3.3 Political Legacies of Imperialism

3.3 Political Legacies of Imperialism

How should contemporary society respond to the legacies of historical globalization?

Historical globalization led to many changes in the political structure of many nations. Throughout the period of 1870–1914, most of the great European powers expanded into Asia and Africa, as well as the islands of the South Pacific. All of them were brought under imperial control as existing political structures were changed and unified under an imperial system.

As you have learned, when the first European settlers arrived in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, each nation they colonized had its own political, economic, and social structures. In some cases, political change meant the colonizing government worked with the existing government to create policies favourable to the Europeans. In others, it meant establishing entire governments whose tasks were to rule over both the people who already lived there and the immigrants. In areas such as the Americas and parts of Africa, often different laws were applied to the settlers than to the Indigenous people. While imperialist policies led the French and then the British to impose their own political systems on North America, the interconnections of globalization taught the Europeans new ways of governing.

Changes to Political Systems

As more Europeans came to their colonies both in North America and in the other parts of the world, they became the dominant force. They began to make more and more decisions involving the colony using methods that were unfamiliar to and vastly different from the governing systems of Indigenous people. Often colonial governments made changes that would greatly impact Indigenous people, who had not been consulted at all. As time went on, governments, particularly in Canada, would recognize that they needed to make agreements with the Indigenous people in the form of treaties.