Arguments Against Colonialism

For almost four centuries, ever since Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the major European countries have been dominating the world by means of colonization. As Jerry Kloby defines it, “colonialism can be best described as the formal political domination of one country by another in which the relationship between the two nations is always one of economic exploitation, although the dominant nation may pretend otherwise” (pp. 100). Through violence and forced labor, countries such as England, France, and Spain have been able to colonize the countries they see to be weaker and exploit their natural resources. Even though the colonizing countries say that they are helping the colonized countries, there is much evidence to support …show more content…
Rothenberg argues that the “vast inequalities of wealth […], the unrelenting poverty that is the reality of life for the majority of the world’s people, […] cannot be understood unless we place them in the context of colonization and its consequences for development” (pp. 76). She is suggesting that the reason for some much of the world’s poverty and the vast gaps between the rich and the poor can be attributed to colonialism. During the time of colonialism, the natives that were being forced into labor were making very little profit, if they were making any profit at all. This can be credited to two main reasons—very low wages and high taxes. One example of this was seen in France’s West Africa—“In a sense, the peasant was exploited twice, first by selling his crop and then by handing over a part of the money made from the sale to the French government as tax payments” (Kloby, pp. 102). In order to make any money, the farmers needed to produce crops that the French wanted to buy. Then part of the money that they made needed to go back to the French government in order to pay their taxes. Even if the people did make some money from their produce, they would loose most of their profit anyway. This did not allow the natives of the colonized countries to grow economically, and it kept them perpetually below the economic standings of the colonizers. Even after the colonized countries have obtained their freedom, there is still evidence of the economic inequality of the past. Another major reason for this long lasting effect is during the time of colonization “whenever internal forces seemed to push in the direction of African industrialization, they were deliberately blocked by the colonial governments […]. European industrialists did not then welcome even the simple stage of processing groundnuts into oil on African