Northern, southern, and eastern European empires spread their influence in different directions around the world.

Identity the regions of their major influences, respectively?

What do the three current countries shown in black have in common regarding this process?

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Answers:

  • northern European countries: North America, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand

  • southern European countries: Central and South America

  • eastern European countries: central Asia

  • Ethiopia, China, and Japan were the least affected by European powers and the latter two actively resisted European domination and influences

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    European colonial empires developed into five different spatial models.
    Look at the pie graph: note the dominance of the English language (expressed in U.S. rather than British spelling and word usage) on internet web pages around the world.

    Imperialism is ideologically driven by the center (European power) whereas colonialism manifests itself on the periphery (in the Americas, Africa, and Asia) in practice.
    The spread of European empires had major consequences on the world's people and their cultures. These persist to this day. The USA emerges from one major colony (British) and in turn becomes an empire itself, reflecting ironically many of the same cultural features of its former British masters. The linguist Nebrijia pointed out to Queen Isabella of Spain in 1492, the inaugural year of the European conquest of the Americas: "Your majesty language is a perfect instrument of rule, a means towards eternal conquest and internal suppression of undesirable languages. Language is always a companion to power and it will remain its companion in the future." Source: I. Hauchler and P. Kennedy. Global Trends. New York: Continuum, 1994, p. 93.

    Compare maps of three empires: Roman (in 117AD), British (in 1898) and USA (in 2004). Source: The Economist, 20 March 2004, pp. 34-35.

    Why did Europeans, rather than say the Chinese or the American Indians, dominate the world in the last 500 years? Read one author's explanation and read another view.

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    Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 1 February 1996; last revised on 07 March 2005.