illuminating

On August 14, 1415 in Ceuta, a Portuguese troop under the command of King John I landed in the North African city and conquered it in less than a day. This overseas adventure would mark the starting signal for an aggressive policy that would mark the world geography for centuries to come: that of European powers permanently taking possession of a territory outside the old continent with a clear will to squat itkeep it and exploit it. Colonialism. The Oxford University-linked project Our World in Data has some magnificent open access work such as this either this which are worth stopping and taking a look at. The data from the last come from Colonial Dates Dataset and are prepared by researcher Bastian Becker from the University of Bremen and are the ones Visual Capitalist has condensed in the form of an infographic, synthesizing the data of the best historians of colonialism. In short: a lot of information in a single image that shows the rise and fall of many European empires. Visual Capitalist. Data from Our World in Data – Colonialism Portugal, it all started with you. Officially we can frame the Portuguese empire in a time frame between 1415 and 1999. Portugal was not so much interested in expanding but rather have access to the gold of West Africa, to the spices of the East and to seek Christian allies against Islam. His sequence of conquests was unstoppable: in 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, in 1498 Vasco da Gama arrived in India, in 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral touched Brazil. Its model was that of a network of coastal enclaves, although it also had large territorial colonies such as Brazil, Angola and Mozambique. Visual Capitalist. Data from Our World in Data – Colonialism The Empire where the sun never sets. A short time later, the Spain that was being formed after the wedding of Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon and the conquest of the strategic and independent Kingdom of Navarra. The empire where the sun never sets (referring to the period of Charles I and Philip II) is formally delimited between 1492 and 1976. Spain opted for territorial control: in a matter of a few decades it had overthrown the Aztec and Inca empires in blood, fire and smallpox. In the 18th century the Spanish empire covered 13.7 million square kilometers and was made up of viceroyalties, House of Contract, Councils of India… a display of global governance that got out of hand. France, Great Britain and the others. The real furor of this policy came in 1914, at which time there were 101 colonies. The spotlight fell on Great Britain, where the Industrial Revolution constituted a true differential advantage in the form of capital, railways and weapons to lay the foundations for the largest empire in history. In fact, at that height more than half of the colonies were theirs. France focused mainly on Africa and Southeast Asia, while others such as Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy were left with some succulent leftovers scattered mainly in Africa, but also in Asia. The mechanism of colonization in its maximum expression was synthesized in the Berlin conference (1885) where the European powers literally divided up Africa without any African people being present. Visual Capitalist. Data from Our World in Data – Colonialism The B side of colonization. The graph shows numbers, curves and colors, but the real story is much darker and not only because of the looting. The academic project “Dartmouth & Slavery Project” of the famous Dartmouth University reflects that 74% of the indigenous population of the Americas was annihilated between 1492 and 1800, either by direct violence or by diseases to which they were not immune. In Africa things were no better: between 25 and 30 million people were torn from their homes to be enslaved, as explains Amnesty International. The consequences are not only historical: colonialism generated racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, as recognized the Durban Declaration in 2001. The great absence: Russia. The graph tracks overseas colonies and there Russia appears marginal, but because where others expanded by sea, the Russian Empire did so by land: over time it covered Siberia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and parts of Eastern Europe. This study of Loyola University Chicago concludes that the Russian Empire was “a colonial empire in denial,” with essentially colonial practices, especially in Asia. The end of empires: decolonization and inheritances. The colonization process went slowly but surely until it reached its peak and then it collapsed. The two world wars exhausted the powers economically, militarily and also morally (their population) and at that juncture the independence movements found the perfect moment. The Napoleonic Wars were the ideal occasion for the decolonization of Iberian America and in the 20th century, the wave of decolonization swept Africa and Asia in a few decades, although today some overseas territories still persist in special conditions that, although they are no longer considered colonies in the strict and traditional sense of the term, still have self-determination on the table. In Xataka | Africa has more than 30,000 kilometers of coastline and one country has managed to control them without anyone noticing: China In Xataka | The death of one empire is the birth of another: the graph that reviews the history of civilizations from 4,000 years ago Cover | Visual Capitalist