Colonisation LAQ

Question 1

Historical background of colonisation - Britain (metropole) and NZ/Aus (satellites)

Answer 1

• Enlightenment era and Industrial Revolution: global expansion and increased global networking; new inventions and advances in technology caused a shift from Feudalism to Capitalism
• Social Darwinism philosophy well entrenched; inequalities based on biologically racist theories

Question 2

What is the principle which was a philosophical justification for the colonization of the territory of less civilized people?

Answer 2

The whole Earth was open to the industry and enterprise of the human race, which had a duty/right to develop the Earth’s resources; thus the more advanced peoples were justified in dispossessing the less advanced when necessary.

Question 3

Process/phases of colonisation

Answer 3

1. Early voyages of discovery and plunder: Extension of the mother country, and extermination of the native populations
2. Exploitation of labour - slavery: black people classified as ‘sub-human’ and biologically inferior to white people which justified slavery and their deprivation.
3. Exploitation of natural resources: vast areas of land annexed by Western powers

Question 4

Effects of racism on a colonised group

Answer 4

• Places them in an inferior position in a hierarchical world system marked by inequality
• Many native people began to take on negative feelings about their own cultures. They had to accomodate to a new world in which they were made to feel inferior and subordinate. This has had an enormous flow-on effect on indigenous people’s health status.
• Dependent state removes the satellite country’s capacity to generate growth and makes it economically vulnerable

Question 5

Link social Darwinism w the sociological processes inherent in colonisation

Answer 5

• Colonisation was based on white European domination of black and/or brown skin coloured populations
• Bc of the philosophy of social darwinism, colonisation is justified on the basis of biologically racist theories.
• Felt it was acceptable to take the land and resources from the less advanced when necessary, for the betterment of the human race.