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D. Scott
Colonialism: Political Aspects
Colonialism in the English language originally indi-
cated a practice or idiom associated with British
colonies (e.g., the phrase ‘the place was going ahead’
was described in 1887 as a ‘colonialism’) and was only
recently applied to the relationships between metro-
politan states and their colonial possessions. Its
modern usage dates from the 1950s, although the
relationships it embraces have a very long history
indeed.
The word is derived from the Latin
: colonia, which
was a synonym for the Greek αποικι!α, meaning a
settlement of people from home, and it should,
therefore, properly apply to the process of establishing
and governing such settlements. It is now closely
linked, and often interchangeable, with imperialism
(e.g., see Imperialism: Political Aspects), but it is a
particular form of the latter. The ideas that the term
embraces have shifted in line with the shift in the idea
of a colony.
1. The Classic Colony
The classical Greek colony was a new community,
originating from an existing πο! λιc: , and, apart from the
Corinthian colonies, was independent, although tied
to the mother country by sentimental and religious
affinities. The high era of Greek colonization lasted
from the middle of the eighth century BC until the early
sixth century BC, by when Greeks had ‘colonized’
much of southern Italy, Sicily, and the Black Sea
littoral. The motives were a mixture of land shortage
and traded expansion (Boardman 1980).
Roman colonies generally had greater strategic
purposes. They were settlements of Roman citizens,
normally veterans, who garrisoned a new town in a
hostile country and thus extended Rome’s imperium or
rule. Similar expansionist activities occurred in many
other parts of the world, as with the Mogul and
Ottoman Empires or the Vijayanagara Empire in
southern India.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, European
powers extended their physical occupation of land to
settle in the Americas, later in Australasia and parts of
Africa. Colonialism involved settlement in areas non-
contiguous to the motherland and should be carefully
distinguished from conquest per se which involves
physical incorporation into the parent state. Settlers
left their homes for many reasons. Some fled religious
and other forms of persecution; some were risk-takers,
seeking opportunities to better themselves; some were
sent abroad by families to resolve domestic difficulties
or by the state to penal colonies.
Governing such distant possessions has always been
problematic. Initially, the local, or native, populations
were subdued forcibly or persuaded to sign agree-
ments, and administrative authority passed to the new
immigrants and their successors. Financial and mili-
tary strength ensured metropolitan dominance at first.
Over time, as the colonies grew in population and
economic strength, their immigrant inhabitants sought
a much greater degree of self-governance. Initially, the
European powers opposed such aspirations and anti-
colonial wars took place that ultimately wrested much
2237
Colonialism: Political Aspects
of South America from Spanish and Portuguese
control and part of North America from British
control.
The American War of Independence, which gave
birth to United States of America composed of 13 ex-
colonies, persuaded British governments to treat more
sympathetically the demands of their surviving col-
onies. Following Lord Durham’s 1839 Report, the
North America Act granted Canada considerable
autonomy. In 1867, Canada became a Dominion, a
term adopted by the major self-governing British
colonies in 1907 and sought unsuccessfully by others,
such as Southern Rhodesia. Genuine devolution of
powers kept Australia and, after the Anglo-Boer War,
South Africa within the British Empire. These
countries still remained constitutionally subject to the
British Parliament and it was not until the Statute of
Westminster in 1930 that they acquired sovereignty.
The metropolitan states were largely successful in
twentieth century in managing the transition of their
possessions from an inferior ‘colonial’ status to an
independent state attached emotionally to the mother-
land. The British failed in Ireland as did the French in
Algeria. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand retained
the monarch of the United Kingdom as their head of
state, although vocal groups challenged this relation-
ship in the latter part of the twentieth century. In
South Africa, where the original Dutch immigrants
(the Afrikaners) were dominant, this link was broken
in 1961.
Colonies, in the sense of territories largely peopled,
and certainly controlled, by descendants from the
motherland, developed political cultures of their own,
closely related to the specific circumstances that
generated the initial settlements (Hartz 1964).
2. Modern Colonialism
Modern colonialism was not characterized by settle-
ments but by external control. As a practice it dates,
with a few exceptions (e.g., the Indian subcontinent),
from the end of the nineteenth century, when the
major European powers laid claim to, and attempted
to rule over, enormous tracts of the globe—mostly in
Africa and Asia—without establishing permanent
settlements in them. In the twentieth century, Japan,
Russia, and the USA joined the major European
powers in such colonial activity. The term thus came
to refer to a condition of unequal relations in which a
strong ‘colonial’ state controls, and usually exploits,
an alien and weaker people in the latter’s ‘homeland.’
The senior administrators were nonresidents.
While the practice has a long pedigree, the word
itself, with its pejorative overtones, only appeared in
the aftermath of the World War II. President Harry S.
Truman used the word ‘imperialism’ in 1949 to cover
all forms of external control over indigenous in-
habitants, but by 1955, when the first volume of his
2238
Autobiography was published, he used the term colon-
ialism to describe such relations. At this time, colon-
ialism was limited to the practices of the Western
European powers, the expansionist policies of the
Soviet Union and China still being subsumed under
the umbrella of imperialism.
This was short-lived. The term ‘colonial power,’
referring to any state dominating another, was soon
extended to the Soviet Union and the USA, and even
in Pakistan, to India where Kashmir was concerned.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles generated the League
of Nations, which introduced a new type of colony, by
granting to certain imperial powers (and Dominions
like Australia and South Africa) mandates to rule over
what had been the German and Italian empires. In
theory, the recipient countries were obliged to ensure
the paramountcy of ‘native interests.’ With the cre-
ation of the United Nations, mandated territories
became trust territories and more attention was given,
through its standing Trusteeship Council, to the
responsibilities of the colonial powers. By the 1950s,
‘native interests’ (except in South West Africa where
South Africa was the trustee) came to embrace the
right to self-determination and independence.
The major colonial powers, Britain and France,
organized their relations with their settler colonies,
their modern colonies, and other states through dif-
ferent departments or offices (e.g., the Dominions
Office or the India Office in Britain) to reflect their
distinct relationships.
3. Colonialism in Practice
3.1 Administration
Ruling modern colonies presented difficult problems.
Metropolitan states had neither had personnel nor the
resources to administer them closely. Occasionally
they relied upon chartered companies to act on their
behalf. Some parts were intensively controlled; much
was ignored altogether for many years; most were
administered through the acquiescence of local
leaders. This British principle of indirect rule, with
roots in the Indian experience, was ideologically based
(Lugard 1922) as well as pragmatically required. Other
European powers emphasized direct rule. In fact, all
powers practised both models as needs demanded.
The debate on the nature of colonial political rule
continues. While the exercise of power was crude and
excessive on occasions, recent scholarship has
emphasized how local peoples sometimes took the
initiative in crafting political strategies that limited
colonial opportunities. After World War I, colonial
administrators lacked the military support or the will
to impose unwelcome policies on subjects accepted the
paternalistic assumptions of trusteeship (Robinson
1965) but worked, in the British empire, towards
economic and political development (Kirk-Greene

2000) and, in the French, towards assimilation. The
idea that colonialism was unacceptable arose with the
growth of democracy in the metropolitan states and
the changing intellectual climate after World War II.
3.2 Anticolonialism
Throughout the modern colonial period some in-
dividuals and groups campaigned for independence,
most notably in India, but the real pressure to end
colonial rule came immediately after 1945. This
reflected a number of seismic shifts in the context of
international affairs. The arrival of internal democracy
in the colonial states themselves challenged the un-
democratic politics of the colonies; the battle against
Nazism virtually destroyed the legitimacy of a racial
hierarchy; both the Soviet Union and the USA, linked
by the bipolar confrontation of the Cold War, yet
representing quite different ideologies, shared an
antipathy to overt colonial empires; the financial and
military costs of retaining overseas possessions became
politically prohibitive in the United Kingdom and the
Netherlands.
Most colonies obtained a negotiated independence
peacefully. Violence—both civil and military—was
sometimes apparent, most especially in the Portuguese
empire and where white settlers (classical colonists)
were entrenched. The logic of colonialism worked
itself out as the motives for occupation disappeared
and the costs of continued rule escalated. The British
colonies became independent seriatim. With their
emphasis on retaining the initiative in the ‘transfer of
power,’ officials sought the kind of educated pro-
fessionals who were calling for independence (on
India, see Mansergh and Moon 1970–83). In contrast,
the French absorbed that elite into metropolitan
organisations until the logic dictated a rapid and
almost simultaneous decolonisation in 1961
(Mortimer 1969). Colonialism had effectively come to
an end by the middle of the 1960s.
However, postmodernists such as Edward Said
have argued that colonialism was neither a finite era
nor a particular institutional structure of super-
ordination and subordination. Both the departing
colonialists and the triumphant nationalists failed to
appreciate the enduring consequences of colonial rule.
Cultures, economies, and institutions were so deeply
embedded in the new states that their futures remained
dependent upon the heritage of colonial overrule (Said
1978).
3.3 Neocolonialism
Political independence, however, was not matched by
full local control. At the Bandung Conference of non-
aligned states in April 1955, the Indonesian president,
Ahmed Sukarno, claimed that colonialism ‘has also its
modern dress, in the form of economic control,
Colonialism: Political Aspects
intellectual control…by a small but alien community
within a nation.’ This perspective, similar to Said’s,
gave birth to the idea of ‘neocolonialism’ and fitted
well with the growing strength of Marxist scholarship
in the 1960s and 1970s.
The word itself probably first appeared in 1961 in
the pages of the radical journals The New Statesman
and The New Left re
iew, but it was soon common
usage in most European languages. Lord Home, when
British Foreign Secretary, attempted at the United
Nations in October 1961 to answer ‘the charge of neo-
colonialism.’ With the end of formal control over most
of the empires, scholars and activists still perceived a
decisive degree of control exercized by the metro-
politan powers, essentially through economic, tech-
nological, and cultural dominance (Crozier 1964).
Francophone scholars spoke of the Philippines as
being ‘entieZ rement neT ocoloniseT s par les Etats Unis.’
Charges of neocolonialism were not limited to the
great colonial powers but were extended to any state
from the rich and developed world exerting influence
over the policies of poor and less developed countries.
Several forms have been identified. Political, econ-
omic, and cultural forces have been said so to constrain
the choices available to such countries that they are
determined by the interests of the stronger states.
Further, it has been argued that the rapid de-
colonization was a calculated policy to move from
overt colonial rule to indirect control through political
superiority in the international community, economic
dominance, and cultural influences. While the evidence
for such a conscious policy is weak, the poorer ex-
colonies were undoubtedly constrained by their pol-
itical, economic, and cultural inheritances. Some states
responded more robustly and effectively than others to
their weaknesses.
3.4 Internal Colonialism
There has been a further recent refinement of the term.
Whereas it had been used to describe a particular
relationship between countries (originally metropoli-
tan states and colonies, later sovereign states), it is
sometimes used to describe broadly similar processes
at work within a single state. Thus, particular groups,
through their dominance of political and economic
power, ensured that other groups are kept in long-
term subservience. It has been used in the context of
East Bengal in Pakistan and in South Africa, where the
‘colonial’ people were the white minority and the
‘subject’ people the black majority.
4. Conclusion
Colonialism is now normally used in a pejorative sense
and is associated with crude exploitation. Few would
deny the reality at times of oppression, economic
exploitation and an unconcern for human and civil
rights. The colonial powers’ primary interests were
2239
Colonialism: Political Aspects
usually selfish and largely economic. But alongside
was a genuine commitment to the principles of
trusteeship and paternal development. Attempts to
evaluate the costs and benefits of colonialism coin-
cided with its formal ending (Perham 1962), but a
growing revisionist literature, in part reflecting the
reduced status of Marxist scholarship, is emphasizing
the advantages for the modern state of the enlargement
of scale, modern educational and economic practices,
and the opportunities provided for some (but not all)
by integration into the world economy. Nevertheless,
it is equally important to acknowledge the relative
short period of colonial rule. Davidson (1964)
was right to observe: ‘Looking back, one may see now
that the colonial period was no more than a large
episode in the onward movement of…life; in another
sense, it was an unexampled means of revolutionary
change.’
See also: Colonialism, Anthropology of; Colonization
and Colonialism, History of; Fourth World; He-
gemony: Anthropological Aspects; Imperialism, His-
tory of; Imperialism: Political Aspects; Nationalism:
General; Nationalism, Sociology of; Postcoloniality;
Third World
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Hartz L 1964 The Founding of New Societies. Harcourt, Brace
and World, New York
Kirk-Greene A H M 2000 Britain’s Imperial Administrators
1858–1966. St. Martins, New York
Lugard F 1922 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa.
Edinburgh, UK
Mansergh N, Moon P (eds.) 1970–1983 The Transfer of Power.
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London
Mortimer E 1969 France and the Africans. Faber, London
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R. Hodder-Williams
Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Colonization and Colonialism, History of
1. Introduction: Problems of Definition and the
Semantic Field
‘Colonization is [...] a phenomenon of colossal vague-
ness’ (Osterhammel 1997, p. 4), because it covers large
and rather different parts of the world and its history.
2240
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Therefore, a convincing theory of colonization and
colonialism in general or of European colonialism in
particular does not exist and will probably never exist,
because it is not feasible. But scholars have still to
define the concepts they use, because an agreement
upon their meaning makes communication possible.
Colonization has to do with migration, because it
describes the movement of people from one part of the
world to another to establish a settlement, quite often
an agrarian one. In this sense, the term has a neutral
connotation. In contrast, colonialism has become a
general invective against western policy, especially
since the Bandung conference of recently decolonized
Asian countries in 1955. In the nineteenth century,
however, it was used more or less neutrally to
characterize the condition of colonies and the (speech)
habits of colonials (Fieldhouse 1981, p. 6).
We have no choice but to accept the change of
meaning that colonialism has undergone, though we
can try to neutralize political emotions. In this sense,
colonialism can be defined as the control of one people
by another, culturally different one, an unequal re-
lationship which exploits differences of economic,
political, and ideological development between the
two (Reinhard 1996, p. 1). People instead of nation or
state is used because basically no sophisticated pol-
itical organization is necessary on either side. And the
terms difference and de
elopment are used in a strictly
descriptive sense and without any value judgement.
They do not suggest that it is more desirable to have
nuclear weapons instead of bow and arrow or that
there exists a general and ‘normal’ path of human
development with the West at the end. But differences
of development are essential to distinguish colonial
rule from empire in general. Roman rule over ancient
Greece and Russian control of East Germany were
imperial, not colonial.
Colonialism, as an unequal relationship between
human groups, very often was the outcome of imper-
ialism, defined as a political activity with the intention
to establish colonialism. But if the meaning of imper-
ialism is limited to expansive policy of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, colonial expansion has to be
used to designate earlier policies. After decolonization,
colonialism as a form of political dependency has
become a mere phenomenon of history. But economic
and cultural domination by former colonial powers
such as Britain and France on the one hand, and by the
US and the US controlled world economy on the
other, still exists. It has been labeled neocolonialism. In
the 1960s and 1970s theories of structural dependency
explained economic underdevelopment as a conse-
quence of western economic domination and as self-
reproducing without chance of escape because of
western control of the world economy. Several success
stories of former colonies have falsified these theories,
but their lesson on informal control as an element of
colonialism remains. Semicolonies such as China or
the Ottoman Empire about 1900 were formally in-
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7