Which form of colonialism was the worst ?

Maciamo

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Inevitably, the discussions about Japan's invasion of East Asia has led some people to criticise Europe's own colonial past.

Not all European countries were colonial powers, although most Western European countries have tried to establish colonies in the Americas (notable failed attempts include some German princedoms and Sweden). It is also important to remember that the borders of present countries do not match the countries of the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th or even early 20th century. Germany and Italy did not exist as countries until the late 19th centuries, for example.

In my understanding, the most brutal European colonisation was that of Central and South America by Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. This colonisation happened at a time of terror in Europe, especially in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands with the Spanish Inquisition. Spain had also just completed the reconquista over the Muslims. It is in this context that the conquistadores left for the Americas and conquer the Aztec and Inca empires. That just a few hundreds of them managed to conquer an empire of millions of people can be explained mainly by the spread of Eurasian diseases such as smallpox, syphillis or influenza that ravaged the local Amerindian populations. The Spaniards just had to walk to the Aztec and Inca capitals almost without a fight, as people were dying from smallpox everywhere around.

The colonisation of the Caribbean was more properly violent, as the Spaniards quickly decided to kill anybody who didn't want to convert to Christianity. This religious and brutal colonisation continued well into the 17th century in all Latin America, and is epistomised in the film The Mission. This was probably the most brutal form of European colonisation ever.

Another extremely brutal and more recent (although much less known) colonisation happened in Congo from 1876 to 1907, when Belgian king Leopold II acquired a huge portion of Central Africa as his personnal domain, which he called theCongo Free State. Millions of Africans died due to the harsh treatment inflicted by Leopold's contractors. When this became known in Belgium, the public scandal it caused forced Leopold to cede his private domain of Congo to the Belgian state, which formed the Belgian Congo. Leopold died the next year and was booed at his funeral (one of the few European monarch to get this dubbious priviledge). Quoting from Wikipedia, "The Belgian administration might be most charitably characterized as paternalistic colonialism". It was certainly a huge contrast with Leopold's rule.

The British, French and Dutch colonisations span over a long period of time and on all continents, so it is difficult to assess which was better or worse.
The early English and Dutch colonisations share in common that they were mostly commercial, through such independent organisations as the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company. The French also had theirs, but most of their colonisation of New France in America was directly sponsored by the king.

Just looking at the 17th and early 18th-century Americas, I'd say that the French did a better job, as independent explorer and fur-traders negotiated and dealt in a fairly peaceful ways with the Amerindians, while the British were very actively importing black slaves from Africa to the Caribbeans and North America.

From the late 18th to early 20th century though, the British had a more enlighened way of dealing with the local populations.

Overall my impression is that the British did the best job in treating the local population, which may explain why the British Commonwealth of Nations (heir of the British Empire) still exists, and Britain has kept relatively good relations with its former colonies (with only a few exceptions).

Who managed most efficiently their colonies ?

I also wonder why, looking at one region of the globe, British colonies have generally prospered more after the independence than French or Dutch ones.
In East Asia, ex-British colonies like Hong Kong, Singapore or Malaysia are thriving, while ex-French and Dutch colonies (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia) are not. The comparison between Malaysia and Indonesia is interesting, as both countries share the same official language, the same majority of Muslims, the same climate, even share the island of Borneo, but Malaysia is so much richer and more developed than Indonesia.

In Africa, ex-British colonies like Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa are also doing better than almost any other countries in Black Africa. Only the much smaller former Spanish colony of Guinea Equatorial (an African Singapore), and the ex-French colonies of Gabon and Senegal can be said to be doing as well.

I wonder whether this is due to a different style of colonisation or to other causes, such as the character of the local people, the environment or just chance. I'd rather go for the first choice.

American colonialism & migrations

Looking at American colonialism, there is usually not much brutality because it started late and was limited to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Phillippines and a few Pacific islands. They are still part of the US except for the Phillippines 9well it's debatable :p ).

I am not quite sure whether the acquisition of the US mainland over the Native Indians should be considered as colonialism. Like with other settlement colonies (Canada, Australia...), this is quite different from European colonialism in Africa or Asia, as the main purpose was to live there and make the country prosper, not just use it for commercial or political purposes. It's not more justificable, but it is more like a migration of population than properly colonialism. It's the same as the Turks invasion and settlement of the Byzantine Empire, the Germanic/Viking invasions of Europe, the Chinese ethnic expansion from North-East China in ancient times to the whole of modern China, including Tibet, Xinjiang or Manchuria. It is also the same as the Aryan invasion of India 5000 years ago, or the Yayoi invasion of Japan from Korea 2300 years ago.

It is therefore normal that migration countries like the USA, Canada, Australia or NZ should be more open to immigration from anywhere around the world than other countries. It is their way of admitting their past mistakes and share their conquest with the world. I seriously doubt that India or Japan would accept masses of immigrants under the pretext that they themselves invaded the country 5000 or 2300 years ago.

Japanese colonialism

As for Japanese colonialsim, it can be divided in 5 categories.

1) Korea was more an extension of Japan than a colony. I would compare it to how Ireland was ruled by England. The English tried to eradicate Irisg language (and culture) by prohibiting the use of Gaelic from the 18th century, and teaching only English at school. Ireland was directly governed from London. The situation was very similar in Korea. The Japanese imposed the teaching of Japanese, and the country was ruled from Tokyo as a part of Japan itself.

2) Taiwan is similar to Korea, except that the Japanese rule was less severe, and the island was more considered as a holiday or retirement colony. It's probably closer to Gibraltar, Malta or Cyprus's relations to Britain.

3) Manchuria was a protectorate (or "puppet-state"). Officially it was independent and ruled by the "last emperor of China" Pu Yi, but the Japanese kept troops there and had complete control. It was more similar to Egypt's relationship to Britain or Morocco's relationship to France in the late 19th and first half of 20th century.

4) China was not really a colony. China was occupied and ruled by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). It is considered as a war and not a colonial period, as the Japanese government or civilians were not properly involved - and 8 years is too short to be called a colony. There was no commerce and the Army was more preoccupied to destroy the country than use it adroitly for their country's profit, as was the norm in the 20th-century colonisation of Western powers. I would rather compare China's occupation to Germany's occupation of Eastern Europe.

Some Chinese cities had previously been colonised by Japan, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and the US. This was the more typical Western commercial and political colonialism of the time. The purpose was to gain trading rights and priviledges and somewhat control politics in the colonised country, without replacing the government. The same system was established in India by the UK, but to the whole country, not just the main cities like in China.

5) Japan's brief occupation of South-East Asia was halfway between the typical Western colonialism of the time and its military invasion of China. Let's say that it was a military invasion and occupation, but that the Army did not rampage as much as in China, apart from a few particularily horrible massacres in Singapore or the Philippines.
 
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Good & comprehensive overview, I think. Not much to add.


Maciamo said:
The Spaniards just had to walk to the Aztec and Inca capitals almost without a fight, as people were dying from smallpox everywhere around.
In case of the Aztecs, it was not quite so easy. They put up a good fight. Without the help of the peoples conquered & oppressed by the Aztec empire, the Spaniards probably wouldn't have succeeded.
The Inca put up a fight as well, but too late. One of the main reasons that they were rather easily defeated was the fact that they were too naive in dealing with the Spaniards.


1) Korea was more an extension of Japan than a colony. I would compare it to how Ireland was ruled by England. The English tried to eradicate Irisg language (and culture) by prohibiting the use of Gaelic from the 18th century, and teaching only English at school. Ireland was directly governed from London. The situation was very similar in Korea.
Good comparison, actually. Didn't think of that before.
But IMO there is one point where the Japanese treated Korea better than England treated Ireland: infrastructure. For the most time the English only exploited Ireland without any investment, while Japan tried to establish a certain infrastructure in Korea (for which purpose is another question).

Anyway, I think, your original question is hard to answer since colonisation methods varied widely, depending on place & time. In one place you had massacres & at the same time another colony might have got a better system of education, or similar.

Colonisation in & of itself is despicable, though, even if it has some positive effects in the long run. Whether we should consider the expansion of the USA, Russia or China differently, I don't know, though I doubt it. Colonies can develop into expansionism, there is no clear line to draw.
 
Roman colonization was the most cruel. Crucifixions, gladiators, christians turned into food for lions...

And regarding Spanish Colonization some will may want to read this:

The Curse of the Black Legend

By TONY HORWITZ
Published: July 9, 2006

COURSING through the immigration debate is the unexamined faith that American history rests on English bedrock, or Plymouth Rock to be specific. Jamestown also gets a nod, particularly in the run-up to its 400th birthday, but John Smith was English, too (he even coined the name New England).
So amid the din over border control, the Senate affirms the self-evident truth that English is our national language; "It is part of our blood," Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, says. Border vigilantes call themselves Minutemen, summoning colonial Massachusetts as they apprehend Hispanics in the desert Southwest. Even undocumented immigrants invoke our Anglo founders, waving placards that read, "The Pilgrims didn't have papers."
These newcomers are well indoctrinated; four of the sample questions on our naturalization test ask about Pilgrims.

Nothing in the sample exam suggests that prospective citizens need know anything that occurred on this continent before the Mayflower landed in 1620. Few Americans do, after all.

This national amnesia isn't new, but it's glaring and supremely paradoxical at a moment when politicians warn of the threat posed to our culture and identity by an invasion of immigrants from across the Mexican border. If Americans hit the books, they'd find what Al Gore would call an inconvenient truth. The early history of what is now the United States was Spanish, not English, and our denial of this heritage is rooted in age-old stereotypes that still entangle today's immigration debate.

Forget for a moment the millions of Indians who occupied this continent for 13,000 or more years before anyone else arrived, and start the clock with Europeans' presence on present-day United States soil. The first confirmed landing wasn't by Vikings, who reached Canada in about 1000, or by Columbus, who reached the Bahamas in 1492. It was by a Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León, who landed in 1513 at a lush shore he christened La Florida.
Most Americans associate the early Spanish in this hemisphere with Cortés in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. But Spaniards pioneered the present-day United States, too. Within three decades of Ponce de León's landing, the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Me., and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon.

From 1528 to 1536, four castaways from a Spanish expedition, including a "black" Moor, journeyed all the way from Florida to the Gulf of California — 267 years before Lewis and Clark embarked on their much more renowned and far less arduous trek. In 1540, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican Indians across today's Arizona-Mexico border — right by the Minutemen's inaugural post — and traveled as far as central Kansas, close to the exact geographic center of what is now the continental United States. In all, Spaniards probed half of today's lower 48 states before the first English tried to colonize, at Roanoke Island, N.C.

The Spanish didn't just explore, they settled, creating the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565. Santa Fe, N.M., also predates Plymouth: later came Spanish settlements in San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego and San Francisco. The Spanish even established a Jesuit mission in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay 37 years before the founding of Jamestown in 1607.

Two iconic American stories have Spanish antecedents, too. Almost 80 years before John Smith's alleged rescue by Pocahontas, a man by the name of Juan Ortiz told of his remarkably similar rescue from execution by an Indian girl. Spaniards also held a thanksgiving, 56 years before the Pilgrims, when they feasted near St. Augustine with Florida Indians, probably on stewed pork and garbanzo beans.

The early history of Spanish North America is well documented, as is the extensive exploration by the 16th-century French and Portuguese. So why do Americans cling to a creation myth centered on one band of late-arriving English — Pilgrims who weren't even the first English to settle New England or the first Europeans to reach Plymouth Harbor? (There was a short-lived colony in Maine and the French reached Plymouth earlier.)

The easy answer is that winners write the history and the Spanish, like the French, were ultimately losers in the contest for this continent. Also, many leading American writers and historians of the early 19th century were New Englanders who elevated the Pilgrims to mythic status (the North's victory in the Civil War provided an added excuse to diminish the Virginia story). Well into the 20th century, standard histories and school texts barely mentioned the early Spanish in North America.

While it's true that our language and laws reflect English heritage, it's also true that the Spanish role was crucial. Spanish discoveries spurred the English to try settling America and paved the way for the latecomers' eventual success. Many key aspects of American history, like African slavery and the cultivation of tobacco, are rooted in the forgotten Spanish century that preceded English arrival.

There's another, less-known legacy of this early period that explains why we've written the Spanish out of our national narrative. As late as 1783, at the end of the Revolutionary War, Spain held claim to roughly half of today's continental United States (in 1775, Spanish ships even reached Alaska). As American settlers pushed out from the 13 colonies, the new nation craved Spanish land. And to justify seizing it, Americans found a handy weapon in a set of centuries-old beliefs known as the "black legend."

The legend first arose amid the religious strife and imperial rivalries of 16th-century Europe. Northern Europeans, who loathed Catholic Spain and envied its American empire, published books and gory engravings that depicted Spanish colonization as uniquely barbarous: an orgy of greed, slaughter and papist depravity, the Inquisition writ large.

Though simplistic and embellished, the legend contained elements of truth. Juan de Oñate, the conquistador who colonized New Mexico, punished Pueblo Indians by cutting off their hands and feet and then enslaving them. Hernando de Soto bound Indians in chains and neck collars and forced them to haul his army's gear across the South. Natives were thrown to attack dogs and burned alive.


But there were Spaniards of conscience in the New World, too: most notably the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, whose defense of Indians impelled the Spanish crown to pass laws protecting natives. Also, Spanish brutality wasn't unique; English colonists committed similar atrocities. The Puritans were arguably more intolerant of natives than the Spanish and the Virginia colonists as greedy for gold as any conquistador. But none of this erased the black legend's enduring stain, not only in Europe but also in the newly formed United States.

"Anglo Americans," writes David J. Weber, the pre-eminent historian of Spanish North America, "inherited the view that Spaniards were unusually cruel, avaricious, treacherous, fanatical, superstitious, cowardly, corrupt, decadent, indolent and authoritarian."

When 19th-century jingoists revived this caricature to justify invading Spanish (and later, Mexican) territory, they added a new slur: the mixing of Spanish, African and Indian blood had created a degenerate race. To Stephen Austin, Texas's fight with Mexico was "a war of barbarism and of despotic principles, waged by the mongrel Spanish-Indian and Negro race, against civilization and the Anglo-American race." It was the manifest destiny of white Americans to seize and civilize these benighted lands, just as it was to take the territory of Indian savages.


From 1819 to 1848, the United States and its army increased the nation's area by roughly a third at Spanish and Mexican expense, including three of today's four most populous states: California, Texas and Florida. Hispanics became the first American citizens in the newly acquired Southwest territory and remained a majority in several states until the 20th century.

By then, the black legend had begun to fade. But it seems to have found new life among immigration's staunchest foes, whose rhetoric carries traces of both ancient Hispanophobia and the chauvinism of 19th-century expansionists.


Representative J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, who calls for deporting illegal immigrants and changing the Constitution so that children born to them in the United States can't claim citizenship, denounces "defeatist wimps unwilling to stand up for our culture" against alien "invasion." Those who oppose making English the official language, he adds, "reject the very notion that there is a uniquely American identity, or that, if there is one, that it is superior to any other."

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, depicts illegal immigration as "a scourge" abetted by "a cult of multiculturalism" that has "a death grip" on this nation. "We are committing cultural suicide," Mr. Tancredo claims. "The barbarians at the gate will only need to give us a slight push, and the emaciated body of Western civilization will collapse in a heap."

ON talk radio and the Internet, foes of immigration echo the black legend more explicitly, typecasting Hispanics as indolent, a burden on the American taxpayer, greedy for benefits and jobs, prone to criminality and alien to our values — much like those degenerate Spaniards of the old Southwest and those gold-mad conquistadors who sought easy riches rather than honest toil. At the fringes, the vilification is baldly racist. In fact, cruelty to Indians seems to be the only transgression absent from the familiar package of Latin sins.

Also missing, of course, is a full awareness of the history of the 500-year Spanish presence in the Americas and its seesawing fortunes in the face of Anglo encroachment. "The Hispanic world did not come to the United States," Carlos Fuentes observes. "The United States came to the Hispanic world. It is perhaps an act of poetic justice that now the Hispanic world should return."

America has always been a diverse and fast-changing land, home to overlapping cultures and languages. It's an homage to our history, not a betrayal of it, to welcome the latest arrivals, just as the Indians did those tardy and uninvited Pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth not so long ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/opinion/09horwitz.html
 
It seems very possible that the the northern american continent will be populated by a majority of american-indian-spanish Hispanic Population in less time to come, than it took the other Imigrants from europe to conquer the territory of the present day USA from the native indians.
 
"Roman colonization was the most cruel. Crucifixions, gladiators, christians turned into food for lions..."
I guess that Russian and Soviet colonisation was the worst one.
 
It's a well accepted fact that Blighty managed and respected her colonies better than any other nation. The Japanese and the Russians were the worst colonists.
 
edit: double post
 
"It is therefore normal that migration countries like the USA, Canada, Australia or NZ should be more open to immigration from anywhere around the world than other countries. It is their way of admitting their past mistakes and share their conquest with the world."

Unfortunately this sentiment is beginning to mean less and less here in the USA. Though I am partially for the new immigration bill, it may cause more problems than its worth. I would hate to see a new wave of discrimination begin to gain leverage with the people of America, who like to remain completely ignorant of the fact that this country was built with immigrants.
Americans may not have been the worst colonists, but they are the worst hypocrites for setting their moral standards so high yet shamelessly falling short on many occasions. There would not be such an outcry against the slave trade, the injustices committed against the natives, and the discrimination of immigrants if we had not established ourselves as the "land of the free". At least other colonists did not hide behind a long term pretense of goodwill. The true motive of the Spaniards was obvious as soon as the first musket was fired, but this was not always the case in America.
 
"It is therefore normal that migration countries like the USA, Canada, Australia or NZ should be more open to immigration from anywhere around the world than other countries. It is their way of admitting their past mistakes and share their conquest with the world."

I don't think the borders are open to emigrants from guilt and shame. There were always open, but mostly to British and to all Europeans afterwords. Now in the new spirit of global village and equality for all races, they are open to all. That's all.
Actually the matter got reversed, the borders are closed to most Europeans that has built these countries, and wide open to the poorest of the poor from other continents. The poorest are usually not the smartest cookies in the jar, and they come from different cultures with a baggage full of very tribal thinking, understanding (not understanding), and acting. Many come here for the stuff and social programs, ignoring or even ridiculing host country's values, which are based on personal freedoms, democracy, tolerance, equality.
That's pretty much the beginning of the end. This must be one of critical reasons why empires collapse.
In middle stages of life of empires the doors are open to all citizens from conquered countries. Life is always better in capital of empire (money, business, commerce). People flock in looking for a better life, especially from the poorest regions of empire. Add few thousands of slaves brought in too.
After few generations it changes the character of empire, values, even lowers average IQ of population and ruling family/class. The politics and management gets worse, economy sucks, civil unrests, smaller army, not enough weapons, etc, and collapse.
It pretty much explains a slow demise (century by century) of Roman Empire, and I bet many others.
 
Empires and countries collapse when they are not strong enough to hold onto core societal values in the face of adversity. A nation full of conviction will not flinch when people with "tribal" ideals begin to pour over the border. Instead, a country that is well established will be able to influence surrounding nations for the better. Rome lost all its charisma, not because of outside influence but because its' own people became too stagnant to produce good leadership.
 
It seems very possible that the the northern american continent will be populated by a majority of american-indian-spanish Hispanic Population in less time to come, than it took the other Imigrants from europe to conquer the territory of the present day USA from the native indians.

I agree that at present it sure looks that way, sadly. I have never agreed with our idea of open immigration. Rather than sharing the land plunder taken from native Americans, we should have attempted to make some things right with them by going back to the treaties. Then the NAs could have decided who they wanted to admit into their own lands. Besides, most of the Mexican American natives ( except some exiles from the southwest) are not the same as the Lakota/Cheyenne or other northern Indian peoples both east and west. So in an ethical sense the Mexican invasion is no more legitimate than the Anglo invasion was.
 
Sounds good on paper Richard. Doing so you would revive the tribal wars though. Native Americans were not a one nation/country. These tribes were fighting each other, and there was no peaceful coexistence (well few years here and there).
To determine what tribe gets what land, what people are the true blood, and how long they lived in certain area (a thousands or maybe only hundreds), you would open the biggest Pandora box in history of North America. Who is qualified to even decide in this matter?
Besides, it is not all bad, some tribes live in peace now for 100s of years, some of them only survived and were not killed off by stronger tribes, that otherwise would happen.
 
Sounds good on paper Richard. Doing so you would revive the tribal wars though. Native Americans were not a one nation/country. These tribes were fighting each other, and there was no peaceful coexistence (well few years here and there).
To determine what tribe gets what land, what people are the true blood, and how long they lived in certain area (a thousands or maybe only hundreds), you would open the biggest Pandora box in history of North America. Who is qualified to even decide in this matter?
Besides, it is not all bad, some tribes live in peace now for 100s of years, some of them only survived and were not killed off by stronger tribes, that otherwise would happen.

Well said LeBrok; I agree with you. We should have done better but didn't; to go back today and attempt to correct the past would indeed open Pandora's box. Canada, I believe, was more intelligent in it's dealings with NAs than we in the USA were.
 
Without a doubt it was the ottoman turks no one was as sick or perverted as them especially with their system of sexual slavery, janissaries and the fact that today turkey is still the largest slaver in the world...
 
Good summary Maciamo.

An interesting fact about the colonisation of India. There was only about 1000 brits administrating the whole sub continent, with off course some solders. They obviously worked smart with locals to get away with this, barring the occasional incident of brutality.
 
spaniards were the worst. look at the british colonies... they are rich. all spain leave behind to us was poverty and misery. thank you spain. we would be better if england conquer us in the past.
 
Not necessarily Canek, there was no uniform policly by which Britain governed all of it's colonies. They were governed according to the political and ethnic situation of each, so we do have places like India where most seemed to profit in one form or another but there are also places who suffered badly. Ireland suffered 800yrs of abuse and the Irish were ever kept grindingly poor, there were periods of extreme brutality and starvation in Scotland, particularly the Highlands and the indigenous population of Tasmania was completely exterminated.

We'll never know for sure how the British would have treated South America, perhaps they would have been worse than the Spanish? I think the difference has only been in the last century or so, it has been US policies and interference which have kept SA in poverty and not enabled it to develope in line with other countries who are as equally rich in natural resources as South America.
 
well All said about many colonial state,

But what about USA?

the Hawai colony!
the open plain culture of the Indians

surely they did kill not Indians, but they killed their buffalo,
surely did not massacre Indians, they let whiskey to do that.
well they did not exterminate indians,
simply they put them in Farms or camps like Hitler did in WW2 and do not feed them, (at least no Gas chambers)

I wonder why conquest of the west is not considered colonisation,

Also about the soldiers of Holy Russia and what they did in Alaska people,
once I read an article ' God is very high, and Tsar (Car) is very far'
talking about the islands of Alaska,
 
Good summary Maciamo.

An interesting fact about the colonisation of India. There was only about 1000 brits administrating the whole sub continent, with off course some solders. They obviously worked smart with locals to get away with this, barring the occasional incident of brutality.

A blatant contradiction with their politics in Ireland...
 

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