REVIEW ON COLONIALISM

The era of European colonialism started around 1493, a year after Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America, when Pope Alexander VI apportioned newly discovered non-Christian lands between the two main Catholic maritime powers of the day, Spain and Portugal. Over the next four and half centuries, the scope of European settlement and dominion expanded to cover the whole of the Americas and much of south and south east Asia, Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand), Africa and the Arab Middle East. By and large, European colonialism began at the coasts of different settlements. Subsequently, through trade and involvement in local politics, European influence soon spread to the hinterland.
It must however be noted that the first European colonizing powers were Spain and Portugal, later followed by Britain, France, and Holland. Countries like Germany, Belgium and Italy involved in ‘colonial businesses in the 19th century. As far back as around 1500, Spain and Portugal already held sway in the newly discovered continent of America. It would suffice to say that the discovery of America and the subsequent outrageous demand for slaves from the sub-Saharan Africa paved way for official colonialism in Africa, Arab Middle East, Oceania (including New Zealand and Australia). While countries like Portugal, France, Britain and Belgium took a grand part evangelizing colonialism, Italy and perhaps Germany were considered as late comers. Eminently, European countries like Britain, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal took a core part in exploiting other areas of the world. We must however be paradoxical with any argument as what brought a country down might be what brings another country up. Hence, to peoples in the colonized world, colonialism was a bad notion-so devilish, but to the western powers that benefitted from this act, it was an ideal venture.
Colonies have been described as ‘underfunded and overextended laboratories of modernity’. They were laboratories within which the subject of the experiments proved unwilling to live. Using different colonial patterns like indirect rule and policy of assimilation by Britain and France respectively, an effective hold was established over colonial territories.   It must however be stated that whichever colonial pattern employed by any colonial power to manage their territories, the ultimate expectation was economic gains. It would not be totally wrong to firmly say that economic competition among European powers gave a strong impetus to European thirst for oversea territories beginning from the 15th century. European powers houses sought new trade avenue and economic location- they searched intensely for raw materials and commodities which hitherto had been exhausted in Europe. The colonial economics of Sub-Saharan Africa resulted in the development of a much weaker indigenous capitalist class, with Africans effectively excluded from all but petty trade in most regions (Tordoff 1997: 42).
Could this ‘colonial pattern’ have failed had local collaborators not helped establish it basic foundation? This is a critical question that has over time generated several heated debates. In virtually every colonized territories of the world, perhaps excluding America, local collaborators played a strategic part in establishing alien overlordship. West Africa, East and Central Africa, much of South Asia and even Latin America were territories indirectly sold out by a few influential personages or the so called collaborators. Pitifully, these set of collaborators and ‘political personages’ occurred to be at the forefront of nationalist struggle. Is it not a little ridiculous to see that the set of people whose lineage gained most from the exploitation of a whole territory purportedly fought for the independence of such territories and later controlled power? Except for a marginal exception, most set of people that agitated for independence in the erstwhile European colonies were from the petite bourgeoisie class, for example, the ‘Ilustrados’ in Philippine were mainly elites who had enjoyed a considerable ‘goodies’ from European exploitation.
Finally, from an African perspective, it would be good to see colonialism as a socio-economic phenomenon in which ‘European countries’ explored, conquered, settled and exploited many territories of the world using different colonial patterns. To an European, this description may however be wrong: colonialism actually might be a successful ideal that aided the spread of European civilization and ‘superior’ western ideas to the less ‘fortunate’ part of the world. Either of the two, we could probably point out our views of colonialism differently and individually. To you, what did colonialism leave as legacies? Generally, colonialism was a master-slave relationship; a master could enjoy his slave and a slave could also relatively enjoy his master.  However, in any part of the world, master-slave relationship is always unequal and often exploitative. Thus, colonialism was arguably an exploitative relationship having far-reaching influence on the ‘slave’ that even the passage of time could not erode.

Written by Matthew
REFERENCE:
Politics in the Developing World, Vicky Randall and Peter Burnell, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, New York. Pg 41.