Brad writes: >Consider the difference between the European colonization of the Americas--where relatively small groups settled and then began to expand into the interior--and European colonialism in Asia or Africa in the same period--where the typical pattern of activity was to huddle on the coast in your fort, trade, and leave...<
There's some truth to this distinction, but part of the European pattern was also to exploit the differences among African tribes (and the Arab traders) to create the slave trade -- or to fight a war to open China to opium.
A key difference in the history of European colonization is the relative density of population of the colonized areas (after being cleared by plague and war). In N. America (N of the Aztec empire) or S. America (outside of the Inca areas) or Australia (I think), the population/land ratio was relatively low, so the emphasis was on grabbing the land, scouring out the Indians (i.e., genocide a la Andrew Jackson) and Aborigines, and setting up settler colonies. (Density was so low that crops which were profitable due to the use of forced labor, like cotton, required the importation of slaves.) In the Aztec & Inca areas, where there was less room for the Europeans to set up their own farms, the emphasis was on forcing the Indians to work in desperate conditions. In China, the empire was too strong for a long time, so that the Europeans followed the pattern of setting up enclaves (Macao, Hong Kong). India didn't have a strong empire to resist the Europeans, but was too big to swallow for a long time, so that the enclave model was followed. Eventually, the Brits set themselves up as replacing the Mughuls, just as the Spaniards had replaced the Aztecs as rulers. More capitalist-minded than the Spaniards, the Brits remade the tax-farmers into capitalist landowners in order to gain support.
Jungles and tropical diseases encouraged the Europeans (who came from a temperate climate) to follow the enclave pattern in Africa and Central America. In the former, the relatively dense population was utilized as a source of slaves.
If I'm wrong about any of the above, I'd love to know.
BTW, what is the current state of the debate about whether Europe got syphillis from the New World? or from Africa? or exported it to the world?
(first message of the day)
Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html