Why the need for colonies?

Tanc49 said:
I object to this statement, the Normans had the right to come and Guillaume was the rightful heir to the crown of England, unlike Harold, this impious impostor!
*my claim above is in no way related to me being from Normandy :D*
The legal issue here is not whether Harold Godwinson was the legal king and Guillaume usurped him :D, but lesser Normans stole land that in the Doomsday had Saxon titleholders. In these cases there is no evidence that the King of England (the legal owner) ordered the transfer.

As an aside, Thirty Years War Germany, land could be owned by one person, rents due to another and the tenancy by a third. Buy the wrong one and you receive a pig in poke.

Julius Vogel said:
So we are all agreed then, the best way to prevent colonialism is an independent Land Registry office, where all ownership, leasehold or other rights or interests in property are registered so all comers can properly check such rights before sale and purchase of land?
A more reliable way is to stick a sword, musket or Maxim machine gun up the nose of the would be coloniser. People don't tend to colonise lands where they get run out (eg 19th century Italians from Ethiopia, 1st century Romans from the east bank of the Rhine). Manhatten is an exception to the general rule that colonies are usually obtained by brute force (before or after a chief has been duped into signing over land).
 
You're forgetting Kenya and Rhodesia.

Kenya- small White population not even two generations deep which disappeared soon after independence.

Rhodesia- Somewhat deeper roots- Local born White population was in generation four in Ian Smith's day though a large share of Whites were descended from post WW2 immigrants. In the four decades since the Smith government went down to defeat the White population has dropped a sparse handful of unfortunate elderly with nowhere else to go.
 
Rhodesia- Somewhat deeper roots- Local born White population was in generation four in Ian Smith's day though a large share of Whites were descended from post WW2 immigrants. In the four decades since the Smith government went down to defeat the White population has dropped a sparse handful of unfortunate elderly with nowhere else to go.

Part of this is due to chance. If Rhodesian didn't have such a selective immigration policy (with wealth requirements), it would easily have a White population whose percentage is on par with South Africa (or higher). There were quite a few years where tens of thousands of Europeans applied to immigrate, and only a few thousand were let in (in 1948, 80,000 applied to get in; <4,000 did).
 
What did European States want?

Access to cheap raw materials.
Access (preferable exclusive) to markets for their manufactured goods.
Safe places to invest money.
Power and prestige (which involves, among other things, control over strategically located territories and populations).
Religious proselytization, land for settlement, military achievement, etc.

Now, you could have at least the first three through treaties and trade agreements. The problem is, treaties, trade agreements, and investments work relatively poorly in the absence of strong centralized governments. Further, it's better to work with one large nation-state than with a patchwork of many smaller ones. Also, xenophobia is not confined to white people; local rulers didn't always have the ability or desire to prevent outrages committed against the strange-seeming European visitors (especially when they behaved arrogantly or without respect for indigenous ways). Finally, local rulers may prove annoyingly willing to "switch horses" and cut a deal with your rival; they're not bound as tightly into the nation-state system with its pressures to respect convention.

All such problems are more easily manageable in a fairly orderly and predictable world of stable nation-states; but if the region you're interested in lacks a strong nation-state polity, you can't force one to arise; such things take time.

So if you want to ensure a stable and predictable environment for your resource extraction, markets and investments, maybe you'd do better to simply conquer and run the joint yourself. Then you don't have to worry about agreeable King A being overthrown and his treaty agreements renounced by Nephew B. You don't have to worry about unruly locals assaulting your miners or railroad workers with Prince C either unable or unwilling to control them. You don't have to worry about Potentate D striking a more favorable trade deal with your rival. When problems arise, a strong government (yours!) is able and willing to address them.

Europe became a group of Westphalian nation-states, which (for understandable reasons) wanted to deal with other nation-states of the same sort. In the absence of such nation-states, conquest and direct rule seemed the best alternative.

Then there are the other factors. Want to proselytize among the natives? Your missionaries will be safest in a region you control. Need land for emigration? Establishing your own rule and military presence protects your settlers. Want to achieve military glory through conquest (a thing still very much honored in Europe)? It's growing harder to wage wars of conquest in Europe, so you'd better export that aggression.

Of course, it helped if the difficult locals were mere "bloody wogs" or "sauvages non civilises". Who could blame you for imposing order on such?
 
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understandable reasons) wanted to deal with other nation-states of the same sort. In the absence of such nation-states, conquest and direct rule seemed the best alternative.
Where they did find them, eg Argentina, Euorpeans were more than happy to work on a more equitable basis. Equitable that is as long as you don't step out of line. The moment you in go the gunboats and marines.

Of course, it helped if the difficult locals were mere "bloody wogs" or "sauvages non civilises". Who could blame you for imposing order on such?
The less European you looked and behaved, the more likely that you would have order imposed on you. The behaviour bit is important because whilst the Chinese and Japanese did not look like Europeans to the same degree, Japan "caused less trouble" and hence had to pay less indemnities. That gave it the money it needed to buy in European technology, experts, etc.
 
Where they did find them, eg Argentina, Euorpeans were more than happy to work on a more equitable basis. Equitable that is as long as you don't step out of line. The moment you in go the gunboats and marines.

The less European you looked and behaved, the more likely that you would have order imposed on you. The behaviour bit is important because whilst the Chinese and Japanese did not look like Europeans to the same degree, Japan "caused less trouble" and hence had to pay less indemnities. That gave it the money it needed to buy in European technology, experts, etc.

I would have to disagree with this. In Africa, the British came across the Zulu, Benin and Yoruba kingdoms and yet things did not turn out like they did with Japan. The three I've mentioned weren't nation states in the western sense but they were polities with their own political leaders, laws and customs. I think its also useful to mention Abyssinia which was for the most part left alone by the Europeans in the 19th century(there was I beleive a lone British punitive expidition.) I believe the Orthodox Christianity practiced by the Abyssinians played a significant role in their being left alone since the Europeans would see no need for missionaries there.
 
I would have to disagree with this. In Africa, the British came across the Zulu, Benin and Yoruba kingdoms and yet things did not turn out like they did with Japan. The three I've mentioned weren't nation states in the western sense but they were polities with their own political leaders, laws and customs.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make. All three had a lower level of technology than the Japanese, ran badly afoul of the British and got conquered.

I think its also useful to mention Abyssinia which was for the most part left alone by the Europeans in the 19th century(there was I beleive a lone British punitive expidition.)
Not really. They defeated the Italians at Adwa.
 
And some were for excess population.

Now this is something I've been interested in. While people love to hand me Vlad Tepes awards for having lethal, American-originated plagues in my timelines, the fact is that scenario has averted (at least temporarily) Malthusian-inspired war in Europe in my timeline.

I do wonder how dystopian Europe would really be without the 'pressure valve' of settler colonies. Perhaps this would cause earlier industrialization, and people who would have become colonists IOTL would have come up with innovations that would help their motherlands escape Malthus' trap. Perhaps they would immigrate to other parts of Europe, settling in the more sparsely-populated east among the Slavs (this is the scenario that played out in my current timeline). Or, perhaps there would be war-even nastier wars of religion, genocide against Jews, Roma, and other 'undesirables', followed by mass starvation as crops go unplanted and outbreaks of diseases like typhus, typhoid fever, and bubonic plague flair up in the starving and beaten population.
 
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