Brief Overview of Colonialism

Two kinds of Colonialism

1) Settler Colonialism 2) Non-settler colonialism.

What is Colonialism

Its when you have a "mother country" that goes into another country and takes over. The mother country needs resources and people (to turn into citizens or use them for labor).

How do you Justify Colonialism

Paper. The pope, or someone else powerful, says you can do it.

Britain as a colonial power

became worlds biggest empire by going around the world and setting up colonies everywhere: Australia, Africa, India, S. & N. America

European Colonial Period

c. 1500-1990s (people debate whether we are still in now) most usually is what referring to when discuss colonialism Britain is who everyone thinks of as colonial power.

Age of Discovery 15th & 16th century

competing colonial projects, started out with Portugal & Spain, ran into French & British, everyone was competing for different claims to land. Native populations just wanted to be left alone. Overlapping conflicts about who had a right to the land.

Do we still live in colonial times?

if the definition is the relationship between a majority and minority invader. We probably still live in colonial era. Some form is around us always. Colonialism is an era AND a concept. always consider interactions between native culture and what decisions are made based on colonial ideas.

Non-Settler Colonialism

is also referred to as Imperialism. The focus of this form of colonialism was the control of the economy and extraction of natural resources of the new territory for the benefit of the "home" or "mother" country. Areas around the world that had non-settler colonialism were often tropical. Parts of South America, Equatorial Africa and all of Southeast Asia are examples of Non-Settler Colonialism. This form of colonialism usually involved mostly men relocating to the new territory they often were working for the government or military or they were business owners. This form of colonialism had less of an effect on local populations since large European populations did not relocate and want their lands, also local labor was needed to extract the resources, so waging wars was not in the benefit of the colonizing power. Since very few European women relocated to these areas, European men often had relations with local women, which of course gave way to mixed-heritage children.

Settler colonialism

is what he discusses especially in regard to the Americas, wherein ship loads of Europeans came to the Americas looking for a new life and for land to homestead. Settler Colonialism happened in places around the world that have temperate climates (similar to European climates). North America, New Zealand, Australia, and parts of Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc.). Settler Colonialism involved men, women and children relocating to the new place and it was more devastating on local populations due to the competition of land and other resources.

"systema de casta"

mentioned in the clip was a European created caste system put in place by Colonizing powers in Latin America as a way for the Spanish descendants ( whose population was small) to gain power and control over the masses.

Colonialism as a bad relationship

on one hand: majority native population who is getting exploited by the minority ruling class, a foreign power who is taking as much as it can

How colonialism works

the way to expand an empire is through large scale immigrate or resource exploitation. colonies follow the resources (coffee, bananas, sugar, wood...) Resources define how an empire will expand and what labor is needed. The difficulty of colonialism is eventually populations mix and it is difficult to maintain the idea of a ruling class. But always have a segment of the population ruling other segments and deciding what the culture would look like. Americas: Castas/racial-mixing: depending on who mixed with who they tried to come up with insane racial categories. ("mestizo")

Treaty of Tordesillas

which split up new territory's between the Spanish and the Portuguese as signed by the Pope in 1494.