Racism and Colonialism

To determine whether there are any beneficial features of colonialism, it is necessary to examine what colonialism entails. Colonialism is the act, policy, or dominating practice of a nation that wants to preserve its dominance over the people of neighboring countries. This act of keeping authority over another country is frequently done in order to develop or exploit the colonized country in a way that benefits the colonizing country. In most situations, colonialism results in improvements to the colonized country's economy, religion, education, language, and culture, among other things. Colonialism is a term used to describe the method in which one country uses to acquire vast amounts of land and other resources in another country while taking control of the manner in which operations are carried out in this country.

Some colonialists believed that it was their duty to improve the state of the countries in which they were colonizing by empowering the less educated and poor in the society who would be very useful in gathering more resources for the colonizing country. Colonizing nations believed that the more colonies they had to themselves the more power they yielded amongst their equals as a result of the vast availability of resources including human capital. This can be seen from the scramble for Africa where super powers including Belgium, Spain, England among others; would divide the lands they wanted to conquer.

Colonialism would take place where the colonizing country would send settlers into the country they aimed at controlling who would then acquire full governance of this country in terms of its politics, markets and natural resources. These settlers would impose their religious beliefs, their structures in terms of linguistics and their cultural beliefs which are still dominant in the way of life for citizens in the colonized states.

Positive Aspects of Colonialism

Some researchers argue most of what was done by the colonialists in the colonizing nations was to benefit themselves, however most of their efforts are beneficial to most of these countries to date. Additionally, there is also the argument that some countries that were never colonized including Japan are some of the economic leaders on a global scale today in comparison to other countries mainly in Africa that were colonized. This point of view is flawed considering the fact that many factors have contributed to African nations being third-world countries including greed from their leaders. The benefits of colonialism can be analyzed in terms of the political effects, social effects, technological effects and economic effects.

The social effects of colonialism mainly revolve around culture, religion and languages that colonized nations were able to acquire for themselves. In most countries in Africa, colonizing nations were able to teach people how to speak English, French and Spanish amongst other European languages which has facilitated easier communication between people of different nations. These languages are considered to have great aesthetic value especially from the aspect of colonized nations as an individual is considered to be more learned if they can speak diverse European languages. Colonialists were able to bring Islam and Christianity to Africa mainly amongst their key colonized nations.

These religions have played a great role in harmonizing people across nations and continents as a result of shared beliefs. Religion provided people with a sense of belonging and united them to the rest of the world that was considered to have more civilization. Religion also made it easier for people to move from one country to another and it even proved to be beneficial as it made it easier for people to learn from one another. Religion brought about peace and respect for one another as people had to live in accordance to ideals set either in the Bible or the Quran considering Christianity and Islam were the two main religions that were acquired vastly. To date, religion still unites people of a country who are able to stand for various ideals that value human life as well as morality in the society. Religion has also provided a moral compass which governs how people should live together in a society amidst contemporary social evils.

One of the major social benefits of colonialism was education. Through education, native people were able to learn more about their country and come up with better ways of how to govern their societies and country at large. Education improved a country’s political system in terms of their judiciary, their economic system as people started to adopt the use of currency within their trade operations, the use of medicine to cure various illnesses, better farming practices amongst other benefits. Through education, various leaders were able to rise up to inspire the native people to retain control over their lands and chase their colonialists back to their countries.