Colonialism and Colonies

A

4

English Colonies

England began exploration during the same period as the Dutch. In 1600 England granted a charter to the East India Company to establish overseas commercial and trade interests. The English government granted the company a monopoly of English trade with the “East Indies,” which the company eventually stretched to include the lucrative opium trade in China. Similar companies were established for the trade with Africa, Virginia, and elsewhere in the Americas.

English colonization in the Americas, however, remained almost unknown in the 16th century because England was at war with Spain. The first English colony in North America was established on Roanoke Island, off the North American coast. This colony failed and the English did not attempt further exploration and colonization in the Americas until 1604, after they made peace with Spain. During the 17th century, the English established colonies in the Caribbean and North America that became the foundations of the British Empire. In the West Indies, the English established sugar plantations, and in 1655 they conquered the Spanish colony of Jamaica, the first English colony taken by force. The English established a string of colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America.

A

5

French Colonies

The English faced competition in upper North America as the French colonized parts of what is now Canada. In 1608 French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Québec as a fur-trading center, strengthening French control of the St. Lawrence River. The French were also interested in converting the native peoples to Christianity, and they used the fur trade to fund their missionary activities.

Later in the century, the French became interested in expansion. In 1673 explorer Louis Joliet and Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette reached the Mississippi River and traveled down it as far as the Arkansas River. In 1682 explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle led an expedition down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming all the land drained by the river for Louis XIV, king of France, and naming the region Louisiana. As the French gained more control in North America, they developed a rivalry with England that would come to a head during the 18th century.

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B

European Merchant Empires (1700-1815)

The foundations of European sea-based empires were laid during the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 18th century, these empires had become powerful. To understand these empires, it is helpful to break them up into regional networks or world systems. A world system is an area where different cultures are related through commercial and other interactions. The boundaries of a world system are not restricted to territory controlled by any one country. The Atlantic Ocean is an example of a world system, as is the Indian Ocean.

For the Atlantic Ocean, it is helpful to think of two fairly distinct, but connected, world systems. The North Atlantic system included Western Europe, Russia, the Baltic, Scandinavia, the abundant fishing areas near Newfoundland and New England, and what became Canada and the northern states of the United States. Its main products were timber, fish, and fur. The South Atlantic system included the Spanish colonies in South and Central America, the Portuguese colony of Brazil, the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean, West Africa, and the southern colonies in North America. Its most prominent products were silver, sugar, tobacco, African slaves, and, after 1800, cotton.

The North Atlantic world system relied heavily on the French, Dutch, and English colonies in North America. By the beginning of the 18th century, conflicts between competing European powers had intensified in that area. Territories along North America’s eastern seaboard changed hands as the British gained control of Dutch areas, and the French and British entered a series of wars. Following the French and Indian War, Great Britain gained control of Canada and all French territories east of the Mississippi River. The British also gained Florida from Spain, which had been an ally of France. The war determined that British, rather than French ideas and institutions would dominate North America.

In the South Atlantic world system, slavery was crucial as a source of labor. Millions of Native American people had died because they lacked immunity to diseases introduced to the area. Death rates reached as high as 80 to 90 percent of the native population during the first century of contact with Europeans. Also, relatively few Europeans migrated to the New World until the late 18th century, providing few workers for new industries.

The shortage of labor became particularly acute after the Europeans introduced the plantation system, which became the main form of agricultural production in the South Atlantic system. The plantation system was particularly prominent in the sugar-producing areas of the Caribbean islands and Brazil and in the southeastern colonies of mainland North America, where cotton and tobacco were important.

Around the world, in the Indian Ocean world system, British power was growing. By the beginning of the 18th century, the powerful Mughal Empire, centered in north India, began to decline. The English East India Company, which had established a presence in India during the 1600s, had a fort in Calcutta (now Kolkata). The company used this fort as a base to gradually take over the entire Indian subcontinent. The company accomplished this by hiring an Indian army, overseen by British officers, which was paid for with taxes collected from Indians. This army formed the main British military weapon in Asia, until India achieved independence from Britain in 1947.

In the Indian Ocean world system, trade was primarily in spices, silk, and other luxury goods. This trade had existed for thousands of years, providing Asian countries with economies featuring large, sophisticated markets, credit systems, and manufacturing techniques. Before the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century, Europeans produced little that Asians wanted, so they were able to participate in the Indian Ocean world system only because they possessed a great deal of silver from America. The Industrial Revolution (the shift from hand manufacturing to large-scale factory production) allowed Europeans to increase productivity of labor by about ten times. Consequently they were able to cut costs substantially while maintaining or even improving product quality. Europeans had another huge advantage: military power. More than any other people, Europeans had made fighting a profession, one that helped them expand their commercial activities.

C

Imperialism of Free Trade (1815-1870)

During the mid-19th century, Britain was the dominant economic and political power in the world. Britain faced little competition from other European powers. The French were recovering from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). The Dutch, although still in control of Indonesia, had declined in power and were not a serious threat. Left unchallenged on the seas, the British were often able to extend their power through informal influence without necessarily asserting formal political control, which would add administrative and defensive costs and responsibilities.

This push for informal influence became known as the imperialism of free trade. The British did not establish many formal colonies, but they controlled other nations in order to increase their economic power. In China, for example, British commercial expansion resulted in the Opium Wars (1839-1842, 1856-1860) when the Chinese government attempted to stop British merchants from illegally importing opium. Britain also gained a great deal of informal power in Latin America after Spain’s colonies became independent between 1807 and 1824. Because Britain’s power and influence were so vast, a popular saying was, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

D

New Imperialism (1870-1914)

That lack of competition changed in the late 19th century, as European powers again became interested in expanding. This was particularly true of Germany, which had become a united nation in 1871 (see German Unification). Almost all the European powers vied with one another for colonies. This surging political rivalry drove New Imperialism.

Although European colonial expansion at the end of the 19th century was called New Imperialism, the motives of colonizers remained the same as in earlier periods. They usually sought economic advantages, but these were hard to disentangle from political and strategic motives. The main differences in this era were the number of competing colonial powers and the parts of the world they chose to colonize. Almost all European powers participated, and they sought colonies in Africa and in the Pacific.

In what is called the Scramble for Africa, European nations partitioned Africa at the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885). The Germans got southwestern Africa, along with Tanganyika in East Africa. The Portuguese got Mozambique and Angola, in southern Africa. Belgium took the Congo, and France got Senegal, the Cameroons, and several other colonies in the western Sudan and Central Africa. The British got the rest, including Kenya and Uganda in East Africa, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the territory that became Nigeria in West Africa. The British already controlled Egypt, which they had occupied in 1882, as well as English-speaking Cape Colony and Natal on the southern tip of Africa. The British also dominated Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) through the British South Africa Company under the leadership of Cecil Rhodes. The result was that almost every part of the African continent was a European colony.

In the Pacific, the British, the French, and the Germans faced competition both from the Americans, who took over Hawaii and the Philippines from the Spaniards, and from the Japanese, who colonized Korea. The French took Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), and the Germans colonized eastern New Guinea, in the South Pacific. In Asia, the British strengthened their hold on Burma (now known as Myanmar) and Malaya. Although China was never formally colonized, European powers established individual “spheres of influence.” When the Chinese rioted in Shanghai and elsewhere in 1900, in the Boxer Uprising, Western powers put down the revolt and imposed a huge indemnity (a fine to cover the cost of losses and damages) on the Chinese.

Both Africa and the Pacific were areas where trade, investment, and profits had all been comparatively low before the late 19th century. These were also areas where Western nations, with their advanced military technology, could easily conquer indigenous states. Imperial nations adopted the attitude that they should control these areas in order to protect what they viewed as weak peoples. In general, the citizens of the more powerful nations supported this view, especially because, with the exception of Japan’s control of Korea, the power holders were white and their subjects were people of color.

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