Colonialism

Colonialism is a system of global relationships where one nation extends its sovereignty beyond its own territorial borders, either directly controlling the population of a foreign state/location or displacing it altogether. This system of international power relations is further commonly supported by a paternalist ideology, which holds that colonized places need and benefit from colonial dominance. Though historically associated with the age of European expansion (1500–1900), colonialism persisted in a formal sense until the early 1980s, when the last states of Africa were decolonized. The legacy of colonialism is, therefore, still quite recent and arguably quite potent, and scholars continue to point to colonialism and contemporary neocolonial relationships to explain global inequalities and environmental change. Several theories of uneven development and ecological problems, therefore, involve ...