Compare And Contrast Colonialism And Imperialism

Colonialism and imperialism are hard to differentiate from one another because they are both underlying repression of a dependent state. In many instances, those two concepts are regarded as words with the same meaning (Kohn, 2012). Although colonialism and imperialism, both refer to political and economic domination of the other, thus having a great deal in common, they also have real differences. Both of them refer to the practice of one country suppressing another. In both suppressions, the dominant country has political and economic control of the country or region that it is dominating. In this sense, the two are very much the same thing. Though they both refer to the domination of another country, colonialism is

the control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people while imperialism refers to the process of building an empire. It is better to see and thought of colonialism as practice and imperialism as the idea motivating the practice (“Difference between Colonialism and Imperialism,” n.d.).
Colonialism refers to the exploitation of the resources of the subdued country for the welfare of the subjugator. It is where one can see great or large scale movement of people to new land to settle in those territories. Colonialism is a term used to describe the settlement of places like India, Australia, North America, Algeria, New Zealand and Brazil, which were all controlled by the Europeans (“Difference between Colonialism and Imperialism,” n.d.).
Howe (2002) explains that “imperialism is the unequal human and territorial relationship, usually in the form of an empire, based on ideas of superiority and practices of dominance, and involving the extension of authority and control of one state or people over another.

It is also the process and ideology that does not only focus on political dominance, but rather, conquest over expansion. Imperialism is particularly focused on the control that one group, often a state power, has on another group of people.” Imperialism can simply be thought as the expansion of the dominance and territory of the conquering country. It is where the colonizers exercises power over the conquered regions either through sovereignty or indirect mechanisms of control. The scramble for Africa in the late 19th century and the American domination of Puerto Rico and the Philippines can be cited as examples of imperialism (“Difference between Colonialism and Imperialism,” n.d.).

Comparing the origin of the two, imperialism has a longer history than colonialism. While the history of colonialism dates back to 15th century, Imperialism has its origins dating back to the Romans (“Difference between Colonialism and Imperialism,”

n.d.).
According to historians, colonialism can be divided into two types: settler colonialism, and exploitation colonialism. Settler colonialism is a form and process of colonial formation whereby foreign people move into a region with the principal purposes of occupying the land they moved in to and the formation of a new community rather than removal or withdrawal of labor or resources of the land they colonized (“What is Settler Colonialism?,” n.d.). Settler colonialism’s goal or intention is always the possession of the naïve territories. This objective of this type of colonialism can be achieved by blatant ways like warfare and military domination but also in astute ways like assimilation which involves the systematic deprivation of native culture and substitute it with that of the dominant country’s culture. One popular scholar, Patrick Wolfe, argued that the concept of settler colonialism is that it destroys in order to replace (“American Settler Colonialism 101,” n.d.). Exploitation colonialism, on the other hand is an economic policy of conquering a country to exploit its natural resources and its native population. In this type of colonialism, no large scale movement can be seen and it is more associated with dominant seeking nations (Levine, n.d.)