The expansion of European influence and power through Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas in many ways began with the flow of traders, travelers, and missionaries intent on establishing themselves in non-Western territories and strengthening their own nation’s resources. Already in the 15th century the Portuguese established trade with parts of Africa and by the 16th century the movement of European powers into foreign lands for expansionist political and commercial purposes was well underway.

The Europeans began a system of global expansion that had not been seen in the west since the fall of the Roman Empire. The presence for nearly a millennium of the Ottoman Empire in the Near East made European colonial expansion a political and cultural imperative as much as an economic one. Soon European political ambitions and their quest to find alternative trade routes to Asia during the 15th century resulted in a collision between the European and the Islamic worlds. An initial period of European extension into other territories first began as mercantile exploits that aimed to increase the wealth of European monarchies through settled commercial outposts and agricultural systems whose only purpose was to fuel and feed the European continent. The slave trade also grew out of this mercantile period as an offshoot of the desire to maximize production and profits.

A second period in European colonialism began at the end of the Napoleonic wars as European powers struggled to maintain their colonial territories. The wars in Europe depleted the strength and resources of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese particularly. In this second phase, the British also reduced their focus on their colonial outposts after their experience with the rebellion of their American colonies and the abolition of slavery in 1807. The abolition of slavery ended the once endless stream of labor that fueled the economy in the British Caribbean colonies and made them profitable.

A new phase of imperialism began in the 1880s through the beginning of World War I when a resurgence of colonial expansionism encapsulated almost all of Africa and most of Asia. In this era, the military and political problems between the European powers on the European continent manifested themselves on the colonial front. Furthermore, incentives for colonial expansion in Africa grew out of a reaction to the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in the north and the discovery of gold and diamonds in the south. In Asia, the Europeans increased their colonial efforts mainly due to the weakening Asian regimes which made their countries vulnerable to new exploits. Following World War I and World War II, the European grip on its former colonies weakened, leading to the independence and formation of new countries made from the diverse ethnic and religious groups that were once subjugated by the Europeans. Today, these former colonies struggle to find their national identities while maintaining tenuous relations with the European nations that once exploited them for centuries.

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