Faris Mulahasanović
Adnan Talić
Mehmed Jakubović
Kenan Mulasmajlović
Bekir Bukvarević
Colonialism and Imperialism
Professor : Muhidin Mulalić
International University of Sarajevo Sarajevo, 20.05.2014.
INTRODUCTION
Our group had an assignment to write an essay about imperialism and colonialism. Important
term regarding these topics is also exploitation. We will try to show how imperialism,
colonialism and exploitation affected history and how they affected people at that time, good
and bad sides and influences, but first of all we need to define those terms, explain what they
mean, when did they happen, who started it and who was influenced by it. All these
informations will be given individually for each of these topics and then we will try to put
them together in common framework in which they have happened and also we will try to
compare it to each other, see benefits and flaws of each topic and of all of them together. We
hope that we will succed, and that we will fulfill our goals in simplest way possible, so as to
show what we have learned and found in our research and showed in this research paper.
COLONIALISM
Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition, and expansion of
colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a set of unequal relationships
between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the
indigenous population.
The European colonial period was the era from the 16th century to the mid-20th century when
several European powers (particularly, but not exclusively, Portugal, Spain, Britain, the
Netherlands, Italy and France) established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first
the countries followed mercantilist policies designed to strengthen the home economy at the
expense of rivals, so the colonies were usually allowed to trade only with the mother country.
By the mid-19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up mercantilism and
trade restrictions and introduced the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.
DEFINITIONS
Collins English Dictionary defines colonialism as "the policy and practice of a power in
extending control over weaker people or areas." The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers four
definitions, including "something characteristic of a colony" and "control by one power over a
dependent area or people."
The 2006 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "uses the term 'colonialism' to describe the
process of European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including
Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia." It discusses the distinction between
colonialism and imperialism and states that "given the difficulty of consistently distinguishing
between the two terms, this entry will use colonialism as a broad concept that refers to the
project of European political domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that
ended with the national liberation movements of the 1960s."
In his preface to Jürgen Osterhammel's Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, Roger Tignor
says, "For Osterhammel, the essence of colonialism is the existence of colonies, which are by
definition governed differently from other territories such as protectorates or informal spheres
of influence." In the book, Osterhammel asks, "How can 'colonialism' be defined
independently from 'colony?'" He settles on a three-sentence definition:
Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a
minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized
people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often
defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population,
the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.
TYPES
Historians often distinguish between two overlapping forms of colonialism:
Settler colonialism involves large-scale immigration, often motivated by religious, political,
or economic reasons.
Exploitation colonialism involves fewer colonists and focuses on access to resources for
export, typically to the metropole. This category includes trading posts as well as larger
colonies where colonists would constitute much of the political and economic administration,
but would rely on indigenous resources for labour and material. Prior to the end of the slave
trade and widespread abolition, when indigenous labour was unavailable, slaves were often
imported to the Americas, first by the Portuguese Empire, and later by the Spanish, Dutch,
French and British.
Also, there are few more types of these two forms of colonialism:
Plantation colonies would be considered exploitation colonialism; but colonizing powers
would utilize either type for different territories depending on various social and economic
factors as well as climate and geographic conditions.
Surrogate colonialism involves a settlement project supported by colonial power, in which
most of the settlers do not come from the mainstream of the ruling power.
Internal colonialism is a notion of uneven structural power between areas of a nation state.
The source of exploitation comes from within the state.
HISTORY
Activity that could be called colonialism has a long history, starting with the pre-colonial
African empires which led to the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans who all built
colonies in antiquity. The word "metropole" comes from the Greek metropolis- "mother city".
The word "colony" comes from the Latin colonia "a place for agriculture". Between the 11th
and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese established military colonies south of their original
territory and absorbed the territory, in a process known as namtiến.
Modern colonialism started with the Age of Discovery. Portugal and Spain discovered new
lands across the oceans and built trading posts or conquered large extensions of land. For
some people, it is this building of colonies across oceans that differentiates colonialism from
other types of expansionism. These new lands were divided between the Portuguese Empire
and Spanish Empire, first by the papal bull Inter caetera and then by the Treaty of Tordesillas
and the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529).
This period is also associated with the Commercial Revolution. The late Middle Ages saw
reforms in accountancy and banking in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. These ideas were
adopted and adapted in western Europe to the high risks and rewards associated with colonial
ventures.
The 17th century saw the creation of the French colonial empire and the Dutch Empire, as
well as the English overseas possessions, which later became the British Empire. It also saw
the establishment of a Danish colonial empire and some Swedish overseas colonies.
The spread of colonial empires was reduced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by the
American Revolutionary War and the Latin American wars of independence. However, many
new colonies were established after this time, including the German colonial empire and
Belgian colonial empire. In the late 19th century, many European powers were involved in the
Scramble for Africa.
The Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire and Austrian Empire existed at the same time as the
above empires, but did not expand over oceans. Rather, these empires expanded through the
more traditional route of conquest of neighbouring territories. There was, though, some
Russian colonization of the Americas across the Bering Strait. The Empire of Japan modelled
itself on European colonial empires. The United States of America gained overseas territories
after the Spanish-American War for which the term "American Empire" was coined.
After the First World War, the victorious allies divided up the German colonial empire and
much of the Ottoman Empire between themselves as League of Nations mandates. These
territories were divided into three classes according to how quickly it was deemed that they
would be ready for independence. However, decolonisation outside the Americas lagged until
after the Second World War. In 1962 the United Nations set up a Special Committee on
Decolonization, often called the Committee of 24, to encourage this process.
Further, dozens of independence movements and global political solidarity projects such as
the Non-Aligned Movement were instrumental in the decolonization efforts of former
colonies.
EXPLOITATION
Most often, the word exploitation is used to refer to economic exploitation; that is, the act of
using another person as a means to one's profit, particularly using their labor without offering
them fair retribution. There are two major perspectives on economic exploitation:
Organizational or "micro-level" exploitation: most theories of exploitation center on the
market power of economic organizations within a market setting. Some neoclassical theory
points to exploitation not based on market power.
Structural or "macro-level" exploitation: focuses on exploitation by large sections of society
even (or especially) in the context of free markets. Marxist theory points to the entire
capitalist class as an exploitative entity, and to capitalism as a system based on exploitation.
THEORIES
The focus of most assertions about the existence of exploitation towards human beings is the
socio-economic phenomenon where people trade their labor or allegiance to an entity, such as
the state, a corporation or any other private company. Some theories of exploitation (Marxist,
new liberal) are structural, while others are organizational (neoclassical).
MARXIST THEORY
In Marxian economics, exploitation refers to the subjection of producers (the proletariat) to
work for passive owners (bourgeoisie) for less compensation than is equivalent to the actual
amount of work done. The proletarian is forced to sell his or her labour power, rather than a
set quantity of labour, in order to receive a wage in order to survive, while the capitalist
exploits the work performed by the proletarian by accumulating the surplus value of their
labour. Therefore, the capitalist makes his/her living by passively owning a means of
production and generating a profit, when instead the labour should be entitled to all it
produces.
NEOCLASSICAL THEORIES
In neoclassical economics, exploitation is organizational, explained using microeconomic
theory. It is a kind of market failure, a deviation from the abstraction of perfect competition.
The most common scenario is a monopsony or a monopoly. These exploiters have bargaining
power. This kind of exploitation is supposed to be abolished by the spread of competition and
markets.
Other neoclassical theories go beyond simple organizational exploitation. First, another type
of exploiter is the hired "agent" (employee) who takes advantage of the "principal"
(employer) who hires him or her, under conditions of asymmetric information (see the
principal–agent problem). For example, a clerk may be able to "shirk" on the job, secretly
violating the labor contract. Similarly, an executive may embezzle funds, which is also
contrary to the interests of the stockholders. This kind of exploitation is beyond the scope of
markets, within corporate or governmental bureaucratic organizations. It is often extremely
hard to solve using competition and markets but is instead addressed using monitoring of
employees and management, risk-sharing agreements, bonding, and the like.
NEW LIBERAL THEORIES
For others, i.e., a number of "new liberals", exploitation naturally coexists with free markets.
As in the Marxist theory, the problem is structural rather than organizational: given its special
position in society (controlling an important asset), a lobby group can shift the distribution of
income in its direction, impoverishing the rest, even though their role serves no reasonable
purpose. While Henry George pointed to land-owners, John Maynard Keynes saw rentiers
(non-working owners of financial wealth) as fitting this picture. The first receive land-rent
while the second receive interest, even though, according to the proponents of this theory,
they contribute nothing to society. They merely own a certain asset and have the ability to
make money from that asset without actually doing any work themselves. While George
argued for a "single tax" on land-rent to solve this problem, Keynes hoped that interest rates
could be driven to zero.
In some ways, these theories are similar to the Marxist one discussed above. However, they
deal with the power and influence of special interests in society (and within the capitalist
class) rather than dealing with a structural difference in class position of the Marxian sort.
Further, while Marx saw exploitation as raising the total amount of production in capitalist
society, in these theories exploitation represents a form of waste or inefficiency, hurting
growth under capitalism. Therefore, according to this view, abolishing rent or interest would
make everyone ultimately better off.
IMPERIALISM
In the book “The Dictionary of Human Geography” imperialism is defined as an unequal
human and territorial relationship, usually in the form of empire, based on ideas of superiority
and practices of dominance, and involving the extension of authority and control of one state
or people over another. Derived from the Latin word imperium (“sovereign authority”),
imperialism is closely affiliated with colonialism. The term was originally used in the second
half of the nineteenth century to describe a state-centered ethos of territorial expansion –
epitomized by the imperial partition of Africa between 1885 and 1914 – that involved both
aggressive national competition for prestige and a more general rationalization of imperialism
as a “civilizing mission”.(Johnston, Pratt, Watts, Whatmore, 2011.)
Imperialism is defined as the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation
over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies. Imperialism
was most prominent in the era from 1850-1914. Imperialism often affects the weaker nation,
though the weaker nation may adopt some of the technology or ideas of the stronger one.The
stronger nation justifies its actions with social Darwinismand the ideas that they are a
superior nation. However, in reality, they are destroying civilizations for their own gain.
During the process of Imperialism, as represented in literature and history, the effected
nations were hurt to the extent that the negative effects outweigh the occasional
benefits.Lewis Samuel Feuer identifies two major subtypes of imperialism:
The first is the "regressive imperialism" identified with pure conquest, unequivocal
exploitation, extermination or reductions of undesired peoples, and settlement of desired
peoples into those territories.The secondtype identified by Feuer is "progressive imperialism"
that is founded upon a cosmopolitan view of humanity, that promotes the spread of
civilization to allegedly backward societies to elevate living standards and culture in
conquered territories, and allowance of a conquered people to assimilate into the imperial
society, an example being the British Empire which claimed to give their "citizens" a number
of advantages. Classical imperialism had strong links with social Darwinism. The thought was
not based on the individual of a species or race, but on the entire race trying to prove their
superiority through force. The reasons for an imperialistic rule were many; they ranged from
trade, resource gathering and colonization of previously uninhabited lands to dominion of the
lesser race by the greater. Many countries were tagged as imperialistic and a majority of them
were European. The term as such primarily has been applied to Western political and
economic dominance in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some writers, such as Edward Said, use
the term more broadly to describe any system of domination and subordination organized with
an imperial center and a periphery. According to (Vladimir Lenin theory) in his work
“Imperialism, the highest state of Capitalism” Lenin concluded that the competition between
empires and the unfettered drive to maximize profit would lead to wars between the empires
themselves, such as World War I. There were major imperial powers in:
a) Great Britain
b) France
c) Germany
d) Russia
e) The United States
f) Japan
Powerful industrial nations established empires in:
a) Africa
b) Asia
c) Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and surrounding islands)
IMPERIALISM IN AFRICA
When the Age of Imperialism began in 1875, it affected Africa in many ways. Nowhere was
the competition for colonies more intense than in Africa. Europeans went after North and
South Africa splitting up the continent. Egypt and Sudan were taken over by Britain to obtain
the Suez Canal. Imperialism helped to develop Africa’s economy and turned it into a
continent of colonies. Until well into the 1800’s Africa was relatively unknown to Europeans.
They controlled less than 10 % of the continent. By 1882 Britain, Germany, Italy, Portugal,
and Spain were all claiming parts of Africa. In 1900, they had divided 90 % of Africa into
colonies. Although European ships had for centuries traded at ports along the coast, they
brought back little knowledge of Africa’s interior. Later Europeans started exploring the
continent. The best known of these explorers was David Livingstone.By 1914 Europe
together with its colonial possessions occupied more than 80 percent of the globe. The
conquest of Africa provided perhaps the clearest example of what is sometimes called the
“new imperialism,” an era roughly beginning in Africa in the 1880s and continuing into the
twentieth century.
THE BERLIN CONFERENCE
At the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885, European powers and the United Statesmet to protect
their “spheres of influence” (areas of special economic andpolitical interests) and to establish
mechanisms for making new territorialclaims. The scramble for African territorywas
underway. An earlier catalyst forthe scramble for territories came fromKing Leopold II of
Belgium (r. 1865–1909). Motivated by greed and ambition toexpand the wealth and territory
ofhis small European kingdom, Leopold undertook what he called a crusade toacquire the
Congo Free State (later, Zaire). The relatively swift imposition ofEuropean colonial rule in
Africa following the Berlin Conference also needs tobe understood against the backdrop of
several centuries of the Atlantic slavetrade, the rise of an African merchantclass, and the
penetration of merchantcapital prior to 1900. These forces undermined the earlier systems of
authorityon the continent and prevented African societies from dealing with theEuropean
presence in any unified way.(Goucher 1998.)
JAPANESE IMPERIALISM
In 1894 during First Sino-Japanese war, Japan apsorbe Taiwan. As a result of the Russo-
Japanese Warin 1905, Japan took part of Sakhalin Island from Russia. In 1910 Korea was
annexed. In 1918, Japan occupied parts of Far Eastern Russia and parts of eastern Siberia as a
participant in the Siberian Intervention. In 1931 Manchuria was conquered. In 1937 during the
Second Sino-Japanese War, it invaded China.By the end of the Pacific War, Japan had
conquered most of the Far East, including what is now Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
The early United States expressed its opposition to Imperialism. Beginning in the late 19th
and early 20th century, however, policies such as Woodrow Wilson's mission to "make the
world safe for democracy" were often backed by military force. In 1898, Americans who
opposed imperialism created the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose the US annexation of the
Philippines and Cuba. After the Second World War, the United States became joined with
Western interests in a global conflict with the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War.
GERMAN IMPERIALISM
Between 1870 and 1900, the population of the Reich had grown from forty-one to fifty-six
million. Germany had pioneered a host of new industries and had become the chief
manufacturing country in Europe. Otto von Bismarck ,German leader in that time had long
opposed colonial acquisitions, arguing that the burden of obtaining, maintaining and
defending such possessions would outweigh any potential benefit. In 1884-1885 Germany had
acquired a colonial empire in Africa. Major German colonies in Africa were: Togo,
Cameroon, German Southwest and German East Africa and also German New Guinea,
Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon and Marshall Islands. In 1898 and 1899 Germany acquired:
Kiaochow from China, the Carolines, Marianas, and Palau Islands (all purchased from Spain
after Germany had lost her war with the United States), and the western parts of Samoa
through an exchange of territory with Britain. German colonial initiatives in Africa were the
best means of creating bad relations with Britain, even more so as they might be synchronized
with France, Britain’s traditional colonial enemy. German colonial policy always lacked a
grand imperial program. Until 1914 it remained an improvised affair. Together with the hectic
naval policy it constituted and insuperable stumbling-block to improved relations with Britain
– a disastrous development leading to the outbreak of the First World War.(Knoll, 1987.)
RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM
Imperial Russia was also part of this massive European trend, and developed discourses of
legitimization to justify its push into Central Asia and the Far East. Saint Petersburg’s
expansionist desires aimed at gaining control of Manchuria, Xin-jiang, Mongolia, and Tibet
yielded a kind of “romantic imperialism” a central feature of which was the myth of the
“White Tsar”. Russian monarchs occasionally used the term in diplomatic correspondence.
Russian authorities had wanted to use the religious networks of their Buddhist subjects as
means to facilitate commercial penetration in Asia. During the late 18th century, many plans
to conquer Mongolia in order to reach China’s borders were conceived. Yet it was not until
the second half of the 19th century that Russia came to take real interest in the Buddhist
world.Lenin wrote extensively on the matter and famously declared that Imperialism was the
highest stage of capitalism.It has also been argued that the USSR practiced colonialism as did
other imperial powers and was carrying on the old Russian tradition of expansion and control.
FRENCH COLONIALISM
France has a long presence as a colonial power, with overseas possessions circling the globe
and a colonial history extending from the 1500s until the late 1900s. Indeed, France won and
lost several empires. After exploring the North Atlantic, France established New France – the
vast territory stretching from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, through the islands of the
Caribbean on to Guyane, as well as trading outposts on the west coast of Africa, in the India
Ocean and on the Indian subcontinent.Imperial wars, revolutions and the sale of the
‘Louisiana Purchase’ deprived France of most of this first empire, its outposts reduced to
several small islands off the coast of Newfoundland, Martinique and Guadeloupe in the
WestIndies, Guyane, the fivecomptoirsof India and La Réunion.(Aldrich, 2008.)
CONCLUSION
In our research paper we tried to briefly explain our main topic which is made of three parts:
colonialism, imperialism and exploitation. We made a research on all of these topics
individually and then compared them so we can connect all of those information in our
research paper. In short, colonialism is a system of European settlement and domination over
a particular territory, imperialism is political, economic and cultural domination and
exploitation is the use of someone or something in an unjust or cruel manner, or generally as a
means to one's ends. The main thing that we learned in the end is that the colonialism,
imperialism and exploitation have more bad sides than good ones. Yes, they did lead to global
economic and political expansion but they caused unnecessary wars and oppression of people
who were subdued to some ideals brought by European empires who only wanted to show
prestige and power over others.
REFERENCES
1. Bush, B. (2006). Imperialism and Postcolonialism. Great Britain, MA:Pearson Education.
2. Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt,Geraldine., Watts, M.,&Whatmore, S. (2011). The
Dictionary of Human Geography. United Kingdom, MA:John Wiley & Sons.
3. Goucher, C. L. (1998). In the Balance: Themes in Global History. Boston, MA: McGraw-
Hill.
4. Knoll, J.A.(1987). Germans in the Tropics : Essays in German Colonial History. New
York, MA: Greenwood Press.
5. Aldrich, R. (2008). The French Empire: Colonialism and its Aftermath.Comparative
Imperial Transformations.
6. Osterhammel, Jürgen (2005). Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview
7. Margaret Kohn (2006). Colonialism. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Stanford
University.
8. Tignor, Roger (2005). Preface to Colonialism: a theoretical overview.
