The term colonialism according to Merriam Webster refers to “control by one country over another area and its people” . it’s a very diverse area in the field of politico-economics. However, my aim is to shed some light upon its origins, effects and what’s next for colonial powers.
Man has had always the urge to expand his power into newly discovered regions. The discovery of Americas in 1492 shook the world of great powers and engendered newly established strategies for world hegemons. The discovery of America by Spanish people paved the way for more tactical colonial aims.The healthy and prosperous indigenous Americans having enriched lives were displaced by cruel colonizers. Soon the region was aimed to serve for the mother countries. The first regions were Latin Americas to become subdued and annexed for its natural resources such as gold , silver etc. This way Spain fostered through extracting labor and resources from colonies. The place for annexation widened enough that other European powers such as Dutch,British empire and France began to take colonial actions against America which led to industrial revolution and furthermore capitalist development.
“The colonial system was the spinal cord of the commercial capitalism of the mercantile epoch” says the historian Eric Williams. Colonialism is in tandem with capitalist development which refers to spread of businesses and capitals to other regions specially those docile and fragile countries. This was the central work of colonizers .From annexation of south america in time of its discovery until 19th century the imperialistic approach towards colonialism had been alive and one dimensional which later on 20th century some global powers were swept away and replaced by new great hegemons which begun new strategies for colonizing. Nevertheless,capitalism and slave trade have to say a lot at the time of colonialism. one might find many perceptible reasons for why did the colonialism occur ? but the agenda behind was to gain more politico-economic power in nearby regions or distant ones which had been occurred via some means. For instance capitalistic development mode was practiced during this era. Capitalism has huge area of discussion thus we suffice only by knowing that capitalism in a nutshell promotes the amassing of capital and spreading it to other regions in order to increase prosperity albeit people might have misused the doctrines of this school of thought but it did contribute a lot to monopoly of certain great powers of time and colonizing the weak labor force and making them more dependent. To elucidate the effects of colonialism, I would say that it led to failures of poor nations, exacerbating their institutions, making them more dependent on mother countries ( read dependency theory), extracting the natural resources and labor force from periphery countries ,slave trade and so on.Slave trade plays a key role as the constituent of colonialism which many people were being enslaved from the poorer nations and carried violently to the colonial powers. This had culminated to death of millions of these innocent human beings which liberty for them was a reverie. Even today we can witness today the dreadful effects of colonialism in third world countries such as Africa, middle east and certain Asian countries. The imperial powers following their global hegemonic aims left tactical but undesirable strategies in these least developed nations and worsening them more. The talk on the effects colonialism is long and spacious thus we turn to third issue which is the future of colonialism or what is yet to arrive on the table for discussion .
The swerve of 19th century to 20th century is parallel with the deviation from previous colonialist aims to the new ones. A new page for seeking global supremacy is turned and the new world order was created. The first half of 20th century is compatible with 2 world wars and the devastation of many territories. New approaches were taken such as geopolitics, geo-economcis. After the two world wars the great powers did not cease to colonize but this time with more narrowed and well schemed agendas. Today we witness the great powers such USA, Russia, China etc have common geopolitical and geo-economic aims which they are working on it.Be it trade,military support, international aids and funds or others. All these acts play a gigantic and malevolent role in the current world. No developed country leaves its citizens and its nationalistic nature acting benevolently but rather to pursue the footsteps of their predecessors continuing to colonize maybe not the way their ancestors did but in the skin of a sheep hidden as wolves which outwardly it seems one thing and inwardly it seems something else.
