The year is 1492. Cristoforo Colombo, hired by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, sailed the Atlantic Ocean to find an alternate route to the mercantile paradise that was India. Unfortunately, his path was blocked by a couple land masses, you might know them as the Americas. No India, but Spain decided to go for the next best thing: Gold (and other precious metals), tobacco, potatoes, cacao (chocolate), corn, lumber, turkey, and plenty of land to grow all of this, including Old World cash crops like sugar and coffee.
Now all the European nations have to do is find out a way to deal with these troublesome people that apparently aren’t Indians that were here before them and they’re set. And they certainly tried their very best to deal with them: enslavement, killing via warfare (a bit unfair since only one side had guns), killing via spread of disease (a “happy accident” until they caught on and used it as early biological warfare), and swindling/moving the natives off of their land. Those that weren’t killed were raped, assimilated, and forced into adopting Christianity (a very “un-Christian” way of approaching the spread of religion).
We Americans know what transpires in North America from here on: The USA, after forcing Britain out, pushes the Native Americans further west until there is nowhere to go, and eventually relegates them to less desirable parts of the nation, “Manifesting its Destiny.” Canada, while less aggressive in taking land from the original residents, still prioritized itself over natives when expanding and decision-making. This oversimplification of the oppression of Native Americans is an understatement, and many experts have told it better and more in-depth.
Down in South America, Spain and Portugal maintained their grip over their colonies into the 19th Century, until the colonists (now almost entirely made up of a mixed native-Spanish ethnicity) finally revolted colony by colony until the whole continent was free. Spanish treatment was just as bad as French and British treatment in the North. Usually, the assumption that the Europeans were the villains in the Americas is a safe one.
Europe then set up spheres of influence in Asia as well as all around strong-arming many Asian nations, such as Japan, who weakened China in the first place. But more importantly, the continent discovered that its southern neighbor Africa was free real-estate. Europe, in a similar fashion to the colonization of the Americas, but with better weapons and extremely resource-hungry, proceeded to rape Africa (pardon the harsh wording, but the following conquests are often literally referred to as “rape”). The event is also referred to as the “scramble for Africa.”
Long story short, consider the continent ruined. Think about our stereotypical ideas of Africa now: it’s thought of as a desolate, unstable, poverty-stricken hellhole to live in. Not even the combined powers of Alyssa Milano and Sarah McLaughlin’s “In the Arms of an Angel” can save Africa. Not that these assumptions are based off of nothing: the nation that shares my very name has a poverty rate of 87%. This is a result of Europe’s conquests. The best example of this is Belgium’s colony in the Congo. The atrocities committed on behalf of financial gain were so awful that the only reason Belgium wasn’t punished for its crimes against humanity was because the world was distracted by a little thing known as the First World War.
I think its now more than apparent that Europe is good at meddling in world affairs. Fast forward twenty years to post-World War II, (a European mess on its own), and there are big changes ahead. One major outcome was the agreement by Europe that it would abandon all of its colonies, and every nation pulled out, leaving Africa to its own, devastated devices.
One of the only areas preserved from being ruined by Europe was the Middle East. That was the Ottoman Empire’s territory. After both World Wars, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed, leaving quite a bit of land open to takeover. Including the holy lands, lived on by the Palestinian peoples for centuries. The Jews after the Holocaust wanted their own sovereign nation (in hopes of avoiding another literal slaughter), and they were happy to take the area surrounding Jerusalem (offered by the Allied nations, not the Palestinian peoples themselves, of course). This move angered every surrounding nation, as the Holy Land was “Muslim territory” and now fellow Muslims were pushed out and replaced by Jews.
Today, in very simple terms, Israel is in a very similar state. Its neighbors hate it, and many Palestinians are (understandably) still upset about being forced off of their land to make room for foreigners. These issues are way deeper than presented, and a true solution is very far off because tensions are so high. European colonialism is a root cause of many of the world’s problems that we see today.
