History of colonialism

In 1462, the previously uninhabited Cape Verde archipelago became the first European settlement in the tropics, and thereafter a site of Jewish exile during the height of the Spanish Inquisition in the 1490s; the Portuguese soon also brought slaves from the West African coast.

The European "discovery" of the New World, as named by Amerigo Vespucci in 1503, opened another colonial chapter, beginning with the colonization of the Caribbean in 1493 with Hispaniola (later to become Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

In the 19th century, the Second Industrial Revolution led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa, in which Belgium, Germany, and Italy were also participants.

They would also be able to probe the existence of the fabled Christian kingdom of Prester John, with an eye to encircling the Islamic Ottoman Empire, itself gaining territories and colonies in Eastern Europe.

After Columbus' first trips, competing Spanish and Portuguese claims to new territories and sea routes were solved with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which divided the world outside of Europe in two areas of trade and exploration, between the Iberian kingdoms of Castile and Portugal along a north-south meridian, 370 leagues west of Cape Verde.

The conflicts that arose between both powers were finally solved with the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529, which defined the areas of Spanish and Portuguese influence in Asia, establishing the anti-meridian, or line of demarcation on the other side of the world.

Towards Asia they made the first direct contact between Europeans and the peoples inhabiting present day countries such as Mozambique, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor (1512), China, and finally Japan.

In the opposite direction, the Portuguese colonized the huge territory that eventually became Brasil, and the Spanish conquistadors established the vast Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, and later of Río de la Plata (Argentina) and New Granada (Colombia).

In the Western Hemisphere, the European colonization involved the emigration of large numbers of settlers, soldiers and administrators intent on owning land and exploiting the apparently primitive (as perceived by Old World standards) indigenous peoples of the Americas.

[17] Spanish treatment of the indigenous populations caused a fierce debate, the Valladolid Controversy, over whether Indians possessed souls and if so, whether they were entitled to the basic rights of mankind.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, championed the cause of the native peoples, and was opposed by Sepúlveda, who claimed Amerindians were "natural slaves".

The islands of the Caribbean soon came to be populated by slaves of African descent, ruled over by a white minority of plantation owners interested in making a fortune and then returning to their home country to spend it.

After the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, Britain had emerged as the world's dominant power but found itself mired in debt and struggling to finance the Navy and Army necessary to maintain a global empire.

[32] From 1765, a series of disputes with Parliament over taxation led to the American Revolution, first to informal committees of correspondence among the colonies, then to coordinated protest and resistance, with an important event in 1770, the Boston Massacre.

On their own the Patriots captured a British Invasion army and France recognized the new nation, formed a military alliance, declared war on Britain, and left the superpower without any major ally.

[33] The Haitian Revolution, a slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, established Haïti as a free, black republic, the first of its kind.

With an eye on the events of the American Revolution forty years earlier, revolutionary leaders began bloody wars of independence against Spain, whose armies were ultimately unable to maintain control.

Spain's colonial possessions were reduced to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and a number of small islands in the Pacific, all of which she was to lose to the United States in the 1898 Spanish–American War or sell to Germany shortly thereafter.

[citation needed] The invasion of Portugal by Napoleon in 1808 had forced King João VI to escape to Brazil and establish his court in Rio de Janeiro.

[37] Gradually the company's increasing influence led the de jure Mughal emperor Farrukh Siyar to grant them dastaks or permits for duty-free trade in Bengal in 1717.

The nominal leader of the uprising, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, was exiled to Burma, his children were beheaded and the Moghul line was abolished.

The French started to settle down in India in 1673, beginning with the purchase of land at Chandernagore from the Mughal Governor of Bengal, followed by the acquisition of Pondicherry from the Sultan of Bijapur the next year.

[51] The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) mediated the imperial competition among Britain, France, and Germany, defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of colonial claims and codifying the imposition of direct rule, accomplished usually through armed force.

As a champion of Realpolitik, Bismarck disliked colonies and thought they were a waste of time, but his hand was forced by pressure from both the elites and the general population which considered the colonization a necessity for German prestige.

[59] After being closed for centuries to Western influence, Japan was forced by the United States to open itself to the West during the Meiji Era (1868–1912), characterized by swift modernization and borrowings from European culture (in law, science, etc.)

During the first part of the 20th century, while China was still subject to various European imperialisms, Japan became an imperialist power, conquering what it called a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

[61] Anticolonialist movements had begun to gain momentum after the close of World War I, which had seen colonial troops fight alongside those of the metropole, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's speech on the Fourteen Points.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 Atlantic Charter declared that the signatories would "respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live".

The Third World's first international move was the 1955 Bandung Conference, led by Jawaharlal Nehru for India, Gamal Abdel Nasser for Egypt and Josip Broz Tito for Yugoslavia.

It refers to the ongoing effects that colonial encounters, dispossession and power have in shaping the familiar structures (social, political, spatial, uneven global interdependencies) of the present world.