The colonization of the world

[Tjis]

I'm looking for a decent primer about the colonization of the world. Unfortunately I know next to nothing about any of this (history wasn't my favorite subject in school). I want to know who colonized what, when, how and why. Also I want to know what the general situation was before the colonization and what the impact of the colonization was on the native civilizations.

I know some random information, mostly from wikipedia, but I'm missing a solid foundation here. If anyone could point me to a decent source of information, I'd really appreciate it.

edit: I should probably specify a bit more. I'm mostly interested in the colonization of Africa, Asia and to a lesser extend Oceania. The colonization of the Americas is interesting as well, it's just not what I want to focus on right now.

[ComradeMan]

I'm looking for a decent primer about the colonization of the world. Unfortunately I know next to nothing about any of this (history wasn't my favorite subject in school). I want to know who colonized what, when, how and why. Also I want to know what the general situation was before the colonization and what the impact of the colonization was on the native civilizations.

I know some random information, mostly from wikipedia, but I'm missing a solid foundation here. If anyone could point me to a decent source of information, I'd really appreciate it.

edit: I should probably specify a bit more. I'm mostly interested in the colonization of Africa, Asia and to a lesser extend Oceania. The colonization of the Americas is interesting as well, it's just not what I want to focus on right now.


I would be wary of using Wikipedia too much other than for very basic facts.

You need to draw a distinction between colonisation and mercantile imperialism.

A rough difference being that New England was a colony with a true colonial raison d'etre whereas India was not a colony but was administered largely in the name of mercantile imperialism. Although the two are linked they are not one in the same.

In Africa you find both. You could look at South Africa, starting from the Dutch East India Company settlement at Cape Town-which began as nothing more than a refreshing station and was not initially intended to become the Cape Colony- to the largescale colonisation of the territories now part of the Republic of South Africa by white Europeans. A complex issue because of the dynamics of the relationship between the British and the Boers- both "white" but with different objectives. This spilled over into Rhodesia with a full on colonisation. On the other hand you could look at other nations such as Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana (British Bechuanaland) and argue that although they were part of the British Empire they were not colonies nor did they have colonial regimes as such- rather imperialist administrations.

As for the impact on the native peoples. Well there is no one common impact although most would argue that it was negative. Different populations have managed to cope with foreign domination/imperialism etc in different ways owing to their own level of technological advancement and/or sheer force of numbers. I don't think for example, that you could easily compare the absolute human disaster that the arrival of the British was for the aboriginal peoples of Australia to the Indian experience under the Raj.

I'd just like to add one little factor- when people talk of the disaster of slavery in Africa they often omit to mention that the disaster in terms of civilisation and culture was that the Arab and European slavers seemed to target the areas that has greater material development such as West Africa than the less developed areas. I am cautious with these terms because I don't want the pc brigade to jump all over me for value judgements but the "cradle" of African civilisation was hit hardest by slavery, not the more "backward" regions- for want of a better word.
This has led to the idea, even among relatively unracist people, of a primitive Africa to which the whiteman brought writing etc etc---- a gross misrepresentation of the facts.

Mussolini's army invaded Ethiopia to "civilise" the "black savages in darkest Africa", many of the Italian soldiers were illiterate and could not even speak standard Italian, they went to civilise a people who had an ancient written language and a Christian tradition that went back millenia! So who exactly was supposed to be the civiliser?

[CommunistWaffle]

Could you be more specific? What era? Which countries? What part of the world?

[bailey_187]

Walter Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Penny Hess - Overturning the Culture of Violence

Alex Callincos - Imperialism and Global Political Economy is half a history of Imperialism but i have not read it yet, i am still on the theory section

Anyway, i am looking for books on the same topic, so hopefully there are more replies