European Colonialism Models

Definitions
1) European colonialism was a process of cultural transformation, violent in its execution, pervasive in its impact, and deeply geographic in its causes and consequences.
2) Europeans of whatever origins, impelled by whatever motivations, imposed themselves by whatever means (military, political, cultural) upon the lives of other people.
3) Europeans colonialism was a world system in which the core (Europe) and periphery (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) were legally and militarily linked as colonizers and colonized in exploitive division of labor. (Today, globalization continues this colonial tradition with the USA as the dominant force.)

In 1492 Columbus first set foot in the "New World" and Europeans controlled only 9 percent of the globe. By 1801 they ruled a third. By 1880, two thirds. And by 1935 Europeans politically controlled 85 percent of the land surface of the earth and 70 percent of its population.

The process of European colonization was quite amazing. Take the case of India. By the 1930s, 4,000 British civil servants assisted by 60,000 soldiers (many of whom were different South Asian ethnic groups) and 90,000 civilians (businessmen and clergy) had imposed themselves upon India with a population of 300 million! Lord Macaulay, who was a member of the British Supreme Council in India during the 1830s, said "The whole native literature of India and Arabia [which he was unable to read] was worth but a single European library self."

British Imperial Art.
Because Britons wanted souvenir images of the India they knew, they began to patronize Indian artists. And between 1770-1825, 30 portrait and 28 miniaturist British painters came to India to work (source: National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, India). The "Company School" of miniature painting, so called because the pictures were originally produced for employees of the East India Company. Though they drew upon a long tradition of miniature painting in India, the painters adapted their style for European consumption. The subtleties of the earlier traditions were sacrificed to produce fairly simple illustrations of a limited range of Indian life which the British encountered.

European colonial empires developed into five different spatial models:
continental empire (see below), sea empire, boreal riverine empire, settler empire, and nationalistic empire.

European Colonialism Models: Continental Empires

Characteristics of Continental Empires

Legalistic, rigidly structured Iberian societies were transplanted to the "New World."
Countries that established this form of colonialism: primarily Spain and Portugal.
Spatial Patterns: colonies were continuous over large amounts of land areas
Native societies were the most transformed of all forms of European colonialism: economically, culturally, and racially.

Economically: Europeans seized land and mineral resources from Indians; established plantation agriculture.

Culturally: native languages and religions, such as those of the Mayans, were destroyed, replaced, or at least transformed by European languages, law, and Roman Catholicism.
Racially: European men (married or single) administrators, soldiers, and priests had legal or illegitimate sexual relations with Indian women; resulting in a large racially mixed population called Mestizo.
The result: a single, hierarchical, multi-racial, land-based societies.

Sources: The colonial models discussed here are primarily based on Donald Meinig, "A Macrogeography of Western Imperialism," Settlement and Encounter, eds. Fay Gale and G. H. Lawton. Another relevant source is J. M. Blaut, Fourteen ninety-two," Political Geography, Volume 11, No. 4, July 1992, pp. 355-385.

Additional optional reading:
1) Anthony Hall, The American empire and the fourth World.
2) Arundhati Roy, An ordinary person's guide to empire.

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 1 February 1996; last revised on 03/07/05.