Empires, colonies, past and present: The good, the bad and the ugly

At the height of its imperial power, Britain had about 130 colonies, imperial ‘possessions’ which encircled the earth.

France, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands accounted for over 200 possessions. Germany, Russia, Belgium, Sweden and Norway also held sway over colonies.

Over a period of about 500 years much of the Americas, parts of Asia, the Caribbean even Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands were settled by Europeans, bringing with them new technologies to produce new crops, produce new wealth for the new settlers and their colonial masters in far off Europe. Guns, diseases and new religions to replace the traditional tools, medicines and animistic religions of tribal ancient cultures to gain control over new found lands.

The world changed dramatically.

For centuries, luxury items had come to Europe from Asia, China and India. Silk, spices, opiates, precious metals, handicrafts among many others, but also saw the transfer of ideas, a cultural exchange including performance, dance, music and art. It also played an important part in the dissemination of religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism as well as Asian faiths; Taoism, Buddhism and Hindu.

Control over the Silk Road shifted over the centuries – going back to the Roman Empire, the Mongols under Genghis Khan with relative safety for merchants and travellers – but the rise of the Ottoman Empire and its control over the western end of the trade route saw the imposition of taxes and religious rules.

Closure of the Silk Road by the Ottomans in 1453 prompted Europeans to explore and develop new sea routes, starting the ‘Age of Discovery’ and a shift toward maritime focussed trading systems, and the beginning of European colonisation in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Americas and Australasia.

Initially, the opening of the direct sea route to India via the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 broke the existing Venetian control of trade with Asia, particularly with the Indian sub-continent, but also laid the precedence for the establishment of trading posts and military outposts to protect commercial interests and the development of the Portuguese Empire.

Looking for a shortcut to Asia, Christopher Columbus set out across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, but instead of finding a route to China landed on Hispaniola, and sought there riches in gold for Spanish royalty, and the first Spanish colony was established, a fort, leaving thirty nine men to form a permanent settlement while he returned to Spain bearing gifts of gold, a few plant specimens and several natives he had captured.

Empire building morphed into colonialism as permanent settlements were formed in the Imperial outposts. The lure of gold and the dream of untold wealth proved too great and other nations quickly joined the treasure hunt of imperial growth and colonial land grabs.

With both Spain and Portugal on the path to globalising European dominance, Pope Alexander VI issued four bulls, decrees, effectively dividing the spoils of newly discovered lands between the two nations. And so with God on his side, Columbus set off to convert indigenous Americans to Christianity, ordering one of his military officers to prioritise that task as new settlements were established.

The early objectives of riches for Spain and Portugal set the standard for further colonial expansion both for Spain and Portugal and for the other European nations which joined in the quest for untold riches. And while all the nations which joined the race for global domination were ‘Christian’, the treatment of indigenous people was essentially the same; exploitation, abuse, enslavement, rape, murder, all while trying to convert to the religion they brought with them.

Each of the earlier colonial empires have gone, faded away through changes in geopolitics and the entwining power of a globalised economy. The last remaining ‘empire’ is the United States of America, which under the control of the Republican Party and Donald Trump is eager to expand; an expansion which is being resisted by the targeted countries, Greenland and Canada.

But are we seeing the American Empire in its last throes as it collapses under the weight being imposed through the tariff and trade wars and the cost of maintaining around 800 military bases in over 70 countries?

Research being done by Sarah Wilson, as reported in a recent Guardian interview points out that:

… “every single, without exception” – complex civilisation from the Roman and Maya empires to Easter Island, ends up collapsing, generally within 250 to 300 years. Our post-industrial civilisation is now at 270 years…

The global destruction of our environment, the consolidation of wealth to fewer and fewer people and the corporations they control, the emasculation of the welfare systems, both at national levels and through international relief agencies is seeing the power of imperialism move from governments, whether as Royal Families or nation states to an elite few who amass greater wealth than many nation states, through the exploitation of those states and their impoverished populations.

Without the imperialism and colonialism of the past 700 or so years, we would have a completely different world. Some of the changes have been good, some bad, others just ugly.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

In the book, ‘Colonialism: A moral reckoning’, Nigel Biggar concedes that there were a few negatives, but is either an apologist for, or defender of mainly British colonialism, pointing to successes in India particularly, how the unification of the disparate states of the sub-continent, the emergence of a democratic government and that India is emerging as one of the strongest economies in the post industrial world.

In some respects he is right. India is ostensibly a democratic nation of over 1 billion citizens and has worked hard to becoming a more equal society. However, other colonies of British and other European empires have not fared as well. Bitter conflicts, power struggles, civil wars, and as witnessed in Africa are ongoing. Wars for dominance, whether ethnic or religious have continued despite, or could if be because of the failures of decolonisation, a failure to plan a transition to independence.

Benefits of colonialism has been the production of goods at prices which are at time seen as unbelievable. Fashions priced to be disposable, wear them once and throw them away, buy new ones. But that benefit, that ‘good’ is more for the consumers on the wealthy nations than for the exploited labouring class of post colonial nations.

An iconic image of that exploitation was of Mahatma Ghandhi meeting Queen Elizabeth wearing a ‘home spun’ garment to protest that India was an exporter of raw cotton, banned from industrialising the production of cotton cloth. That was to be done by British factories.

Other ‘good’ elements are the bringing of Christianity to diverse indigenous populations.

In each of the ‘good’ seen, there is an inherent ‘bad’. In the provision of cheap merchandise, there is the exploitation of labour, in the bringing of Christianity, there is the loss of indigenous cultures, beliefs, language.

For each ‘good’, usually so defined by the coloniser, there is a ‘bad’, usually inflicted on the colonised.

And then there is the ‘ugly’.

Ugly can be as simple as driving between Kalgoorlie and Leonora in the goldfields of Western Australia. A new road when I first travelled it about 12 years ago, a safe road connecting a number of mines, and for tourists, long deserted ghost towns, for the casual prospector the fun of scanning metal sectors over the ground for the odd nugget. It occurred to me driving that road the first time that Europeans had discovered this region and the mineral wealth it contained was a mere hundred and ten years ago. Previously, for about the last 60,000 or so years, there may have been tracks connecting remote first nations people, and an unspoiled scenery, now despoiled with slag heaps of waste mining material dotted along the road.

But ‘ugly’ has a human face too, the theft of lands, the exploitation of people, the genocide of those who resisted the colonial takeover of lands.

The ugly is also manifest in the climate crisis we face. Industrialisation as a product of contemporary colonialism has seen environments despoiled, raped for resources, the continued and ever increasing rate at which gas and oil drives industry, powers electricity grids as both industry and population growth demand more power.

Listening to Senator Matt Cavavan interviewed this morning, when aiming to become leader of the National Party, deny the climate change, deny that the flooding, the droughts, the extreme heat we are facing, not just here in Australia, but all around the world, has anything to do with the way we burn more and more fossil fuels, that the target of reaching net zero is unachievable, that trying to achieve that is the driver of the inflation driven ‘cost of living crisis’ is all because we are striving to meet that impossible target.

The denial that the unbridled quest for power and wealth by colonialism has led to the crisis we face today is demonstrated by those who are the most exploitative, as demonstrated by the current geo-political struggle with Trump’s Tariff Wars, off shoring manufacturing to cheaper labour markets, the billionaires fighting for larger slices of the economic pie, never having enough.

It is impossible to wind the clock back. We cannot ‘go back to where we came from’, the world is a far different place than when Vasco da Game set sail searching for an alternate route to replace the Silk Road, or Christopher Columbus set sail searching for a short cut to India across the Atlantic Ocean.

But we can, and probably need to change. We need to change the way we consume, the way our purchases encourage the ongoing exploitation of cheap labour, the way we continue to declare one group of people as privileged over others who are exploitable, or that one religion is deemed as superior to any other, or one ethnic group is more deserving that another.

And we need to recognise that we can make a difference in the decisions we make.

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