Colonialism and Decolonisation – An Attempt at Systematisation and Interpretation

Abstract

Colonialism as a manifestation of contact between the European centre of civilisation and overseas communities expressed by the relationship of domination, subordination, and modernisation existed in the world between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Of course, other forms of contact that also impose subjugation and modernisation have always been known, and they involved both the colonisation of neighbouring territories and even the relationship between the central power and distant provinces within a single country. But they were quite different from modern or imperialist colonialism. In contrast, settler decolonisation merely broke the dependence of colonies and dominions on the metropolis – which took place in the New World from the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the 1930s – and changed little in the position of the indigenous population. If anything, it was generally for the worse. Only the decolonisation – expected as the right one – that took place in Asia, Africa, and Oceania after 1945 proved so causative that the leaders of the indigenous population took over – regardless of their ability and effectiveness to exercise power. In the latter case, one can see a mirror image: it took about 25 years for the conquest of overseas territories in the late nineteenth century to be followed in a similarly short period after the Second World War by the dismantling of the global colonial system and the creation of more than a hundred new states.