Asian communities responded to imperialism through many different means. Some, like the Ottoman Empire, adopted reforms that sought to emulate Western models of military organization and education. Others, like Japan, emulated the nation-state form itself.
Southeast Asia's social structure has changed as a result of colonialism, which also introduced contemporary western concepts. Some of these concepts were influenced by western culture, including human rights, religion, and education. The region's population has increased as a result of the presence of European powers.
Impact of Imperialism on Southeast Asia
Southeast Asian economies became based on cash crops. Roads, harbors, rail systems, and improved communication was established. Education, health, and sanitation improved. Millions of people, from different ethnic groups, changed the racial makeup of Southeast Asia.
Local resistance to colonialism has a long history in Southeast Asia. Rebellions were frequently led by charismatic figures who drew on religious vocabularies and traditional ideas of power to express their opposition to an alien presence.
The arrival of the western powers had an impact on Southeast Asian political and public administration as well. The institutions for a modern state such as a state bureaucracy, courts of law were created. Then, Southeast Asian countries were transformed from a traditional kingdom into a modern nation state.
Britain's colonial legacy in South Asia over hundreds of years includes arbitrarily partitioning the country along religious lines, the Bengal Famine, exporting slaves to other territories, and looting trillions of dollars of wealth.
Southeast Asia was heavily influenced by European colonialism. The only area of the region that was not colonized by the Europeans was Thailand, which was called Siam during the colonial era. It remained an independent kingdom throughout the colonial period and was a buffer state between French and British colonizers.
Siam has never been a colony of Europe during the period of col- onization, 1800s-1900s. To avoid British colonization, the Bangkok cap- ital city subsequently privileged and welcomed British settlement in exchange for sovereignty.
Colonisation was the process of taking over the economy, politics and culture of an independent nation. After colonising India, Britain expanded its empire in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore and Malaysia. England entered China as well, as it wanted to take control over the Opium trade in China.
For adherents to these views, pre-colonial South East Asia was dominated by communal, village-based production, over which weak centralised state structures had limited control and made limited demands. Production was dominated by agriculture to which craft activities were merely annexed.
China and Japan responded to Western imperialism differently. Essentially, Japan gave in to the Western pressure to opening their ports and cities to foreign trade and relations, while China refused. This allowed Japan to very successfully modernize.
Chinese resisted European imperialism through war, rebellion, not purchasing foreign-made products, and American protection. China had a wealth of natural resources that the European countries desired but China did not seek many European goods, which resulted in a trade imbalance between Europe and China.
Asian communities responded to imperialism through many different means. Some, like the Ottoman Empire, adopted reforms that sought to emulate Western models of military organization and education. Others, like Japan, emulated the nation-state form itself.
Colonialism's impacts include environmental degradation, the spread of disease, economic instability, ethnic rivalries, and human rights violations—issues that can long outlast one group's colonial rule.
European-style colonial empires and imperialism operated in Asia throughout six centuries of colonialism, formally ending with the independence of the Portuguese Empire's last colony Macau in 1999. The empires introduced Western concepts of nation and the multinational state.
It's the need of raw materials for their industries as well as other commodities such as spice and tea that motivated them to colonize. Asian countries such as India and China were basically rural States and they were self sufficient. The advent of Industrialization was limited to the West and did not affect the East.
Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States were the imperialist countries that had colonies in Southeast Asia.
Colonialism or Colonisation
Establishment of a colony or colonies in a country or area. Colonisation dispossessed Indigenous people of their traditional lands. In Australia, colonisation began with the First Fleet's arrival from Britain in 1788, and progressed over time with settlements in different states.
The visitor to Metro Manila commonly sees the Philippines as the most westernized of Asian countries and in many ways, it is. But there is also a rich underlay of Malay culture beneath the patina of Spanish and American heritage.
Ultimately, of all the countries in the world, only one consistently appears on every list of countries that have never been colonized: Japan. Several other countries appear on various lists. However, they all have events in their history that arguably make them colonies according to one definition or another.
・Japan was in the Warring States period, and the potential for war among the feudal lords was substantial. Therefore, countries like Spain simply abandoned the idea of invasion. In fact, feudal lords throughout Japan had a large number of troops and a substantial number of firearms.
Japan was not formally colonized by Western powers, but was a colonizer itself. It has, however, experienced formal semicolonial situations, and modern Japan was profoundly influenced by Western colonialism in wide-ranging ways.
INTRODUCTION: Colonialism first stepped into China after the victory of the British Navy in the first opium war (1839-42). This war is marked in history as the first in which steam-driven ships were used as the main force (Spence, J. D. 2013: 157).
Europeans wanted the power and resulting wealth that would come from controlling trade. Finding all- water routes to Asia and its riches would allow European merchants to cut out Middle Eastern middlemen and reap all the profits of eastern trade. Some Europeans were also eager to spread Christianity to nonbelievers.
The first Dutch ship arrived in 1600, and in 1609 the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) established a trading factory in Hirado. Following the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639, the Dutch became the only Europeans allowed to remain in Japan.