Geography

GEOGRAPHY
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(25 July, 2011)
Geography
What is colonialism?
Colonialism has been known to be a way of dominating, through the means of conquering another country by force through occupying it with settlers and trying to exploit that country’s economy. Nevertheless, those people and there land are known to make up a colony. A colony might either be settler colonies of which the colonists are known to move permanently, for instance the original thirteen states of the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina and there are also dependencies that is known to be governed by the parent country of which few colonists actually move such as the British Raj, Egypt, the Dutch East Indies and the Japanese colonial empire (Kamrava, 2002).
Colonialism normally happens when a foreign country who have got strong powers within themselves sends some representatives to go and camp in a given colony, take control of that colony and benefit from it by using it as a source of wealth to enrich themselves. This is normally done or achieved through expanding their industries and trading by gaining new sources of raw materials, new markets for goods and exported goods that could be used as investments in those colonies. They even tend to inflict the parent country’s culture, religion and language and yet they found them in their arrivals (McEwan, 2009).
One may wonder, where did this colonialism start from? It is because of this reasons that there is need for one to understand the term “colonialism” it selves which it is meant to refer to as overseas European empires. Its footage can be traced back to the ancient Phoenicians, the first group to settle down in the Mediterranean Sea for trading purposes and followed by the Greeks who settled there for the same purpose which is trading. This incident occurred between 1550 B.C.E to about 300 B.C.E.
The modern colonialism is known to have begun in the year 1415 when Portugal decided to overpower the Muslim port of Ceuta in Northern Africa. This encouraged more wave of colonialism. This led to the Spanish exploration to follow suit and its focus was in Africa, Americans, India and East Asia. However, the first succession of the overseas colonies took place in 1600s and the lucky countries of the succession were such as England, France and the Netherlands (Kamrava, 2002).
When we put our focus on the colonialism and geography, we note that the settlers were used as a link between the inhabitant and the imperial hegemony hence bridging the geographical gap between those who were being colonized and the colonizers. The colonizers took advantages of having the knowledge about the earth’s surface. Reasons, the colonizers had enough of the resources needed such as cartography, shipbuilding, navigation, mining and agricultural productivity.
Ever since its colonization, the idea of colonialism has been perceived to posses either positive or negative effects in those nations they colonized. This has triggered a debate between those who have impacted the colonies in a positive way and those who have made the colonies undergo some negative challenged. On the other hand, putting these in to the real perspective, most of the focus has been put into those conditions of colonized regions. However, some of the researches that have been carried out of late show that, the European colonialism caused a greater backwardness in the levels of development in most colonies especially in terms of the economy. This was a very long period even though at the end of it all, the most economically sound regions before colonialism became the least prosperous economically after colonialism. The vice versa is true to the least economical areas before colonialism. Endowments that were mostly available during the colonial period and kind of institutions that are present were encouraged by these institutions. However, in a case of the type of climate, the change in numbers of birth rate, death and case diseases in given areas, topography and soil types led to establishment of some institutions in those region. These led to an imbalance in societies hence becoming detrimental to future developments (Kozlowski, Weber 2010).
With the argument that had been created before about the impact of colonialism in most colonies. Those with a positive mind about the impact argue that, the colonizing of those colonies brought about some benefits to them. This was through their developments in the economic and political infrastructure for the purpose of modernization and democracy. These developments have been proved by those countries which underwent through the hands of colonizers such as the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore
For those who are against the issue of colonialism argue that, colonizing other countries brings about the political, psychological and some demoralization to them. They further argue that some of the successful nations before being colonized were economically successful but after colonization, their economical development dropped drastically hence leading them to the state of poverty. Disease such as smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever and other unmentioned disease were introduced during this period of colonialism. This diseases since ever, has affected the healthy on some nations with others lacking some medications even though a few can be treated.
Despite all the others, one may wonder whether it matters on which of the world powers colonized the other and their developments, but all this depends on the way one may view it. Nevertheless, to me it because of the resources they gained from the colonies. For instance those who gained the resources through the means of force might end up benefiting or loosing due to poor management of those resources.
What is climate?
When we talk about climate, one need to understand what climate is all about and this has to begin with one knowing the meaning behind climate. Climate is known to be the average or typical, weather conditions that are normally observed for quite some period of time for a certain area or location. The climate is known to change every now and then and that is why in most cases, the weather keep on changing that is from coldness to warmness, from rainy to sunny and many other characteristics of the climate. However, when there is a climate change, it can have long-term effects to the surrounding environment. Most countries get affected especially those ones with large territories and long coastal lines like for instance Russia, a country that was colonized by the Mongols for more than 200 years before gaining its independence. The long period of colonization ended up affecting the economic models of Russia thus the reversals of fortunes. Despite colonizati...