Colonial Empires
The study of the process of decolonization wouldn’t be complete without looking first at the colonies. Using Wikidata informations on colonies, we regroup on the map below the colonies for the nine biggest European colonial empires. We choose to overshadow the size of the colonized population to focus on the number of colonies. The barplot below shows us that the United Kingdom was the biggest Empire of this era, it was the biggest empire in human history.
The map of colonies per European powers shadows the colonial policies of the different superpowers.
Russia was always focused on neighboring colonies for boundary expansion. It began through the XV to XVII centuries to expand their territory up to the Sea of Okhotsk, on the Asian side of the Pacific Ocean. In the scope of our analysis, the Soviet Union continued to establish its boundaries by taking control of various countries from the balkans up to Eastern Europe.
On another hand, Portuguese and Spanish colonies established first their influence over the American continent after the discovery of new techniques for fast-sailing travels. They brought their languages and religions to the natives of those countries.
Finally the United Kingdom and France were the one that expanded the most. They followed an imperialist expansion process through North America, to Africa and even to Asia. Both countries still possess up to this day territories in various continents and in various oceans.
Gentlemen, we need to talk higher and truer! It must be said openly that the superior races do indeed have a right with respect to the inferior races because there is a duty for them. They have a duty to civilize the inferior races.
The imperialist countries justified their colonization process as a way to bring civilization to the lower « races ». As Jules Ferry stated in front of the French Chamber of Deputies in 1885, it was a duty to them. To put this in context, Jules Ferry was Prime Minister of France while being part of the progressists political movements. This propaganda was brought to the colonizers population and made a consensus emerge in favor of colonialism, as shown on the various posters on the right of this screen.
Nonetheless, every line were moved once the european superpowers began to drag their colonies in their World Wars. France and United Kingdom draw on their colonial empires extensively for both human and material resources.
France took some 200’000 colonized to work in war industries, while also dragging 500,000 to take the uniform of the French Army and man the trenches of the Western Front. The colonized people expected in return more consideration from the central government, which they didn’t get. Thus nationalism in the colonies became stronger in between the two wars to gain full potential after World War II.