Source: https://www.vox.com/2014/5/8/5691954/colonialism-collapse-gif-imperialism

One of the things that bothers people so much about Russia’s slow play to gobble up chunks of Ukraine is that countries, by and large, have stopped annexing each others’ territory since World War II. This modern success is all the more remarkable by the fact that, for most of history, countries loved to conquer land and subjugate the people living there.

European colonialism has been far and away the worst offender in this regard in the last 500 years. Take a look at this GIF charting the rise and fall of (mostly) European empires from 1492, when the European discovery of the Americas kicked off their movement west and south, to 2008.

A lot of interesting things pop out in that GIF. Thailand never gets colonized by any power, European or Asian. Denmark had the earliest westward European colonies, in Greenland. The Japanese empire was pretty huge in 1938.

But the biggest, most remarkable thing in the map is the ebb and flow in the territory controlled by the big European powers. That reflects a few things. Wars between great powers themselves (say, World War I), colonial conquest (Britain in Australia), conflict between colonial powers (Britain and France in North America), and colonized people throwing out colonizers (the dramatic decline in African colonialism after World War II).

The rise and fall of colonial empires warrants particular attention. Each of these sometimes-century long occupations that transformed daily life for colonized people. These regimes varied in all sorts of ways: the degree to which they literally enslaved colonized subjects, to take a particularly grim example, or the amount to which they allowed local political autonomy.

Scholars are still arguing over the implications of these massive colonial shifts for modern politics, which are undoubtedly dramatic. Take the big-picture global economy: why some countries are rich, and others are poor. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson have proposed that colonialism created a “reversal of fortunes” in economic terms. Previously rich peoples became poor when colonized, while previously poor peoples ended up comparatively wealthier. And both, by and large, remain so today.

Why? Well, the central purpose of European colonialism was to benefit and enrich Europeans. Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson propose that created different incentives for European powers in richer and poorer colonized lands. In richer places, they built governments whose task was to steal wealth and resources and send them to Europe, shattering the foundations of local prosperity. In poorer places, they actually built European settler communities, protecting economically useful institutions like private property rights in order to make these communities do well. In both previously poor and previously rich places, these colonial institutions altered the trajectory of their development down to the present day.

The Acemoglu/Johnson/Robinson theory is quite controversial. Other scholars contest the very idea that a reversal of fortunes even happened. That makes sense: given colonialism’s immense influence on both colonized and colonizing societies, isolating variables for controlled studies is really hard. There’s also a time-span problem: tracking the consistent influence of one variable across hundreds of years can be tricky.

That’s, in a way, the point. Colonialism’s influence was so immense that we’re only just beginning to figure out how to properly measure it.

But there are some things we know, foremost among them that colonialism was brutally nasty business. One estimate suggests that, from 1885 to 1908, Belgian King Leopold II’s occupation of the Congo killed 8 million people. R.J. Rummel, a University of Hawaii scholar who spent his life estimate state-perpetrated atrocities, put the 20th century death toll attributable to colonialism at 50 million (behind only the Soviet Union and communist China in total killed). And European colonialism was around for hundreds of years.

So when you see huge chunks of the globe colonized in 1914, and colonial powers shrunk to basically their homelands in 2008, you’re seeing one of the greatest humanitarian accomplishments of the past 100 years in action.

  • DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Very nice animation. Haven’t seen it in this remarkable way. Quite insightful. Even your writings.

    Just want to add some points: One still can see in todays „power map“ which countries haven’t been colonized and stayed independent. Those countries are still somehow more powerful and independent in their economics: Japan, Thailand, Persia (Iran) The way they managed to stay out of the muddle was different. Still it is burnt into their strategic politics and self-confidence.

    For China it was a trauma that is still active. It never has been a follower in their history, but a leader. We‘ll see in next centuries if that ends into a world war III.

    One of the most fascinating questions is, and for me as well, why does it start in Europe? Not in India, China or Persia. Does anyone has good books about this question?

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Why does it start in Europe?

      I’m no historian, please take this with a massive chunk of salt, but one theory I’ve read is that Europe started with much better and more varied domesticable animals. Better domesticated animals meant denser cities, which meant more division of labour and less people farming, which meant more technological innovation, until finally the industrial revolution happened which was the big push for the rest.

      • DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Unfortunately, this theory cannot explain why the Arabic countries were much more culturally advanced compared to Europe for centuries. But suddenly Europe overtook it.

        I mean Europe learnt so much from these countries, take arabic numbers or letters for example. It can’t be for the reason of domesticable animals. Must be something else

        • kersploosh@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Regions like Persia, China, and the eastern Mediterranean got a head start because their climate, plants, and animals allowed agriculture to begin. Agriculture allowed major cultural developments: written text, math, astronomy, etc. These things then slowly spread to Europe via trade and wars of conquest.

          Europe took all this imported knowledge and added another detail: developing better weapons and militaries. Wars happen everywhere, but Europe took it to a new level with centuries of near-constant fighting. This created big incentives to develop better weapons, better tactics, to travel and trade to find new resources, etc. All that military development led to improvements in metallurgy, shipbuilding, ocean navigation, etc. They leapfrogged all the cultures that came before them.

          • DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            This sounds very reasonable. Thx.

            May I add to this that trade was quite advanced in Europe - compared to other regions. That might stem from the constant need for money to finance the armies. You get more money from trade but from the soil.

            Trade let merchants emerge as a new player in society and they demanded more rights for the „free.“ I mean most of the early thoughts about human rights came from Netherlands and were mainly financed by merchants. With the goal to establish merchants as political power besides or instead the nobility.

            TIL Army and weapons are dark but it leads to bright light that sparks societal progress.

    • kersploosh@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Why does it start in Europe?

      You should read Guns, Germs, and Steel. The author argues that humans in certain regions of the world benefitted from particular environmental factors: better climate, better geography for trade, the availability of plants and animals that will tolerate being domesticated, etc. Many small advantages combine over centuries to create huge differences in technological advancement.

      • DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I assume this counts for all the regions with advanced cultures. Think Persia, Egypt, Early China. Europe may be too.

        Still it doesn’t explain the fast forward push after 15th century and the spread over the world. Why not China or India?

        Some years ago in 12th century Europe was in the Middle Ago and split into many small kingdoms. Whereas in other regions big empires were active https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_century Then the black death reduced European population significantly.

        Geographic favor might help cultures to flourish faster, but somehow reducing it only to that seems a bit add for me. Anyhow, I‘ll take a read into that book. Thx

    • Bondrewd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I can think of a few “chinese” colonization periods. The colonization southward was a similar process and the sinicization still goes on to this day, it is an immense effort.

      Europe had a lot less chance for hegemony most likely. Also there was no cultural pressure for isolationism.