Why imperialism happened

Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, made its final payment to France in Here in the United States, Native reservations have extraordinarily high poverty, alcoholism, unemployment, and suicide rates.

These are the effects of what Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, a social worker and professor, describes as historical trauma: intergenerational emotional and psychological damage. The violence of colonial thinking continues to shape the trajectories of countries that were once colonizers too.

Colonizers believed the world was theirs for the taking, saw Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as disposable, and believed that nothing mattered more than the currency in their pockets. Wherever colonialism has manifested in the world, from all over the Americas to every corner of the African continent, it has been met with a fierce struggle of resistance. Throughout history, Indigenous people have routinely risen up and successfully overthrown colonial powers, demonstrating that while colonizers may steal land and resources, they can never steal the dignity of a people determined to be free.

In the United States, ongoing protests in Minnesota are being waged against the proposed Line 3 oil pipeline , which the tribes who live along its planned route say would violate their sovereignty. Just a few states away, NDN Collective, an Indigenous organization based in South Dakota, launched a Land back campaign in calling for the return of all public lands to Indigenous people, beginning with Mount Rushmore.

If colonialism is to be understood as an ongoing process, then so too is the fight for Indigenous self-determination.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Stay up-to-date with the politics team. In basic terms, the German culture that Bismarck attempted to impose included the German language and the particular religion of Lutheranism. The Kulturkampf is considered something of a hybrid, however, because its program of nationalization also extended to a large Polish minority who lived in territories Prussia had conquered in the late eighteenth century. The Poles resisted Prussification fiercely; as part of the wider European nationalism in the nineteenth century, the Poles had developed a strong national culture that they defended against the Germans.

A similar program had already been attempted in Russia, where Emperor Nicholas I r. Like other nationalizing projects in Europe and like cultural imperialism in the European overseas empires, Official Nationality attempted to bind citizens and subjects to an identity based on a common language, religion, and culture. It was also based on a feeling among Russian intellectuals that their nationality was superior to that of the peoples they had conquered.

The attempt to Russify the subjects of the vast empire was accompanied by an effort to centralize government; the loss of regional autonomy was viewed as one way to assure the eventual victory of Russian culture. The program was only partly successful and became less so the further one moved from the capital at St. The Polish provinces of Russia, for instance, where the Polish people had established their own national identity, were minimally affected.

The people of modern-day Belarus and Ukraine, who lived closer to St. Petersburg, were more affected. Nonetheless, the desire to assimilate foreign cultures and replace them with the culture of the dominant nationality shows that the Russification programs of the nineteenth century fit neatly into the wider pattern of European empires that attempted to do the same overseas. Imperialism was a matter of national pride as well as a means of economic exploitation, and this first reason helps to explain Italian imperialism.

Italy was reunified in and wanted to show that it was the equal of the other European powers. Since Britain and France had obtained large empires and Germany was beginning to do the same, at the end of the nineteenth century Italy began to seek an empire of its own in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was a special case in many ways, however. Much like ancient Egypt and, to some extent, ancient Greece has been de-Africanized in European literature, Ethiopia held a similar place. There are several reasons for this. First, Ethiopia had a long-standing Christian civilization. Second, the country had maintained ties with European countries in the late medieval and early modern periods. Ethiopia was not actually isolated; the leaders of its church were always Coptic Christians from Egypt, and for centuries Arab slavers had decimated the population.

Partly for these reasons, Ethiopia had not been a target of European imperialism in the nineteenth century until Italy began to create its overseas empire. Another major reason why Ethiopia is different is because when the Italians first attempted to take the country by force in the late s, they failed.

At the critical Battle of Adwa in , Ethiopian forces routed the Italians, who had attempted to launch a surprise morning attack but did not realize that the Ethiopians had already awoken for church services. This was a major embarrassment for the Italians but a source of pride for Ethiopia. In the twentieth century, Ethiopia accepted a status on the world stage that other African and Asian countries did not have.

Italy, under Mussolini, attempted to retake Ethiopia in ; the Italians were eventually successful in The conflict is best known as one example of the weakness of the League of Nations; Italy and Ethiopia were both members, but the League took no action to stop the war or save Ethiopia. The Italian imperial experiment in Ethiopia is notable because it does not accord with the general trend in which European powers overwhelmed and then exploited Asian and African subject peoples.

The experience of interacting with non-Europeans changed European culture, and exposure to non-European values changed European values as well. Moreover, an empire was a source of national pride; in an era of strong nationalism in all European countries, this cannot be discounted.

In Britain, for instance, the possession of an overseas empire was one of few things that could reliably unite the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish who lived under the British flag. Stories of imperial adventure interested those back home. Japan is similarly an economic power with a chip on its shoulder, putting money into creating a more expansive military, but an actual imperial repeat performance seems beyond unlikely.

There was a time when it was believed that as a group the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and some added Turkey — would be the collective powerhouse of a future multi-polar planet. But that was before the Brazilian , South African , Indian and Turkish economies stopped looking so rosy. If you take one country — or possibly two — out of the mix, war between states or between major powers and insurgencies has largely ceased to exist.

Admittedly, every rule has its exceptions and from full-scale colonial-style wars Iraq, Afghanistan to small-scale conflicts mainly involving drones or air power Yemen, Somalia, Libya , the United States has seemingly made traditional war its own in the early years of this century. Nonetheless, the Iraq war ended ignominiously in and the Afghan War seems to be limping to something close to an end in a slow-motion withdrawal this year.

Possible exception number two: Israel launched a day war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in and a significant three-week military incursion into the Gaza Strip in though none of this added up to anything like the wars that country fought in the previous century.

There was as well the Russian incursion into Georgia a straggler from the unraveling of the Soviet Union. There was also a dismal US-supported Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in and a Kenyan invasion of that mess of a country but not exactly state in France has also sent its troops elsewhere in Africa, most recently into the Central African Republic, but these were at best micro-versions of nineteenth century colonial wars.

Turkey has from time to time struck across its border into Iraq as part of an internal conflict with its Kurdish population. In Asia, other than rising tensions and a couple of ships almost bumping on the high seas, the closest you can get to war in this century was a minor border clash in April between India and Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi war of independence in was essentially a civil war. And that, of course, leaves out the carnage of the first 50 years of a century that began with a foreign intervention in the Boxer Rebellion in and the Russo-Japanese War of and ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In fact, judged by almost any standard from just about any period in the previous two centuries, war is now missing in action, which is indeed something new under the sun.

So an imperial era is on the wane, war in absentia and no rising great power contenders on the horizon. In the 13 years of this new century, the scorecard on internal strife and civil war, often with external involvement, has been awful to behold: Yemen with the involvement of the Saudis and the Americans , Syria with the involvement of the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Iranians, Hezbollah, the Iraqis, the Turks and the Americans , and so on.

Moreover, 13 years at the beginning of a century is a rather small sampling. The two systems were very different and as a result had different effects on African societies. The British system of indirect rule simply meant that power over colonies would be exercised through indigenous political structures. These structures which is related to a customary law were preserved and allowed to continue. In the early years of colonial rule, local rulers were still powerful and they were able to maintain the integrity of their political structures and system of government.

To a large extent ordinary people did not suffer or feel the impact of colonial rule, and for many there was a little change. This did not mean that African rulers were free to behave as if nothing had changed with colonisation.

The British government introduced policies to limit local rulers power to govern their societies. For example, chiefs lost their authority to sentence anyone to death. Crimes requiring a death penalty were given to the magistrate who applied British law to judge the merits of the case.

Chiefs were also forced to give up their support by a military unit made up of volunteers. Chiefs were only allowed to rule in accordance with customary laws. However, in some cases the British government introduced new laws and forced chiefs to pass them as customary laws.

For example, they introduced a Hut Tax to increase revenues to colonial governments. This tax was charged on every one who owned a hut, poor or rich. The tax was not a customary law, but it was portrayed as a customary practice by the British colonial governments. French and Portuguese colonies were ruled differently. Unlike the British system, the French and Portuguese gave a role to local African leaders preferring to adopt a system of direct rule.

Colonies were treated as if they were extensions of the two European states. For example, French colonies were treated as French departments. The French government did not include any African rulers. They were stripped of all their powers and the people were ruled directly by French colonial officers often with a military background. These colonial officers replaced African rulers because most areas were divided into districts and departments.

The division of French colonies into districts and departments did not take into consideration existing boundaries of different ethnic groups. Whereas the British policy was based on the separation of races and preserving the culture or identities of African societies, the French policy was based on inclusion. Their policy was to encourage Africans to become French in every sense of the word.

This policy was part of expanding French civilization to African people. However, this policy did not mean that African people in French colonies were treated with equality. Their inclusion into French societies was based on inequality between the French people and colonised Africans.

The Portuguese introduced the prazo system. The prazo is a Portuguese system of land grants that was introduced in the colonies. It was a mixture of local political structures and a Portuguese political system. It was not an indirect rule system because land was taken from African rulers and given to Portuguese settlers.

The control of land gave Portuguese the power to control African people. Because Portuguese rule was very weak, Portuguese holders of these land grants prazo legitimised their control of land by marrying into African royal families. These Portuguese rulers called themselves chiefs like African chiefs and ruled like African chiefs. The prazo system was adopted largely because the Portuguese government was a weak colonial power as compared to other colonial powers.

The Portuguese did not have the wealth required to administer their colonies. As a result, Portuguese colonies were the least developed colonies in Africa.