I've been thinking lately.Rather than direct colonization, what if Europeans simply signed trade agreements with the natives wherever they wanted to trade with and invest in those places as well if they wanted to. If these agreements are respected by other European countries then they would respect each others "turf". I understand that some colonies were settler colonies so what if Europeans simply bought land from the natives instead of taking it from them? It would have avoided lots of bloodshed on both sides.
Why the need for colonies?
- Thread starter Emperor Palpatine
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Prestige? I mean sure resource/settler colonization was the onus before the 19th century but by that time Europe had industrialized and was bored.
So the Scramble for Africa became the most deleterious dick-waving contest in history before the world wars.
So the Scramble for Africa became the most deleterious dick-waving contest in history before the world wars.
This did happen IOTL in some cases. There is the famous case of Manhattan Island being sold to the Dutch for the equivalent of 60 guilders' worth of trinkets.
William Penn also emphasized a policy of purchasing land in the colony of Pennsylvania.
The problem with buying land, though, was that the indigenous people often did not fully understand what they were agreeing to (as the treaties were naturally written in the Europeans' language), which often led to future conflict.
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unprincipled peter
Donor
problem one: usually, you need infrastructure to have an effective trade system, which usually means a control system. it's rare that a trade set up was a harmonious good for all situation where both sides agreed on all and held up their end of the bargain indefinitely. much of what's considered 'trade' was an extractive industry. The americas aren't going to willingly ship all their gold/silver to Europe even if given fair market price, and europe isn't going to pay fair market price when they can take it for less, and taking it means infrastructure.
problem two: getting the colonizers to respect each other's turf. the history of man is basically wanting the biggest piece of pie, and conniving to deny as much as possible to others. No one is going to politely acknowledge that Spain is entitled to all that Peruvian silver because of some gentleman's agreement.
problem two: getting the colonizers to respect each other's turf. the history of man is basically wanting the biggest piece of pie, and conniving to deny as much as possible to others. No one is going to politely acknowledge that Spain is entitled to all that Peruvian silver because of some gentleman's agreement.
Looking back, I have to wonder if the Europeans knew what they were getting into when they colonized Africa. Land that held a bunch of diseases that killed whites by the truckload, an ecology that typically required a different style of agriculture to make it profitable, and Africa was in many parts so relatively lightly populated compared to Asia that they probably didn't provide that much of a market for European goods.
That's three out of six habitable continents that functioned as a pressure-release valve for Europe.
Random aside: I remember a quote about colonization and WW2 that basically said "What Europe found so monstrous about Hitler was that he applied the same type of racism and brutality when dealing with Europeans as Europeans did when dealing with the natives of the regions they colonized."
Part of the rationale for colonizing Africa was that it represented the last chance to do so, since the rest of the world had been carved up already. Colonies were seen as a kind of long-term investment: a disease-filled tropical swampland in 1880 might turn into a valuable agricultural producer and/or a place to send colonists in 1930. That was the thinking, anyway.
Anaxagoras
Banned
Why give out medals at the Olympics? A lot of it was just chest-thumping. After all, if you have the third largest colonial empire in the world, you can lord it over those losers who have only the fourth largest colonial empire in the world.
A lot of it was Social Darwinism. Especially for Africa, Westerners thought along the lines of "They're wasting the land/resources. Our way of life is clearly better than theirs and they won't be able to adapt to our ways unless we interact with them directly. Taking over their land will only benefit them, they just can't understand that yet"
lordapocalipsis
Banned
That is the case of the Spanish colonies, they used the colonies to pillage: goold, silver and other resources, but at the same time, use the colonies as markets for their products.
In the case of Portuguese they were most as points to controll trade routes.
the same could be said about Dutch
Ok so why not simply invest in a mine in South America? Sign a treaty with the natives giving you permission to do so and have some sort of berlin conference that comes up with a system for acknowledging such treaties in Europe.
Possible in the case of the Incas had they not gone through a destructive civil war that put the final nail in the coffin for their empire's survival. Also it would help if the English have a bigger interest in South America, they could use the Incas as a buffer to Spanish domination. For other natives, I'm afraid it is much more difficult to avoid the Europeans' desire for resources and prestige.
Well, there comes a point where Incans will not subjugate their national interests for the benefit of Spain (such as allowing Spain to possess a monopoly on their trade). You'd also have to go through various middlemen (i.e. the Incan bureaucracy) before the Spanish crown gets the money. Probably much more efficient to coerce the Incans into doing your bidding at the point of a gun, especially with the massive technological disparity.
Though of course, the Spanish conquest of the Mesoamerican empires seemed pretty haphazard and also motivated by the prospect of gigantic plunder (e.g. the gold hoard which the conquistadores wanted to find).
Where's the glory in that? Kings wanted subjects, not just trading partners.
That's rational from a capitalist mindset .
From a mercantilist mindset, ownership is required so that colonies can be exploited for the benefit of the mother country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism