let's think together for a moment about
all the people who have lived where you
live now and all the different states
and nations and empires who have claimed
that land like right now i'm standing on
land in what's now south florida that's
currently controlled by the u.s but in
the past has been controlled by the
spanish is possibly named after the
moyami and is the traditional territory
of the kalusa mikasuki seminole taino
and tequesta nations as we've talked
about a few times here on crash course
geography each place comes with multiple
names and a long history of rulers and
claims that can still influence how it's
perceived today
as geographers we can look at why those
territories change control so much and
what the impact of that control has on
relationships and landscapes i'm ali zay
carrere and this is crash course
geography
[Music]
last time we explored the relationships
different economic systems can create
between states this can be a
relationship like the one between
bulgaria and germany their shared
communist then capitalist history has
led to long-standing alliances and being
committed trading partners through all
sorts of governments and economies
though we've also seen how geopolitics
and different governments can influence
the relationships between states and
today we're going to talk about a
particular form of governing and the
lasting impact it can have throughout
the world
that's right get out your risk boards
we're talking about empires an empire
forms when a single authority controls
multiple territories states and
countries there are several ways an
empire can function ranging from
intrusive to rather hands-off but when
an empire also creates unequal economic
or power relationships that relationship
is considered imperialism though this
relationship can eventually be more
hands-off too
imperialism describes the domination and
subordination of one state over others
and is often motivated by the
acquisition of land resources or
strategic positions from there we can
look at different types of colonization
which is either a type of imperialism or
just another type of empire depending on
who you ask that often implies
settlement of people in an area and a
degree of cultural control in addition
to control of land and resources which
kind of sounds like imperialism plus
imperialism and colonialism do have
really similar definitions in fact
they're still debated within geography
and other disciplines in the early 21st
century when we talk about colonialism
we're often referring to european
colonialism which happened globally
between the 15th century to the present
but the chinese japanese and mongols
built vast empires too
in this case we talk about imperialism
because of the way each expanded through
force and each had elements of
extraction of resources and control of
local politics we feel the impacts of
colonialism and imperialism around us in
almost all places in the world even
though many of those systems have been
formally ended for instance the mongol
empire consolidated a huge chunk of
central asia and even though the
territory has changed hands many times
it's still more or less together today
that land makes up much of what's now
russia and mongolia ultimately empire
imperialism and colonialism are all
interrelated tactics of geopolitics that
are used to achieve similar goals of one
state maintaining economic political or
cultural dominance over other
territories often for economic gain in
geography when we want to study how
colonialism changes the cultural
landscape we'll start with economic
relationships as we'll talk about more
next time geographers are particularly
interested in the mechanisms that create
uneven development where one place has
more wealth and power than another
modern economic relationships have deep
connections to colonialism and
geographers have a few different ways to
think about the connection between
colonialism and current economic
landscapes one way to think about
lasting impacts of colonialism on the
landscape is through dependency theory
the basic idea is that the long history
of extraction between a colony and its
colonizer creates an economic situation
that's difficult to pull out of
it leaves those former colonies still
economically reliant on the colonizer
after gaining independence to further
explain the relationship between those
with global power and those without
world systems theory categorizes the
world into core areas with a lot of
wealth and power periphery areas that
send raw materials to the core and rely
on the core for economic support and
then semi-periphery areas which rely on
relationships with both the core and the
periphery and some wealth and power and
neocolonialism is another theory that
attempts to explain situations where one
country is outwardly independent but
their economic and political power is
closely monitored and controlled by
external forces geographers use ideas
like these and others to explain the way
powerful and less powerful countries
relate to each other like in taiwan
which has had imperial and
colonial-esque relationships a few times
around 1624 the dutch colonized the
indigenous people of taiwan and used
taiwan mainly as a shipping port to get
goods out of asia and back to europe
they fought for control of the island
with the indigenous people who were
already there using mostly subsistence
agriculture or small-scale agriculture
for local use by families and
communities rather than for export the
dutch version of colonization was pretty
much just for taiwan's strategic
location for their shipping needs but as
the qing dynasty took control of taiwan
in the 1680s it was a more imperial
relationship at first mostly as a way to
keep pirates from controlling key ports
then as chinese refugees moved to the
island due to political tensions in
china the new settlers began farming
sugar and rice on a small scale and
changing land ownership arrangements for
all intents and purposes this was a
subtler colonial relationship meaning
that people from china moved to the
island to live and in doing so changed
the cultural practices of the area as
chinese people moved in they negotiated
and fought with the indigenous peoples
as they tried to set up their own small
rice and sugar farms along with planting
out towns
in some cases indigenous peoples were
able to claim ownership of the land and
charge rents but in others the
indigenous peoples quit subsistence
farming to work on the sugar plantations
or were forced to move their subsistence
plots into more rugged territory then by
1895 when japan took control of taiwan
japan wanted taiwan to move from a
subsistence to an industrial level of
rice and sugar production they created
restrictions on where people could live
and farm that made it difficult to
continue subsistence farming
people began to change what they grew
and many had to work on plantations to
make enough money as the japanese empire
rose japan became less isolated and more
open to european trade they were trying
and succeeding to be an imperial force
one that was strong enough militarily
and economically to avoid being
colonized themselves to create that
strength japan became an economic
colonizing force meaning they used land
outside of their own territory to
improve their economic resources taiwan
became the source of primary goods like
sugar and rice and those goods mostly
went to japan all of this extraction and
separating of people from their land
should have kept taiwan from having much
power in economic relationships with
larger economies like china and japan
after world war ii but at the end of the
1940s china went through a civil war
that led to communist rule and prompted
the u.s and their allies to provide
ample funding to set up strong
capitalist economies to reinforce and
maintain a containment zone around
chinese communism
today taiwan still acts as a shatter
belt between china and the west meaning
it's strategically located between two
large powers the us's allies and china
so by the 1980s taiwan was considered
one of the asian tigers which was a term
used for asian economies that
experienced intense growth and
industrialization after world war ii
that's a lot of land grabbing and
economic movement and all that just in
this one island taiwan shows us that
there are a host of motivations for one
country to colonize another and that the
outcomes of colonization aren't uniform
but a country is more than just its
economy and colonialism can shape the
landscape in other ways too colonizers
have been known to antagonize existing
ethnic conflicts or create new ones by
promoting one group over another and
making sure both groups know why which
ultimately meddles in both local
politics and culture
this is what happened in what is now
called myanmar which was most recently a
part of the british empire this can be
as simple as how different groups are
talked about and how language gets used
to signal the good cultures the
messaging throughout myanmar's colonial
period about which groups were outsiders
and which groups belonged set up
foundations for ongoing conflicts
between the peoples of this region
usually the so-called civilized
developed and modern cultures are either
the colonizers or the colonizer's
preferred cultural group and derogatory
language like uncivilized primitive or
backward refers to the people being
colonized or the more marginal groups
this coding of people and cultural
traits as acceptable and unacceptable
allows for the mistreatment enslavement
and genocide of people
and today myanmar is known for regular
war and conflict between groups and an
ongoing genocide as of late 2021. both
myanmar and taiwan are examples of how
empires treat a peripheral territory in
the case of taiwan it was advantageous
for the territory to build up a strong
presence through a powerful economy
because they have control over their own
economy and are strong enough to
negotiate favorable trade for themselves
they are not fully dependent on any one
country
they are a semi-periphery but in the
case of myanmar it went through a type
of colonization that politically divided
different cultural groups leaving the
resulting state fractured the british
empire united its own power through
national pride and accumulating immense
wealth but destroyed local power through
suppression of national cultural
expression like languages and religions
changing local knowledge and education
and dismantling the existing economy so
in myanmar and other former colonies the
long-term political consequences of
colonization are bound up in the impact
of how colonizers treated their cultural
heritage and landscapes in other parts
of the world settler colonialism like
taiwan experienced with the qing dynasty
often makes the largest impact on the
cultural landscape settlers can use
processes like forced migration remaking
place names and other tactics that
rewrite the landscape to signal that one
culture is prioritized over other
already existing cultures as north
america also struggles to reconcile its
history and present-day settler colonial
system with social calls for equality
for black indigenous and other people of
color we can see the roots of those
stereotypes and tensions going back to
colonial language so much of the world
has spent time in one form of empire or
colonial structure or another that we
can also find the imprint of colonialism
even in places that were never colonized
like in thailand which was never a
colony despite being nestled between
territories once part of mongolian
japanese and even european empires but
it still felt the pressure of those
narratives that dictated what was a
desirable culture
now i'm going to use my psychic
geography powers and guess that you have
a thai restaurant somewhere near you
feeling pressure to fit in the thai
government tried to both make their food
seem palatable to non-thai audiences
which would help them align with
dominant cultures and remain true to
their cultural heritages and by 2003 the
thai government invested millions
providing loans to thai citizens who
wanted to create restaurants abroad this
furthers their cultural outreach and
international goodwill this is a form of
culinary colonization or pressure to
change and conform the cultural trait of
food for diplomatic reasons
while no one external leader or state
required this change the leaders of
thailand realized that if thai people
were going to control the narrative
about their culture they would have to
get out ahead of the pressure to conform
thailand crafted their own story and
worked to ensure the world could see
them in a favorable light before any
other cultural group could decide what
to privilege and what to silence about
thai cultural traits like food so as
cultural and human geographers
unraveling colonial influence is part of
understanding the cultural landscape and
as economic and political geographers
being able to read the causes of unequal
economic opportunity or political power
is part of our work but colonialism
isn't a thing of the past we still see
the push and pull for control over
resources in regions all over the world
and we'll begin to explore that
relationship next time when we talk
about development and the ways that
countries measure their success on the
global stage
many maps and borders represent modern
geopolitical divisions that have often
been decided without the consultation
permission or recognition of the land's
original inhabitants many geographical
place names also don't reflect the
indigenous or aboriginal people's
languages so we at crash course want to
acknowledge these people's traditional
and ongoing relationship with that land
and all the physical and human
geographical elements of it we encourage
you to learn about the history of the
place you call home through resources
like nativeland.ca and by engaging with
your local indigenous and aboriginal
nations through the websites and
resources they provide
thanks for watching this episode of
crash course geography which is filmed
at the team sandoval pier studio and was
made with the help of all these nice
people
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