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Many settler colonies sought to establish European-like institutions and practices that granted certain personal freedoms and allowed settlers to become wealthy by engaging in trade. [17] Thus, jury trials, freedom from arbitrary arrest , and electoral representation were implemented to allow settlers rights similar to those enjoyed in Europe ...
Many European statesmen and industrialists wanted to accelerate the Scramble for Africa, securing colonies before they strictly needed them. As a champion of Realpolitik , Bismarck disliked colonies and thought they were a waste of time, but his hand was forced by pressure from both the elites and the general population which considered the ...
Furthermore, local tribal leaders did not simply give up their own people for the aforementioned commodities but rather through intertribal wars, debts, and civil crime offenders. [5]: 54 Labor in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies became scarce. European diseases and forced labor began killing the indigenous people in insurmountable numbers.
The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, dogs and various domesticated fowl, from which many diseases originally stemmed. In contrast to the indigenous people, the Europeans had developed a richer endowment of antibodies. [64]
Before the expansion of early modern European powers, other empires had conquered and colonized territories, such as the Roman Empire in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Modern colonial empires first emerged with a race of exploration between the then most advanced European maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, during the 15th century. [2]
The Scramble for Africa [a] was the conquest and colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers driven by the Second Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century in the era of "New Imperialism": Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
On the other hand, European colonial empires sometimes attempted to channel, restrict and impede trade involving their colonies, funneling activity through the metropole and taxing accordingly. Despite the general trend of economic expansion, the economic performance of former European colonies varies significantly.
The first phase of European colonization of Southeast Asia took place throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Where new European powers competing to gain monopoly over the spice trade, as this trade was very valuable to the Europeans due to high demand for various spices such as pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.