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The phenomenon of colonization is one that has occurred around the globe and across time. Various ancient and medieval polities established colonies - such as the , Babylonia, Persians, Greeks, Roman Empire, Han dynasty, and Arabs. The High Middle Ages saw colonising Europeans moving west, north, east and south. The medieval Crusader states in the Levant exemplify some colonial features similar to those of colonies in the ancient world.
A new phase of European colonialism began with the "Age of Discovery", led by the Portuguese, who became increasingly Expansionism following the conquest of Ceuta in 1415. Portugal aimed to control navigation through the Strait of Gibraltar, to spread Christianity, to amass wealth and plunder, and to suppress predation on Portuguese populations by Barbary pirates (who operated as part of a longstanding African slave tradeat that point a minor trade, one the Portuguese would soon reverse and surpass). Around 1450 the Portuguese developed a lighter ship, the caravel based on North African fishing boats. Caravels could sail further and faster than previous vessels, A companion to the PBS Series The Genius That Was China were highly maneuverable, and could sail into the wind.
Enabled by new maritime technology, and with the added incentive to find an alternative "Silk Road" after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Empire effectively closed profitable trade route between Asia and Europe, early European exploration of Africa was followed by the Spanish exploration of the Americas, further exploration along the coasts of Africa, and explorations of West Asia (also known as the Middle East), South Asia, and East Asia.
The conquest of the Canary Islands by the Crown of Castile, from 1402 to 1496, was an early instance of European settler colonialism in Africa. In 1462 the Portuguese established the first European settlement in the tropics by peopling the previously uninhabited Cape Verde, which thereafter became a site of Jewish exile during the height of the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions in the 1490s; the Portuguese soon also brought slaves from the coast. Because of the economics of plantations, especially sugar, much European colonial expansion and slavery would remain linked into the 19th century. The use of exile to Penal colony would also continue.
The European "discovery" of the New World (as named by Amerigo Vespucci in 1503) opened another colonial chapter, beginning with the colonization of the Caribbean in 1493 with Hispaniola (later to become Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The Portuguese and were the first trans-oceanic global empires: they were the first to stretch across different continents (discounting Mongol Empire and those with land in Africa along the Mediterranean), covering vast territories around the globe. Between 1580 and 1640, the Portuguese and Spanish empires were both ruled by the Spanish monarchs in Iberian Union. During the late 16th and 17th centuries, England, France, and the Dutch Republic also established their own overseas empires, each in direct competition with the other European expansionists. Meanwhile the Tsardom of Russia expanded overland: Russian Siberian, Central Asian and East colonies eventually extended to Alaska and California.
The end of the 18th and mid-19th century saw the first era of decolonization, when most of the European colonies in the Americas, notably those of Spain, New France, and the Thirteen Colonies, gained their independence from their respective . The Kingdom of Great Britain (uniting Scotland and England), France, Portugal, and the Dutch turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa and South Asia (particularly Southeast Asia), where coastal enclaves had already been established.
In the 19th century, the Second Industrial Revolution led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa, in which Belgium, Germany, and Italy also participated. The newly-westernized Japanese Empire established the Japanese colonial empire in eastern Asia (notably Taiwan, Korea, and Manchukuo) from the late-19th century.
There were deadly battles between colonizing states and revolutions in colonized areas, shaping areas of control and establishing independent nations. During the 20th century, the colonies of the defeated Central Powers of World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until after the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest.
The two main countries in the first wave of European colonialism were Portugal and Spanish Empire.Thomas Benjamin, ed., Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism Since 1450 (2006) 1: xiv–xvi. The Portuguese started the long age of European colonization with the conquest of Ceuta, Morocco in 1415, and the conquest and discovery of other African territories and islands, this would also start the movement known as the Age of Discoveries. The Spanish and Portuguese launched the colonization of the Americas, basing their territorial claims on the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. This treaty demarcated the respective spheres of influence of Spain and Portugal.Gilmartin, et al. p. 115
The expansion achieved by Spain and Portugal caught the attention of Britain, France, and the Netherlands.Jonathan Hart, Representing the New World: the English and French uses of the Example of Spain (2001). pp 85–86. The entrance of these three powers into the Caribbean and North America perpetuated European colonialism in these regions.Gilmartin, M. (2009). Colonialism/Imperialism. In Key concepts in political geography London: SAGE pp. 115–123.
The second wave of European colonialism commenced with Britain's involvement in Asia in support of the British East India Company; other countries such as France, Portugal and the Netherlands also had involvement in European expansion in Asia.Gilmartin, et al. p. 115Tonio Andrade, "Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel: European Expansion and Maritime Asia, 1400–1750." Journal of Early Modern History 14.1–2 (2010): 165–186.
The New Imperialism ("New Imperialism") consisted of the Scramble for Africa regulated by the terms of the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The conference effectively divided Africa among the European powers. Vast regions of Africa came under the sway of Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and Spain.George Shepperson, "The Centennial of the West African Conference of Berlin, 1884–1885." Phylon 46.1 (1985): 37–48.Peter J. Cain, and Anthony G. Hopkins, "Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas II: New imperialism, 1850‐1945." Economic History Review 40.1 (1987): 1–26. online
Gilmartin argues that these three waves of colonialism were linked to capitalism. The first wave of European expansion involved exploring the world to find new revenue and perpetuating European feudalism. The second wave focused on developing the mercantilism capitalism system and the manufacturing industry in Europe. The last wave of European colonialism solidified all capitalistic endeavors by providing new markets and raw materials.Gilmartin, et al. pp. 115–16
As a result of these waves of European colonial expansion, only thirteen present-day independent countries escaped formal colonization by European powers: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Qajar Iran, Japan, Liberia, Mongolia, Nepal, Qing dynasty, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey as well as North Yemen.Marcin Solarz, The Language of Global Developmen. A Misleading Geography. (2014), p. 18
Portuguese successes led to Spanish financing of a mission by Christopher Columbus in 1492 to explore an alternative route to Asia, by sailing west. When Columbus eventually made landfall in the Caribbean Antilles he believed he had reached the coast of India, and that the people he encountered there were Indians with red skin. This is why Native Americans have been called Indians or red-Indians. In truth, Columbus had arrived on a continent that was new to the Europeans, the Americas. After Columbus' first trips, competing Spanish and Portuguese claims to new territories and sea routes were solved with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which divided the world outside of Europe in two areas of trade and exploration, between the Iberian kingdoms of Castile and Portugal along a north-south meridian, 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. According to this international agreement, the larger part of the Americas and the Pacific Ocean were open to Spanish exploration and colonization, while Africa, the Indian Ocean, and most of Asia were assigned to Portugal.Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492–1700 (1984).
The boundaries specified by the Treaty of Tordesillas were put to the test in 1521 when Ferdinand Magellan and his Spanish sailors (among other Europeans), sailing for the Spanish Crown became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean, reaching Guam and the Philippines, parts of which the Portuguese had already explored, sailing from the Indian Ocean. The two by now global empires, which had set out from opposing directions, had finally met on the other side of the world. The conflicts that arose between both powers were finally solved with the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529, which defined the areas of Spanish and Portuguese influence in Asia, establishing the anti-meridian, or line of demarcation on the other side of the world.Melvin E. Page, Colonialism: An International Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia (2003) 1:361–2.
During the 16th century the Portuguese continued to press both eastwards and westwards into the Oceans. Towards Asia they made the first direct contact between Europeans and the peoples inhabiting present day countries such as Mozambique, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor (1512), China, and finally Japan. In the opposite direction, the Portuguese colonized the huge territory that eventually became Brasil, and the Spanish established the vast Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, and later of Río de la Plata (Argentina) and New Granada (Colombia). In Asia, the Portuguese encountered ancient and well populated societies, and established a seaborne empire consisting of armed coastal trading posts along their trade routes (such as Goa, Malacca and Macau), so they had relatively little cultural impact on the societies they engaged. In the Western Hemisphere, the European colonization involved the emigration of large numbers of settlers, soldiers and administrators intent on owning land and exploiting the apparently primitive (as perceived by Old World standards) indigenous peoples of the Americas. The result was that the colonization of the New World was catastrophic: native peoples were no match for European technology, ruthlessness, or their diseases which decimated the indigenous population.Page, Colonialism 2: 770–781.
Spanish treatment of the indigenous populations caused a fierce debate, the Valladolid Controversy, over whether Indians possessed souls and if so, whether they were entitled to the basic rights of mankind. Bartolomé de Las Casas, author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, championed the cause of the native peoples, and was opposed by "Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda", who claimed Amerindians were "natural slaves".Daniel R. Brunstetter, and Dana Partner. "Just war against barbarians: revisiting the Valladolid debates between Sepúlveda and Las Casas." Political Studies 59.3 (2011): 733–752.
The Catholic Church played a large role in Spanish and Portuguese overseas activities. The Dominican Order, Jesuits, and Franciscans, notably Francis Xavier in Asia and Junípero Serra in North America were particularly active in this endeavor. Many buildings erected by the Jesuits still stands. Buildings such as the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Macau and the Santisima Trinidad de Paraná in Paraguay, the latter an example of the Jesuit Reductions. The Dominican and Franciscan buildings of California's missions and New Mexico's missions stand restored, such as Mission Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California and San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico.John Frederick Schwaller, The history of the Catholic Church in Latin America: From conquest to revolution and beyond (2011) ch 1–3.
As characteristically happens in any colonialism, European or not, previous or subsequent, both Spain and Portugal profited handsomely from their newfound overseas colonies: the Spanish from gold and silver from mines such as Potosí and Zacatecas in New Spain, the Portuguese from the huge markups they enjoyed as trade intermediaries, particularly during the Nanban trade Japanese history trade period. The influx of precious metals to the Spanish monarchy's coffers allowed it to finance costly in Europe which ultimately proved its economic undoing: the supply of metals was not infinite and the large inflow caused inflation and debt, and subsequently affected the rest of Europe.Levack, Muir, Veldman, Maas, Brian (2007). The West: Encounters and Transformations, Atlas Edition, Volume 2 (since 1550) (2nd Edition). England: Longman. p. 96. .
Whereas Spanish colonialism was based on the religious conversion and exploitation of local populations via (many Spaniards emigrated to the Americas to elevate their social status, and were not interested in manual labor), Northern European colonialism was bolstered by those emigrating for religious reasons (for example, the Mayflower voyage). The motive for emigration was not to become an aristocrat or to spread one's faith but to start a new society afresh, structured according to the colonist's wishes. The most populous emigration of the 17th century was that of the English, who after a series of wars with the Dutch and French came to dominate the Thirteen Colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States and other colonies such as Newfoundland and Rupert's Land in what is now Canada.Walter Hixson, American settler colonialism: A history (2013).
However, the English, French and Dutch were no more averse to making a profit than the Spanish and Portuguese, and whilst their areas of settlement in the Americas proved to be devoid of the precious metals found by the Spanish, trade in other commodities and products that could be sold at a massive profit in Europe provided another reason for crossing the Atlantic, in particular, furs from Canada, tobacco, and cotton grown in Virginia and sugar in the islands of the Caribbean and Brazil. Due to the massive depletion of indigenous labor, plantation owners had to look elsewhere for manpower for these labor- intensive crops. They turned to the centuries-old slave trade of west Africa and began transporting Africans across the Atlantic on a massive scale – historians estimate that the Atlantic slave trade brought between 10 and 12 million black African slaves to the New World. The islands of the Caribbean soon came to be populated by slaves of African descent, ruled over by a white minority of plantation owners interested in making a fortune and then returning to their home country to spend it.Phyllis Raybin Emert, ed., Colonial Triangular Trade: An Economy Based on Human Misery (1995).
Russian Empire had no state-sponsored expeditions or colonization in the Americas, but did charter the first Russian joint-stock commercial enterprise, the Russian America Company, which did sponsor those activities in its territories.Anatole G. Mazour, "The Russian-American Company: Private or Government Enterprise?." Pacific Historical Review 13.2 (1944): 168–173.
From 1765, a series of disputes with Parliament over taxation led to the American Revolution, first to informal committees of correspondence among the colonies, then to coordinated protest and resistance, with an important event in 1770, the Boston Massacre. A standing army was formed by the United Colonies, and independence was declared by the Second Continental Congress on 4 July 1776. A new nation was born, the United States of America, and all royal officials were expelled. On their own the Patriots captured a British Invasion army and France recognized the new nation, formed a military alliance, declared war on Britain, and left the superpower without any major ally. The American War of Independence continued until 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed. Britain recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded by the British possessions to the North, Florida to the South, and the Mississippi River to the west.Stephen Conway, The War of American Independence 1775–1783 (1995).
The first major movement against the British Company's high-handed rule resulted in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the "Indian Mutiny" or "Sepoy Mutiny" or the "First War of Independence". After a year of turmoil, and reinforcement of the East India Company's troops with British Army soldiers, the Company overcame the rebellion. The nominal leader of the uprising, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, was exiled to Burma, his children were beheaded and the Moghul line was abolished. In the aftermath all power was transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown, which began to administer most of India as a colony; the company's lands were controlled directly and the rest through the rulers of what it called the Princely states. There were 565 princely states when the Indian subcontinent gained independence from Britain in August 1947. Kashmir: The origins of the dispute , BBC News, 16 January 2002
During period of the British Raj, famines in India, often attributed to El Nino droughts and failed government policies, were some of the worst ever recorded, including the Great Famine of 1876–78, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died and the Indian famine of 1899–1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people died.Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts. 1. Verso, 2000. p. 173 The Third Plague Pandemic started in China in the middle of the 19th century, spreading plague to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone. Plague. World Health Organization. Despite persistent diseases and famines, however, the population of the Indian subcontinent, which stood at about 125 million in 1750, had reached 389 million by 1941. Reintegrating India with the World Economy . Peterson Institute for International Economics.
By the early eighteenth century, the French had become the chief European rivals of the British. During the eighteenth century, it was highly possible for the Indian subcontinent to have succumbed to French control, but the defeat inflicted on them in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) permanently curtailed French ambitions. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 restored the original five to the French while making it clear that France could not expand its control beyond these areas.
The beginning of the Portuguese occupation of India can be traced back to the arrival of Vasco da Gama near Calicut on 20 May 1498. Soon after this, other explorers, traders and missionaries followed. By 1515, the Portuguese were the strongest naval power in the Indian Ocean and the Malabar Coast was dominated by them.
During this period, Europe's powers added nearly 8,880,000 square miles (23,000,000 km2) to their overseas colonial possessions. As it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s, Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion (known as the Scramble for Africa), although conquest took place also in other areas – notably south-east Asia and the East Asian seaboard, where Japan joined the European powers' scramble for territory.Parker Thomas Moon, Imperialism and world politics (1926), online.
The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) mediated the imperial competition among Britain, France, and Germany, defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of colonial claims and codifying the imposition of , accomplished usually through armed force.
In Germany, rising pan-Germanism was coupled to imperialism in the Alldeutsche Verband ("Pan-Germanic League"), which argued that Britain's world power position gave the British unfair advantages on international markets, thus limiting Germany's economic growth and threatening its security.Volker Rolf Berghahn, "German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler" German Studies Review 40#1 (2017) pp. 147–162 Online
Asking whether colonies paid, economic historian Grover Clark argues an emphatic "No!" He reports that in every case the support cost, especially the military system necessary to support and defend the colonies outran the total trade they produced. Apart from the British Empire, they have not favored destinations for the immigration of surplus populations.Raymond Leslie Buell, "Do Colonies Pay?" The Saturday Review, 1 August 1936 p 6
Leopold II of Belgium personally owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, under his rule many atrocities were committed. Round after round of international scandal regarding the brutal treatment of native workers forced the Belgium government to take full ownership and responsibility.
The Dutch Empire continued to hold the Dutch East Indies, which was one of the few profitable overseas colonies.
In the same manner, Italian Empire tried to conquer its "place in the sun," acquiring Somaliland in 1899–90, Eritrea and 1899, and, taking advantage of the "Sick man of Europe," the Ottoman Empire, also conquered Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Libya) with the 1911 Italo–Turkish War. The conquest of Ethiopia, which had remained the last African independent territory, had to wait until the Second Italo–Abyssinian War in 1935–36 (the First Italo–Ethiopian War in 1895–96 had ended in defeat for Italy).
The Portuguese and Spanish colonial empire were smaller, mostly legacies of past colonization. Most of their colonies had acquired independence during the Latin American revolutions at the beginning of the 19th century.
Imperialism also took place in Burma, Indonesia (Netherlands East Indies), British Malaya and the Philippines. Burma had been under British rule for nearly a hundred years, however, it was always considered an "imperial backwater". This accounts for the fact that Burma does not have an obvious colonial legacy and is not a part of the Commonwealth. In the beginning, in the mid-1820s, Burma was administered from Penang in Britain's Straits Settlements. However, it was soon brought within British India, of which it remained a part until 1937. Burma was governed as a province of India, not considered very important, and barely any accommodation was made to Burmese political culture or sensitivities. As reforms began to move India towards independence, Burma was simply dragged along.
With the final revision of treaties in 1894, Japan may be considered to have joined the family of nations on a basis of equality with the western states. From this same time imperialism became a dominant motive in Japanese policy.
Imperial Japan won conflicts against the Qing dynasty and gained control of Korea and Taiwan when the Treaty of Shimonoseki was concluded in 1895. In 1910, Korea was formally annexed by the Empire of Japan. The Japanese colonization of Korea saw rapid modernization of the peninsula and there was brutal treatment of civilians such as Korean comfort women who were forced to serve in brothels for the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces.
In 1931 Japanese army units based in Manchuria seized control of the region and created the puppet state of Manchukuo. Full-scale war with China followed in 1937, drawing Japan toward an overambitious bid for Asian hegemony (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere), which ultimately led to defeat and the loss of all its overseas territories after World War II (see Japanese expansionism and Japanese nationalism). The Imperial Japanese Army committed atrocities exemplified by the Nanjing Massacre.Sandra Wilson, "Rethinking the 1930s and the '15-Year War' in Japan." Japanese Studies 21.2 (2001): 155–164.
In 1945, the United Nations (UN) was founded when 50 nations signed the UN Charter, which included a statement of its basis in the respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. In 1952, demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term "Third World" in reference to the French Third Estate. The expression distinguished nations that aligned themselves with neither the Western world nor the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. In the following decades, decolonization would strengthen this group which began to be represented at the United Nations. The Third World's first international move was the 1955 Bandung Conference, led by Jawaharlal Nehru for India, Gamal Abdel Nasser for Egypt and Josip Broz Tito for Yugoslavia. The Conference, which gathered 29 countries representing over half the world's population, led to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.
Although the U.S. had first opposed itself to colonial empires, the Cold War concerns about Soviet influence in the Third World caused it to downplay its advocacy of popular sovereignty and decolonization. France thus received financial support in the First Indochina War (1946–54) and the U.S. did not interfere in the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Decolonization itself was a seemingly unstoppable process. In 1960, after a number countries gained independence, the UN had reached 99 members states: the decolonization of Africa was almost complete. In 1980, the UN had 154 member states, and in 1990, after Namibia's independence, 159 states. Hong Kong and Macau transferred sovereignty to China in 1997 and 1999 finally marked the end of European colonial era.
Globally, the non-aligned movement, led by Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia) and Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt) tried to create a block of nations powerful enough to be dependent on neither the United States nor the Soviet Union, but finally tilted towards the Soviet Union, while smaller independence movements, both by strategic necessity and ideological choice, were supported either by Moscow or by Beijing. Few independence movements were totally independent of foreign aid.Gerard McCann, "From diaspora to the third world and the United Nations: India and the politics of decolonizing Africa." Past & Present 218.suppl_8 (2013): 258–280. In the 1960s and 1970s, Leonid Brezhnev and Mao Zedong gave influential support to those newly African governments which many became one-party socialist states.
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