Colonial Legacies
- What is “colonialism”? A “colonial legacy”?
- There is a lot to know about colonialism. How much of a country’s colonial history is needed to understand its present? What sorts of facts?
- What predictions would recent arguments about colonialism make for countries in the developing world that were never colonies (Afghanistan, Iran, Thailand, most of China, etc.)? For countries in the developed world that were colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Ireland)?
- Consider the various instruments used in recent articles on colonial influences (settler mortality, missionaries, etc.). Which ones do you believe? What would make the articles using these instruments more convincing?
- Did British colonial rule encourage representative institutions? If so, through what route? What meaning does the notion of a “colonial legacy” have in a place like the English-speaking Caribbean, where both nations and states were created from whole cloth?
