Why britain colonised

Indeed it is often suggested that the British empire was something of a model experience, unlike that of the French, the Dutch, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Portuguese — or, of course, the Americans. There is a widespread opinion that the British empire was obtained and maintained with a minimum degree of force and with maximum co-operation from a grateful local population. This benign, biscuit-tin view of the past is not an understanding of their history that young people in the territories that once made up the empire would now recognise.

A myriad revisionist historians have been at work in each individual country producing fresh evidence to suggest that the colonial experience — for those who actually "experienced" it — was just as horrific as the opponents of empire had always maintained that it was, perhaps more so. New generations have been recovering tales of rebellion, repression and resistance that make nonsense of the accepted imperial version of what went on. Focusing on resistance has been a way of challenging not just the traditional, self-satisfied view of empire, but also the customary depiction of the colonised as victims, lacking in agency or political will.

The theme of repression has often been underplayed in traditional accounts. A few particular instances are customarily highlighted — the slaughter after the Indian mutiny in , the massacre at Amritsar in , the crushing of the Jamaican rebellion in These have been unavoidable tales.

Yet the sheer scale and continuity of imperial repression over the years has never been properly laid out and documented. No colony in their empire gave the British more trouble than the island of Ireland. No subject people proved more rebellious than the Irish. From misty start to unending finish, Irish revolt against colonial rule has been the leitmotif that runs through the entire history of empire, causing problems in Ireland, in England itself, and in the most distant parts of the British globe.

The British affected to ignore or forget the Irish dimension to their empire, yet the Irish were always present within it, and wherever they landed and established themselves, they never forgot where they had come from. The British often perceived the Irish as "savages", and they used Ireland as an experimental laboratory for the other parts of their overseas empire, as a place to ship out settlers from, as well as a territory to practise techniques of repression and control.

Entire armies were recruited in Ireland, and officers learned their trade in its peat bogs and among its burning cottages. Some of the great names of British military history — from Wellington and Wolseley to Kitchener and Montgomery — were indelibly associated with Ireland.

The particular tradition of armed policing, first patented in Ireland in the s, became the established pattern until the empire's final collapse. For much of its early history, the British ruled their empire through terror. The colonies were run as a military dictatorship, often under martial law, and the majority of colonial governors were military officers.

Normal judicial procedures were replaced by rule through terror; resistance was crushed, rebellion suffocated. No historical or legal work deals with martial law. It means the absence of law, other than that decreed by a military governor. Many early campaigns in India in the 18th century were characterised by sepoy disaffection. Britain's harsh treatment of sepoy mutineers at Manjee in , with the order that they should be "shot from guns", was a terrible warning to others not to step out of line.

Mutiny, as the British discovered a century later in , was a formidable weapon of resistance at the disposal of the soldiers they had trained. Crushing it through "cannonading", standing the condemned prisoner with his shoulders placed against the muzzle of a cannon, was essential to the maintenance of imperial control. This simple threat helped to keep the sepoys in line throughout most of imperial history.

To defend its empire, to construct its rudimentary systems of communication and transport, and to man its plantation economies, the British used forced labour on a gigantic scale. From the middle of the 18th century until , the use of non-indigenous black slave labour originally shipped from Africa was the rule.

Indigenous manpower in many imperial states was also subjected to slave conditions, dragooned into the imperial armies, or forcibly recruited into road gangs — building the primitive communication networks that facilitated the speedy repression of rebellion. Interpretations of the British Empire have changed and developed over time. In the 19th and early 20th century, some historians argued that the empire was the deserved result of Britain's technical and moral superiority.

They argued that British rule established formal systems of government, law and education as well as the development of infrastructure, like railways. However, this is a dated view that has been widely challenged.

Many modern historians argue that it is unacceptable to say that colonialized peoples did not have or would not have developed their own entirely valid forms of government, laws, and infrastructures without the influence of the British Empire. This lists the logos of programs or partners of NG Education which have provided or contributed the content on this page.

Leveled by. Tuesday, May 19, It was called the Silk Road. It made it possible for Europe to receive silks, spices, and pottery. Then in the s, new leaders took over much of Asia and Europe.

Traveling by land became difficult. It was easier to travel by sea. This encouraged European exploration. It led to Europe exploring and colonizing other lands. Colonization happens when one country invades and controls another country and its people. Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer. He was hired by Spain's king and queen to find a fast sailing route to Asia.

In , he landed on an island in the Caribbean Sea. He thought it was India, but he was wrong. He called this land the "New World. These countries included Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England. Each country wanted wealth and power.

However, each had different reasons for colonization. The country conquered many lands and empires. Most were in Central America and South America. While they were not as successful in the rest of North America, there are still signs of their rule. A fort built in present-day Florida by the Spanish in is the oldest surviving European post in the United States. The Spanish also wanted to spread the Christian faith to Native Americans.

Missions were created to teach the native people European ways. The first mission was led by Don Juan in New Mexico in It was followed by many others as they became more established. Expanding from villages to cities, the missions became home to explorers and other settlers. France traded animal furs with the Native Americans. However, the French influence in North America was always relatively small.

Even though it is a small country, the Netherlands prospered in North America because of its navy.