Logic dictates that any wealth or resource that staysin the community is more likely to benefit that community as opposed to if it is shipped to a different continent and never seen again.
You can't just say "logic dictates" when logic dictates no such thing. I'm not saying your wrong, or there is not correlation, but there is no clear pattern between how far off an occupier is and the treatment of the occupied from what I can see.
The vikings & other nordics who bled in to early irish bloodlines didn't arrive via england.
I think it's mostly just a bit of a bikeshed over terminology to be honest; we could also call it "European conquest of Africa", or whatnot, but that's just the same as "colonialism" with a different name.
Colonialism is a specific institution, it distinct and separate. It does not mean that mongoles were better, but they dealt with subjugated countries differently. They did not redraw borders of countries, or forbid people from mining their own salt.
"After his morning bhajan, Gandhi waded in to the sea shore and picked up a handful of salt, proclaiming that with the handful of salt he was proclaiming the end of the British Empire. The police arrived and arrested thousands of national leaders including Gandhi. Gandhi's bold defiance of the salt law encouraged other Indians to break the law as well"
There also were plenty of examples of conquerors applying specific economic laws to the conquered. For example, Muslim conquerors would impose a tax on Christians and Jews in their empires (the Jizya). Does that make them colonial powers? So how is colonialism a specific institution?
The entire country India was ruled by a private company, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India
The Mongoles have not redrawn borders along a line on a map the way British and French have, creating the mess we now have in the Middle East.
I can't make a complete list of criteria that defines colonialism, but to claim that it was no different than other conquests is to betray complete historical illiteracy.
Back then there was not really the same concept of boarders. But you can be 100% sure that the Mongols picked sides in many local conflicts and simply layed down the law on things like grazing rights and many others things.
> I can't make a complete list of criteria that defines colonialism, but to claim that it was no different than other conquests is to betray complete historical illiteracy.
It really isn't. Sure colonialism from 1800 is not the same as 1200 century mongol conquest. But to draw a line between colonialism and all other types of conquest in human history is actually historically questionable.
Comparing colonialism to other conquests at the same time is very apt. Empires impose institutions and take sides in local conflicts, enforcing new laws making deals with neighbours not to the advantage of locals and so on.
Unless you can lay out a set of clear differences between colonialism and all other froms of one society taking over another, I see no reason to treat collonialism as seperate.
> The entire country India was ruled by a private company
And in other cases, for exmaple the mongol one specific branch of the family was put in command of a region and those families often engadged in trade of the resources from their part of the empire. There are lots and lots of ways empires manage their 'colonies', a quasi private 'company' is certaintly not typical but its also not ahistorical as far as I can see.
Either you posses some unique knowledge that historians do not, or you are dead set on 'proving' colonialism was 'no different than what came before' regardless of any arguments brought forward.
Can you actually show this to be true?
Lots of things in history is are pretty unique. At the time East India company was clearly not special, other institutions of that type that existed. And we can find clear precedents in history.
Any attempted to really define colonialism will either be incredibly convoluted or equally aligns many other historical situations.
Lots of what we call colonization is also not threw quasi-private space sponsored monopolies.
Perhaps its baggage from the 18 and 19 centuries when only Europeans, Americans, and Japanese had territories spanning continents in a form we would call colonies. The only reason the Japanese had those territories was because they thought an empire would stop them from being colonized themselves. ( This does not excuse the terrible abuses of the Japanese government.)
You often have what we would call colonialism in this process, just a more local version of it. Think about the Huns sweeping into central Europe, conquering those people's and adding them to their coalition. Or the Aztec demanding tribute from their neighboring cities. Or China conquering central Asian states and Korea. Or the Zulu building a confederation through conquest of Southern Africa. All of these were coercive relationships, built on a state or proto state dominating the "less advanced" people around them.
I'm not saying that this makes colonialism good, but the idea that there was some sort of peaceful prior existence for the people before colonization or without colonization there wouldn't be just as difficult violent struggles is not obvious from history.