Neo-colonialism

Neo-colonialism

Since the end of the 1990s has been developing an international campaign for debt relief for poor countries, especially Africa.

This kind of action has been gaining adherents and is a sign that global poverty even bother to point to the rich countries to seek solutions to it.

We must remember, however, that the origin of poverty, which condemns to death millions of people around the world, is the intense exploitation perpetrated by world powers for centuries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This process is known as imperialism.

The new European issues

In the nineteenth century for many European countries have colonies meant to have easy and cheap access to raw materials and energy sources for industry such as iron, coal and oil. It also meant building the consumer markets for products manufactured in Europe.

The neocolonial domination reached its climax with the so-called Scramble for Africa, held atBerlin Conference, between 1884 and 1885. At this conference, convened by the Germans, representatives of the United States and fourteen countries in Europe have made arrangements to divide the African continent.

Thereafter, a succession of actions, Africa was being occupied, a process which continued in the decades that followed. At the beginning of World War I (1914), almost the entire African territory was under occupation of European forces. Beyond Africa, the capitalist nations divided up the parts of Asia and Oceania. Between 1830 and 1880, four European powers developed colonial policies in Asia: Britain, Russia and Holland, who already had territories before 1830, and France, who came to conquer them from this year. In 1885, the French signed a treaty that became a possession of Indochina to France.In Latin America, European imperialism penetrated mainly through trade and financial, not for territorial domination. Since the early nineteenth century, the British capital has financed theforeign trade of Latin America. And in the middle of the century, also began to finance theexploration of minerals, the agriculture, the construction of communication routes, the ports,etc.. French and Germans have also made investments in Latin America.

As the debt to those countries grew, the governments of Latin America were forced to hand over the administration's exploitation of railways, customs and urban transport to foreign companies. Thus, while maintaining political independence, Latin America was controlled by the interests of foreign capital.