Questions about Colonialism
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is colonialism and how is it defined?
Colonialism is the practice of extending and maintaining political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a territory and its people by another people, in pursuit of interests defined in an often distant metropole. The historian Jürgen Osterhammel defines it as a relationship in which colonisers, convinced of their own superiority and ordained mandate to rule, make the fundamental decisions affecting the colonised. The word derives from the Latin colonia, a Roman settlement of newly settled citizens.
What are the four main types of colonialism?
Modern studies broadly classify colonialism into four types: settler colonialism, exploitation colonialism, surrogate colonialism, and internal colonialism. Settler colonialism aims to supplant existing populations with settlers, while exploitation colonialism uses fewer colonists to extract resources or labour. Some historians also identify national and trade forms, with Taiwan under the KMT cited as the archetypal national-colonialist society.
How much of the world did colonialism cover at its peak?
European colonial empires spanned 35% of Earth's land by 1800 and peaked at 84% by the beginning of World War I. At the outbreak of the First World War the world's colonial population totalled about 560 million people, of whom 70% lived in British possessions and 10% in French possessions.
How many Africans were enslaved through the colonial system?
The European colonial system took approximately 11 million Africans to the Caribbean and to North and South America as slaves. Between 1450 and 1870, the Portuguese Empire brought 3,646,800 enslaved people to Brazil, the largest single destination, followed by 1,665,000 to the British Caribbean and 1,600,200 to the French Caribbean.
How did diseases affect colonized populations?
Introduced Old World diseases devastated indigenous populations, and some believe they caused the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World. Smallpox killed half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518, wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans in 1618 and 1619, and killed around 50% of indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation.
When did decolonization happen and what is neocolonialism?
Decolonisation started in the 18th century and accelerated sharply after 1945, with a particularly large wave occurring between 1945 and 1975. Jean-Paul Sartre coined the word neocolonialism in 1956 to describe the continuation of colonial-style exploitation by indirect means after formal independence.