The Time and Process of Colonization in African Countries

The time and process of colonization in African countries;

Century: Early Colonies

After the demise of the Western Roman Empire, its overseas provinces and colonies were divided up by countries such as the Eastern Roman Empire, the Frankish Empire and the Visigoth Kingdom. Due to political and military restrictions, the population of West Rome is sparse, so they are not capable of conquering overseas colonies.

The Crusade marked the beginning of Europe's interest in areas outside itself. Eastern Mediterranean countries were not colonies of Crusaders, but the fourth Crusader occupied the Byzantine Empire. Venice and Genoa occupied many pre-Byzantine territories in the eastern Mediterranean and established their own commercial colonies.

2. From15th century to17th century: the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal.

It is generally believed that the first colony occupied by western countries in modern times was the colony occupied by the Portuguese. Portugal originally came from Morocco. In order to eradicate pirates, control the import of gold and ivory from West Africa through Cedar, and carefully deploy and occupy Cedar Port. Then establish direct contact with Hei Di in West Africa to produce gold. It also went south along the African coast and occupied organizations such as Madeira and Cape Verde Islands.

With the development of the Renaissance in Europe, there is a desire for commercial capital and wealth in Europe. At that time, Europe's main trade targets were the East, especially silk, precious stones, spices and other luxury goods from China, India and Nanyang Islands.

As the trade with the East was monopolized by Venice and Genoa at that time, western European countries decided to explore their own routes to the East. Portugal and Spain were the first to explore the Eastern Front. 1498 Da Gama arrived in India through the Cape of Good Hope.

In order to ensure that the trade with India is not interfered by the Mughal Empire, Oman and the Turkish countries along the Indian Ocean, Portugal established its first colony in Goa in 15 10, built forts, equipped troops and protected the safety of Portuguese businessmen.

As Portugal monopolized the route from the Cape of Good Hope to the East, Spain had to find a new route from the East to the West. 1492 After Columbus discovered America, Spain launched a conquest and colonization campaign against America. In a short time, it destroyed the empire established by Indians and established a large number of colonies.

1494, after papal arbitration, Portugal also acquired a huge colony in the American continent east of 50 w.

Because the Spanish conquered areas are rich in gold and silver, a large number of precious metals flowed into Europe through Spain, which stimulated the price changes and industrial and commercial development in other parts of Europe.

At the same time, due to the introduction of new consumer goods such as coffee, cocoa, tea, tobacco, sugar and potatoes into Europe, the eating habits of Europeans have also changed greatly, which has led to an increase in demand for these consumer goods and prompted Spain and Portugal to develop cash crops in the newly conquered America.

From the end of 16 to the beginning of 17, Britain and France seized the Caribbean islands from the Spanish, and the Netherlands seized the Natal area on the northeast coast of Brazil from Portugal. The slave plantation system initiated by the Portuguese in Madeira and Cape Verde in Africa was introduced into these areas controlled by Britain, France and Holland, and the demand for labor increased sharply.

Due to the brutal slaughter of Indian aborigines by colonists, the number of Indians dropped sharply from 50 million at the end of15th century to 4 million in17th century, and European colonists had to look for new sources of labor from Africa.

From 1442, the Portuguese used Berbers as slaves, and the Spanish began to transport African blacks into America from 1502.

The demand for slave trade prompted these two countries and emerging capitalist countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, France and Denmark to set up many trading posts along the coast of West Africa, selling slaves, ivory, gold and peppers, which were called "the seeds of heaven" at that time. Another name for Ivory Coast is Seed Coast.

However, because the coast of West Africa is inaccessible and the terrain and climate are not suitable for Europeans, Europe's colonization of Africa in the next few centuries will be limited to a few coastal strongholds.

From the naming of these colonies by European countries-Gold Coast, Ivory Coast and Slave Coast-we can see that the colonies in West Africa are basically resource-predatory colonies.

3.17th century to18th century: Britain, France and the Netherlands.

With the discovery of the New World, the Atlantic Ocean replaced the Mediterranean Sea and became the only way for commercial transportation, which led to the decline of the Hanseatic League in Italy and northern Germany and the traditional commercial cities such as Britain, France and the Netherlands. The economy of western countries is gradually rising.

Britain initially tried to open up the eastern trade route through Russia. Therefore, the Moscow company was established, telephone number 1533. Soon, it found that Russia had no direct commercial ties with the East, so it turned to the northwest route and tried to cross the northern part of North America eastward.

1588 After Britain defeated the Spanish Armada, it began to colonize North America and established the Hudson's Bay Company and the New England Colony. /kloc-in 0/600, British businessmen established the British East India Company and then began to expand in India.

After the Netherlands became independent at the end of 16, it quickly developed into the largest maritime and commercial country in the world. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, and gradually monopolized the trade with China, India, Japan, Ceylon and Spice Island. France established a new French colony in North America and occupied several strategic places and sugar-rich islands in the Caribbean.

Because Britain planted tobacco and cotton in North American colonies, France needed to send manpower to sugar cane plantations in Caribbean islands, so the demand for slaves in the two countries was growing.

1526, Britain started the slave trade. Soon after, the Netherlands and Denmark, as active trade transit countries, also joined the slave trade activities, trying to share the benefits. Sweden, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Kurland and other countries also engaged in the slave trade during this period, thus occupying some strongholds on the African coast.

Because the local economy in West Africa is mainly gathering and hunting, and the grain output is limited, in order to feed the slaves of long-distance sellers, agricultural areas have been opened around these strongholds, and food crops such as sweet potatoes and yams have been introduced from there. I come from Europe and America.

From the beginning of the 7th century to the middle of the 8th century, Robert Claivu, the founder of the British East India Company, fought four wars. With its powerful naval power, Britain seized a large part of French territory east of India, Canada and Mississippi River overseas and became a world-class colonial power.

And in several wars with the Netherlands, it replaced the Netherlands as a shipping power and established a huge merchant fleet and navy. With the signing of the Paris Treaty with France and Spain in 1763, Britain replaced Spain and became the world's largest colonial power.

During this period, European countries managed their colonies in America in the same way, that is, they treated their motherland differently and sent governors or deputy kings to the colonies to represent the king.

The economic development of the colony was restricted and supervised, and it was forced to grow a single cash crop needed by the patriarchal clan system. The mining industry is highly developed and other industries have stopped developing. Even basic consumer goods such as farm tools and clothes cannot be produced.

The suzerain country exported colonial products for free or at low prices, which even led to colonial deflation and forced to borrow other countries' currencies. The links between the colonies were also blocked. In thirteen states in North America, mail sent from one colony to another must be sent back to London first.

4. The era of industrial revolution: the shrinking of colonies.

After the arrival of the industrial revolution era, the traditional colonial trade of sugar, tobacco and slaves is no longer of great significance. The demand for industrial raw materials such as cotton, wool, fuel, iron, copper, tin and coal in industrial countries has replaced the demand for consumer goods. At the same time, these countries urgently need to open up markets outside their own countries to digest their manufactured goods.

Because the European market is saturated, we can only seek development space from America and Asia.

1776 After the independence of thirteen states in North America, the British colonial cause suffered a great blow, and the focus of colonial economy shifted from North America to India with richer resources and broader market. In addition, Britain also occupied Australia, New Zealand, Myanmar, Cape Colony and Hong Kong.

Due to the influence of the concept of natural human rights advocated by the French Revolution and religious, humanitarian and economic reasons, Britain declared the slave trade illegal in 1807, and then the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark and other countries also announced the prohibition of the slave trade.

This measure made the strongholds of countries in the coastal areas of Africa shrink rapidly, and both Denmark and the Netherlands sold their commercial stations in the coastal areas of West Africa in the middle of the19th century.

At the same time, due to the influence of the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America declared their independence, the demand for slaves dropped sharply, and the colonial power of the two countries in Africa also declined rapidly.

In North Africa, the French took advantage of Turkey's decline, and by eliminating pirates in North Africa, they infiltrated into Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisia and other Turkish dependent countries. Algeria, where pirates are most active, has been hit hardest. 18 15, the U.S navy defeated the Algerian navy. 18 19, the British-Dutch joint fleet shelled Algiers, and France also had many conflicts with Algeria.

During the period from 1825 to 1875, except for Britain and France, the activities of European countries to conquer new colonies basically stopped, and instead, they moved to overseas colonies.

As far as the situation in Britain is concerned, a sentence by British Prime Minister disraeli in 1852 can be said to be the best summary of Britain's attitude towards colonies in this period: "Colonies are a heavy millstone hanging around our necks".

Take Gambia and Gold Coast as examples. Their business tax income lags far behind administrative expenses. The British Parliament has repeatedly proposed to reduce the size of the colony, or to give up the colony completely.

That's because the Royal Navy's West African Fleet needs to build a naval base in the Gulf of Guinea to ban the slave trade, and Britain is the best. These two areas were finally preserved.

However, in order to resettle the slaves who were freed in the Caribbean Islands, Britain opened the Sierra Leone colony in the form of authorized companies during the colonial contraction, the American Colonial Association opened the Liberian colony at the same time, and France opened Liber. Evil colony. Colonies were used to house slaves.

5.65438+From the end of 2009 to the beginning of the 20th century: the climax of colonial occupation.

1870 After the Franco-Prussian War ended and Germany was unified, the German geographer Frederick Laczer began to study the expanding market of German industrial products at that time and began to defend Bismarck's imperialist policy with geography.

He believes that with the development of the world, space will become more and more important for a country, big countries will gradually expand, and small parliaments will become insignificant.

World history needs more and more space. This fact can be clearly seen from the evolution of important commercial countries: Venice is a city; Holland is a delta country; Britain is an island country; America is a continent. Great powers must conform to this absolute and inevitable trend and strive to expand their space through colonization, merger and conquest.

Sir Half Makinder, a British imperialist theorist, also put forward a similar theory, pointing out that a country must achieve self-sufficiency if it wants to survive. Controlling the origin of raw materials and making it an export market for products has become a strategic demand of national interests.

In the first 75 years of the19th century, western countries occupied an average of 2 1000 square kilometers of colonies every year, and in the last 25 years, they occupied an average of 620,000 square kilometers of colonies every year.

From the end of15th century to the middle of19th century, colonial countries only occupied 3180,000 square kilometers of land in Africa, and in the last quarter of19th century, Europe became more interested in Africa, occupying 25.69 million square kilometers of land in Africa.

Due to the rapid industrialization and population increase in Europe, the demand for vegetable oil, plant fiber, rubber and some mineral resources has increased, and these products can be exchanged for cheap industrial products in Africa. The demand for new raw materials has led to fierce competition for African raw material producing areas.

The colonization of African continent by colonial countries began in the late19th century, with the gradual method initiated by France in Senegal as the starting point, that is, taking farms growing peanuts or oil palm as the forward base, using drugs to treat tropical diseases, using local aborigines to form hired troops and advancing to the hinterland along major rivers. This method is far more effective than the British coastal infiltration method, so it is imitated by other colonial countries.

In the1870s, a large number of minerals, such as diamonds and gold, were discovered in South Africa, which stimulated other colonial countries to develop similar minerals in other parts of Africa. The land for competition is no longer limited to areas suitable for planting crops, but wasteland, swamp, desert and no man's land have all become the objects for competition.

1884- 1885 The Berlin Conference established the principle that "only actual occupation can prove the rule of the colony". Britain, France, Portugal and other countries occupying the coastal areas of Africa quickly signed agreements and treaties with local chiefs to expand their influence on inland areas. Germany, Belgium and Italy, emerging industrial powers, have also joined the fight for Africa.

From 1885 to 1900, European countries completed the division of Africa. In addition to Ethiopia and Liberia, traditional African kingdoms such as Asanti, Dahomey, sokoto and Buganda, as well as the free countries of Transvally and Orange established by Europeans, have all become colonies or protectorates of western countries. Egypt is nominally an independent country, but it is completely under the control of Britain.

In Asia, from 65438+ 1960, Russia accelerated its colonization and conquest of Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Siberia and the Far East, successively occupying Daruzi, Middle Luzi, Little Luzi, Shiva Khan, Bukhara Khan and Hao Han Khan, and infiltrating into Xinjiang, Outer Mongolia and Manchuria in China.

By 1876, Russia had occupied170,000 square kilometers of land. France conquered Annan, Laos and Cambodia, Britain occupied Malay Peninsula and North Borneo, and controlled the Persian Gulf and the southern Arabian Peninsula.

In Oceania, emerging Germany bought colonies such as the Carolina Islands and the Mariana Islands from Spain. In addition to directly conquering colonies, colonial countries also turned some economically backward countries into semi-colonies, such as China, Korea, Siam, Persia, Afghanistan and Ottoman Empire.

In these countries, they seized the rights and interests of customs, transportation, commerce, road construction, mining, factory construction, banking and military training.

6. 19 14 world colonies from the beginning of the 20th century: the re-division of colonies and the two world wars.

Colonial countries and colonies have occupied 85% of the world land area. The colonial distribution of countries is uneven.

In addition to Britain and France, which are still powerful, Spain and Portugal, which have already declined, still control large colonies, while emerging countries such as the United States, Germany, Japan and Italy only occupy some "leftover land" with small area and poor resources.

With the intensification of the means of fighting for colonies, major colonial countries were involved in a series of diplomatic and military conflicts from the end of 19 to the beginning of the 20th century, such as the first moroccan crises between Britain, France and Germany, the second Fashoda crisis between moroccan crises and Britain, the two Boer wars, the Spanish-American war, the Russo-Japanese war and the Italian-Turkish war.

From 1900 to 19 14, on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, various colonial countries formed extremely complicated conflicts of interest in order to compete for new colonies or protect existing colonies: Germany challenged Britain's world hegemony; Japan challenges Russia's hegemony in Asia; Russia challenges Britain's hegemony in Asia.

Britain used France to contain Germany; Britain used Japan to contain Russia; France used Russia to contain Germany; Germany used the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire to surround Russia. In order to consolidate the existing colonies, Britain, France, Russia and Germany, Austria and Italy successively formed two groups.

World War I ended in the defeat of the Allies. As a punishment, Germany was deprived of all its overseas colonies, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, its territory was divided up by neighboring countries or formed into a new country, and the Ottoman Empire lost all its Arab territories.

With the modernization of economy, the adjustment of market, the development of urbanization, the progress of social culture and the upsurge of national liberation and anti-colonialism movement, the old colonial system has been greatly weakened by1920s, and colonial countries have realized that they cannot acquire new colonies by war.

Colonies deprived by defeated countries became areas designated by the League of Nations and were administered by victorious countries. Although it is still a colony in essence, the mandate rules of the League of Nations have stipulated that the trustee must promote the welfare of the residents in the designated territory and establish an independent country in due course.

In the 1930' s, a new trend of thought of colonialism emerged-the fascist colonial view originated from geopolitical theory and the concept of "living space".

After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan also began to put forward the slogan that Asian countries should resist the aggression of the white world under Japan's "leadership", and in the 1930 s, it evolved into the theory of "Greater East Asia * * * glory circle". Italy, Spain and other fascist countries also put forward the slogans of "fascist imperialism" and "Spain's Spain".

In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler did not advocate that Germany should expand overseas, thinking that overseas expansion was not as good as European expansion, but he later approved the colonial requirements in the Nazi Party's "25-Point Program" and encouraged the activities of the German colonial movement after 1933.

193 1 year, the Japanese launched the September 18th Incident, occupied the northeast of China, and announced that the world division had begun again, followed by 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia.

The cause of the Second World War is very complicated and cannot be simply attributed to the development of traditional forms of colonialism, but the theory of "living space" as a variant of colonialism and the struggle for "living space" are obviously one of the main reasons for its outbreak.

7. Colonial independence movement after World War II.

1939 World Colonies Due to the influence of World War II, the remaining major colonial countries after World War I, such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, were weakened in the war.

During the war, the national industries of India, East Africa, Nigeria, Belgium, Congo and other unoccupied allied colonies developed to a certain extent, and the division of labor within the colonies was broken.

At the same time, because Japan and Germany weakened the Allies by supporting the colonial nationalist movement, the national liberation movement in the Allies' colonies also developed under the wings of the Axis countries in the war.

After World War II, colonial liberation movements broke out in Dutch East India, British Burma, French India and zhina, which were occupied by Japanese troops.

Nationalists in these areas cooperated with Japanese occupation forces in the war to establish nominally "independent" puppet countries. On the eve of surrender, Japan handed over power and weapons to local nationalists, causing chaos to its allies.

1945 August 17, Indonesia was the first to declare independence, and Vietnam declared independence on September 2. The wave of colonial independence movement immediately spread to Myanmar, India, Malaya, the Philippines and other Asian countries and regions. 1953 After Cambodia became independent, the colonies of France, the Netherlands and the United States in Asia became independent countries.

After the 1960s and 1950s, especially after the 1955 Bandung Conference, with the encouragement of independent colonial and semi-colonial countries, this movement developed to Africa.

1956 After the Second Middle East War, Britain announced the policy of "retreating from the east of Suez". From 1957 to 1963, Britain successively withdrew from Ceylon, Malaya, North Borneo, Strait Colony, South Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Trujil Oman, Zanzibar, Kenya and Uganda.

The wave of post-war African countries' independence began with the independence of Britain, Egypt and Sudan in 1956 and Ghana in 1957. /kloc-since 0/960, the African colonial independence movement has reached its climax. In the one-year period from 1960, 17 countries in Africa declared their independence, of which 13 countries were former French colonies, 3 countries were former British colonies, and 1 countries were former belgian colonial.

By the end of 1960, most colonies belonging to Britain and France had declared independence, and only Portugal still kept a large number of colonies in Africa. After years of war, these colonies gradually became independent in the middle and late 1970s. ..