The impact of colonialism on lasting consequences

Colonialism is the lasting influence of one people's political, social, economic, and cultural control over another territory and its people, and differences in colonial institutions can help explain differences in development, government, and state capacity. These lessons answer how colonial power shaped societies and left consequences that persist. They trace its effects through economic arrangements, labour, health, landscapes, and responsibility for climate change.

2 articles, 1 video, 1 book · about 1 hr 46 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   the impact of colonialism · Wikipedia · 60+ min read

   European cartographers mapped unexplored areas as "blank spaces," a practice that helped colonial powers claim land. The Dictionary of Human Geography notes that cartography imposed Western place-names and borders, emptying "undiscovered" lands of their Indigenous meaning and priming them for colonization. Settler colonialism's impact involves large-scale immigration to colonies, often motivated by religious, political, or economic reasons. It aims largely to supplant prior existing populations with a settler one and establish settlements. Colonial encounters often introduced new diseases that sometimes caused local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. Smallpox killed half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518.

2. Read
   

   Revealed: How colonial rule radically shifts historical responsibility for climate change - Carbon Brief · Carbon Brief · 25 min read

   Colonial rule shifts responsibility for historical climate emissions because colonial rulers held ultimate decision-making authority, but previous analysis implicitly assigned them none. Carbon Brief's new analysis reverses that assumption: the US (21%) and China (12%) still top, while the French share rises by half, the UK nearly doubles, the Netherlands nearly triples and Portugal more than triples.

3. Watch
   

   Colonialism: Crash Course Geography #39 · YouTube · 12 min watch

   Colonialism has shaped relationships and kept economic, political and cultural dominance in place. Its impacts reach from Taiwan to Myanmar, and Thailand's culinary colonization is one example.

4. Book
   

   Disgrace · Bookshop.org

   Disgrace is a 1999 novel by South African author J. M. Coetzee. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.

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