Western Colonialism

AFGHAN WARS (Western Colonialism)

When the British Indian army invaded Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842), the country was a mere shadow of the mighty and feared Kingdom of Afghanistan of the eighteenth century. The demise of the Afghan state resulted partly from internal reasons, but it was mainly due to the loss of its traditional source of […]

ALBUQUERQUE, AFONSO DE (Western Colonialism)

1453-1515 Afonso d’Albuquerque, known as ”the Great,” was born in Alhandra, near Lisbon, Portugal, and died at sea off Goa, India. He was the second governor of India, who laid the foundations of the Portuguese Empire in the Orient. Albuquerque was the second son of the senhor of Vila Verde. His ancestors and those of […]

AFRIKANER (Western Colonialism)

The first Afrikaner(s) were settlers, mainly of Dutch origin, who established themselves in the Cape of Good Hope region. Their descendants controlled South Africa for a long time and were the architects of the racist system that prevailed there until the 1990s. Initially, the Afrikaner were known as Boers, a word that means “farmer,” “peasant.” […]

AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS (Western Colonialism)

Slavery, a fairly universal development across many of the world’s ancient and early modern societies, took myriad forms reflecting a number of variables within a given historical setting. The enslavement of both Native American and African peoples in the Americas was no different, in this respect, from previous developments. Yet slavery in the Americas was […]

ALCOHOL

Alcohol has a long history predating European colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa. African traditional drinks include first and foremost the thick, cloudy grain beers of the savannah areas of East Africa and southern Africa and the Sahelian zone, and the palm and banana wines of the higher rainfall areas, especially in Central and West Africa. TRADITIONAL […]

ALGERIA

Algeria’s significance in the history of Western colonialism can be seen in four stages. In Algeria the transition from medieval and early modern (in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries) to modern and contemporary interactions (in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) between Europe and the southern Mediterranean is particularly visible. Algeria was the scene of both […]

AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY

The American Colonization Society (ACS), formed in 1817, actualized aspirations of some African American leaders who supported repatriation and settlement of free blacks in Africa. African American participation in the American Revolutionary War did not yield anticipated results— emancipation and justice. Two main schools of thought, migration and integration, competed as solutions to the conditions […]

AMERICAN CROPS, AFRICA (Western Colonialism)

The Columbian Exchange left significant marks on African history and society, arguably nowhere more than in the introduction of American food crops, which occurred within the context of Portuguese trade in slaves and commodities and the development of a broader Atlantic economy. Subsequent increase in the cultivation of these crops is inseparable from population growth […]

ANGLO-BURMESE WARS (Western Colonialism)

Three wars were fought between Burma and the British colonial empire during the nineteenth century. THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR OF 1824-1826 From the end of the eighteenth century the Burmese king Bodawpaya (r. 1782-1817), steadily expanded his realm westward. At the same time the British gained territorial control over Bengal and elsewhere in India. In […]

AMERICAN SAMOA (Western Colonialism)

Samoa is an archipelago of islands situated in the South Pacific. The western islands of the archipelago, including Upolu and Savai’i, comprise the present-day independent nation of Samoa. The eastern islands comprise the present-day U.S. Territory of American Samoa since the 1899 Treaty of Berlin division of Samoa, at which time Germany and the United […]

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