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Colonialism. What do we think of it ?
Colonialism. It has shaped European and World History in both positive and negative ways. Since the American War of Independence we have seen de-colonization. The pioneers of which were, involuntarily, the British who lost the Thirteen Colonies, the French who lost Haiti and the Spanish who lost their colonial empire in South America and later on the Phillippines. From then on it was quiet for a while but after World War II it started all over again with a massive wave of decolonization: first the British in India and the Dutch who got thrown out of the Netherlands Indies- now Indonesia. And on it went during the 1950s right up until the 1970s.
The decolonization process cannot be described in one single word. It was violent in some places with a non-western populace, peaceful in others with a non-western populace, violent with a western populace like in what is now the United States of America (The Thirteen Colonies) or South Africa or non-violent with a western populace.
In some cases the result was a nation that was still closely linked to the former mother country. Like Canada and Australia are to Britain. In other places the former colonial overlords were stamped out and the country indigenounized (like in Indonesia and Africa).
So what to think about those final colonies during the 21th century. Could colonialism perhaps be turned into a cultural and a political bond. Like the Commonwealth of Nations or perhaps be more like the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union) where the Dutch (and Flemish) regulate the use of the Dutch language together with the Netherlands Antilles (still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) and Suriname (independent since 1975) - and where South Africa and Indonesia are special partners ?
Or should we turn ourselves away from our former colonies the way they turned away from us ?
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Originally Posted by Seuthanan
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