A short history of colonialism [Paperback]

This well-written and comprehensive book by an outstanding expert provides students of history and the general reader with reliable up-to-date information on an essential part of the history of mankind: the global impact of European colonial expansion from the late Middle Ages to the present. It deals with the discoveries, with Portuguese, Dutch and English trade systems in Asia, with the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British Colonies in America, the American plantation economy and the trade in African slaves, with settler colonies in the southern hemisphere, with US-, Russian and Chinese continental imperialism, with western colonial rule in Asia and Africa and the several waves of decolonisation between 1775 and 1989. Twenty-four maps illustrate the narrative.

A useful teaching text, it combines traditional and more recent perspectives to produce a final balance sheet of Western colonialism and its global heritage. A carefully selected bibliography encourages further reading.

1. Colonies and colonialism

2. The European Atlantic

3. Europeans and Asians

4. The Iberian Atlantic

5. Plantation America and the African Atlantic

6. New Europes on the North Atlantic and the first decolonisation

7. New Europes in the southern hemisphere and the second decolonisation

8. Continental imperialism

9. Overseas imperialism in Asia

10. Imperialism in Africa

11. Late imperialism and the great decolonisation

12. A balance-sheet of colonialism

Bibliography

Index

Wolfgang Reinhard is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the University of Freiburg, Germany