Colonialism

This article is about territorial expansion. For the architectural style, see American colonial architecture.

See colony and colonization for examples of colonialism that do not refer to Western colonialism. Also see Colonization (disambiguation)

The pith helmet (in this case, of the Second French Empire) is an icon of colonialism in tropical lands

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony, and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole. Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the metropole and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population.

The colonial period normally refers to the late 15th to the 20th century, when European states established colonies on other continents. During this time, the justifications for colonialism included various factors such as Christian missionary work, the profits to be made, the expansion of the power of the metropole and various religious and political beliefs.

Colonialism and imperialism are ideologically linked with mercantilism.

Definitions

The opening of the Colonial Institute (now the Tropenmuseum) in Amsterdam by Queen Wilhelmina, 1926

Collins English Dictionary defines colonialism as "the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker peoples or areas." The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers four definitions, including "something characteristic of a colony" and "control by one power over a dependent area or people."

The 2006 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "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." It discusses the distinction between colonialism and imperialism and states that "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."

In his preface to Jürgen Osterhammel's Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, Roger Tignor says, "For Osterhammel, the essence of colonialism is the existence of colonies, which are by definition governed differently from other territories such as protectorates or informal spheres of influence." In the book, Osterhammel asks, "How can 'colonialism' be defined independently from 'colony?'" He settles on a three-sentence definition:

Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonised people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonised population, the colonisers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.

Types of colonialism

Historians often distinguish between two non-mutually-exclusive forms of colonialism:

• Settler colonialism involves large-scale immigration, often motivated by religious, political, or economic reasons.
• Exploitation colonialism involves fewer colonists and focuses on access to resources for export, typically to the metropole. This category includes trading posts as well as larger colonies where colonists would constitute much of the political and economic administration, but would rely on indigenous resources for labour and material. Prior to the end of the slave trade and widespread abolition, when indigenous labour was unavailable, slaves were often imported.

Plantation colonies would be considered exploitation colonialism; but colonizing powers would utilize either type for different territories depending on various social and economic factors as well as climate and geographic conditions.

Surrogate colonialism involves a settlement project supported by colonial power, in which most of the settlers do not come from the mainstream of the ruling power.

Colonialism often played out in pre-populated areas. This gave rise to culturally and ethnically mixed populations such as the mestizos of the Americas, as well as racially divided populations as found in French Algeria or Southern Rhodesia.

History

Main articles: History of colonialism and Chronology of colonialism

World map of colonialism in 1800

This map of the world in 1914 shows the large colonial empires that powerful nations established across the globe

World map of colonialism at the end of the Second World War in 1945

Activity that could be called colonialism has a long history. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans all built colonies in antiquity. The word "metropole" comes from the Greek metropolis [Greek: "μητρόπολις"]—"mother city". The word "colony" comes from the Latin colonia—"a place for agriculture". Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese established military colonies south of their original territory and absorbed the territory, in a process known as nam tiến.

Modern colonialism started with the Age of Discovery. Portugal and Spain discovered new lands across the oceans and built trading posts. For some people, it is this building of colonies across oceans that differentiates colonialism from other types of expansionism. These new lands were divided between the Portuguese Empire and Spanish Empire, first by the papal bull Inter caetera and then by the Treaty of Tordesillas and the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529).

This period is also associated with the Commercial Revolution. The late Middle Ages saw reforms in accountancy and banking in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. These ideas were adopted and adapted in western Europe to the high risks and rewards associated with colonial ventures.

The 17th century saw the creation of the French colonial empire and the Dutch Empire, as well as the English colonial empire, which later became the British Empire. It also saw the establishment of some Swedish overseas colonies and a Danish colonial empire.

The spread of colonial empires was reduced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by the American Revolutionary War and the Latin American wars of independence. However, many new colonies were established after this time, including the German colonial empire and Belgian colonial empire. In the late 19th century, many European powers were involved in the Scramble for Africa.

The Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire and Austrian Empire existed at the same time as the above empires, but did not expand over oceans. Rather, these empires expanded through the more traditional route of conquest of neighbouring territories. There was, though, some Russian colonization of the Americas across the Bering Strait. The Empire of Japan modelled itself on European colonial empires. The United States of America gained overseas territories after the Spanish-American War for which the term "American Empire" was coined.

After the First World War, the victorious allies divided up the German colonial empire and much of the Ottoman Empire between themselves as League of Nations mandates. These territories were divided into three classes according to how quickly it was deemed that they would be ready for independence. However, decolonisation outside the Americas lagged until after the Second World War. In 1962 the United Nations set up a Special Committee on Decolonization, often called the Committee of 24, to encourage this process.

Further, dozens of independence movements and global political solidarity projects such as the Non-Aligned Movement were instrumental in the decolonization efforts of former colonies.

European colonies in 1914

The major European empires consisted of the following colonies at the start of World War I (former colonies of the Spanish Empire became independent before 1914 and are not listed; former colonies of other European empires that previously became independent, such as the former French colony Haiti, are not listed):

British colonies:

• Aden
• Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
• Ascension Island
• Australia
• Bahamas
• Basutoland
• Bechuanaland
• British East Africa
• British Guiana
• British Honduras
• British Somaliland
• Burma
• Canada
• Ceylon
• Egypt
• Ellice Island
• Falkland Islands
• Fiji Island
• Gambia
• Gold Coast
• India
• Ireland
• Malaya
• New Zealand
• Nigeria
• Northern Rhodesia
• Oman
• Papua
• Sarawak
• Sierra Leone
• South Rhodesia
• St. Helena
• Swaziland
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Uganda
• Union of South Africa

Dutch colonies:

• Dutch East Indies
• Dutch Guiana

French colonies:

• Algeria
• French Guiana
• French Equatorial Africa
• French Indochina
• French Somaliland
• French West Africa
• Guadeloupe
• La Réunion
• Madagascar
• Martinique
• Morocco
• New Caledonia
• Tunisia

German Empire colonies:

• Cameroon
• Caroline Islands
• Eritrea
• German New Guinea
• German East Africa
• German South West Africa
• Gilbert Islands
• Mariana Islands
• Marshall Islands
• Togo

Portuguese colonies:

• Angola
• Goa
• Mozambique
• Port Guinea

Numbers of European settlers in the colonies (1500-1914)

By 1914, Europeans had migrated to the colonies in the millions. Some intended to remain in the colonies as temporary settlers, mainly as military personnel or on business. Others went to the colonies as immigrants. British citizens were by far the most numerous population to migrate to the colonies: 2.5 million settled in Canada; 1.5 million in Australia; 750,000 in New Zealand; 450,000 in the Union of South Africa; and 200,000 in India. French citizens also migrated in large numbers, mainly to the colonies in the north African Maghreb region: 1.3 million settled in Algeria; 200,000 in Morocco; 100,000 in Tunisia; while only 20,000 migrated to French Indochina. Dutch and German colonies saw relatively scarce European migration, since Dutch and German colonial expansion focused upon commercial goals rather than settlement. Portugal sent 150,000 settlers to Angola, 80,000 to Mozambique, and 20,000 to Goa. During the Spanish Empire, approximately 550,000 Spanish settlers migrated to Latin America.

Neocolonialism

Main article: Neocolonialism

The term neocolonialism has been used to refer to a variety of contexts since decolonization that took place after World War II. Generally it does not refer to a type of direct colonization, rather, colonialism by other means. Specifically, neocolonialism refers to the theory that former or existing economic relationships, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, created by former colonial powers were or are used to maintain control of their former colonies and dependencies after the colonial independence movements of the post–World War II period.

Colonialism and the history of thought

Colonialism and geography

Settlers acted as the link between the natives and the imperial hegemony, bridging the geographical, ideological and commercial gap between the colonisers and colonised. Painter, J. and Jeffrey, A. affirm that certain advances aided the expansion of European states. With tools such as cartography, shipbuilding, navigation, mining and agricultural productivity colonisers had an upper hand. Their awareness of the Earth's surface and abundance of practical skills provided colonisers with a knowledge that, in turn, created power.

Painter and Jeffrey argue that geography as a discipline was not and is not an objective science, rather it is based on assumptions about the physical world. Whereas it may have given “The West” an advantage when it came to exploration, it also created zones of racial inferiority. Geographical beliefs such as environmental determinism, the view that some parts of the world are underdeveloped, legitimised colonialism and created notions of skewed evolution. These are now seen as elementary concepts. Political geographers maintain that colonial behavior was reinforced by the physical mapping of the world, visually separating “them” and “us”. Geographers are primarily focused on the spaces of colonialism and imperialism, more specifically, the material and symbolic appropriation of space enabling colonialism.

Colonialism and imperialism

Governor-General Félix Éboué welcomes Charles de Gaulle to Chad.

A colony is part of an empire and so colonialism is closely related to imperialism. Assumptions are that colonialism and imperialism are interchangeable, however Robert Young suggests that imperialism is the concept while colonialism is the practice. Colonialism is based on an imperial outlook, thereby creating a consequential relationship. Through an empire, colonialism is established and capitalism is expanded, on the other hand a capitalist economy naturally enforces an empire. In the next section Marxists make a case for this mutually reinforcing relationship.

Marxist view of colonialism

Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism, enforcing exploitation and social change. Marx thought that working within the global capitalist system, colonialism is closely associated with uneven development. It is an “instrument of wholesale destruction, dependency and systematic exploitation producing distorted economies, socio-psychological disorientation, massive poverty and neocolonial dependency.” (according to some left-wing historians, in all of the colonial countries ruled by Western European countries “the natives were robbed of more than half their natural span of life by undernourishment”.) Colonies are constructed into modes of production. The search for raw materials and the current search for new investment opportunities is a result of inter-capitalist rivalry for capital accumulation. Lenin regarded colonialism as the root cause of imperialism, as imperialism was distinguished by monopoly capitalism via colonialism and as Lyal S. Sunga explains: "Vladimir Lenin advocated forcefully the principle of self-determination of peoples in his "Theses on the Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" as an integral plank in the programme of socialist internationalism" and he quotes Lenin who contended that "The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation. Specifically, this demand for political democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for a referendum on secession by the seceding nation."

Liberalism, capitalism and colonialism

Classical liberals generally opposed colonialism (as opposed to colonization) and imperialism, including Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Henry Richard, Herbert Spencer, H. R. Fox Bourne, Edward Morel, Josephine Butler, W. J. Fox and William Ewart Gladstone. Moreover, American revolution was the first anti-colonial rebellion, inspiring others.

Adam Smith wrote in Wealth of Nations that Britain should liberate all of its colonies and also noted that it would be economically beneficial for British people in the average, although the merchants having mercantilist privileges would lose out.

Post-colonialism

Main articles: Post-colonialism and Postcolonial literature

Further information: Dutch Indies literature

Post-colonialism (or post-colonial theory) can refer to a set of theories in philosophy and literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. In this sense, postcolonial literature may be considered a branch of postmodern literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires. Many practitioners take Edward Saïd's book Orientalism (1978) as the theory's founding work (although French theorists such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon made similar claims decades before Said).

Saïd analysed the works of Balzac, Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they both absorbed and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Writers of post-colonial fiction interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak? (1998) gave its name to Subaltern Studies.

In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), Spivak explored how major works of European metaphysics (such as those of Kant and Hegel) not only tend to exclude the subaltern from their discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as fully human subjects. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), famous for its explicit ethnocentrism, considers Western civilization as the most accomplished of all, while Kant also allowed some traces of racialism to enter his work.

Impact of colonialism and colonization

Main article: Impact and evaluation of colonialism and colonization

The impacts of colonization are immense and pervasive. Various effects, both immediate and protracted, include the spread of virulent diseases, the establishment of unequal social relations, exploitation, enslavement, medical advances, the creation of new institutions, and technological progress.^{[citation needed]} Colonial practices also spur the spread of languages, literature and cultural institutions. The native cultures of the colonized peoples can also have a powerful influence on the imperial country.

Slaves and indentured servants

Further information: Atlantic slave trade and Indentured servant

Slave memorial in Zanzibar.

European nations entered their imperial projects with the goal of enriching the European metropole. Exploitation of non-Europeans to support imperial goals was acceptable to the colonizers. Two outgrowths of this imperial agenda were slavery and indentured servitude.

African slavery had existed long before Europeans discovered it as an exploitable means of creating an inexpensive labour force for the colonies. Europeans brought transportation technology to the practise, bringing large numbers of African slaves to the Americas by sail. Spain and Portugal had brought African slaves to work at African colonies such as Cape Verde and the Azores, and then Latin America, by the 16th century. The British, French and Dutch joined in the slave trade in subsequent centuries. Ultimately, around 11 million Africans were taken to the Caribbean and North and South America as slaves by European colonizers.

European empire	Colonial destination	Number of slaves imported
Portuguese Empire	Brazil	3,646,800
British Empire	British Caribbean	1,665,000
French Empire	French Caribbean	1,600,200
Spanish Empire	Latin America	1,552,100
Dutch Empire	Dutch Caribbean	500,000
British Empire	British North America	399,000

Abolitionists in Europe and America protested the inhumane treatment of African slaves, which led to the elimination of the slave trade by the late 19th century. The labour shortage that resulted inspired European colonizers to develop a new source of labour, using a system of indentured servitude. Indentured servants consented to a contract with the European colonizers. Under their contract, the servant would work for an employer for a term of at least a year, while the employer agreed to pay for the servant's voyage to the colony, possibly pay for the return to the country of origin, and pay the employee a wage as well. The employee was "indentured" to the employer because they owed a debt back to the employer for their travel expense to the colony, which they were expected to pay through their wages. In practice, indentured servants were exploited through terrible working conditions and burdensome debts created by the employers, with whom the servants had no means of negotiating the debt once they arrived in the colony.

India and China were the largest source of indentured servants during the colonial era. Indentured servants from India travelled to British colonies in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and also to French and Portuguese colonies, while Chinese servants travelled to British and Dutch colonies. Between 1830 and 1930, around 30 million indentured servants migrated from India, and 24 million returned to India. China sent more indentured servants to European colonies, and around the same proportion returned to China.

The end of empire

The populations of some colonial territories, such as Canada, enjoyed relative peace and prosperity as part of a European power, at least among the majority; however, minority populations such as First Nations peoples and French-Canadians experienced marginalization and resented colonial practises. Francophone residents of Quebec, for example, were vocal in opposing conscription into the armed services to fight on behalf of Britain during World War I, resulting in the Conscription crisis of 1917. Other European colonies had much more pronounced conflict between European settlers and the local population. Rebellions broke out in the later decades of the imperial era, such as India's Sepoy Rebellion.

The territorial boundaries imposed by European colonizers, notably in central Africa and south Asia, defied the existing boundaries of native populations that had previously interacted little with one another. European colonizers disregarded native political and cultural animosities, imposing peace upon people under their military control. Native populations were relocated at the will of the colonial administrators. Once independence from European control was achieved, civil war erupted in some former colonies, as native populations fought to capture territory for their own ethnic, cultural or political group. The Partition of India, a 1947 civil war that came in the aftermath of India's independence from Britain, became a conflict with 500,000 killed. Fighting erupted between Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities as they fought for territorial dominance. Muslims fought for an independent country to be partitioned where they would not be a religious minority, resulting in the creation of Pakistan.

Post-independence population movement

The annual Notting Hill Carnival in London is a celebration led by the Trinidadian_and_Tobagonian_British community.

In a reversal of the migration patterns experienced during the colonial era, post-independence era migration followed a route back towards the imperial country. In some cases, this was a movement of settlers of European origin returning to the land of their birth, or to an ancestral birthplace. 900,000 French colonists resettled in France following Algeria's independence in 1962. A significant number of these migrants were also of Algerian descent. 800,000 people of Portuguese origin migrated to Portugal after the independence of former colonies in Africa between 1974 and 1979; 300,000 settlers of Dutch origin migrated to the Netherlands from the Dutch West Indies after Dutch military control of the colony ended.

After WWII 300,000 Dutchmen from the Dutch East Indies, of which the majority were people of Eurasian descent called Indo Europeans, repatriated to the Netherlands. A significant number later migrated to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Global travel and migration in general developed at an increasingly brisk pace throughout the era of European colonial expansion. Citizens of the former colonies of European countries may have a privileged status in some respects with regard to immigration rights when settling in the former European imperial nation. For example, rights to dual citizenship may be generous, or larger immigrant quotas may be extended to former colonies.

In some cases, the former European imperial nations continue to foster close political and economic ties with former colonies. The Commonwealth of Nations is an organization that promotes cooperation between and among Britain and its former colonies, the Commonwealth members. A similar organization exists for former colonies of France, the Francophonie; the Community of Portuguese Language Countries plays a similar role for former Portuguese colonies, and the Dutch Language Union is the equivalent for former colonies of the Netherlands.

Migration from former colonies has proven to be problematic for European countries, where the majority population may express hostility to ethnic minorities who have immigrated from former colonies. Cultural and religious conflict have often erupted in France in recent decades, between immigrants from the Maghreb countries of north Africa and the majority population of France. Nonetheless, immigration has changed the ethnic composition of France; by the 1980s, 25% of the total population of "inner Paris" and 14% of the metropolitan region were of foreign origin, mainly Algerian.

Impact on health

See also: Globalization and disease and Columbian Exchange

Aztecs dying of smallpox, (“The Florentine Codex” 1540–85)

Encounters between explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced new diseases, which sometimes caused local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. For example, smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and others were unknown in pre-Columbian America.

Disease killed the entire native (Guanches) population of the Canary Islands in the 16th century. Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlan alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors. Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 17th century. In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. Some believe that the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. Over the centuries, the Europeans had developed high degrees of immunity to these diseases, while the indigenous peoples had no time to build such immunity.

Smallpox decimated the native population of Australia, killing around 50% of indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation. It also killed many New Zealand Māori. As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza. Introduced diseases, notably smallpox, nearly wiped out the native population of Easter Island. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population. The Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part to infectious diseases brought by Japanese settlers pouring into Hokkaido.

Conversely, researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus's voyages. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions of Europe. The disease was more frequently fatal than it is today; syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance. The first cholera pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. Ten thousand British troops and countless Indians died during this pandemic. Between 1736 and 1834 only some 10% of East India Company's officers survived to take the final voyage home. Waldemar Haffkine, who mainly worked in India, who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague in the 1890s, is considered the first microbiologist.

Countering disease

The Dutch Public Health Service provides medical care for the native people of the Dutch East Indies, May 1946

As early as 1803, the Spanish Crown organised a mission (the Balmis expedition) to transport the smallpox vaccine to the Spanish colonies, and establish mass vaccination programs there. By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans. Under the direction of Mountstuart Elphinstone a program was launched to propagate smallpox vaccination in India. From the beginning of the 20th century onwards, the elimination or control of disease in tropical countries became a driving force for all colonial powers. The sleeping sickness epidemic in Africa was arrested due to mobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk. In the 20th century, the world saw the biggest increase in its population in human history due to lessening of the mortality rate in many countries due to medical advances. The world population has grown from 1.6 billion in 1900 to over 7 billion today.

St. Paul's Indian Industrial School, Middlechurch, Manitoba, Canada, 1901. Compulsory attendance for native children in the Canadian residential school system resulted in death rates as high as 69% from contagious disease.

Historians have published documented evidence that discussion of how diseases were spread was concealed by colonialists to conceal actual origins of how indigenous populations were purposefully infected with these new diseases. Evidence has been presented at Canada's current Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Trent University historian John S. Milloy has written about criticism of government policy raised by contemporary doctors and others regarding tubercolosis among native people (A National Crime: the Canadian government and the residential school system, 1879-1986, University of Manitoba Press, 1999. ISBN 9780887556463). Documents from the RG 10 series on Canadian residential school system, written by Canada's federal Department of Indian Affairs (Vols. R 7733) (reproduced in Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust (2005) by Kevin Annett), show many examples of a deliberate policy of non-intervention in preventing the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and smallpox that were devastating native populations; at worst, there is evidence that the Canadian government was adopting policies that had the inevitable result of encouraging the rapid spread of deadly diseases among the native population.

Government officials, including the heads of Indian Affairs, authorized these practices through a policy that legitimated lack of care and widespread deaths on the grounds that “a high death rate from tuberculosis and other diseases is to be expected … among Indian children” (DIA Superintendent D.C. Scott, 1918).

Government policy was not to treat natives infected with tuberculosis or smallpox, and native children infected with smallpox and tuberculosis were deliberately sent back to their homes and into native villages by residential school administrators. Within the residential schools, there was no segregation of sick students from healthy students, and students infected with deadly illnesses were frequently admitted to the schools, where infections spread among the healthy students and resulted in deaths; death rates were as high as 69%. Despite the high death rate among students from contagious disease, in 1920 the Canadian government made attendance at residential schools mandatory for native children, threatening non-compliant parents with fines and imprisonment.

Some historians argue that once European colonists discovered indigenous populations were not immune to certain diseases, they deliberately spread diseases to gain military advantages and subjugate local peoples. Historian Roland Chrisjohn, Director of Native Studies at St. Thomas University (New Brunswick), has argued in The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada (Theytus Books, 1997. ISBN 0919441858) that the Canadian government followed a deliberate policy amounting to genocide against native populations. A documented case supporting official consideration of germ warfare against natives involves British commander Jeffrey Amherst during the Siege of Fort Pitt. It is uncertain whether this documented British attempt successfully infected the Native Americans. Letters show that British authorities discussed the possibility of deliberately distributing blankets infected with smallpox among enemy tribes in 1763. It has been regarded as one of the first instances of use of biological weapons in the history of warfare. Others, such as John S. Milloy, argue that colonial policies were not conventional genocide, but rather policies of neglect aimed at assimilating natives. Contemporary Europeans voiced such perspectives towards native deaths from contagious disease; Governor Winthrop of colonial Massachusetts declared, "God hath therefore cleared our title to this place".

See also

• African independence movements
• Age of discovery
• American Empire
• Anticolonialism
• Austria-Hungary
• Belgian colonial empire
• British Empire
• Bulgarian Empire
• Chartered companies
• Christianity and colonialism
• Civilising mission
• Cold War
• Colonial cinema
• Colonial Empire
• Colonial wars
• Colonies in antiquity
• Colonial India
• Colony
• Concession (territory)
• Danish overseas colonies
• Dutch Empire
• Empire of Liberty

• European colonization of the Americas
• Exploration
• French colonial empire
• German colonial empire
• German eastward expansion
• Global Empire
• Historical migration
• Historiography of the British Empire
• Imperialism in Asia
• Imperialism
• Inca Empire
• Italian Empire
• Japanese Empire
• Manifest Destiny
• Mexican Empire
• Mongol Empire
• Mongol invasions
• Mughal Empire
• Muslim conquests
• Ottoman Empire
• Ottoman wars in Europe

• Persian Empire
• Portuguese Empire
• Postcolonialism
• Protectorate
• Right to exist
• Russian Empire
• Settler colonialism
• Sino-African relations
• Soviet Empire
• Soviet occupations
• Spanish Empire
• Special Committee on Decolonization
• Stranger King (Concept)
• Swedish overseas colonies
• Transmigration program
• Tropical geography
• Turkic migration
• United Nations list of non-self-governing territories
• French colonial flags
• List of French possessions and colonies
• List of Muslim empires and dynasties

References

• Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (2005)
• Getz, Trevor R. and Heather Streets-Salter, eds. Modern Imperialism and Colonialism: A Global Perspective (2010)
• Stuchtey, Benedikt: Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450-1950, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: July 13, 2011.

Primary sources

• Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 1899
• Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, Pref. by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Constance Farrington. London : Penguin Book, 2001
• Kipling, Rudyard, The White Man's Burden, 1899
• Las Casas, Bartolomé de, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542, published in 1552)
• LeCour Grandmaison, Olivier, Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial, Fayard, 2005, ISBN 2-213-62316-3
• Lindqvist, Sven, Exterminate All The Brutes, 1992, New Press; Reprint edition (June 1997), ISBN 978-1-56584-359-2
• Maria Petringa, Brazza, A life for Africa (2006), ISBN 978-1-4259-1198-0
• Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, Princeton, NJ: M. Wiener, 1997.
• Said, Edward, Orientalism, 1978; 25th-anniversary edition 2003 ISBN 978-0-394-74067-6

External links

• Liberal opposition to colonialism, imperialism and empire (pdf) - by professor Daniel Klein
• Colonialism entry by Margaret Kohn in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Globalization (and the metaphysics of control in a free market world) - an online video on globalization, colonialism, and control.