Colonialism

Colonialism is usually understood as a political doctrine promoting and justifying the exploitation by a colonizing power of a territory under its control either for its own benefit or for the benefit of the colons settled in this territory. In this sense, colonialism refers mainly to the unequal relationships developed between European colonizers and their respective colonial empires. This conventional definition has been considered too restrictive by some scholars who, in the past 20 years, have stretched the notion. Colonialism has come to include many different kinds of unequal power relationships between two countries (e.g., between Israel and Palestine) and between the West and the world (the concept of colonialism replacing to some extent that of imperialism). Colonialism can also refer to unequal relationships between a dominant majority group and a minority group that is an indigenous group or considered to be not autochthonous (internal colonialism). Colonialism has also been used in association with larger modern political and economic processes such as the economic world system since the 16th century or, more generally, with a vision of European “modernity.” The polysemy of colonialism is largely due to the renewed interest, since the 1980s, in the colonial and postcolonial periods among literary critics, historians, anthropologists, and political scientists. In this entry, colonialism is analyzed only as a set of complex, unequal, and past relationships linking European colonizing powers to colonies (for other meanings, see the entry on postcolonialism). It is, thus, useful to dissociate colonialism as a political doctrine forged by those writing during the colonial period from colonialism as a paradigm reexamined by scholars since the 1980s. In the last section of this entry, the way postcolonial thinkers have portrayed colonialism is briefly explored before other approaches examining colonialism from a more political, social, and economic angle are examined.