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Colonialism refers to the direct political control of a society and its people by a foreign ruling state. Essentially it is a political phenomenon. The ruling state monopolizes political power and keeps the subordinated society and its people in a legally inferior position. But colonialism has had significant cultural, social, and economic correlates and ramifications. Neocolonialism is the continued exercise of political or economic influence over a society in the absence of formal political control.
Traditionally, the concept of colonialism has been associated with ”colonization, which refers to the transplantation or settlement of peoples from one territory to another. The word colonization is derived from the Latin colonia, meaning the settlement of people from home. But popular and scholarly uses of the term later shifted the meaning. Colonialism came to refer to political control with or without settlement. The concept also took on a more explicit ethnic, racial, and geographical component. It increasingly came to refer to the establishment of political control by European or western powers over Asia, Latin America, and Africa. It also signified political control by one ”race over another ”race, where the latter is deemed inferior to the former.
Analytically, colonialism is related to but also distinguishable from imperialism. While imperialism also refers to control by one society over another, it does not have to take the form of direct political control. It can also occur through informal political means (such as temporary military occupation), the exercise of economic power (control over finance or imposition of embargoes), or cultural influence (the spread of Hollywood movies around the world). Colonialism, by contrast, is a more specific variant of imperialism, referring to a situation whereby control is exerted directly and for a sustained duration of time. The ruling power officially declares political control over another territory and its people and institutionalizes the control through declarations of law. The colonized country is then a part of the mother country but subordinate to it. In this sense, colonialism can be seen as one particular form of imperialism among others.
The term neocolonialism refers to relations of unequal power between countries despite the formal independence of those countries. The term suggests that, even after colonized societies attain independence, they are kept in a position of political and economic inferiority that reproduces the position they had had when they were formal colonies. In this view, formerly colonized nations remain subject to unequal exchange with western countries, become dependent upon them for capital and technology necessary for their own industrialization, and serve as places for labor exploitation and continued resource extraction by foreign firms. Politically, formerly colonized nations remain subject to various mechanisms of outside control by western powers, either through debt bondage and international institutions like the World Bank or through political pressure or direct military intervention.
Bibliography:
- Brewer, (1990) Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey. Routledge, London.
- Memmi, A. (1967) The Colonizer and the Colonized. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
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