Colonialism: Good or Bad?

[Cyclops]

In the end it made the world a better place, the lessons learned could not/would not have been learned any other way.
Colonialism (more specifically the horrors of colonialism) has made colonial countries more caring and understanding than any civilizations in history. A loss for specific humans, but a win for humanity, it has also means colonialism (in the actual sense of the word) is not possible, at least not possible by any respectable country.

Just to play devil's advocate here, are you saying Belgium, France and the UK are good because they had colonies, and Switzerland, Andorra and Monaco are evil because they didn't? Or did the goodness seep osmotically across the borders? I feel like I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I want to express it differently.

Thucydides expressed the moral problem of conquering another polity in his celebrated Melian dialogue: liewise writers from Tacitius to Gibbon have articulated the hypocrisy of Roman conquest and colonisation ("to their rape and slaughter they give the name of Empire: they make a desert and call it peace") the question of right or wrong in conquest and colonialism is well understood from antiquity.

I don't think countries learned colonialism is evil for the experience of having colonies, I think wealth and social development (often derived from colonial ventures, or trade with countries with colonies) and the opportunity for moral maturity that freedom from want gives led to changes in public attitudes.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Colonialism:Good or bad? A noble adventure to improve the living standards of other countries or a greedy attack to boost national interests at the expense of locals? Whats your opinion about this?

It was a double-edged sword, neither all good nor all bad...

Colonialism had the obvious benefit of bringing stone age societies into the modern age, stamping out a lot of tribal warfare, in many areas ending certain diseases, but often at a great human expense in terms of oppression and massacres.

Take the Belgian Congo as an example, if Belgium had not been there, is it even remotely possible that there would be paved roads, railways, bridges, and other infrastructure along those lines today? Does anybody believe a stone age society would have made it into the industrial age on its own in a few decades? Of course the Belgians and their tribal collaborators directly caused the deaths of at least several million people by working them as slave labor and massacring many. So yes, colonialism developed the Belgian Congo but at a staggering human cost.

In other instances, such as the dividing of China into spheres of influence, the ending of the Qing dynasty, colonialism was largely negative because it came into a society that was already fairly advanced and greatly disrupted and even destroyed the status quo.

Given the ethics of the past were different I can't condemn the British Empire for doing its thing, but I can see much evil came from its actions. The British were not in India for the good of Indians, they were there to turn a profit and send vast quantities of treasure out of the place. That is no longer an acceptable practice, although it continues in the guise of corporate and UN institutions in Africa and other places to this day.

Indeed, something we would do well to remember... If we judge the past by the standards of the present then all of history is condemned.

[Hanny]

Take the Belgian Congo as an example, if Belgium had not been there, is it even remotely possible that there would be paved roads, railways, bridges, and other infrastructure along those lines today? Does anybody believe a stone age society would have made it into the industrial age on its own in a few decades? Of course the Belgians and their tribal collaborators directly caused the deaths of at least several million people by working them as slave labor and massacring many. So yes, colonialism developed the Belgian Congo but at a staggering human cost.

Belgian Congo Owned by the King from 18885 to 1910 not the State of Belgium who took it over and started to improve the infrastucture statring in 1920, there was no rail or road building done under the Kings rule, in which approx 10 million were exterminated through his policies, from a population that was 14 million at independence and is used to teach Genocide history, http://study.com/academy/lesson/hist...trocities.html

By 1960 it had 5000 klm of railways, in a State of 2,300sq klm ( payed for a loans that required 60% of GDP to pay back) it had none before 1910, for 10 years the only rail line was to bring minerals to Rhodesia and the UK RR to S Africa to port for export. It has the lowest paved road infrastucture, 1,242 klm in all of Africa. It has the worlds lowest per capita income. At Indepedence there was not a single docter or lawyer or Engineer, just some of the professions barred from the congolese, left in the State.

[Papay]

Belgian Congo Owned by the King from 18885 to 1910 not the State of Belgium who took it over and started to improve the infrastucture statring in 1920, there was no rail or road building done under the Kings rule, in which approx 10 million were exterminated through his policies, from a population that was 14 million at independence and is used to teach Genocide history, http://study.com/academy/lesson/hist...trocities.html

By 1960 it had 5000 klm of railways, in a State of 2,300sq klm ( payed for a loans that required 60% of GDP to pay back) it had none before 1910, for 10 years the only rail line was to bring minerals to Rhodesia and the UK RR to S Africa to port for export. It has the lowest paved road infrastucture, 1,242 klm in all of Africa. It has the worlds lowest per capita income. At Indepedence there was not a single docter or lawyer or Engineer, just some of the professions barred from the congolese, left in the State.

Your totaly confused on history, are you sure you should be posting at all?.

Keep in mind though that these improvements happened because they wanted to govern their colonies more easily. They never thought that they would abandon the place

[Hanny]

Those improvements were minute and payed for by the Congolese for the sole purpose of increasing profit. The Belgian Government has apologised and asked for forgivness for its Lumumba assassination.

[sumskilz]

I don't think the intent of the colonial powers should be considered in assessing the question. People can benefit others while pursuing their own interests. People can harm others while acting out of intended altruism. It's the results that matter.

These conversations usually ignore the agency of those being colonized. Most of these colonial ventures would have failed if it weren't for at least some of the native people see a benefit in cooperating with the colonizing powers. For example, some of the divide an rule policies elevated previously oppressed minorities while the colonial system lasted, which in turn created lasting resentments. In those cases, what is positive would depend on who you're talking about and whether you mean in the lives of the people then or the result long term.

[Cyclops]

I don't think the intent of the colonial powers should be considered in assessing the question. People can benefit others while pursuing their own interests. People can harm others while acting out of intended altruism. It's the results that matter.....

I'd say determining "good or bad:" is a value judgement and intent can be considered in assessing the player's actions.

The results of colonialism have generally been conquest and exporting wealth to the metropolis. Some colonies have incidentally picked up a bit of tech or administrative ability here and there, and most have found agents of collaboration (from Quislings to forward thinking statesmen).

The example of Thailand demonstrates that not being colonised is no bar to development. The example of so many African states is that colonialism has forced together groups the have trouble co-exisiting without armed occupation forces, and continue to be exploited by external powers. For every South Africa there are two Congos or Rwandas.

You're right about agency, and its plain to see from the establishment through to the de-colonializing period. Clive doesn't conquer Bengal for John Company without Mir Jafar, and Gandhi was a London trained lawyer practising across the Empire before he severed the jewel from its crown.

[Dave Strider]

Of ing course it's bad, is this even a question?

[IrishBlood]

Coming from a colonized nation, it is inherently bad.

It steals land from the natives, forces them to become second class citizens, results in incalculable loss of life due to wars and rebellions and the famines and diseases that ensue as a result.

The notion that some country's are better off from being colonized vary massively from nation to nation.

Countries that were 'empty' (e.g had small native populations that were widely dispersed throughout a large geographic area), such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia etc, have turned into fully functioning modern first world states. That said, the fast majority of the population of those nations are descendent's of foreign migrants, with the ethnic natives in the minority. In most cases these indigenous minorities suffered many massacres and deprivations at the hands of settlers and have been treated as second class citizens until very recently (although some would argue they are still being mistreated in Australia). If 'good' is taken to mean that colonization resulted in productive use of land and the creation of a functional state, then yes, the colonization of Canada, New Zealand, Australia and other similar examples can be regarded as 'good', however it was very very very bad for anyone who got in the way of said colonization, e.g, the people who lived there first.

On the other hand, countries which had a very large native population and were 'civilized' as in had large kingdoms, extensive governments, roads and were beginning to embrace modernization, such as Burma and Vietnam for example, had absolutely nothing to gain from colonization. The Colonizers did not seek to create a new nations (as was the case with Canada, etc), rather they wanted to exploit the colonized state for its resources and labor to improve the wealth and prosperity of the colonizing nation. I am abhorred by the notion that people who were colonized should be grateful for the infrastructure and institutions provided for them by their colonizer. Take the example of Thailand, through shrewd diplomacy and a fair bit of luck they managed to avoid colonization and as a result they are doing a hell of a lot better than their immediate neighbors, with the exception of perhaps Malaysia and Singapore who are quite exceptional cases.

In the majority of colonizations, far more was taken out than was ever put in and as such are inherently 'bad'.

Perhaps one of the worse legacys of colonialism, as has already been pointed out in this thread, is the way ethnic groups who traditionally have not gotten along have been lumped together into geographically massive states and share little in common with one another other than the bare bones colonial institutions left behind and a basic grasp of the language of their former colonizer. It's little surprise that so many African nations are as ed up as they are!

[Symphony]

Of ing course it's bad, is this even a question?

Yes, it's a question...it's only simple if you choose to be simplistic. If nothing else, it forces one to wrestle with knee-jerk reactions and immediate assumptions (like yours), actually think about the issue and examine it, and come out the other side with something more than a knee-jerk reaction and assumptions. Historians have been asking this question for some time now, and a fair number (all of them at least as learned as you) are ready to admit that it actually isn't an easy question. So, care to participate in the actual discussion, now that you've shared your immediate reaction with us?

That said, I'm not sure it's a question that can be answered with something as simplistic as "good" or "bad" (assuming we're discussing the quality of the results, rather than morality). Not all colonization examples are equal, and it's an absurd notion to try to lump them all into one bucket and deem it "bad" or "good", as the OP and a great many modern 101-level professors are wont to do (and a disturbing number of posters here like to parrot).

It's even silly to try to discuss "colonization" as an all-encompassing event. As cclnpy already pointed out, you have to (at a bare minimum) separate the colonized and post-colonization phases...a frightening number of the horrors attributed to "colonization" are actually the result of overly-rapid, poorly-executed decolonization. Whether the initial colonization was "right", "wrong", "good", or "bad" doesn't really do much to mitigate the damage done when the decolonization is such a mess, although I suppose it makes for awesome after-the-fact moralizing.

So, probably as a starting point, what do we consider "colonialism"? There are obvious examples, and those less obvious...simply including any time one state has invaded another will lead us nowhere, as the reasons historically are simply too diverse to have any kind of rational discussion.

[IrishBlood]

Yes, it's a question...it's only simple if you choose to be simplistic. If nothing else, it forces one to wrestle with knee-jerk reactions and immediate assumptions (like yours), actually think about the issue and examine it, and come out the other side with something more than a knee-jerk reaction and assumptions. Historians have been asking this question for some time now, and a fair number (all of them at least as learned as you) are ready to admit that it actually isn't an easy question. So, care to participate in the actual discussion, now that you've shared your immediate reaction with us?

That said, I'm not sure it's a question that can be answered with something as simplistic as "good" or "bad" (assuming we're discussing the quality of the results, rather than morality). Not all colonization examples are equal, and it's an absurd notion to try to lump them all into one bucket and deem it "bad" or "good", as the OP and a great many modern 101-level professors are wont to do (and a disturbing number of posters here like to parrot).

It's even silly to try to discuss "colonization" as an all-encompassing event. As cclnpy already pointed out, you have to (at a bare minimum) separate the colonized and post-colonization phases...a frightening number of the horrors attributed to "colonization" are actually the result of overly-rapid, poorly-executed decolonization. Whether the initial colonization was "right", "wrong", "good", or "bad" doesn't really do much to mitigate the damage done when the decolonization is such a mess, although I suppose it makes for awesome after-the-fact moralizing.

So, probably as a starting point, what do we consider "colonialism"? There are obvious examples, and those less obvious...simply including any time one state has invaded another will lead us nowhere, as the reasons historically are simply too diverse to have any kind of rational discussion.

I would take it to mean either;

1) any instance in which a large amount of foreign settlers forcefully invaded a land and displaced the natives, taking their lands and subjugating them in the process.

2) any instance in which a country/area was invaded and significant time infrastructure put in place so that it could be systematically looted of its wealth (mineral wealth, timber, national treasures, food, slave labor, etc) over a long period of time, e.g, for as long as the colonizer could possibly get away with it.

There is a distinct difference between the two as forcefully settling lands can radically alter the cultural/ethnic/religious demographic in an area which has lasting effects for generations afterward. 600 ODD years after the Ulster Plantation in which thousands of English adn Scottish settlers took over the land of the Gealic people in what is today's Northern Ireland, still causes discontent and violence to this day and likely always will.

Compare that to instances where the colonizer never managed to settle the conquered land in significant numbers, such as Burma and Vietnam, the footprint of British and French colonialism is more of less long gone. Although decolonization undoubtedly triggered the various wars that engulfed Burma and Vietnam, they were to a large extent civil wars and thus not directly attributed to colonialism.

[Copperknickers II]

Colonialism:Good or bad? A noble adventure to improve the living standards of other countries or a greedy attack to boost national interests at the expense of locals? Whats your opinion about this?

Colonialism was never meant to improve the living standards of other countries, it was supposed to provide money and opportunities for the colonisers. Locals either cooperated, in which case they could get in on the action and make a lot of money, or were exploited. Sometimes, especially if they weren't part of their own society's elite, they didn't have a choice. They just swapped one exploiter for another.

As for the argument that colonisation provided valuable infrastructure and development, that is simply untrue. China, Japan, Singapore and the like provide excellent examples of developing countries creating their own infrastructure that is actually much better than that of colonial countries. The same applies with government structures: discounting settled colonies like Australia, Canada and South Africa, countries which maintain colonial governmental and bureaucratic systems are rarely successful, or at least more successful than neighbouring uncolonised countries, or less integrated former colonies.

That's not to say colonialism didn't provide any positives for colonised countries: it has some success stories like Hong Kong, South Korea and Israel (notwithstanding the Palestinian problem), and it did provide some things like democracy in South Asia and the spread of the English language which makes globalisation much quicker and more painless, but overall it was a shameful and arrogant phenomenon which is the cause of suffering and death today and probably willl be for centuries to come. No doubt the worst legacy was it's utter disregard for the power systems and identities of conquered territories: the arbitrary borders in Africa and the Middle East, the travesty of Palestine, the genocides, and perhaps worst of all, slavery and associated racist ideas which even today are the cause of so much poverty and deprivation.

[Symphony]

I would take it to mean either;

1) any instance in which a large amount of foreign settlers forcefully invaded a land and displaced the natives, taking their lands and subjugating them in the process.

2) any instance in which a country/area was invaded and significant time infrastructure put in place so that it could be systematically looted of its wealth (mineral wealth, timber, national treasures, food, slave labor, etc) over a long period of time, e.g, for as long as the colonizer could possibly get away with it.

So, under your definition, subjugation of some sort has to take place in order for it to be termed colonialism.

You don't think that's poisoning the well at all?

[Ludicus]

Liberia... it has been a real success story.

Hmm? I presume you are joking, right?
Liberia country profile

The civil war killed a quarter of a million Liberians. In 2013, the United Nations Refugee Agency repatriated 155,000 Liberians who had fled during the civil war. Rampant corruption, high unemployment, and widespread illiteracy hinder development. Political instability and international sanctions have destroyed most large businesses and driven out many foreign investors.
The conflict left the country in economic ruin and overrun with weapons. The capital remains without mains electricity and running water. Corruption is rife and unemployment and illiteracy are endemic.
The UN maintains some 15,000 soldiers in Liberia. It is one of the organisation's most expensive peacekeeping operations.

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it has some success stories like... Israel (notwithstanding the Palestinian problem)

The euphemism here is the word "notwithstanding".This implies immigrants gently landed, ("settlers"), that lived, built homes and lived their lives, rather than suggesting that their were part of a movement consisting of subjugation and disempowerment of the native inhabitants.
There is no colonialism without natives inhabitants (in this case,Palestinians); colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another.

[IrishBlood]

So, under your definition, subjugation of some sort has to take place in order for it to be termed colonialism.

You don't think that's poisoning the well at all?

Well that's what happens when a place gets colonized! The natives and the settlers will inevitably come into conflict and in order for the settlers to be successful, they must subjugate the locals, either by massacring them, driving them off the valuable land and onto crappy land, or asserting total dominance over them to using them as second class citizens/slaves/serfs.

[Copperknickers II]

The euphemism here is the word "notwithstanding".This implies immigrants gently landed, ("settlers"), that lived, built homes and lived their lives, rather than suggesting that their were part of a movement consisting of subjugation and disempowerment of the native inhabitants.
There is no colonialism without natives inhabitants (in this case,Palestinians); colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another.

But in the case of Israel the Jews were not the colonial power, they were a wronged and persecuted minority who had suffered frequent ethnic cleansing and displacement, partly at the hands of Muslims. I'm not saying the people of Palestine deserved to have thousands of people shipped into their country and sovereignty of most of their homeland removed from them for the crimes of their ancestors, but the Zionist project gave a persecuted and hounded minority a safe and prosperous place to live which would not have been at the expense of the local population had they not reacted so aggressively. The plight of the Palestinians is partially of their own making.

[sumskilz]

Hmm? I presume you are joking, right?
Liberia country profile

Well look, it depends on how you measure success. I mean, General Butt Naked and the Butt Naked Brigade may have been responsible for killing more than 20,000 people including carrying out regular sacrifices of small children which they ate in order to maintain their magical powers, but at the end of the civil war, Jesus appeared to General Butt Naked as a blinding light and he now preaches the gospel as the president of End Time Train Evangelistic Ministries Inc.

[Ludicus]

Well look, it depends on how you measure success. I mean, General Butt Naked and the Butt Naked Brigade may have been responsible for killing more than 20,000 people including carrying out regular sacrifices of small children which they ate in order to maintain their magical powers, but at the end of the civil war, Jesus appeared to General Butt Naked as a blinding light and he now preaches the gospel as the president of End Time Train Evangelistic Ministries Inc.

Hehe
I really appreciate your sense of humor.

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the Zionist project ... would not have been at the expense of the local population had they not reacted so aggressively

So aggressively... like it or not,to criticize the colonized people for adopting a violent attitude is short sighted. There are not good or bad colonizers. There are colonizers, and that's it.
Talking about the Zionist project-Israel Zangwill asked for a "a land without a people for a people without land"; and Chaim Weizmann said,"there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people".
It seems that there were no people in Palestine worth considering as a people.In fact Avraham Stern described the Arabs as "beasts of the desert", not a legitimate people".

Jabotinsky, the founder of the Zionist Revisionist movement, wrote,
"colonisation can continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through.This is our policy towards the Arabs and to formulate it in any other way would be hypocrisy.We are in need of a territory where our people will constitute the overwhelming majority…and one must not be afraid of the word "segregation" "also calling the Palestinians "a yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags"

Frankly.

Edit: take note, that said, it doesn't mean that I am anti-semitic.It means merely that I am anti-colonialist. Once upon a time my country was a .. " a Jewish country". King João II recruited prominent Jewish scholars for his Council of Scholars, by royal decrée a fine site on a hillside in Lisbon was given to the Jews, on which they build a synagogue, the Chief Rabbi was given the same rank as the Cardinal, the Royal Treasure was Jewish, as the Royal physician, etc.
More recently, read the Times of Israel,
Portugal becomes 2nd country, after Israel, with a Jewish with a a Jewish Law of return

Later this month, Portugal will open a $1.5 million learning center in Trancoso, a town once home to many Jews.

It means that they are welcome here.The Portuguese Minister of Justice said,

I would not say that it is a historical reparation, because I believe that in this regard there is no possibility of repairing what has been done. I would say that it is the granting of a right

According to the the president of Lisbon’s Jewish community,"we expect the law to be effective by mid-February or the beginning of March 2015"

[Winston Smith]

Colonialism dehumanises both the colonist and the colonised.

[sumskilz]

So aggressively... like it or not,to criticize the colonized people for adopting a violent attitude is short sighted. There are not good or bad colonizers. There are colonizers, and that's it.
Talking about the Zionist project-Israel Zangwill asked for a "a land without a people for a people without land"; and Chaim Weizmann said,"there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people".
It seems that there were no people in Palestine worth considering as a people.

Context: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the people and for the country, but also for themselves."

Hence, the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement.

What the early Zionists suffered from wasn't so much disregard as naivety. They believed the Zionist project would lead to the end of antisemitism because there would no longer be any reason for the rest of the world to resent Jews if they had their own place to be. They thought that the Arabs living there would easily integrate into Hebrew society since they were descendants of the same people.

It was only after large riots and ongoing violence against Jews, that guys like Jabotinksy and Avraham Stern came about. They were at odds with the mainstream Zionists, but soon circumstances pushed more and more to that direction as the situation in Europe and British and Arab opposition to further Jewish immigration made the Zionist project turn from a utopian vision into a perceived fight for the survival of the Jewish people.