Title: ﻿The European conquest of the world - Global Learning
Headings: 
﻿The European conquest of the world
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Content: The peripheralization of the conquered peoples had the consequence that when formal political independence was conceded, in response to nationalist movements, the newly independent countries encountered tremendous obstacles to autonomous development. In addition to the legacy of colonial economic structures, these obstacles included imperialist strategies by the core powers, seeking to preserve the core-peripheral relation with the colonized regions. So today the world-system stands on a foundation of colonialism: it is a neocolonial world-system. In the development and maintenance of the project of global conquest, it has been necessary for the colonizing governments to justify the conquests in the eyes of the peoples of the conquering nations. The participation of the people has been required: for officers and soldiers in the armed forces; and for merchants and consumers in the developing structures of global commerce. During the first three centuries of the world-system, the justification was religious: the conquered peoples were not Christian, and thus considered not civilized, so the conquest was viewed as bringing civilization to the world.