What is Colonialism, and Why Is It Horrific?
It's not a thing of the past, and we shouldn't accept it
You barely remember your life before they came.
You had a different name. The one you have now belongs to them. It’s a name from their language, with meaning in their culture, but it’s certainly not one your father would have chosen.
He’s dead. He tried to refuse them when they came, so your mother told you. He was proud of his heritage and your people, and he didn’t want to bend to the whip of foreign invaders.
You don’t remember seeing him stabbed to death at the end of their bayonets, but you know it happened. They didn’t even lay him to rest properly; your customs were the practices of Devil worshipping savages, and all he merited was to be thrown in a hole outside of town.
There’s no marker to tell you where. Your mother won’t speak of the event in any detail. You’re tired of seeing the haunted look in her tearful eyes, so you’ll never ask again.
They came, they killed him — killed many people; your friends, neighbours, your relatives — and they took the land for their own.
You and your mother serve them now. You have a new name, one they forced onto you because they couldn’t be bothered to pronounce the one your parents chose.
You wear their clothing. You speak their language. You cook their foods the way they like it, you don’t even know the recipes your mother grew up with. She works her fingers to the bone in the earth of their plantations while you have a relatively comfortable job indoors as a household servant.
You’re not sure which one you would prefer. At least out there you might not have to deal with the constant sneering disdain, or worse, the patronizing praise for ‘acting civilized.’
You were young enough to be trained like a dog, but she was too old, too set in the ways of your people. They took you from her, one last crushing theft, and put her to pasture.
You are not one of them. You will never be one of them. You are a stranger, an Other, a lesser. Inferior. Your people were an inconvenience, squatting on land that held riches they wanted to claim.
And now, all that you were will fade away. You will not be forgotten like a discarded broken tool, you will be erased, a page ripped from a heretical text and cast into the pyre of history.
At least, history as they see it. The way they tell it in their churches, preached from the pulpit while you sit in the pews, absorbing their words with a pit in your stomach.
You have no choice; their faith is yours now.
Everything belongs to them. There is precious little left that belongs to you.
Did that story make you uncomfortable?
When you read about the history of colonialism, it’s common to feel detached. If you’ve never experienced it yourself, it’s hard to parse the idea of losing your entire culture and language and belief systems, even your personal agency over your home.
I’ve even seen some people argue that colonialism benefits conquered peoples because it brings innovations and enhances their lives.
I doubt the people being conquered would agree with that assessment.
Colonialism is a practice of domination and exploitation. A foreign power takes control of a new territory at the point of a sword, subjugating and controlling the local population and forcibly assimilating them into their culture and laws.
This typically includes colonization and the construction of settlements populated by people from the dominant culture. Think about how the Spanish colonized South America and either wiped out or heavily subjugated indigenous cultures like the Maya and the Inca.
Other obvious examples include the founding of British, Spanish and French colonies across North America. Several countries like Mexico, Canada and the United States were born of settler colonialism just like this.
There was also the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, the British Empire’s colonial history in the modern-day countries of India, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and many other African countries, and of course, Ireland.
My own ancestors came to Canada in the aftermath of the an Gorta Mór — the Great Famine.
Part of the reason the Famine was so outrageously severe in Ireland was because of colonialism; the British continued to export crops from Irish farms during the blight, essentially letting people starve when they could have closed the ports and allowed the local population to support itself.
Hell, the potato blight wouldn’t have been an issue if not for the fact that the potato was the main food crop of poorer Irish workers. It wasn’t even native to Ireland; potatoes are a Nightshade, they’re from the Americas. It was brought to Ireland by English ships, as was the blight fungus later on.
The British Crown could have prevented the Great Famine by temporarily halting the export of food and diverting resources until the Famine was over. It chose not to. A truly staggering volume of badly-needed food was transported out of the starving country under military guard, and attempted thieves were killed.
They chose to let people die so they could keep making money off of their labour.
Colonialism is about exploitation, and if the local people died off through disease and famine, it was easier to take their lands. From imposed famine to direct, intentional genocide, the tactic of eradication has always been a tool for colonial powers.
It still is. We’ll touch on that later.
Colonialism only really benefits the colonisers.
While some people try to argue that point — usually by pointing to technological development and infrastructure brought by foreign invaders — I still stand by my claim.
I don’t think technological advancement is worth the vast array of negatives that come with colonization — especially since trade can accomplish the same damn thing without genocide.
In fact, international trade is how we’re able to accomplish great strides in research and development these days.
We’re not talking about a few bad days followed by centuries of greatness, here. We’re talking about decades of subjugation, genocide, environmental degradation, the destruction of language, culture, history, suffering and death.
We’re talking about centuries of systemic racism, pervasive injustice, economic and racial apartheid. Seriously — the literal Apartheid regime in South Africa, y’know how that happened?
Colonialism!
And while Apartheid has technically been overturned on paper, in practice the Black population of South Africa is still struggling under extreme inequality. We’ve talked about that a little bit before, when the President of South Africa had to put up with Trump spouting conspiracy claims about persecution of white Christian Afrikaners in his country.
The history of racism in the States, by the way, is a legacy of colonialism and chattel slavery. The same with our systemic racism against our First Nations people here in Canada. Remember the Residential Schools?
If your economy is built on the idea that those people over there aren’t actually human, you can kill them, take their land and exploit them for their labour to enrich yourself and feel superior while doing it, you’re not bringing a benefit to those people.
I don’t think that’s a controversial thing to say. At least I really hope it isn’t.
But given the past decade or so of global political shifts and democratic backsliding, who knows?
I’ve talked about the history of colonialism and how it’s impacted the founding of the nations we know.
Now let’s talk about what colonialism looks like today — because it’s not some distant memory from centuries past. It’s very much alive and well now, and it’s just as bad as it’s ever been.
Remember, colonialism is about foreign powers exerting dominance and control over a territory, exploiting its natural resources and local people, and forcing assimilation.
If you’ve been waving the Ukrainian flag since Putin’s invasion in 2014, I’ll bet you just sat up straight in your chair. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? All of Putin’s talk about bringing Ukraine back under Russian control?
How about Trump’s involvement in ‘peace talks’ and his plan to profit off of reconstruction? His insistence on the U.S. being entitled to a share of the spoils and mineral-rich lands in Ukraine smacks of colonial thinking. I’m not the only one saying that, either.
At the risk of getting myself lit on fire in the comment section, you can also look at the Palestinian genocide raging in Gaza and the West Bank as a colonial endeavour. Particulary the illegal settler colonies in the West Bank.
Netanyahu makes no secret of the fact that he intends to fully conquer and occupy the Gaza Strip. Palestinians are living under harsh segregation right now — they were under an apartheid before the current genocide kicked off, it’s only worsened since.
With the backing of several major countries like the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada among others, Israel has carried out brutal repression against the Palestinian people, including non-combatant civillians and children.
Over here in the Americas, Trump is sparking a full-on war with Venezuela for the purposes of regime change, and talking about how he plans to get his hands on ‘the oil.’ He uses drugs and immigration and alleged criminal activity to excuse it, but it’s clear his motives are economic and expansionist in nature.
They just seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, and Trump insists that he intends to keep it. I’m being strongly reminded of the wars in the Middle East.
It’s like how he insists that Canada and Greenland should be part of the United States, for ‘national security’ reasons. He wants our natural resources, and he isn’t fooling any of us.
I’m harping on Trump a lot in this section. That’s for good reason. He is the quintessential modern colonialist at the head of one of the most powerful and wealthy nations in the world.
If he, Putin and Netanyahu get their way, the little story I opened this piece with could become uncomfortably close to reality for many, many people now — just like it was in the past.
Colonialism is horrific.
It benefits only the people who impose their control on others, dehumanizes and degrades the oppressed, and constructs systems that continue to ensure segregation and exploitation far into the future.
If you value freedom, the right to self-determination and agency, if you value your loved ones and your culture and the vibrant diversity of people and the natural world, then you should recognize colonial practices as a threat.
We only need to look to history and study the impacts and legacy of colonization in the past to see that there’s neither a need, nor should there be any desire to see it happening now.
Colonialism needs to be consigned to the midden heap of history, just like the people who practiced it.
We need to do better than this.
We need to be better than the colonizers who wiped out the Inca and destroyed Mayan culture. We need to do better than the men who built the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We need to do better than the greedy English businessmen and Royals who let starving people die so they could keep making coin.
We need to do better than monsters like Putin, Netanyahu and Donald Trump.
We need to do better than the world they want to create — a world where you can kill, displace, exploit and conquer in the name of profit and be lauded for your ‘business acumen’ and strength.
Especially because, as explained by the theory of the Imperial Boomerang, whatever tactics colonial powers use abroad will inevitably be used against their own people at home.
We can’t accept a world built on subjugation. Not if we want to be free.
Solidarity wins.
My own Irish ancestors came to Canada just ahead of the famine years in the 1830's. For them, it was the poverty imposed by the British. They were from County Mayo.
I am of the belief that colonization is inherent in human DNA. It's in our nature to conquer other tribes for their resources. Maybe someday we will outgrow it but we're still very far off from anything meaningful.
American here my family came to the US to flee persecution. Ironically, America is a third non white and many people have come here to flee persecution. Horrifying to think about especially with the founding of the country as well as the slavery and Jim crow.
Colonialism is why Africa is so poor yet full of resources. It's why millions have died whether in the Holocaust, Gaza, native Americans, or elsewhere. It's why people are worth billions or even trillions.
I think people should look at this post to really understand things. Yes, trump and Putin are colonialists and imperialists. That is how they got so rich in the first place, exploitation.