BRIEF HISTORY OF COLONIALISM
Ever since the ancient times European traders had been traveling to India and China via ancient silk routes courtesy of safe passage granted by the Mongol rulers. But when Ottomans defeated Mongols and took over the North East Asian Territories, using ancient silk routes to travel to India and China became more difficult. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the land route to Asia became much more difficult and dangerous. Portuguese navigators tried to find a sea route to India by travelling around the African continent. But it was a long and perilous journey so astronomer Paolo Dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested King Alfonso V of Portugal that India can be reached much quicker travelling via west and across the Atlantic Ocean. But King Alfonso V rejected his proposal. But Columbus Brothers picked up the Toscanelli's idea and started searching for sponsors. One after another all european monarchs refused to invest in Columbus's daring notion. They thought Columbus's estimate of distance to Japan was far too less that what it in reality was. But in the end Columbus found his sponsors in form of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
Christopher Columbus sailed from Palos on 3rd August 1492, but instead of reaching India like he had expected to, he found a previously unknown continent of Americas then called the New World. Christopher Columbus returned to Americas the second time with a whole garrison of soldiers and butchered indegenous populations especially the native Americans whome he named Red Indians. More than 2 million native Americans perished after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, because Columbus was carrying a secret destructive weapon that even he didn't knew about. This weapon was diseases like smallpox and measles to which American indegenous populations were not immune like Europeans. Some estimates calculate that as many as 8 million American natives perished from these infectious diseases brought to Americas by European explorers.
Columbus's discovery of new world, inspired numerous other explorers who embarked upon exploratory voyages of their own. Six years after Columbus's failed objective of reaching India via sea, Portugese explorer Vasco Da Gama reached India on 20th May 1498.
Map with the main travels of the age of discoveries, 1482–1524. See details in expandable table:
The Portuguese began systematically exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1418, under the sponsorship of Prince Henry. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reached the Indian Ocean by this route. In 1492 the Spanish Monarchs funded Christopher Columbs's plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic. He landed on an uncharted continent, then seen by Europeans as New World, America. To prevent conflict between Portugal and Spain, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed dividing the world into two regions of exploration, where each had exclusive rights to claim newly discovered lands.
In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco Da Gama reached India by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. Soon, the Portuguese sailed further eastward, to the valuable spice islands in 1512, landing in China one year later. Thus, Europe first received news of eastern and western Pacific within a one year span around 1512. East and west exploration overlapped in 1522, when Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish expedition West, achieving the first circumnavigation of the world, while Spanish conquistadors explored inland the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands.
Since 1495, the French and English and, much later, the Dutch entered the race of exploration after learning of these exploits, defying the Iberian monopoly on maritime trade by searching for new routes, first to the north, and into the Pacific Ocean around South America, but eventually by following the Portuguese around Africa into the Indian Ocean; discovering Australia in 1606, New Zealand in 1642, and Hawaii in 1778. Meanwhile, from the 1580s to the 1640s Russians explored and conquered almost the whole of Siberia.
But European explorers had no intentions of finding new lands and trade with the people of the newly discovered lands in a civilised manner. Their aim was to find a new land and enslave its indegenous populations and profit from them by selling them in slave trade and if they resisted then wipe them all out. And this is mainly what Spanish conquistadors did in South American countries like Mexico, Peru and Colombia. Numerous flourishing South American civilisations like Aztecs and Incas. Millions of people were killed either by the sword of the conquistadors or by their diseases.
Some of the worst atrocities committed during the age of discovery were committed by Christian missionaries. Christian missionaries forcefully converted thousands of natives to Christianity and those who refused to convert to Christianity were brutally killed by means of inquisitions. Spanish and Portugese were especially adept in using inquisitions in the name of god to slaughter millions of innocent natives of South America and Africa.Although it has to mentioned that some Christian missionaries truly adhered to the teachings of Jesus and worked really hard to protect ethnic populations from harsher elements within their own ranks. They operated orphanages in many African regions to provide food, love and shelter to those children who had lost their parents either to colonial oppression or to tribal wars.
'Romanus Pontifex',was a "papal bull" written in 1454 by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal. As a follow-up to an earlier authorisation , it confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands discovered or conquered during the age. The Papal Bull permitted the enslavement and conquest of all lands south of Cape Bojador in Africa. Along with encouraging the seizure of the lands of Saracen Turks and non-Christians (labeled pagans), it repeated the earlier bull's permission for the enslavement of such peoples. The papal bull also gave Spanish conquistadors a right to purify heathens (non Christians) by means of execution, burning at stake and decapitation.
Selling and buying human beings, slaughtering millions of innocent people in the name of faith, stealing their anscestoral land and looting their civilisation's accumulated wealth, these are the things that civilised Europeans brought to the world of so called savages and brutes. I wonder who should have taught being civil to whome.
BRITISH EMPIRE DURING ITS PEAK
British had started their colonial conquest in late 16th century and continued it well into the 20th century. By the year 1922, Britain had colonies on every continent of the world. Britain had dominion over 458 million people which at that time was the one fifth of the global population at that time. Total area under the rule of British was 33,700,000 square kms, approximately a quarter of earths total land area. Such was the prowess of the British empire that it was said that sun never sets in British empire, when one part of the British empire was engulfed in darkness of the night, it would be day in some other British colony.
BRITISH MODUS OPERANDI
When British explorers first arrived on any land, they never intimidated the indegenous populations like Spanish or Portugese did. Britishers always came into a new country as traders who were just looking to buy Indian spices and tea. So immediately local kings and chieftains welcomed them with traditional Indian hospitality. Slowly and gradually when trading with a specific kingdom or port became far too frequent then Britishers asked local kings for a small building where travelling British traders could rest and store their cargo. Britishers called these storage centres "Trading Outposts" and they had these trading outposts in nearly all of the port cities of India like Cochin, Bombay, Vizag, Calcutta and many others. Upto this time every aspect of trading and commerce regarding Indo-British trading was carried out by The East India Company in the name of the British Crown.
After some time when Britishers and Indians, both became habitual of each other's presence, both parties started seeking each other's help in political, economic and religious matters. Whenever a kingdom where East India Company was stationed, was being attacked by some neighbouring kingdom, then rulers of the first kingdom sorted the assistance of Britishers in form of modern weaponry, military tactics and if possible troops assistance. Hence this way slowly and gradually the influence of East Of India Company started expanding into other Indian Territories and Kingdoms. By late nineteenth century the Infrastructure of East India Company had spread all over India with more than 10,000 employees working in it and Company traded goods worth millions of pounds every year.
So to safeguard this huge infrastructure of trading outposts, Britain requested its allied Kings and Nawabs to allow them to bring some of their own troops in order to secure the vast amount of capital that was necessary for both Britishers and Indian Kings and Chiefs. Then slowly and gradually East India Company was replaced by officials of British Monarchy. By pitting one strong kingdom against another powerful king, Britishers systematically wiped out all those powers who could have challenged British Raj (British Rule) in India. Despite all these careful manouvres, British Rule was not able to subdue all Indian Kings. Bitter and bloody wars between British and their allied forces and an alliance of Kings challenging British rule would continue well into the early 1900s. By mid 1850s, Britishers had most of India under their control except some regions of Northern India.
One strategy that ensured Britishers of significant local support was appeasing the local king or nawab of that specific are which Britishers wanted to bring under their influence. By joining hands with local rulers, Britishers negated any significant opposition from local civilians. In those civilians in any kingdom considered their king as divine ruler and guardian of their lives. And when they saw their king joining hands with Britishers, they believed that if king has joined hands with Britishers than it must be in their best interest. So they passively accepted the political and social changes, that Britishers made in their society.
But this strategy of aligning with local Royalty was mainly applied in South East Asian countries like India, Burma, Thailand, Malaya and many others. British strategy in African and South American countries was much more authoritative and accompanied brute force to achieve submission on any local resistant. Reason for this was that unlike India, there were no big, powerful and wealthy kingdoms which possessed huge armies. Political and social structure in African countries was still very much a mixture of feudal and tribal characteristics. Communities were divided into tribes and possessed at best an force of few hundred men wielding primitive weapons like spears and arrows. Only one tribal force posed serious resistance to the British colonials in Southern Africa. And that force was of thousands of warriors of the Zulu Nation. Zulu king ruled on a huge area of land ranging from Kwazulu Natal in South Africa to the north Eastern South African town of Maputo. Some of the most violent and bloodiest wars for British colonial expansion were fought against the forces of Zulu nation. But eventually even Zulu nation was forced to submit to the authority of British Empire.
But nowhere was the savage and barbaric element of British Empire more evident than in the colonisation of the Americas. British Colonisation campaigns of America were so bloody and violent that it won't be wrong to say that foundation of modern day America was laid with a mortar of soil and blood of indegenous native populations. Just like the Spanish conquistadors on the west coast of America, British Colonials wiped out more than 95% of the indegenous populations on the Eastern coast of the Americas. But many of the Carribean Islands that British Empire seized were very sparsely populated if populated at all. This made the colonisation of these islands considerably easier than the Islands that British colonised in South Asia.
In North America at its peak British empire maintained thirteen colonies on the Eastern coast of America. But in time British explorers found massive expands of pristine untouched land in Canada. But contrary to common believes this land was not uninhabited. Several tribes of native Indians inhabited these regions near to the Great Lakes. In even more harsh and frozen regions of Canada in the North, Inuit People had been flourishing for thousands of years. British Colonias snatched the land that had been inhabited by tribes of Native Indians for thousands of years. Native tribes not only had to relocate when their land was occupied by British Colonials but also had to suffer centuries of discrimination and segregation in the hands of invaders.
MYTH OF MORAL HIGHGROUND
It was a common ideology of all European colonial Empires that their occupation of foreign lands and enslavement of indegenous people was a morally justified deed because they were civilising the savage and primitive people of the world. Infact many Britishers even to this very day legitimise the colonial past of Britain with this arguement. As far as civilisation and culture is concerned, there is quite substantial evidence that history of Indian subcontinent contradicts this belief of colonials. Even if one ignores thousands of years old scriptures and religious texts of Hinduism, there is still a lot of archaeological evidence proving that civilisation flourished in India well before it even arrived in British Isles.
Modern day archeologists have proved that some of the earliest civilisations in the whole world sprung up in the continent of Asia. And the earliest of all Asian civilisations was the Sumerian Civilisation which rose up in the historical region of Mesopotamia(modern day Iraq) upon the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Archeological evidence suggests that the earliest permanent settlement in this region dates back to around 3500 BCE. Sumerian civilisation is credited for being the first implementers of large scale agriculture and urban developement. Sumerians were also one of the earliest people to, maintain a centralised authority, a military for defense against foreign invaders and create trade links to other lands by sea and land. Sumerian civilisation flourished for nearly 1700 years. Repetitive farming of same crop during the period of over 1500 years resulted in a phenomenal increase in salinity of the soil. Slowly and gradually crops started failing which forced many of the Sumerians to move to other regions of Middle East. And ultimately Sumerian civilisation completely disappeared with the rise of the Babylonian empire in 1790 BCE.
In India the Indus Valley Civilisation is considered the earliest civilisation in the region. Although western archeologists estimate that Indus Valley Civilisation emerged around 3300 BCE, but archeologists of India and Pakistan claim that the genesis of the Indus Valley Civilisation is much much older than what western archeologists claim. They claim that birth of Indus Valley Civilisation can be dated to as back as 8000 BCE. So that makes Indus Valley Civilisation to be around 10,000 years old. Furthermore Indus Valley Civilisation is considered to be the first civilisation to maintain multiple urban settlements. Although there were dozens of smaller settlements throughout Northern India and Pakistan but most notable and major urban settlements of Indus Valley Civilisation were Harappa, Mohenjo Daro, Dholavira, Ganeriwala, Cholistan and Rakhigarhi. All five of these sites were targets of major archeological excavations by both Indo-Pak and western archaeologists. UNESCO has declared all five of these sites as World Heritage Sites. Indus Valley Civilisation is credited with the developement of first, fixed drainage and sewage systems, house to house water distribution network, irrigation systems for the fields, substantial river transport system connecting various towns with one another and urban architecture.
And in Egypt pyramids were being constructed around 2500 BCE. Constructing such a huge structure would even be an enormous task today, so the fact that Egyptians constructed those huge pyramids in 2500 BCE tells us about their technological, mathematical, architectural prowess even 4500 years ago.
By the 3500 BCE, when civilisations were flourishing in Central Asia, inhabitants in the British isles were literally rolling around in mud and resembeled the hunting and gatherer society of primitive times. So the arguement that British Empire colonised several of the above mentioned regions in order to civilise the people of these regions is not only factually inaccurate but it also exhibits the White supremacist ideology of being superior to the dark skinned races. It is this discriminatory belief that made Britishers consider the dark skinned races as savage, uncivilised and barbaric. And this belief of Britishers was one of the main reasons, why a feeling of contempt motivated British colonies to eventually rise in revolt against the British Empire.
SUPERMACIST IDEOLOGIES AND RACIAL ABUSE IN BRITISH EMPIRE
British Empire empire was one the largest and most powerful colonial power in the world. With countries like India, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and South Africa under their rule there was no country that could equal the wealth, power and productive territories of the British Empire. Despite all the evils of British Empire, truth is that most of the British colonies would have happily remained under the British Flag if only Britishers could have stopped the indiscriminate exploitation, discrimination and segregation of the indegenous populations. If Britishers could just have spent half the amount of wealth taken out of a colony on that colony's people, British empire could very well have been the greatest power in the world even today. But this wasn't the case. British colonies looted the wealth of their colonies and shipped all of it to England. Indegenous populations kept getting poor and poorer while courtesy of their stolen wealth the British Crown kept on getting richer and richer. British Empire imposed harsh taxes on the local rulers, the same rulers who had once supported the British Empire to set up their infrastructure throughout the country.
With most of their treasures and wealth seized by the British Colonials, local Kings and rulers had no means of generating enough wealth to pay the taxes imposed by Britishers on several kingdoms. Failiure to pay the taxes meant the kingdom could be acquired by the Britishers and integrated into the British Empire. So to pay the taxes, most kings and chiefs further taxed their civilians especially farmers. And if by any chance the annual crop failed, farmers would have just enough of grains saved either to pay the king's taxes or to feed their families. Paying the saved amount of food to king, inevitably meant the starvation of the poor peasants.
During early 1900s, a famine ravaged the Eastern regions of India especially Bengal and Bihar. Forced to pay the taxes under the threat of arrest and incarceration, millions of poor peasants were left with nothing to feed their families. Britishers quite conveniently sent all the collected wheat and rice back to Britain whilst the people of India were starving to death. Famine of 1902 claimed the lives of more than 20 million Indians who died of starvation and diseases. It wasn't untill the famine ended in 1907, that British Colonials started distributing the food to the starving populations.
Although now adays, British Empire's involvement in the slave trade is seldom mentioned but nothing can hide the fact that more than 80% of the global slave trade was carried out by the British Empire. Dehumanisation and commoditisation of indegenous native population was so rampant in British Culture that British Colonials viewed the indegenous populations as a commodity that could be bought and sold in markets overseas to maximise the proffits. Most of the British colonies in Africa became one of the biggest and most unfortunate sources of slave labour for the labour demands in the American colonies. Unlike their African counterparts Indian labourers were paid for their work, but the wages paid to the labourers and the conditions in which they had to work and live were fairly poor. Millions of Indian labourers were taken to far away British colonies like Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Egypt and South Africa. Being taken to such far away places the labourers had no choice but to continue working in whatever the conditions were.
But nothing can be comparable to the suffering and hardship endured by the African people who were sold as slaves to British plantation owners and rich farmers of the American colonies. Many regions of America for example New Orleans, had become a hub for slave trade in the North America. Because the European settlers purchased them from the British traders, these human beings were now considered the property of that farmer or plantation owner. No wages were paid to the African workers and they were expected to survive in even worse human conditions than we can even imagine. They were given one meal a day, some clothes and a place to sleep at night. These workers were forced to work upto 18-19 hours a day and seven days a week. This was the human exploitation at its worst. Mortality rate of African slaves in these plantations and farms was high, with as many as 20% of the workers dying every year of diseases, starvation, over-exertion and physical assaults in the hands of their owners.
Some of the most heinous and horrendous crimes committed against indegenous populations occurred in Australia. Under the orders of Royal Society, Lt. James Cook made landfall on the Eastern shore of Australia at a place now known as Kurnill Peninsula and on the beach of a Botany Bay near Sydney on 29th April 1770. Two before landing in Australia, Cook had sighted several aborigine Australians on the coast of mainland. After the initial voyage of discovery, James Cook made two more voyages to Australia and NewZealand. And in 1788, the first fleet of British colonisers consisting of many soldiers arrived at Port Jackson about 15 kms from Botany Bay. Colonists name this new place Sydney Cove (near to the present day harbour in Sydney).
Although James Cook had made just one contact with the Aborigine Australians residing near Botany Bay, but even that brief encounter had resulted in small confrontation with the natives. When First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, they encountered Eora people and Bidjigal Clan of the natives. There was no method of communicating with natives and Britishers were also totally oblivious about the culture and traditions of the aborigine people and most importantly the kind of relationship they had with the land. When the Australian natives saw the British colonists cutting trees and digging up earth for construction purposes, they saw it as desecration of their motherland. It was not much longer after this that hostilities broke out between the two groups. Aborigines armed with wooden spears were never going to be any match for the muskets and swords carried by British soldiers. The massacre of the aborigines that started in 1788, continued well into the 1950s.
British Colonists arriving on a land already inhabited by aborigine people, had the moral responsibility to try their level best to communicate with the natives and seek their approval before landing on their land and starting construction of buildings. When British Colonists had first arrived in India and in the Americas, they first seeked the approval of the natives for creating a temporary settlements. And then they signed treaties with the natives, which gave them a right to construct buildings on the land with authorisation from the native people. Britishers would have realised that both native Indians in Americas and Kings of India possessed enough force to challenge any of their activities without seeking a formal permission from the indegenous people of the area. But in Australia, British colonists saw that aborigine people posed no significant threat to their colonising ambitions. Neither did they possess any weapon that could inflict any serious damage to them, so they decided to completely disregard the native tribes. If Australian Aborigines had possessed a significant force with even a little more advanced weapons than wooden spears and sticks, the attitude of British Colonists towards them might have been totally different.
One other significant factor that ensured the persecution of aborigine Australians was the developement strategy of the British Colony of Australia. During the earlier colonising endeavours in India, South Asia, Africa and the Carribean Islands, British Colonists had tried to maintain a friendly rapport with the indegenous people of their would be colonies. This was not because of any goodness of the hearts of the British Colonists but rather it was a strategic requirement. British colonists were totally dependent on employing indegenous people for the construction and maintenance of their colonial infrastructure. This also gave ample opportunity to both parties for friendly interactions and communications with each other. Secondly employing local indegenous people also provided employment opportunities to the natives, where they could earn good wages for their hard work. Hence all these give and take interactions between natives and British Colonists helped create a friendly rapport between both parties.
But the strategy in Australia was going to be totally different than any of the previous colonisations campaigns. King George III of England had employed James Cook for a specific purpose. James Cook was contracted to search for a habitable region in the southern continent of Terra Australis(Austrlia).
After his third voyage in 1779, James Cook advised King George III about the habitable land he had landed on in Australia. King George III ordered a fleet of 11 ships to develope a penal colony in Australia. This colony was supposed to be a prison colony where the most troublesome convicts of the British Empire were to be relocated. Most commonly these convicts were Irish and Scottish freedom fighters and other opposers of the British Crown. First Fleet also brought 1000 convicts with them on their journey to Australia. These convicts were to be treated pretty much as white slaves. These convicts were to be used in the construction and developement of British Colony of Australia. So this meant that British colonists didn't required any help from indegenous people like they did in Africa, Asia and the Carribean.
This made local indegenous populations expendable for the British Colonists who had no significant use for them. This also meant that only interaction between the two parties was going happen during their skirmishes with each other. Another factor that I think worked against the aborigines was their extremely primitive way of living. Although their cultural history can be dated back to around 10,000 years but despite such a long cultural existence, the aborigine way of living had not changed even a little bit. This truly speaks volumes about their cultural and traditional integrity and dedication to their ancient ways of life. But this uncorruptible quality of their way of living, may have worked against them during their interactions with the Colonists. Aborigines in 1790s wore little to none clothes, their overall appearance, the way their hair looked and their living quarters gave false perception of them being highly unhygienic and filthy. This was hardly the truth but those unaware about the aborigine culture, traditions and their way of living, were easilly convinced of the contrary conclusions.
Another thing that British Colonists were astonished about was that the aborigines had no concept about one single authority like a leader, chief or a king. Everybody in the aborigine culture was equal and no one was above anybody. It a further testament to the harmonious, cooperative and coexisting nature of aborigine tradition and culture that there was no word for "my or mine" in their native aborigine language. Aborigine people had no concept of property and wealth. Everything they had was given to them by the land and the land belongs to all, hence everything they had was shared with everybody. British colonists who had a culture of lust for power, wealth and land, the aborigine way of life seemed impractical and primitive. British colonists concluded that because of all these differences in their culture, the Aborigine people belonged to a sub human under developed specie on ancient hominids. Furthermore their deluded believes were even substantiated by the primitive nature of aborigine tools, weapons and their simple basic houses.
So Britishers concluded that because Aborigine people were sub human, they had no right to own land or property. Hence they maintained this arguement for nearly 150 years that Australia was uninhabited when they arrived. And because there were no existing inhabitants, the land of Australia became the property of British Crown. Initial skirmishes between Aborigines and British forces soon became an all out war or conquest for British and a war for defeating the invaders for aborigines. From the year 1800 to 1910, nearly 80% of aborigine population was systematically wiped out by an organised extermination operation.
Slavery, racial discrimination, indiscriminate slaughter of indegenous population of the colonies and supermacist ideology are recurring characteristics of British Empire which were prevalent in all of British Colonies.
This kind of discriminating and supermacist believes pointed to a sinister side of British Empire. And the extent of racial segregation and dehumanisation of the indegenous people of Africa and Australia proves that like many other cultures around the world there are many black stains of shame, on the white fabric of English culture.
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