Impacts of Colonialism on Non-Western Cultures. Political Independence and Economic Dependency

Once Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas had been explored and settled by Europeans, acculturation of indigenous populations began. As a result of colonialism, local economies were disrupted and reorganized to suit European needs. Local subsistence agriculture was replaced with the production of crops and other commodities for global markets. Local handicraft industries were also driven out of business. Less developed countries supplied raw materials, whereas Europe specialized in the production and distribution of finished goods.

A primary purpose of colonialism was to establish and reinforce trade linkages between the European mother countries and their colonies. To this end. Europeans organized local transportation and urban development within each colony. In many colonies, urban development was concentrated in seaports, which served as conduits between the colony and the mother country.

Many such seaports later expanded to become major cities in Third World countries. The European governments frequently established their port cities far from populated areas and indigenous centers of political and economic power. Lagos. Rio de Janeiro. Calcutta. Bombay. Singapore, and Buenos Aires owe their origins to European colonial activity.

Transportation within colonies focused on the port cities. Europeans built railroads and highways to connect interior locations with port cities, but transportation between places within the interior was neglected. Adequate transportation within former European colonies in Africa, for example, is lacking even today.

Boundaries between colonies were drawn at conference tables in European capitals. The diplomats who drew the boundaries had little direct knowledge of local conditions. Their primary concern was to protect the interests of the European colonial powers.

Political Independence and Economic Dependency. By the early twentieth century, political movements demanding independence had begun to arise in European colonies throughout Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. In the Americas, such movements had been successful much earlier. After World War II, demands for political independence escalated rapidly. Between 1945 and 1980, most European colonies achieved political independence. Today, only a few places remain as colonies — for the most part, remote, sparsely populated places. Only Puerto Rico and Hong Kong (which is to be incorporated into China in 1997) are colonies populated by more than 250.000 residents.

The achievement of political independence has generally failed to resolve international disparities in wealth and productive capacity. Former colonies remain dependent economically on Europe. North America, the Pacific Rim economies, and the Middle East. Dependency is in part the result of acculturation. European colonial powers imposed European political systems, educational systems, languages, and other European institutions on their colonies. They organized colonial economies in order to import profits into Europe. Today, most former colonies retain strong trade linkages with the former European colonial powers.