Title: ﻿The European conquest of the world - Global Learning
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﻿The European conquest of the world
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Content: But the modern European conquest of the world was more penetrating. In previous eras, the conquering power required a tribute from the conquered societies or kingdoms, but the basic structures of their political-economic systems were left intact. In contrast, European colonial domination involved the transformation of the economies of the colonized, so that the colonized regions were converted into peripheral zones in a developing world-economy. They were turned into suppliers of raw materials, on a basis of forced or cheap labor, and purchasers of the surplus manufactured goods of the colonial power. With their traditional industries destroyed, and their traditional agriculture transformed, the colonies became impoverished and economically dependent on the core. 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.