another episode of What the Theory?, my

somewhat sporadic series in which I aim

to provide some sometimes enjoyable but

certainly accessible introductions to

some key concepts in the humanities. A

few people have asked in the comments to

some of my other What the Theory? videos

for a video about postcolonialism. And

that was certainly the video that I set

out to write today. However, just as when

we were looking at postmodernism it was

important for us to first have a decent

grasp on modernism to really understand

the ramifications for postmodernism,

it became increasingly clear that it

was key to have a proper understanding

of colonialism before even being able to

begin to discuss postcolonialism. And,

although I did try initially to

work them into one video, it looked like

it was gonna be absolutely massive.

So, what I decided to do instead is to

split it up into two videos, this first

one on colonialism and a second one on

postcolonialism which will come out

shortly after. If you would like to see

that video when it does come out then

please do consider subscribing and,

equally, if you have any suggestions or

desires for a video you'd like

to see then please do comment down below

and let me know, that's always really

useful. A second precursor to this video

is that I'm aware that, as someone from

England, my understanding of both

colonialism and postcolonialism can

only ever really be academic. As such,

what I've aimed to do throughout both videos

is to draw on a wide range of

scholars many of whom have a far more

visceral experience of

colonialism and the

repercussions of that. For now, though,

here we go with Colonialism: What the

Theory?

Colonization has a long history. Archaic

Greece (that's the period just before

Classical Greece) established colonies

both around the Mediterranean Sea but

also around the Black Sea. They did so

partly in order to gain access to

different kinds of raw materials but

also to deal with their overpopulation

problem. The notion of Empire similarly

goes back to Ancient Egypt when the

Upper Valley, led by King Narmer, conquered

the Lower Valley thus uniting the

country. And it's worth saying early on

in this video that, within what today

we're going to be referring to as

colonialism, there is in fact a number of

different political systems. So,

colonialism and the idea of

going to "settle" a foreign land is very

different to the idea of Empire and one

nation ruling over another territory. For

the purposes of today's video, however,

we're going to largely conflate both

those two (and also the many kind of sub

forms of colonialism or Empire) in order

to talk more broadly about the notion of

one nation ruling over a distant

territory, usually overseas. And this is

partly simply for the reason that I

often cite, in order to keep this video

digestible in one sitting, but also

because, as always with this series, what

I'm interested in today is primarily the

cultural both implications and

justifications of colonialism rather

than the minutiae of each of the

particular political systems which

enabled it to happen. And, despite those

historical antecedents which I've

already discussed, we're today

exclusively going to be talking about

modern colonialism; that is when European

nations set out to either send their own

citizens to settle in foreign

territories or established political

control overseas. So, let's begin with a

brief (and certainly incomplete) review of

how the process of colonisation happened.

From the early 16th century,

technological advances in both

shipbuilding and also navigation allowed

a number of European

nations to travel overseas much

further than they had before. And, with

this, they identified possible trade

benefits. Though this period often gets

termed (extremely problematically) as the

"Age of Discovery", it's important to

remember that, as Jean Brown Mitchell

reminds us in the Encyclopedia

Britannica article, that 'it was new roots

rather than new lands that filled the

minds of kings and commoners, scholars

and seamen'.

Particularly, many European nations were

keen to access more quickly and more

directly luxury goods from Asia.

Commodities such as pepper and many

spices until this point had to be

transported over land thus going through

many different territories each of which

would add their own layer of profit.

Their motive, then, was that, by more

directly importing some of these goods

over the sea rather than over land, they

might be able to cut out some middlemen

and therefore bring the price down on

these items. As nations set off in search

of these trade routes, however, time and

again they instead found themselves

encountering new land masses which they

were previously unaware of. (This

ignorance to other continents is in spite

of the fact that the Vikings had

previously visited North America, but

that's perhaps a story for another time).

A prime example of this is the Spanish

explorer Christopher Columbus who was

searching for a passage to Asia when he

instead came across the island of San

Salvador in the Bahamas (known to its

then inhabitants as Guanahani). As more

lands began to be "discovered", European

nations largely decided, rather than just

to trade with the indigenous peoples, to

instead establish political control over

these territories and rule them from

afar. And it's worth remembering that, in

all cases, the primary motive for doing

so was to better exploit these newly

found lands for economic advantage. In

South America, for example, Spain found a

number of veins of silver ore; whereas, in

North America, it was largely tobacco

that was deemed to have real economic

potential back in Europe. Due to similar

technological advances in shipbuilding

and navigation

that had led to the first contact

between Europe and the Americas, this

period also saw the beginning of the

Atlantic slave trade in which

expeditions from European nations set

out to West Africa to either abduct

African people themselves or purchase

them from local slave catchers. Enslaved

Africans were, for the most part, shipped

to the Americas in order to carry out

the work that the exploitation of the

natural resources of that continent

required. Spain's silver mines and the

tobacco farms of the British colonies,

then, were populated largely by enslaved

people from Africa. And it's worth

pointing out that, in establishing their

political power over the rest of the

world, slavery and colonialism very much

intersected to make the European nations

that were involved in both even more

powerful. And it wasn't just about

exploiting the natural resources of

these newly found territories, it was as

much about being able to control trade

both going into these places and out of

them. The Industrial Revolution in

Britain, for example, was largely made

possible because of the "new markets" that

were opened up through the expansion of

the empire. The fact that European

colonialism was initially driven by

trade rather than by the political motive

of wanting to have that kind of

political control over the rest of the

globe can perhaps be seen most keenly in

the example of the various East India

Companies. The East India Companies of

Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and

Portugal were initially private

companies. The British East India Company,

for example, was a private enterprise

which set out for India in order,

primarily, to make money off the spice

trade. They gradually, however, also became

involved in the trading of cotton, opium

and slaves. It was this private

company which initially took control, by

force, of the Indian subcontinent; it was

only after the Indian Mutiny of 1857 in

which control was passed directly to the

UK government. This would be a very long

video if I attempted to lay out the

exact things which happened in every

case whereby a European nation

took political and economic control over

another. By 1900, however, European nations

had control of over 75% of the rest of

the world. It's also worth pointing out

how recent much of this activity was for

while here we've mainly focused on the

beginnings of the colonization process,

much of this activity continued well

into the 20th century. For example, only

10% of the continent of Africa

was under European control as recently

as 1870 when the so called "Scramble for

Africa" saw this grow over a few decades

to 90 percent. For the rest of this video,

however, I want to focus not on the

political system of colonialism but

instead on the ideology of colonialism

that sat beneath that. And the ideology

of colonialism had two main effects in

its contemporary period: the first was

to legitimise these actions in the minds

of those who were undertaking them and

the citizens of the countries in whose

names they were supposedly acting. But

far more important is the impact of

colonial ideology on the so-called

"subjects" of the countries which were

being ruled over. Margaret Cohen and

Kavita Reddy document the

development of colonialism as an

ideology fairly extensively in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

entry for the term. Most interesting is

their reminder that early colonialism

took place within a political and

religious context in which notions of

Natural Law, a philosophy developed

most influentially by Thomas Aquinas

which argued that all human beings, as God's

creations, had certain inherent rights,

was gaining traction. The popularity of

this philosophy had even reached the

Vatican and, very early on, Pope Innocent IV,

in stark contrast to the

papal authority given to the

Crusades, stated that it was not

legitimate for European nations to wage

war on indigenous

peoples simply for the reason that they

were not Christians.

Instead, violence against these people

could only be just if they were seen to

be breaking Natural Law themselves. As

Cohen and Reddy write, 'non-believers had

legitimate dominion over themselves and

their property, but this dominion was

abrogated if they proved incapable of

governing themselves according to

principles that every reasonable person

would recognise'. Here, then, we find the

genus of an idea which is a mainstay of

colonial ideology throughout the ages in