Analysis of European colonialism and colonization

This article refers to the evaluation of Western colonialism. See colonisation for other examples of colonialism.

Colonialism is the practice of creating settlements in lands geographically distant from the parent land. Historically, this has often involved killing or subjugating the indigenous population. With the spread of Hellenic and Roman culture and technology by the Roman Empire, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most of the world has at some point been colonised by a European country. The most notable colonial powers were Rome, Greece, Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Denmark, whose combined empires covered at various times the whole of North, Central and South America, Africa, Australia, much of Indonesia, the countries lying on the Eastern Mediterranean, much of the Indian subcontinent, and most of the countries lying in between. In short, most of the world. It is interesting to note that all of these colonial powers have a large coastline. Historically, the settlements of new lands and the maintenance of trade and prosperity have depended heavily on naval power.

Debate about the perceived positive and negative aspects of colonialism has occurred for centuries, amongst both coloniser and colonised, and continues to the present day. Different types of colonialism must first be distinguished, as they were spread in time and thus didn't represent the same historic phenomenon. Starting in the 15th century, the School of Salamanca, gathering theologians such as Francisco Suarez, theorized natural law, thus limiting the domination of Charles V's imperial powers by according natural rights to indigenous people. However, the School of Salamanca also created a casuistry justifying legitimate cases of conquests, thus legitimizing the colonisation project itself. The Valladolid controversy opposed the famous Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas to the dominant beliefs of his times, which considered that the Native Americans had no souls and could thus be freely enslaved. In the 18th century, Diderot criticized ethnocentrism and the colonisation of Tahiti in Supplément au voyage de Bougainville ("Supplement to Bougainville's Travel", 1772).

Pigmentocracy

Main article: Pigmentocracy

In the Portuguese colonies, miscegenation was commonplace, and even supported by the court as a way to boost low populations and guarantee a successful settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. Some of the children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, possibly based on lighter skin color, but not race. Some former Portuguese colonies have large mixed-race populations, for instance, Brazil, Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe. Miscegenation was still common in Africa until the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in the 1970s, which succeeded the 1974 Carnation Revolution. To the present day, Angolan, Brazilian, and Cape Verdian societies are defined by the degree of melanin (lighter skin). In Cape Verde, the population is often differentiated by lighter and darker skin (known as pele de chocolate, or "chocolate skin"). Because of white supremacist institutions and the values they inculcated among the populace, many such miscegenated societies were and remain to this day heavily stratified by color, with darker-skinned citizens assigned the lowest economic and social status. This was demonstrated by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre's famous Casa-Grande & Senzala ("The Great House and the Slave Quarters" - 1933). Eduardo Galeano also showed how the profusion of Spanish words to design various types of skin color demonstrated a very precise racial hierarchy in Latin America. In the US, anti-miscegenation laws were passed and racial segregation enforced.

Genocides and relation to the Holocaust

Further information: Genocide and Holocaust

Concerning the scramble for Africa, most historians tend to describe both positive aspects (infrastructures, education) and negative aspects (racism, exploitation, and, in some cases, even extermination - see for example the Herero genocide between 1904 and 1907). Several authors, such as Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist (1992), French historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison or, in a more moderate way, Hannah Arendt (1951) have linked the possibility and the history of the Holocaust to colonialism. In Exterminate All The Brutes (a sentence taken from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness), Sven Lindqvist argued that the techniques and inhumanity necessary to the Holocaust were indeed commonly practiced during colonial rule, in which several ethnic groups were exterminated. However, this thesis, linking the Holocaust to colonial genocides, has been harshly disputed by other authors.

Imperialism and dependency theory

Main articles: Dependency theory and Neocolonialism

Dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank argue that colonialism leads to the net transfer of wealth from the colonised to the coloniser, and inhibits successful economic development. Critics such as Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, the Négritude movement (gathering Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor) argue that colonialism does political, psychological, and moral damage to the colonised as well. Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy likened debating the pros and cons of colonialism to "debating the pros and cons of rape".

Critics of the alleged abuses of economic and political advantages accruing to developed nations via globalised capitalism have referred to them as neocolonialism, and see them as a continuation of the domination and exploitation of ex-colonial countries, merely utilizing different means. Neocolonialism is in this sense a new form of imperialism, which had first been theorized by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg thought that the necessary economic expansion of capitalism automatically led to territorial expansion, in order to find new resources and markets.

However the dependency theory and theories of economic underdevelopment of the Third World by colonial powers are contested by many economic historians. Bill Warren, a marxist historian, disagreed with the dependency theorists:

There is no evidence of a process of underdevelopment…The evidence rather supports a contrary thesis: that process of development has been taking place…and that this has been a direct result of the west.

Benign colonialism

Benign colonialism is a term that refers to a supposed form of colonialism in which benefits outweighed risks for indigenous populations whose lands, resources, rights and freedoms were preempted by a colonising nation-state. The historical source for the concept of benign colonialism resides with John Stuart Mill who was chief examiner of the British East India Company dealing with British interests in India in the 1820s and 1830s. Mill's most well-known essays (1844) on benign colonialism are found in "Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy." Mill's view contrasted with Burkean orientalists. Mill promoted the training of a corps of bureaucrats indigenous to India who could adopt the modern liberal perspective and values of 19th century Britain. Mill predicted this group’s eventual governance of India would be based on British values and perspectives. For a discussion of Mill's arguments see Doyle (2006).

Advocates of the concept cite improved standards of health and education, employment opportunities, liberal markets, developed natural resources and introduced improved governance. The first wave of benign colonialism lasted from c. 1790-1960. The second wave included neocolonial policies exemplified in Hong Kong (Liu 2003), where unfettered expansion of the market created a new form of benign colonialism. Political interference and military intervention (Doyle 2006) in independent nation-states, such as Iraq (Campo 2004), is also discussed under the rubric of benign colonialism in which a foreign power preempts national governance to protect a higher concept of freedom. The term is also used in the 21st century to refer to American, French and Chinese market activities in African countries with massive quantities of underdeveloped nonrenewable natural resources.

These views have support by some academics. Economic historian Niall Ferguson has argued that empires can be a good things provided that they are "liberal empires". He cites the British empire as being the only example of a "liberal empire" and argues that it maintained the rule of law, benign government, free trade and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. Historian Rudolf von Albertini agrees that, on balance, colonialism can be good. He argues that colonialism was a mechanism for modernisation in the colonies and imposed a peace by putting an end to tribal warfare. Historians L.H Gann and Peter Duignan have also argued that Africa probably benefited from colonialism on balance an, although it had its faults, colonialism was probably "one of the most efficacious engines for cultural diffusion in world history". These views, however, are controversial and are rejected by many who, on balance, see colonialism as bad. The Economic historian D.K Fieldhouse has taken a kind of middle position, arguing that the effects of colonialism were actually limited, and their mean weakness wasn't in deliberate underdevelopment but in what it failed to do. Niall Ferguson agrees with his last point, arguing that colonialism's main weaknesses were sins of omission. Marxist history Bill Warren has argued that whilst colonialism may be bad because it relies on force he views it as being the genesis of Third World development.

Literature that challenges the assumptions of benign colonialism claiming the colonialist project as it actually unfolded placed First Nations, Inuit and Métis at higher risks of vulnerabilities to catastrophes, to social exclusion and human rights abuses, has not been as widely publicized. further references from the merged former article Benign colonialism

Post-colonialism and post-colonial literature

Main articles: Post-colonialism and Postcolonial literature

Historical debate in France

Main articles: Abolitionism and Negationism

On May 10, 2001, the Taubira law officially recognized slavery and the Atlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity. Between various propositions, May 10 was finally chosen as day dedicated to the recognition of the crime of slavery. Anticolonialist activists also want the African Liberation Day to be recognized by the Republic. Although slavery was recognized by this law, four years later, the vote of the February 23, 2005 law by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), asking teachers and textbooks to "acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa", was met with public uproar and accusations of historic revisionism, both inside France and abroad. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria, refused to sign the envisioned "friendly treaty" with France because of this law. Famous writer Aimé Césaire, leader of the Négritude movement, also refused to meet UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy, leading the latter to cancel his visit to Martinique. The controversed law was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006.

Philosopher Paul Ricœur has spoke of the necessity of a "decolonisation of memory", starting with the recognition of the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian war (1954-62) and the recognition of the decisive role of immigrated manpower in the Trente Glorieuses post-WW II economic growth period.

References

• Campo, Juan E. 2004. “Benign Colonialism? The Iraq War: Hidden Agendas and Babylonian Intrigue.” Interventionism. 26:1. Spring.
• Doyle, Michael W. 2006. “Sovereignty and Humanitarian Military Intervention.” Columbia University.
• Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. Benign colonialism.
• Kurtz,Stanley. 2003.”Lessons from the British in India.” Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint. Policy Review.
• Liu, Henry C. K. 2003. “China: a Case of Self-Delusion: Part 1: From colonialism to confusion.” Asia Times. May 14.
• Mill, John Stuart. 1844. "Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy."
• Mill, John Stuart. “A Few Words on Nonintervention.” 1973. In Gertrude Himmelfarb, Ed. Essays on Politics and Culture. Gloucester: Peter Smith. pp. 368-84.

Bibliography

• Diderot, Denis, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772)

See also

• Colonialism
• Colonial mentality
• Imperialism
• Dependency theory
• Third World debt
• Odious debt
• Scientific racism
• Atlantic slave trade