7.7.1: Colonialism

 7.7.1: Colonialism The first theory, colonialism, stresses that the countries that industrialized first got a jump on the rest of the world. Beginning in Great Britain about 1750, industrialization spread throughout western Europe. Plowing some of their profits into powerful armaments and fast ships, these countries invaded weaker nations, making colonies out of them (Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2017; Infante-Amate and Krausmann 2019). After subduing these weaker nations, the more powerful countries left behind a controlling force in order to exploit the nations’ labor and natural resources. At one point, there was even a free-for-all among the industrialized European countries as they rushed to divide up an entire continent. As they sliced Africa into pieces, even tiny Belgium got into the act and acquired the Congo, which was seventy-five times larger than itself. The purpose of colonialism was to establish economic colonies—to exploit the nation’s people and resources for the benefit of the elites of the “mother” country. The more powerful European countries would plant their national flags in a colony and send their representatives to run the government, but the United States usually chose to plant corporate flags in a colony and let these corporations dominate the territory’s government. Central and South America are prime examples. There were exceptions, such as the U.S. army’s conquest of the Philippines, which President William McKinley said was motivated by the desire “to educate the Filipinos and uplift and civilize and Christianize them” (Krugman 2002). Colonialism, then, shaped many of the Least Industrialized Nations. In some instances, the Most Industrialized Nations were so powerful that when dividing their spoils, they drew lines across a map, creating new states without regard for tribal or cultural considerations (Duiker and Spielvogel 2017). Britain and France did just this as they divided up North Africa and parts of the Middle East—which is why the national boundaries of Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries are so straight. This legacy of European conquests is a background factor in much of today’s racial–ethnic and tribal violence: By the stroke of a pen, groups with no history of national identity were incorporated within the same political boundaries.