Colonial System

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A Colonial System is a political system that espouses colonies.



References

2016a

  • (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/colonialism Retrieved:2016-10-20.
    • Colonialism is the establishment of a colony in one territory by a political power from another territory, and the subsequent maintenance, expansion, and exploitation of that colony. The term is also used to describe a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous peoples.

      The European colonial period was the era from the 16th century to the mid-20th century when several European powers established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first the countries followed mercantilism designed to strengthen the home economy at the expense of rivals, so the colonies were usually allowed to trade only with the mother country. By the mid-19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions and introduced the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.

2016b

  • (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/history_of_colonialism Retrieved:2016-10-20.
    • The historical phenomenon of colonisation is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Modern state global colonialism, or imperialism, began in the 15th century with the “Age of Discovery", led by Portuguese and Spanish exploration of the Americas, the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India and East Asia. The Spanish and Portuguese empires were the first global empires because they were the first to stretch across different continents, covering vast territories around the globe. The phrase “the empire on which the sun never sets” was first used for the Spanish Empire in the 16th century. During the late 16th and 17th centuries, England, France and the Dutch Republic also established their own overseas empires, in direct competition with each other. The end of the 18th and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization, when most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metropoles. Spain was irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New World colonies, but the Kingdom of Great Britain (uniting Scotland with England and Wales), France, Portugal, and the Dutch turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia, where coastal enclaves had already been established.

      The second industrial revolution, in the 19th century, led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa, in which Belgium, Germany and Italy were participants.

      During the 20th century, the colonies of the losers of World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest. In 1999, Portugal gave up the last of Europe's colonies in Asia, Macau, to China, ending an era that had lasted six hundred years.

2016c