Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. The rise and fall of the British Empire has created a plethora of intellectual cpaial which discuss the reasons for the sunset. Most empires began as visions in the minds of people. Modern colonialism started with the Age of Discovery. Portugal and Spain discovered new lands across the oceans and built trading posts.The UK and Japan were tiny islands, and Portugal, France and Spain were small states who could not sustain empires. Russia, China and the USA are colossal countries which can hold territory, wage protracted wars, and sustain losses for a decade.  British victories in the Spanish, Seven Years’ war and the Napoleonic Wars established London as the leading colonial power.

Henry the VIIIth (1509–1525?) envisioned a “that this realm of England is an empire” , at a time when Vasco De Gama was going around the Cape of Good Hope and  discovering a sea route to South Asia. At the same time Zaheerudding Babr was also planning an Mpire in South Asia. The main statesman who envisioned the UK as a maritime and worldwide power in the first half of the 18th century was a person by the name of William Pitt.

European colonial “Empires” were built on a new concept called exploitation of local resources by subjugating other people and their territories. Empire building required neglect of its own peoples and diversion of funds to miliatry spending. At the time when the UK and France were building arms, London and Paris were shanty town. European countries engaged in massive expenditures in defense. In the 1880s the UK was spending as much as the combined expenditure of the next two high-spending powers, Russia and France. To consecrate its status as an empire, Queen Victoria was declared as the Empress of India in 1876.

Colonialism
Six countries: Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and the United States, had colonies in Southeast Asia.

Portugal
The Portuguese had the least impact on Southeast Asia. They captured Malacca in 1511, holding it until the Dutch seized it in 1641. Otherwise, they maintained only a small piece of territory on the island of Timor, southeast of Bali.

Spain
Spain ruled the Philippines from its conquest of Cebu in 1565 and Manila in 1571 until its defeat in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

The Netherlands
Dutch colonialism falls into two periods. the first, that of the V.O.C., or Dutch East India Company, lasted from 1605 to 1799. The V.O.C. had little interest in territorial administration; its primary concern was to maximize profits through trading monopolies.

When the V.O.C. collapsed in 1799, the Dutch government took control of its assets in 1825, after the Napoleonic Wars, and began to bring the Indonesian archipelago under its administrative authority. This process was completed during the 1930s.

At the end of the Second World War, the Dutch had hoped to retain the Netherlands East Indies as a colony, but the Indonesians opposed the return of the Dutch, setting up a republic in 1945. In 1949, after four years of fighting, the Indonesians gained their independence with the assistance of the United Nations which served as a mediator between the Indonesians and the Dutch.

Great Britain
The British conquered Burma, fighting three Anglo-Burmese Wars in 1824-26, 1852, and 1885-86. Unlike other colonies which maintained their ethnic identity, Burma was a province of British India. The Burmese, therefore, had two sets of rulers, the British at the top with the Indians in the middle. In 1935 the British agreed to separate Burma from India, putting this agreement into effect in 1937. Burma was able to negotiate its independence from Great Britain in 1948.

Penang (acquired in 1786), Singapore (founded by Raffles in 1819), and Malacca (Melaka, acquired in 1824), were governed by Britain as the Straits Settlements. The Straits Settlements served as a base for British expansion into the Malay Peninsula between 1874 and 1914. When the Malay States entered into negotiations for their independence–achieved in 1957–Penang and Malacca became part of Malaysia as did Singapore in 1963. However, Singapore was asked to withdraw from the federation in1965. Singapore has been an independent city state since that date. Sarawak and Sabah which joined Malaysia in 1963 continue to remain members of the federation.

France
France moved into Vietnam in 1858, capturing Saigon in 1859. Using the south, then called Cochin China, as a base the French moved west and north completing the conquest of Indochina by 1907. (Indochina–the five territories under French authority: Cochin China, Annam, Tongking, Laos, and Cambodia.) The French also wanted to retain their colony after the Second World War. The Vietnamese rejected French rule, and after defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu, obtained their independence at the Geneva Conference in 1954.

The United States
The United States moved into the Philippines as a result of the peace settlement with Spain in 1898. The Filipinos were granted a Commonwealth (internal autonomy) government in 1935, and their independence in 1946.

Thailand
Thailand continued to be independent. It was the only Southeast Asian state to remain independent during the colonial period.

The rise the sunset of the British Empire. Image via Wikipedia

It is a fact that by 1900, the British Empire was the uncontested Superpower which was at its apex. It was at this time that French began to lose its status as the Lingua Franca of the world. France was the second largest empire which held 52 million inhabitants hostage to Paris. Britain had colonized 400 million people at the time when London controlled a fifth of world’s land.

The British, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish and other European Empire was fueled by greedy traders and maverick adventurers, many of them belonging to the nefarious East India Company. These so called traders were making English settlements in the West Indies since the beginning of the 17th century. It was the acolytes of these British corporations that were setting up encampments around the world. Credit for extending British power to Nigeria and South Africa goes to adventurists like Lugard and Cecil Rhodes.

Most of these wars were turf wars to take advantage of mines or land. The Boer War of 1899-1902 that was waged to gain control of gold and diamond mines. Mohandas Gandhi supported the Boear war and served as Seargent Major Gandhi in the wars against the Zulus. Colonization of Latin America and other countries led to massive hunger and genocide. Australian Aboriginese, who “were hunted and killed as if little different from wild animals.” The colonists in America and Australia passed on two deadly Western diseases – smallpox and influenza – to the natives.

The rise the sunset of the British Empire. Image via Wikipedia

Settlers acted as the link between the natives and the imperial hegemony, bridging the geographical, ideological and commercial gap between the colonizers and colonized. An expanding empire demanded labor for the colonies, so not only ordinary citizens were encouraged to emigrate to the new lands– the criminals were also transported to what came to be called ‘the penal colonies in Australia and the West Indies. The British Parliament enacted about 17 Acts between 1718 and 1763 legalising transportation as a penalty for even such petty crimes as the theft of property between a shilling and £2. 158,000 convicts were shipped to Australia, and another 80,000 were dumped in America and the West Indies. Over two crore British nationals to move to colonies between 1815 and 1914.

After the subjugation of the colonies schemes were devised in the name of ‘free trade and commerce’ to milk their resources and wealth. The Navigation Acts ensured that the colonies did not trade with foreign countries. The North American colonies were prohibited from making steel, and refining iron. Britain did not allow its citizens to wear imported garments.

British colonists procured furs from Canada, fish from New Zealand, sugar from Fiji and West Indies, silk from China, tea and jute from India and gold from South Africa–at rock bottom prices or free. In 1782, Sir John Macpherson admitted that Britain had used India as a vassal state and received more than £50 million from India alone since 1757 – the year the East India Company captured Bengal after the historic battle of Plassey. This plundered wealth was reinvested to produce more wealth, so much so that by 1913 the UK had become the biggest overseas investor in the world, with a third of its wealth invested abroad.

The natives were also used as cannon fodder to fight other wars, with folks like Gandhi acting as self-professed Recruiter-In-Chiefs.Millions were sent to fight for the Union Jack or other European flags.

Out of 120,000 conscripted New Zealanders, 50,000 were injured and 18,000 killed 332,000 Australians, 58,460 were dead whereas over 56,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the service of the empire.

The UK made a lot of enemies. Japan gave it humiliating defeats in Singapore and in Malaya, Hong Kong and Burma during World War II. The spread of colonial empires was reduced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by the American Revolutionary War and the Latin American wars of independence

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