Quote: "During this time, the European empires of Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden began to explore and claim the Americas..."
This subfield studies the expansion of European powers into the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania during the early modern period.
Definition of Colonialism and Imperialism: Understanding the meaning of these terms and how they are different.
European Expansion: A study of how European nations expanded their influence through colonization in Africa, Asia, and the Americas starting from the 16th Century.
Geography and Demography: Understanding geographic and demographic differences between colonial powers and colonized regions helps to contextualize colonialism.
Economic motivations: How economic factors like mercantilism, gold, spices, land, and resources drove colonialism.
Technological advancement: The role of technology in imperial expansion including ships, maps, and navigational instruments.
Social, cultural, and ideological motivations: Highlighting the role of social, cultural, and ideological factors that motivated imperial expansion including religion, nationalism, and civilisation.
The slave trade: The impact of the slave trade on the peoples of Africa and their forced migration across the atlantic to the Americas.
The scramble for Africa: A period of intense imperial competition among the European powers for control over the African continent during the latter half of the 19th century.
Colonialism in Asia: Colonialism in Asia and the impact of European imperialism in places like India, China, and Japan.
Native resistance: The ways in which natives fought back against colonisers, including both peaceful and violent forms of resistance.
Economic exploitation: Exposing how economic exploitation took place under colonial rule, and its impact on the colonized population.
Cultural impact: Examining the cultural impact of colonialism on both the colonial and colonized countries, and how colonialism was responsible for the spread of Western culture.
The role of missionaries: Role of missionaries in shaping the perception of colonized people and spreading Christianity.
Imperialism and its impact on international relations: How imperialism shaped international politics, and the long-term impact of imperialism on the political and economic structures of developing countries.
The decolonization of Africa: The process through which Africa emerged from colonial rule.
Neo-colonialism: A study of the postcolonial global economy and the continued exploitation of resources and peoples among poorer nations by industrialised nations.
Imperialism in the 21st century and its impact on the world: The continued practice of imperialism in the world today, the ways in which it has changed, and its impacts on the world at large.
Gender and Colonialism: Understanding how colonialism affected gender roles and the role of women in society.
Colonial violence: A study of the violence perpetrated by colonial powers on colonised peoples.
Language and education: Examining the impact of colonial languages on indigenous cultures, and the role of education in shaping colonial perceptions.
Economic Imperialism: It involves countries exerting their dominance over another nation through economic means, like trade, commerce, investments, and market saturation. It primarily benefits the imperialist country rather than the colony.
Cultural Colonialism: It refers to a situation where the imperial power forcibly imposes its cultural practices, values, and beliefs on the colonies, leading to the destruction of the natives' traditional culture and values.
Settler Colonialism: It involves a colony being established by migrants from the imperialist state on the land of the colonized, leading to the dispossession of the land and displacement of the indigenous people.
Military Imperialism: It is the use of military force to maintain political and economic domination over a territory, often involving the complete takeover of the colony.
Neocolonialism: It is the use of economic, political, and cultural means to maintain indirect control over a former colony in the post-colonial era, often by establishing dependent relationships and exploiting the newly independent nation's natural resources and people.
Quote: "The Norse had explored and colonized areas of Europe and the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short-term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland circa 1000 CE."
Quote: "...leading to the displacement, disestablishment, enslavement, sometimes even the genocide of the indigenous peoples in the Americas..."
Quote: "Some settler colonies, including New Mexico, Alaska, the northern Great Plains, and the North-Western Territory in North America, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Darién Gap in Central America, and the northwest Amazon, the central Andes, and the Guianas in South America remain relatively rural, sparsely populated, and indigenous as of the 21st century."
Quote: "Russia began colonizing the Pacific Northwest in the mid-18th century, seeking pelts for the fur trade."
Quote: "The rapid rate at which Europe grew in wealth and power was unforeseeable in the early 15th century..."
Quote: "The Ottoman Empire's domination of trade routes to Asia prompted Western European monarchs to search for alternatives..."
Quote: "With the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal and Spain agreed to divide the Earth in two..."
Quote: "The Treaty of Tordesillas granted the eastern tip of South America to Portugal, where it established Brazil in the early 1500s."
Quote: "By the 1530s, other Western European powers realized they too could benefit from voyages to the Americas, leading to British and French colonializations in the northeast tip of the Americas..."
Quote: "The city of Santo Domingo, in the current-day Dominican Republic, founded in 1496 by Columbus, is credited as the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the Americas."
Quote: "By the 1700s, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland..."
Quote: "Violent conflicts arose during the beginning of this period as indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing European colonizers..."
Quote: "...as indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity... from hostile indigenous neighbors who were equipped with Eurasian technology."
Quote: "The United States, for example, practiced a settler colonial policy of Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears."
Quote: "Other regions, including California, Patagonia, the North Western Territory, and the northern Great Plains, experienced little to no colonization at all until the 1800s."
Quote: "European contact and colonization had disastrous effects on the indigenous peoples of the Americas and their societies."