What do you mean by implications of colonial policies and institutions?

Question

What do you mean by implications of colonial policies and institutions?

Answer 1

Colonial policies are practices designed by governments which legitimize the takeover of other, previously-sovereign countries through conquest, enslavement, territorial expansion, etc.  Spain conquered Latin America (and parts of North America for a while) - Latin America used to be all indigenous people, like the US, but the Spanish conquered the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan empires. They spread the Spanish language and Roman Catholicism. Swords and guns were the weapons used in the beginning of colonial expansion. Then the Catholic Church was used as an instrument of colonial control.  Then, economic institutions were created which served the mother country. The borders of all the Latin American countries were drawn up by European colonizers. Brazil was the Portugese colonial territory. Belize used to be called British Honduras, because it was the part of Honduras conquered and controlled by the British.

Colonial institutions are numerous - colonial educational systems presented the colonizers worldview/perspective/language rather than the "native" perspective/languages;  colonial functionaries were administrators that were indigenous to the territory that actually served underneath the colonizers own administration - it was easier to control a population when the colonized saw a face that looked like their own; colonial economic institutions that took a country's resources and exported it back to the mother country

When I was younger, "colonialism" was a dry, empty word - when I started reading history on my own, however, I saw how colonialism had affected our whole world. I became an anti-colonialist.

There are still colonies today - China took over Tibet in 1959. Puerto Rico, even though it's not called a colony, is largely considered to be a colony of the United States. Hong Kong was a British colony until a few years ago. East Timor was a colony of Indonesia until 2002.

Answer 2

Colonial rulers had harsh policies for the locals that they ruled over. These policies tended to favor the colonial rulers and were frequently unjust to the plight of the locals. It really depends which colonial power you are talking about, for example, the British Empire was one of the most powerful empires that ruled many parts of the world. Their trade institutions eventually led to contracts with local rulers and finally to them conquering a certain territory.