. Whereas Africa had the Zebra, and America the Lama.
Technology: Landes points at the early inventions like eyeglasses, mechanical clocks and printing. These are inventions that account for European difference. Different types of ships were used in Europe. The galley is a classic, but which was unusable for the open sea. The Portugese and the Spanish developed the Caravel and the Galleons which allowed for longer voyages.
In the 19th century Europeans developed steam ships, which helped to navigate the Congo. Discovery of vitamin C and quinine allowed for longer voyages and voyages into malaria-ridden areas (malaria literally means bad air-disease). The plant for quinine came from Peru. Prior to quinine Africa was known as the white man’s death. Gunpowder was also developed, like maxim guns.
Many of these inventions were not initially European, but were rather Chinese. Tonio Andrade The Gunpowder Age, follows Pommeranz work and argues that China was stronger and had gunpowder weapons long before Europe.
Economy: Capitalism in the Europe which developed through the bourgeois revolutions. Private property, and the profits from the land and things. Many human beings so on wanted more profits, and so were more daring by the system to accumulate more capital leading to more profits. Industrial revolution is the reason for Pommeranz’ great divergence between Europe and Asia. Colonisation was economically motivated basically.
”Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world by the internatioanl trusts has begun, and in which the partition of all the territory is divided up between large states”. Lenin
Hopkins, British Imperialism, imperialism was basically about gentlemans fights in London.