Colonialism and the World System

This chapter examines contact, the colonial experience, the modern world system and their combined effects on culture. Colonialism lasted for about 600 years, and it is an indelible part of the Early Modern world, essentially covering the period from the late fifteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Colonialism is the experience of contact and conquest, the product of a military and economic collision of people of distinct cultures speaking different languages. Early Modern colonialism linked the entire world into a new, global framework known as the world system. The world system consisted initially of a European core to which raw materials flowed from a periphery, the sites of colonial exploitation. Subaltern groups in colonial situations are the people living at the periphery; the dominant groups originate in the core. Colonialism entered its final phase shortly after World War II and concluded around 1970 when most colonies got their independence from the core powers.