Colonization and its causes?

General Discussion
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Not exact.

  1. To say that colonized people led simpler lives is misdirecting.

Chinese and Indian people led no simpler lives than the Europeans. And in 1500, Indian and Chinese technological levels were not inferior to the European ones and the mass of available capital was greater.

And beyond technology, some “simple” civilization can be very complex, culturally.

  1. Theses “simpler” civilizations were as imperialistic that the European one.

    Mongols built an empire. No need to expand.

    China built an empire, from some divided states occupying just a fraction of its present territory. In July 751 AD, Tang and Abbasid forces met in the valley of the Talas River to vie for control over the Syr Darya region of central Asia. Tang defeat gave control of central Asia to Islam.

    Aztecs and Incas built empires. In Africa, empires were built.

  2. In the sixteenth century, Europe began it colonization of the world.

    The European powers and their elites wanted power and money, in gold and silver.

Its advantages were technology, but mainly strong centralized states, with stable succession rules, seen as legitimate by their populations and neighbors.

  1. The weaknesses of the colonized people sealed their fate.

    The Aztec empire was weak and as soon as they had a possibility of a successful revolt, the subject people revolted.

    The squabbles between the colonized people were the second weakness. Each time, the colonizing power found local allies and used them. In fact, the colonization involved a very limited number of European people.

      The Celts of Britannia showed the same weakness in front of the Saxon invasion, or the Irish in front of the Vikings, then of the English.

    The third weakness was ideological.

    The example of China is significative. The Ming dynasty had launched strong expedition up to Africa. But at a time, it enclosed itself on itself and rejected everything coming from strangers, sure of its world superiority.

    The Turkish empire was unable to adapt.

2

I agree, but technologically advanced nations were never colonized (for long).
long term colonization was mainly of technologically underdeveloped countries, regardless of their cultural histories.
AFAIK, China had advanced technology and was never a colony of another nation. Japan only ruled part of China for about 50 years.

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In the late 19th century, as China declined in the face of internal struggles and foreign intrusion, Japan was on the rise. As the world moved on to the 20th century, China’s loss of influence over Korea and the stunning victory of Japan in the Sino-Japanese War confirmed that China was no longer the premier power in the Pacific.

The Mongols had advanced technology and were very warlike. They conquered but seldom “governed” their conquests.

The colonization of India was achieved by opportunistic trade and politics.

The colonization of Indonesia by the Dutch lasted 125 years one of the longest occupations before the Japanese took it and ruled for 4 years till the end of WWII and Indonesia became independent.

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There are only a few animals in the world that have been domesticated, they happen to live where the white people started their nations. This was not technology or smarts, just evolution

4

Mostly true, except for China and India !

5

Religion played its part too, at least for Europe. Read the diaries of Columbus for example, or the pilgrims. They’re laced with references to spreading Christianity. Combine religion with technology and you get colonization and genocide.

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Thanks for starting this topic and responding to Write4U’s claim.

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Most of what we call farm animals were domesticated in Mesopotamia. Chickens were domesticated in China.

The horse and possibly dogs are the main animals domesticated by “Whites”.

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Except for one thing. If memory serves, the Egyptians were domesticating cats and maybe even dogs, during the time of Horus worship. They even buried their dead with their cats. They worshipped Bast/Bastian, with the belief the cat deity would protect their home if they treated cats well. Then there is the dog head god, Anubis. White people didn’t start Egypt.

Now the thing is, the cats in the days of Bast worship were not like the house cats we see today. I don’t exactly think they were necessarily tame leopards either. Like the dog, though, the cats may have been domesticated early in life by Egyptians, but it would take at least three cat generations, removed from the wild, for a leopard cub (or any wild cat- the Savannah is a good example) to be domesticated and even then, some of the wild would still be there. So even if the Egyptians did take a wild cub from its mother at a young age and successfully nursed the cub, which is doubtful given I don’t think they had baby bottles, but I could be wrong, it would be the cub’s grandbabies would be considered the first domestics. It is possible, but doubtful, that Egyptians domesticated wild cats.

More likely, like the dog, the Egyptians attracted young cats with food, the cats hung around, and eventually, with time, they got house cats that maybe have looked like leopards and other wild cats, but were actually more like the Bengals, Savannahs, and other large domestic cats, such as the India Lynxes my aunt raised. Which means, the Egyptians beat white people with their domesticated pets, even in a land they might have conquered.

However, some Asian leader of the time, for example, may have visited Tut, Cleo, and other Egyptian leaders and said, “I’m impressed by your cats. Is there any way I could trade for one”, traded, and took it back to China. The leader of Rome, for all we know, might have said, “My daughter heard about your cats and would like one. Is there any way we could strike a deal?” Who knows, but that’s a good bet of how domesticated animals ended up in other areas in Europe and China.

After that, the Europeans did take their cats with them, because they made good mousers on the ships.

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Okay, I might have been a little off on the domestic animal thing.