Colonialism

Both the global magnitude of colonialism's expansion and its abrupt, fragmented demise place colonialism at a pivotal phase in human history. Colonialism normally refers to the conquest and direct control of other land and other people by Western capitalist entities intent on expanding processes of production and consumption. In this context, colonialism is situated within a history of imperialism best understood as the globalization of the capitalist mode of production. While colonialism as a formal political process managed through state entities began to unravel following World War II, the global expansion of capitalism continues as a process that informs and often structures national, corporate, and human entanglements on a global scale.

Historically, colonialism is a term largely restricted to that period of European expansion lasting roughly from 1830 to 1930. By the early 20th century, Britain, [Page 144]France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal together claimed control of nearly 84 percent of the earth's surface. The British alone ruled over one fourth of the world's land and one third of its population.

European expansion did not begin, of course, in 1830. It was arguably the Iberian navigators of the 15th century, reaching the Americas in 1492 and India in 1498, who inaugurated the age of colonialism. Furthermore, other empires outside of Europe clearly rose (and fell) prior to the colonial period. By the 1830s, however, a new period of empire building had erupted, sparked by a volatile combination of technologies (of travel, production, and health) and ideologies (including liberalism, enlightenment, scientific racism, and capitalism) that entangled human relationships within the distinct and asymmetrical identifying categories of colonizer and colonized.

Colonial expansion was related to technological advancements driven by the rise of industrialization. Processes of commodity production that required ever larger quantities of raw material and unskilled labor, along with advances in travel technologies, pushed European powers into untapped spaces of labor and material around the world. In the process, colonized lands were reconfigured as spaces of manufacture or plantations for cash crops, and newly landless colonial populations were introduced to the wage economy.

Travel technologies helped make this possible. From the large-hulled sailing ships that took the Portuguese into Southeast Asia during the 1500s to the steam engines that followed 300 years later, people and products began to move through space at a pace the world had never before seen. At the same time, medical discoveries, such as quinine, allowed for relatively sickness-free travel into tropical climates that had before caused great illness for Europeans. In addition, the arms revolution at the end of the 19th century allowed for relatively small forces to take and hold large blocks of land and indigenous populations.

Ideologically, the impetus for colonialism might rest with what has been called capitalism's tendency to expand beyond the confines of a single political system. Yet this push outward was buttressed not only by a belief in the logic of capitalism but also by a belief in the racial and cultural superiority of the colonizers. Colonialism as a “civilizing” project was fueled by Enlightenment beliefs in reason and progress, ideas thought capable of leading humanity out of the darkness of tradition and superstition and into the light of objective truth.

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