What Were The Main Consequences Of Colonialism

For The Colonies Essay, Research Paper

During the last half millennium, the major European powers decided that it would be beneficial to their interests if they obtained colonies overseas to help with their economic expansion, among other things. They also wanted to develop capitalism and create a world market with an international division of labour. There were two main phases of colonial expansion (Chandra, 1992). The first of these was from 1450-1800, and the colonies were seen as places to trade with, but they didn’t produce raw materials and weren’t seen as markets. Colonialism meant conquest, plunder and small amounts of settlement. The second phase occurred after the industrial revolution when there was a great need for raw materials to be used in domestic factories. This period was from 1800-1945, and it was a phase of exploitation rather than a phase of expansion. The colonial leaders also saw the colonies as markets for the products that they produced at home, and they were often used against the interests of other competing colonial powers. `The implications of colonial rule on the colonies are considerable, and there was a large impact on local economics, culture and political systems. The manner in which decolonization took place also led to problems. Many geographers see a colonial past as probably the most important initial condition for underdevelopment. Although there is an obvious negative association between colonial rule and industrialisation, colonialism did give some benefits to the colonies. `The most obvious legacy of colonial rule was the deprivation of resources on a massive scale over a long period of time. In the later stages of colonial rule, the resources that could be exploited were the main reason for establishing a colony. For example, between 1600-1810, the Spanish rulers exported 185 tons of gold and 22,000 tons of silver from their colonies in the Americas back to Spain, and in 1585, one quarter of all Spanish revenue came from the colonies in the new world. This kind of exploitation was common to all rulers of colonies, and the British extracted over £100,000,000 from India in about 50 years of colonial power. After the industrial revolution, the need for more and more raw materials came about, so there was even more exploitation of the colonies. `Leading on from the above point, there was a policy to actively discourage industrialisation in the colonies for a number of reasons. It firstly meant competition for the industries at home, but it also diverted labour from the production of raw materials, and it reduced the market for manufacturing goods. This was why there was no state intervention to help the domestic colonial industries to grow, and they were further hampered by the free trade policy that was imposed on them. African imports were banned by the metropolitan powers of Europe, but they had no qualms about flooding the colonial market with cheap European goods to destroy the local industries. For example, India lost 7% of its workforce in the manufacturing sector in the period 1800-1881 due to British colonial policy. Other examples of this course of action include the illegalisation of slitting and rolling mills, blast furnaces and forges after 1750 in America, and the shutting down of a twine factory in Tanganyika in 1936, because British industrialists decided to complain about it. The whole colonial policy is shown perfectly in that there was only 47 industrial establishments employing more than ten people in Ibadan in 1963, and only 9 of these employed more than 100. The surplus generated by industry was directed back to the colonial powers rather than back into the industry. `Industrialisation only really began in earnest after independence, and in many cases there was a great deal of state intervention, leading to a mushrooming of state ownership. This coupled with the economic conditions it produced led to dominant class formations which were to have profound effects on political power in the future. `Slavery is probably the worst legacy of colonialism, and this was the trade of labour, mainly from Africa, to the new world to work for European settlers. It is estimated that between 1601 and 1870, 15,200,000 left Africa. This not only decimated the local population but it led to mixing in previously homogenous races, which caused severe racial tension, an example being in the deep south of the USA.The system of indentured labour is also a colonial legacy. `Many former colonial countries are now suffering serious demographic problems, which are partly due to their colonial history. The population numbers began to grow when the death rate started to decline but there was no fall in the birth rate to match it. The drop in the death rate was due to Western health standards, the introduction of insecticides (e.g. DDT), and also due to modern medical facilities. This caused serious problems in the later years of colonial rule, and coupled with slow economic growth and persistently low levels of production, the resulting population explosion led to widespread pauperisation and marginalisation. `As all government decisions were taken by the colonial rulers, when the colonies actually got independence, very few people actually knew how to look after the country, and almost none of them knew about the workings of a democratic government. In the past the decisions had been made to benefit the European powers, so the newly independent p