3.0.5 How the Colonial Period Happened - Overview

Version 1.3 August 2014                                              (Previous Version)

We show in the detailed pages of Chapter 3.5 how history explains why the Europeans colonized the world from about 1500 to 1950 CE and why the Africans, Chinese, Indians, Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians did not.  It was not because of any innate superiority or evil in Western Europeans, but because of social, technological and geographical accidents, epidemic diseases, rivalry between colonized peoples, short sighted elites and abuses of human rights on all sides.

●      The scientific and industrial revolution began in Europe.  There are many possible causes.

●      The printing press, paper making, magnetic compass, metallurgy, and gunpowder were invented in China.  Indian arithmetic and algebra spread through the Muslim world to Europe. 

●      Gunpowder assisted the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal dynasties, in the 1400s and 1500s, to establish large empires across western and southern Asia, centred on Turkey, Iran, and India.

●      Trade developed across Eurasia, along land routes between China, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and via sea routes around the Indian Ocean and the coasts of Asia and Africa.

●      China and India were advanced economies and had no need of the inferior products of Europe.

●      China explored the world with large, sophisticated sailing ships, as far west as Africa, but had no incentive to go east (towards the Americas) or further south (westwards around Africa).

●      European nations on the Atlantic coast used Chinese technology to sail around Africa, to find another trade route to Asia.  They accidentally “discoveredâ€� the Americas seeking a westward route to India, and accidentally “discoveredâ€� Australia after being blown off course to India.

●      Eurasians caught fatal diseases from their domestic animals that spread as epidemics around Eurasia over centuries, until the local populations gradually acquired immunity from them.

●      Native Americans, Australians and islanders were decimated by Eurasian diseases (such as smallpox and influenza), but only a few major diseases went back to Eurasia (notably syphilis). 

●      Europeans had steel swords, guns, cavalry and backup from Europe, often facing foot soldiers with wooden weapons.  Europeans exploited local animosities to persuade local groups to become allies, relied on them to defeat their enemies, then turned on their erstwhile allies. 

●      The Europeans established the Atlantic slave trade, purchasing African slaves from coastal Africans with cheap European goods, using slaves to mine silver and gold, and grow sugar and cotton, in the Americas, using the profits to pay in coins for desired Indian and Chinese goods.

●      The industrial revolution and slave labour enabled the Europeans to make cheaper (if poor quality) cloth, and more numerous and effective weapons, so they dominated the world.

●      Britain forced India, Egypt and others to deindustrialize, to minimise competition, and enforced low tariffs on European manufactures, creating ongoing under development in the third world.

●      Europeans never quite ruled in China, but the British sent cheap opium to create a market, and from about 1850 to 1940 Western Europeans forced China to tolerate their intrusive demands.

●      After WWI Britain and France carved up the defeated Ottoman Empire to suit themselves.

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

more                                                                                Statement 18

This period supports choosing core values of diversity and equality, effected through freedom from slavery, torture and extrajudicial processes, territorial integrity and indigenous rights.