In the colonial period imperialism advanced in uneven ways across time and space globally. European exploration in the late 15th century first brought destructive, exploitative, and deadly changes to what became known as the Americas. The subjugation and elimination of Indigenous groups, which commenced during this period, created the conditions for accumulation by dispossession, enslavement (of both Indigenous groups and people stolen from Africa), plantation-style production systems, and the extraction of resources—the legacies of which still mark political, social, economic, and environmental landscapes today. Following rebellion and successful de jure (legal) independence from Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s (starting with the radical uprising of enslaved peoples in Haiti), Western powers turned to new regions to regain such systems of control and resource extraction. In 1848, the Berlin Conference was held— also called the “Scramble for Africa,” where European powers divided the continent and created new sites of extraction. Such patterns followed in South and Southeast Asia as well as North Africa and Central Asia in the latter parts of the 19th century. As a result of these violent campaigns, there are very few places on the globe that did not sustain, at some point, a form of colonial-imperial relation. Independence movements were ongoing and by the end of the 20th century, de jure colonial control had all but disappeared. Decolonization had occurred and the global periphery entered the period of being postcolonial. Former British colonies were assembled into the Commonwealth, which changed relations from direct control and subjugation to allegiance to the Queen and for some, drastic changes in economic relations, (this had the effect of marginalizing Indigenous struggles in many of these places). Notwithstanding the legal separation of the colonies from imperial powers, de facto (in effect) colonial arrangements lingered and remain today, giving rise to a series of critiques and new ways of thinking about imperialism and the impact of colonialism, such as the theory of postcolonialism.
Identifying key processes and sectors in the interaction between climate and socio-economic systems: a review toward integrating Earth–human systems
