The history of Atlantic is an area of expertise in which the Atlantic World in the early contemporary era is studied. This field is based on the view that, after the development of sustained 16th century’s European close interaction with the New World, the continents that surrounded the Atlantic Ocean including the Europe, Americas, as well as Africa established a common sphere or regional system of cultural and economic exchange that may be examined as entirety. There exist a number of aspects of the Atlantic history. This paper seeks to explore the aspect of colonialism of Atlantic history.
Colonialism can be referred to as the organization, utilization, preservation, gaining as well as enlargement of colonies in a single territory by individuals from a different territory. Colonialism is a group of uneven associations between the colony and the metro pole, and between the settlers and the native population. The European era of colonialism was the period between the 1500s and the mid-1900s when a number of European authorities especially the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain set up colonies in Africa, Asia, as well as the Americas. Initially, the nations followed policies of the mercantile system planned to make strong the home economic system at the advantage of competitors, thus the colonies were normally permitted to do business only with the country of origin. By the mid of the 19th century, though, the influential British Empire abandoned mercantile system and restrictions of trade and brought in the rationale of free trade, with little tariffs or restrictions.
According to historians there are two distinguishable overlapping types of colonialism, which include settler, as well as exploitation colonialism. Settler colonialism entails large-scale immigration usually prompted by political, economic or religious reasons. Exploitation colonialism, on the other hand, entails fewer colonialists and centers on approach to resources for exportation, characteristically to the metro pole. This type of colonialism includes trading posts and bigger colonies whereby colonists would make up a lot of the economic as well as political administration, but would depend on native resources for material and labor. Before the ending of the slave trade as well as extensive abolishment, when native labor was not available, slaves were frequently imported to the Americas, initially by the Portuguese Empire, and afterward by the French, Spanish, British and Dutch.
Plantation colonies would be regarded as exploitation colonialism though colonizing authorities would use either form for a variety of territories relying on a number of economic and social elements as well as geographic and climate conditions. Surrogate colonialism entails a project of settlement that is backed by colonial authority in which the majority of the settlers do not come up from the ruling power’s mainstream. Internal colonialism is an idea of irregular structural authority between regions of a country state. The exploitation source originates from inside the nation.
The take-over of huge territories contributes to multitudes of various cultures under the fundamental control of the regal powers. Since the period of Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, this reality has been dealt with by empires taking in the idea of universalism, as well as employing it to their regal policies towards their matters away from the regal capitol. The metro pole, the capitol, was the basis of apparently progressive policies enforced all through the far-away colonies. The territory that developed from Athenian take-over stimulated the distribution of Greek religion, language, philosophy and science all through the colonies. The Athenians regarded their own customs as better than those of others. They called people talking strange languages as savages, ignoring foreign languages as substandard mutters that went to ears of Greek like bar-bar.
Romans found competence in enforcing a policy of Universalist towards their settlements in a number of issues. The law of Roman was enforced on the citizens of Roman, as well as colonial matters, all through the empire. Latin propagated like the common government as well as the trade language, the lingua Franca, all through the Empire. Romans as well enforced peace amongst their varied foreign matters that they depicted in helpful terms as the Pax Romana. The application of universal ordinance by the Romans differentiates the growth of a European idea of internationalism as well as universalism. Acceptance of other beliefs and customs has ever been minor to the objectives of empires, though. The Roman Empire was broadminded of the varied religious practices and cultures, as long as these never threatened Roman power (Pagden, 2003).
Colonists played as the connection between the locals and the regal domination, reducing the ideological, commercial and geographical gap between the colonized and colonizers. Progressed technology enabled the growth of states in Europe. With means such as navigation, shipbuilding, cartography, agricultural and mining output colonizers had a whip hand. Their consciousness of the surface of the Earth, as well as the profusion of practical attainments, offered colonizers information that, successively, created authority (Painter & Jeffrey, 2009).
There is an argument that the discipline of geography was not and is not an aim science, instead it is grounded on premises concerning the physical world. While it might have offered the West a benefit when it started geographic expedition, it as well made regions of racial lowliness. Geographical convictions such as determinism of environment, the opinion that certain parts of the world are developing, legalized colonialism and made opinions of tilted evolution (Painter & Jeffrey, 2009). These are currently considered as simple ideas. Geographers who are politicians hold that colonial conduct was strengthened by the physical world mapping that visually dividing them into two opposing groups. Geographers basically focus on the imperialism and colonialism spaces, more specially, the symbolic and material annexation of space paving way for colonialism (Carolyn, 2009).
In the Atlantic history, colonialism is known to have vast as well as pervasive impacts. A variety of impacts, both instant and lengthy, include exploitation, the increase of virulent illnesses, the set up of uneven social associations, abolitionism, captivity, medical improvements, the introduction of new organizations, (Lovejoy, 2012) meliorated infrastructure, (Ferguson, 2003) and progress of technology (Thong, 2012). Colonial patterns also encourage the propagation of literature, languages as well as cultural establishments. The local cultures of the peoples being colonized may as well be influential on the regal state.
Since the ancient time expansion of the economy has gone along with regal growth. The trade-networks of Greece stretch all over the Mediterranean area as Roman trade enlarged with the major aim of directing compliment from the regions being colonized towards the Roman metro pole. By the time Augustus was the emperor, about 120 ships belonging to the Roman would set sail each year from the Roman Egypt’s Myos Hormos in to India. With the growth of routes of trade during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, Syrian Muslims, Gujari Hindus, Armenians, Jews, Christians from the southern and the central parts of Europe controlled trading paths that provided Arab and Persian with horses to the armies of the three empires, Mocha coffee to Belgrade and Delhi, Persian silk to Istanbul and India (Pagden, Peoples and Empires, 2003).
Civilization of Aztec grew into a big empire whose objective, just like the Roman Empire, was to exact compliment from the dominated colonial regions. For the Aztecs, the most crucial compliment was the gaining of sacrificial sufferers for their religious ceremony (Pagden, Peoples and Empires, 2003). The European colonial empires, on the other hand, at times tried to transmit, limit as well as obstruct trade that involved their colonies, moving activity via the metro pole and levying taxes accordingly. Nations in Europe got into their regal tasks with the aim of inspiring the European metro pole. Use of non-Europeans as well as other Europeans to back regal objectives was satisfactory to the colonizers. Two offshoots of this regal plan were slavery as well as apprenticed servitude. In the 17th century, almost two-thirds of English colonists moved to Northern part of America as apprenticed retainers.
Slavery in Africa had been there long prior to the Europeans’ discovery that Africa was an utilizable way of making cheap labor pool for the colonies. Europeans introduced technology in transportation into practice introducing big numbers of slaves from African to the Americas through sail. Portugal and Spain had taken slaves from African to work at colonies in Africa, for instance, the Azores and Cape Verde, and later Latin America, by the century 16th. The Dutch, British and French, joined in the trade of slave in the centuries that followed. Eventually, approximately 11 million Africans were carried to North and South America and the Caribbean as slaves by the colonizers from Europe (King, People on the Move: An Atlas of Migration, 2010).
A number of abolitionists in America and Europe resisted the cruel treatment of slaves from Africa that led to the abolition of the slave traffic by the late century 18th. The shortage of labor caused the motivated European colonizers to create a new origin of labor by use of a system of apprenticed servitude. Apprenticed servants agreed to an agreement with the colonizers from Europe. In their agreement, the servant would labor for an employer for an at least one year term, whereas the employer accepted to compensate for the voyage of the servant to the colony, perhaps disburse for the return to the nation of origin, and also disburse the worker a salary. The worker was indented to the boss since they owed arrears back to the boss for their journey cost to the colony that they were required to pay from their salaries. In fact, apprenticed servants were used through awful conditions of work as well as taxing debts introduced by the bosses, with whom the employees had no way of discussing the arrears once they got to the colony.
Both India and China contributed as the largest indentured servants’ source throughout the colonial era. Those indentured servants who came from India moved to the colonies in Asia, Caribbean and Africa that were under Britain. The Chinese servants, on the other hand, moved to the Dutch and British colonies. Between the years 1830 and 1930, there were about 30 million indentured servants who moved from India, and about 24 million servants returned to India. There were more indentured servants who were sent by China to European colonies. Simultaneously, about the same number of servants went back to China (King, 2010).
Slave suppression as well as the slave trade became a secondary focus that was taken by the colonial regimes especially after the Scramble for Africa. By the time the colonial period was over, most of the colonial regimes were successful in this aim, but the act of slavery is still exercised in Africa (Lovejoy, 2012). The post-independent error saw a reversal of the patterns of migration that were witnessed during the era of modern colonialism. In most of these cases, it was the European settlers who were moving back to their motherland or to an ancestral place of birth. After Algeria got its independence in 1962, there were a huge number of about 900,000 French colonists, also referred to as the Pied-Noirs, who resettled back in France. A significant number of those who migrated had their origins from Algeria. About 800,000 people who were of Portuguese origin also moved back to Portugal after the African countries that were being colonized by the Portuguese gained their independence between 1974 and 1979. Similarly, there were about 300,000 settlers who migrated from the Dutch West Indies to the Netherlands after the control of the colony by the Dutch military ended (King, 2010).
After World War II was over, 300,000 Dutchmen who were living in the Dutch East Indies repatriated back to Netherlands. Most of these people were from the Eurasian descent, which is known as Indo Europeans. A huge number later migrated to Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand (Willlems, 2001).
Global travel as well as migration generally developed at a rising at a quick pace all through the era of the expansion of the European colonization. Those citizens belonging to the former colonies that were under the European countries may enjoy the status with greater privilege regarding the rights to migrate during times of resettlement in the former nations of European empire. For instance, these people may enjoy dual citizenship rights or big quotas of immigrants be offered to the former colonies. In other instances, the nations that were formally under the Europe may continue to have a political, as well as economic tie, with the colonizing nation. For instance, Commonwealth of Nations is one of the organizations that promote cooperation among and between the former colonies, who are the Commonwealth members and Britain. There is a similar organization (Francophonie) that exists between France and its former colonies. Others include the Community of Portuguese Language, which united the former Portuguese colonies, and the Dutch Language Union.
The migration process from former colonies has been faced with numerous problems especially for the European countries. These areas experience hostility being expressed to groups with ethnic minority who migrated from the former colonies. There has also been cultural as well as religious conflict that have erupted recently in France between those immigrants who came from the Maghreb countries in the northern Africa and the rest of the population in France. However, there has been a change in the ethnic composition, through immigration, in France (Seljuq, 1997).
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