Hisotry of Colonialism and Its Effect

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History of colonialism:

Colonialism as we know today is part of the history of most developing countries; we can never really understand the structure of these economies without taking account of the history. Colonialism may be defined as a particular form taken by the process of creating an integrated world economy and the development of an international division of labor Fieldhouse (1994:164). Colonialism in the 20th century has been subject to a lot of blame as a result various theorists such as Walter Rodney, Andre Gunder Frank have written extensively on the impact colonialism has African countries and how the disadvantage for this has been of advantage to the western societies. Similarly the discourse and practice of colonialism started around the 19th century and declined after the First World War.
Although most colonies had made significant economic advancement, prior to 1885 such progress could not be considered advanced like the countries of the west. The colonial struggle was not limited to Africa but also extended in Asia and pacific Islands.
The major aim of colonialism was profit and wealth accumulation, which was high in countries that had a lot of resources for instance Ghana is known for having abundance of gold, Nigeria for oil etc.
To begin with, trade in the early years of colonialism was the major vehicle for extending capitalism; it enhanced the growth of a money market and introduction of capitalist financial institutions. Most importantly trade encouraged primary production. To value this point one has to differentiate the impact of trade before and after colonization. It is noteworthy to say that there was trade prior to colonization, but at that point the Europeans were not particular relationships ...

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...The railway system did not constitute in any country a coherent system of communications as well as helping to build one, they were built in ad hoc in accordance with the metropolitan or western interest. It meant that the ports were not necessarily located where they could yield development of the country.

Disarticulation and the development of export commodities
It is noteworthy to say that before the coming of the Europeans the indigenous people in Nigeria were self-sufficing that is they had ways in which they organized their economies and their ways of life. With the coming of the Europeans they introduced capitalism that was introduced was devoid of competition, which is entirely different from what they had in their own country. To obtain supply of preferred commodities it was sometimes necessary to discourage the production of others

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