Steve Gilliard: Colonialism Ain't What it Used to Be

When the British decided to force "open the door" to trade with China in the mid-19th century, the traditional Chinese government had no guns. The Opium Wars were one-sided conflicts in which the British practiced "gunboat diplomacy"--send in the gunboats, shell, repeat and then force diplomatic concessions. And it worked. The Chinese government could not match the British Navy and was forced to make concessions in a series of treaties. The British got richer and more powerful. This kind of hard power was the advantage that European technological development had given the British as they built a vast empire during the 1800s, encountering people who had no guns across the globe.

This is just one illustration of just how much the world has changed since then (perhaps I am understating here): the European powers practiced a form of imperialism in the 19th Century in which many of their adversaries had no guns. During the twentieth century, we saw the end of the European empires as colony after colony revolted or was granted independence. In Indochina and then in Algeria for instance the French were defeated by the people they had previously occupied. Many historians site World War II as the major cause of the decline of the European ability to successfully defend their empires. The colonies became financially burdensome, especially as they drained military resources when they revolted.