HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION 2 AND 3

COLONIAL HISTORY OF EUROPE 2 + 3

History’s tendency to remember white men, and let non-white women slip into oblivion.

Columbus (late 15th, early 16th Century) & Cook (late 18th Century) - icons of European colonial voyages
Different explorers - Ibn Battuta (14th Century) From Morocco to Beijing. Ma Huan (early 15th Century) Chinese explorer. Marco Polo (13th Century), mere travel, no settlement
! The travels of Arab and Chinese explorers did not include any permanent settlements, unlike those of European explorers !

PERIODIZATION

• It is hard to pinpoint the exact start of European colonization.
• Common answer is 15th Century.
• 16th & 17th are common as well
  (Immanuel Wallerstein - 16th Century is the rise of a single world economy - there is a core of incentives in Western Europe, a semi-core in the rest of Europe, and a periphery in the rest of the world. This is unbelieavably reductionist and controversial).
• Some (David Landes) would go as far back as the 11th Century.
• Kenneth Pomeranz (The Great Divergence) claims Europe and China/Japan had very similar development up until the 18th Century, when the two spheres of influence begin going in VERY different directions. For him the industrial revolution was lead by a need to innovate and find new sources of energy in Europe (timber - coal - steam - Industrial Revolution), whereas China didnt have this kind of need for innovation, which lead to Europe outpacing China.
• John Darwin - pre-18th Century: Europe and Asia resemble eachother quite closely
• British North America and the Dutch in Asia give us a certian earliest point of european colonization - pre-18th Century
• Dvid Abernathy: 5 phases of European Colonization: (innacure as well, Indian colonization overlaps with second decolonization)

1. Expansion (1415 - 1773) begins with Portugal on the African coast, begins with regulating act in British NA
2. First decolonization (1775 - 1824) battle of Bunker Hill (first British defeat in USA), giant wave of former colony independence
3. Second colonization (1824 - 1912) begins with Anglo-Burman war (Miyanmar) & ends with Italian conquest of Libiya
4. Consolidation (period between two World Wars)
5. Second decolonization (1940-1980, but still ongoing) independence of African and Asian territories

• Anthony Hopkins: 4 stages (archaic globalized networks (pre 15th century); proto-globalization (15th-19th century); high imperialism; post-colonialism)

Takaway: we cannot reduce European colonization into any way simplistic scheme. Any scheme can hold truth, but we cannot be this reductionist.

CAUSES
Why was Europe so sucessful??? Basically entire world was colonized, so, how was Europe able to do this? Why Europe specifically?

• Student answers: Enlightenment/Renaissance ideas of science, exploration, etc. Religion. Europe being a zone of tight infighting, need to expand in a different direction, give yourself an edge over other empires (Spain vs Portugal in the beginning). Military supperiority, easy of communication (horses). Greed (economic element). Feeling of supperiority and general expansionism (social/ideological element).

• In truth: there’s many causes, falling under some umbrellas:

1. Geography: Europe is a peninsula surrounded by water. Naval expertiese, acess to ease of travel. Portugal was the pioneer, and closest to the Atlantic. Followed by Spain (Atlantic and Mediterrenian), the Dutch and England.
   16th Century - Portugese
   17th Century - Spanish
   18th Century - Dutch
   19th Century - British
   All of these have major acess to water, ease of transportation, ease of exploration, communication, travel and trade.
   Appeal of Indian and Chinese commodities (spices) - need to search for new routes. America was discovered, which was the catalyst.

• Jared Diamond: Eurasia contrasted against the other continents. Eurasia: West-East distances; others: North-West distances. A wider variety of climates in other continents. There was a wider variety of animal and grain species in Eurasia (barley, wheat, rye, rice… / horse, goat, sheep, pig, cow…) → much more exchange, much greater food supply, much grater demographic development, better division of labour

2. Technology
   EARLY MODERN AGE (first colonization)

• early inventions: eyeglasses (doubles working life of craftsmen), printing press (mass dessimatio of informatio and propaganda), mechanical clock (discipline, order)
• new ships (by Portugese, Spanish…): better transportation
• gunpowder

19TH CENTURY / INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (later colonization)

• science and medicine, disease prevention (scurvy and malaria)

• steamships

• maxim gun (automatic rifle)

• Tonio Andrade - in China late 15th - early 16th Century there’s already a gunpowder empire, point being we cannot reduce european colonization only to its technology

3. Economy

• capitalism: property rights, profit motive, capital accumulation (Marxian primitive accumulation): capitalism inherently drives growth and expansion
• industrial revolution (mid 18th, early 19th Century onwards): need of resources/raw materials (cotton - textiles, etc.), ability to travel further and faster, need to invest and grow markets, large euro population needing to spread out, so settler colonialism
  (notably, not all buisnesses were pro-colonization, not all colonization was due to economics)

! John Hobson - Imperialism: A Study. For him is capitalists expanding their market territories further and further, broadaing the channels of their surplus.

! Lenin - Imperialism is the highest stage of Capitalism. Imperialism is capitalism is at that stage of development at which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape. At which the world has been partitioned by capitalist superpowers, etc.

4. Politics

• Competition between the European metropoles (first Spain-Portugal)(then Spain-Netherlands)(then Netherlands-England)
  16th - Spain vs Portugal
  17th - the Dutch vs Spain, then the Dutch vs England
  18th - Britian vs France
  late 19th, early 20th - scramble of Africa: Germany, Italy, Belgium enter the game

• Power, national identity, geopolitics (becoming strong, global states), preemptive strikes (conquring new territories to prevent other countries from colonizing them), directing attention away from home and to the colony

[LEARN AUTHOURS BY NAME! LEARN AUTHOURS BY NAME! IT WILL BE ON THE EXAM! LEARN AUTHOURS BY NAME! - make flashcards with their names and general ideas]
[ONLY NEED TO MEMORIZE THE PORTRAIT AUTHOURS - IF PICTURE ON PP, THEN REMEMBER]

5. Culture

• European mantality, feeling of supperiority
• science: cult of progress
• social darwinism - idea of racial superiority, the domineering white race, idea of white race as the strongest, etc.
• ideology: civilizing mission, fervent idea of spreading civilization across the globe
• religion: christinization, missionaries, desire to spread the christian fate across the world, further feeling of religious superiority

! Max Weber - The Spirit of Capitalism: in Europe he found an ‘active’ & ‘rational’ mentality. Unlike Islam (irrational / Muslims take the text for granted, took it too literaly.), Confucionism (inactive / Chinese invented, but didnt capitalize - they couldnt establish superiority.), Buddhism (inactive & irrational). This uniqueness of christianity lead to things such as science, legal state, freedom, beurocracy, property, individual innitiative, etc.

! Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book: Nobel prize lauriate, wrote novels about British colonialism in England. His literature exemplifies general feelings of white supperiority. He deems indians as lesser, needing salvation via the white opressor.

6. Irrationality

! Joseph Schumpeter - The Sociology of Imperialism (1919): how did Europe become Imperial? For him this was pure irrationality. Imperialism does not yield rewards (profits, expansion, etc.) - it drained resources, no meaningful economic return. Imperialism is mere repetition of past societies, implimenting past ideas and methods into the modern world. Colonialism just repeats the old fashioned warrior class, old fashioned ideas of expansion.

! Bernard Porter - The Absent Minded Imperialism (2005): The British Empire happened while the brits were asleep. It was a series of coincidences. The British empire wasnt felt inside britian (like how Americans dont care very much about Washington’s relation with other nations) (very exaggerated)

! Jon E. Wilson - India Conquered (2016): chaos is leading cause of imperialism, British India was chaothic, irrational.

7. Combination

! Niall Furguson - Civilization (2011): 6 fields in which Europe changed the world (competition, science, property, medicine, consumption, work)

! David Abernethy - Global Dominance: 3 sectors of expansion. Public (State, needs power, has monarchich bodies), Private (Merchants/Capital, needs profit, has companies), Religious (Church, needs to spread faith, has missionary bodies).
All three had the will, need and ability to expand.
The three sectors expanded independantly, not always collaborating. This allowed Europe flexibilites in its expansion: via religion in America, via trade in Asia, etc. This forms a stronger net of expansion. In Congo and the 19th Century French colonies all three collaborated.
In China: developted sectors, capacity to expand, yet no will to do so. I.E. the Chinese state didnt have the need to expand.
In Muslim world: public sector - badly centralized and scattered. Private sector - too individual, no company hiearchy. religious sector - not centralized enough, too fluid and adaptive. I.E. Much will to domineer, but lack of capacity.

! John Darwin - English Historical Review (1997): interventionalist ideology, economic coalitions, maritime superiority, military superiority

8. Causes beyond Europe

• Europe relied on older, non-European trade networks. Chola empire (South India) laid foundational trade networks. East Asian economies were also very strong (Pomeranz, Darwin), and analagous to Europe.
  -Further non-European catalysts for colonization: India as a magnet of trade; Ottoman expansion requiering new routes; New World enabling further expansion; reliance on technology by non-European nations (gunpowder - China, etc.)

CONSEQUENCES:

1. Diversity:
   notably great diversity in both colonizer and colonized. States, proto-states, chefferies, variety of economies, political formations, levels of industrialization, etc. Pillage colonizalism, settler colonialism, development colonialism…

! Different situations lead to different consequences

2. Politics:
   European powers transformed, reshaped and remade the countries they passed through.
   Border age - 18th Centry for Europe, 19th for Asia, Americas, 20th for Africa.
   Borders were drawn by European powers (West Indies has ethic diversity, is consolidated into one territory by the Dutch, later reforms into Indonesia, Malaysia, Burundi)
   Euroepans impacted: place names, flags, national identities.

! Many previous colonies ended up adopting the system of governance of the colonizers, only with new leaders. Namely - Authoritharianism. Very few became democracies.

3. Economy:
   Colonial relationships are still present. Past colonizers determine the progress of the past colonized.

Colonizers transformed the economies of the colonized. New crops, new mines, new infrastructure to enable exploitation,

! The economies of many past colonized nations are still dominated by the modes of production established by thier colonizers. Ugandas main export (90%) is coffee. This is what Uganda was used for by the colonizers prior.

In some cases colonization allows for more trade (‘trade follows flag’ - flag being the colonizer). In other cases colonization closes certain options for trade.

! Utsa Patnaik - A Theory of Imperialism: 45 Trillion dollars were drained from India by Britian. British economy grew via India.

4. Society:
   New ideas introduced (land ownership, land tiling, property rights; rise of new elites, capitalist economies).
   In Algeria we see a major rise in land ownership.
   Change of social structure, marginalized rural communities.
   Rise of proletariat, rise of urban cities similar to those in Europe.
   Demography: extermination of ENTIRE populations, entire racial, ethnic and social groups. Mass decline of native population in the Americas, in Australia, etc.

Suriname: gigantic mix of indigenious peoples, imported people, immigrants, etc. Hindui temples, mosques, etc. Their food is a mix of a wide variety of cultures. Indonesian and African.

Colonization has impacted the spread of religion, the orientation of their driving, the kinds of sports they like, etc. etc. There’s many major and many trivial traces of colonialism.

Language as well - english is omnipresent. This is beacuse of colonization. Use of latin script? Colonization. Spanish? Colonization too. Colonization too created new languages, mixing colonizer and colonized languages.

• In Haiti: Creole language created by mixing in French.

Pijamas were originally Indian. Colonizers took this.
Food is the result of colonization. Fries are too a result of this - potatoes were originally in the Americas. Same as chocolate, same as tomatoes. Chilies as well. Sweet potatoes. Coffee as well. Tea is Indian/Chinese.

Psychology too: feelings of superiority/inferiority. Past proapganda impacts modern worldviews, racism is impacted by colonialism. In recent memory: violence, slavery, exploitation, genocide.